1. "Leaders" want to seem hyper-competent. They don't want to figure out why the existing system was built or defer to previous leadership. So they tear things out and bring their own people, effectively starting over on some aspects. They also attribute blame and appropriate credit.
2. "Leaders" want to create scale and "progress". The company is doing fine with one engineering team? But how would that look on my resume? Let's get two dev ops team to "optimize" $100/month cloud costs for a $2 billion dollar revenue company (yes, you read that right). Let's add 9 more dev teams. Let's completely rebuild the tech stack because a). My friends prefer x to y and z). We can pretend we did something. If I sound bitter, I am not, but this IS a true story - 3 years in, 70 more IT employees (mostly devs), dev isn't any faster and we just go back to where the product started, almost.
3. "Leaders" often can't zoom in, despite the claim that leaders are excellent at focusing at the right scale.
4. "Leaders" like to play leader, because actual leading is hard. Acquiring random companies definitely creates "growth".
5. On top of #4, they come in when there is financing and are basically used to free money, so they throw it around.
The more interesting question is, from a business pov, is there any other way? If it were profitable to continue creating that good company, people would do it because there is a return to be made.
If "leave before things start going downhill from the pretend-growth" happens everytime, there is an arbitrage opportunity to just continue compounding the "good" company.
throw1234651234|2 years ago
2. "Leaders" want to create scale and "progress". The company is doing fine with one engineering team? But how would that look on my resume? Let's get two dev ops team to "optimize" $100/month cloud costs for a $2 billion dollar revenue company (yes, you read that right). Let's add 9 more dev teams. Let's completely rebuild the tech stack because a). My friends prefer x to y and z). We can pretend we did something. If I sound bitter, I am not, but this IS a true story - 3 years in, 70 more IT employees (mostly devs), dev isn't any faster and we just go back to where the product started, almost.
3. "Leaders" often can't zoom in, despite the claim that leaders are excellent at focusing at the right scale.
4. "Leaders" like to play leader, because actual leading is hard. Acquiring random companies definitely creates "growth".
5. On top of #4, they come in when there is financing and are basically used to free money, so they throw it around.
motoxpro|2 years ago
If "leave before things start going downhill from the pretend-growth" happens everytime, there is an arbitrage opportunity to just continue compounding the "good" company.
unknown|2 years ago
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