[nine_zeros]

> The remaining employee's workloads are about to increase 50%

Keep in mind that execs will get bonuses for cutting costs but the real workers have additional work without a raise.

The downward spiral seems almost inevitable - attrition, drop in quality, services turn shitty, loss of revenue, repeat.

[kibwen]

> attrition, drop in quality, services turn shitty, loss of revenue, repeat

Execs are lauded for cutting costs, parasitically enrich themselves on the carcass of a once-productive business, jump ship to a new host before it all comes crashing down, repeat.

[cableshaft]

Some execs have already jumped ship. From the article:

"In the final months of 2023, several top executives announced their departures, including Twitch’s chief product officer, chief customer officer and chief content officer. Twitch also lost its chief revenue officer, who worked on Twitch from within Amazon’s Ads unit."

[_jal]

Funny, I read this just recently.

https://adrianco.medium.com/signs-that-its-time-to-leave-a-c...

[edgyquant]

Sounds like a sweet gig, how do I land one?

[no_wizard]

Be born in the aristocracy[0] or land one of the very small openings where executives get hired from outside the circle via executive recruiting, which usually means networking your way to VP / SVP at a some kind of notable firm or otherwise getting close to attainment of the executive class.

I hear being an ex-founder is useful in this regard. Apparently, working at McKinsey or Bain or one of the other large "prestigious" consulting firms is also a good move. Going to Harvard, Yale, Stanford or similar univerisities is almost a hard requirement. Almost[1].

Or, in the rarest of events, found a business that is successful and somehow manages to get big enough that you get status by proxy.

In any case, sans the last (and rarest) way, you'll have to walk the walk and talk the talk. It can get unsavory.

[0]: Oligarchy and Plutocracy fit too. Take your pick. To grossly oversimplify: If you're part of the Aristrocratic families (Rockefellers, Dursts etc) thats one way. Another is via being apart of the oligarchy (corporate power is alive and well. from oil companies to big tech) which is often intertwined with aristrocratic insitutions (Harvard, Yale etc). Finally, of course, you have the mesh of percentage at the top that fall into Plutocracy, which are wealthy and powerful themselves but are in service of even wealthier and more powerful oligarchs and artistrocrats in many cases.

[1]: Somehow around the edges you can find your way into it without this, but its challenging to say the least. Usually (but not entirely) its due to the rarest case, being a successful entreprenuer and surviving long enough to be recongized by proxy. Though, sometimes servant becomes the master. See outside executive recruiting

[VirusNewbie]

It seems like we could check this. Is your hypothesis that an outsized number of SVP/EVP at top paying tech companies are going to be from either dynastic wealth or from traditional Ivy backgrounds?

[no_wizard]

They already hail largely from top 50 colleges[0][1], for instance.

We know that Ivy League graduates have better access to opportunity and privilege than anyone else, there's enough out there on this that I would consider it common knowledge by now.

[0]: https://academicinfluence.com/rankings/schools/which-college...

[1]: Note, I didn't say Ivy league, but arisotricatic institutions. These include many state universities with large alumni endowments and historical privileges.

[VirusNewbie]

I don’t care that much about fortune 500. I make more than some C level on the lower end of the list as an IC at FAANG. I’m not talking about people making high six or low seven figure a year packages, i’m talking about people making more than most professional athletes.

[throwup238]

Bohemian Grove, after the human sacrifice. They throw the skull up at the Owls Nest Camp like flowers at a wedding and the person to catch it becomes the next megacorp executive.

[bananapub]

ask sam altman what he did - I still can't figure out how he went from "startup that went nowhere" to "hand out other people's money at YC until paulg fires him" to "CEO of openai".

[alaskamiller]

Glad I'm not the only one

[matchbok]

Something called hard work?

[bananapub]

and they say HN has no sense of humour, bravo

[matchbok]

Please go try to build a company, hire people, make payroll, and.... actually build something. Then get back to me.

[rchaud]

I'm almost expecting a mention of bootstraps, and not of the CSS framework variety.

[matchbok]

Nah, just a basic understanding of how a business works. I suggest you read up!

[refulgentis]

Bless you my sweet summer child.

(OP, in some of the longform pieces written since The Event they touch on this transition being a mystery too, but I think it's a tale as old as time: earnest, smile on their face, performs work and passion, team player, right place right time and asked.)

[matchbok]

Econ 101, read it.

[thot_experiment]

Sell your soul. You have to be capable of looking at people and erasing their humanity/removing your empathy.

[_jal]

Necessary but not sufficient.

Also, don't confuse empathy and sympathy - you need to extinguish the latter, but the former is incredibly important to your ability to play suckers.

[thot_experiment]

I think you might have them backwards? Empathy is the one where you viscerally feel the other person, sympathy is where you can simulate what they're feeling but without that deeper connection, or at least that's how I was taught it.

[matchbok]

How dare those people build a business and create jobs! They must have no humanity.

Geez.

[thot_experiment]

These are just some of the lies that anyone in a position to make money exploiting people tells themselves, talk to any drug dealer, you'll get similar answers. We all do it to some extent though, the developer creating a heinous subscription cancel flow, the designer making bail bonds ads. You build walls and look the other way. Every one of these actions forces you to give up some of your empathy for the individuals you exploit, the scale at which most execs operate is just mind boggling in comparison.

[aaomidi]

Most execs aren't founders

[kibwen]

In the immortal words of George Carlin: "It's a big club, and you ain’t in it."

[ericmcer]

With the amount of layoffs tech has had in the last year I imagine attrition is less of an issue. Maybe they factored that in.

[lanewinfield]

The American Dialect Society's 2023 Word of the Year is... "enshittification"

https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshitt...

[adamredwoods]

I wished they co-slanged it as "encrapification" because NPR did a report on it and did not mention the word on air. I think it's a valuable web-evolution term.

[matchbok]

The real workers? So the execs that literally run the company and give people the jobs are... what exactly?

[hock_ads_ad_hoc]

Leeches, arbitraging the labor of the actual, real workers.

[Daz1]

Low IQ opinion

[BizarreByte]

Overpaid parasites in a lot of cases.

[matchbok]

Great, if you can do the job, feel free to apply.

[BizarreByte]

Please, I'm not in the right class nor do I have the right family to get such a position.

Are you a C-level exec? It's strange to me when working class people defend them.

[matchbok]

lol that you think that's how it works. How many companies have you created? How many jobs?

You hold a pretty naive view of how a business operates.

[phist_mcgee]

The unequal partner in a near/actual exploitative working arrangement

[matchbok]

Please read Business 101 sweet child.