[elktown]

Yup, it's certainly a mix. I think the stock market incentive is most obvious for the usual VC-style "this must look presentable to the stock market before IPO"-spiel. After that I'd expect management/corp politics incentives to play a larger part indeed.

But isn't tech a bit unique in how accepted this kind of self-serving corruption is at pretty much all levels? From the "This might require a few extra folks, but I want to pad my resume" IC level all the way up to "Let's make this look good for Wall Street" exec level.

[calebkaiser]

My experience has been that this is not unique to tech, and is common in all large enough industries. I think it's just the natural emergence of reward hacking i.e. if you're an executive at Pepsi and your job is largely to increase the stock price, and you know that you can do something to change the way your numbers are presented such that Wall St will like it, you'll likely do it.

I do think tech certainly has its own flavor though, particularly because of how differently it is treated by investors.

[elktown]

I do think there's a certain level of vagueness and lack of rigor that permeate throughout (software) tech that enables self-serving to a greater extent than usual. I agree though that it's to be expected in most corps at a certain level where that vagueness also starts to appear.

[zipy124]

I don't think it's that unique but Engineering type people might be more optimisation minded and see total comp as something to optimise.