maybe i spend too much time inside the company and not enough time inside the set of people with the same astrological sign, but it feels to me like companies are often defined by a “vibe”, and that vibe happens to have been selected for profit maximizingness in the past (because if that vibe always sucks at profit it will go bankrupt), and companies will try to correct the vibe if they are obviously failing at maximizing profit, but most day to day decisions are guided by some mix of that vibe and a bunch of subagents that do random shit, and course correcting is really really fucking hard. i can easily think of half a dozen examples of companies being poorly described as primarily profit-maximizing with some minor divergences. google is a fountain of money with an AGI lab attached, and also a bunch of random side projects bolted on because doing a side project is good for your promo packet. meta is zuck’s personal kingdom and reflects his taste in exciting new directions. quant firms are basically statistical analysis firms that thumb their noses at deep learning. kodak was a film company that forgot to notice this was no longer a profitable vibe. ibm is a mainframe company that forgot to pivot into newer kinds of computers and is now desperately trying to pretend to be relevant in AI. tsmc is an ultra conservative fab company that has seen countless fads rise and fall and is scared to make big bets.
maybe i spend too much time inside the company and not enough time inside the set of people with the same astrological sign, but it feels to me like companies are often defined by a “vibe”, and that vibe happens to have been selected for profit maximizingness in the past (because if that vibe always sucks at profit it will go bankrupt), and companies will try to correct the vibe if they are obviously failing at maximizing profit, but most day to day decisions are guided by some mix of that vibe and a bunch of subagents that do random shit, and course correcting is really really fucking hard. i can easily think of half a dozen examples of companies being poorly described as primarily profit-maximizing with some minor divergences. google is a fountain of money with an AGI lab attached, and also a bunch of random side projects bolted on because doing a side project is good for your promo packet. meta is zuck’s personal kingdom and reflects his taste in exciting new directions. quant firms are basically statistical analysis firms that thumb their noses at deep learning. kodak was a film company that forgot to notice this was no longer a profitable vibe. ibm is a mainframe company that forgot to pivot into newer kinds of computers and is now desperately trying to pretend to be relevant in AI. tsmc is an ultra conservative fab company that has seen countless fads rise and fall and is scared to make big bets.