[chartered_stack]

What makes you think that it's only CEOs who look like they're part of a hive mind? It's got nothing to do with capitalism or it's "creepy agents". It's simply the human condition. It's literally company/human see company/human do. One company/management loudly kangs whatever their position is and others simply follow it because they think it's either "industry standard" or it's convenient somehow to them. That's all it is - people trying to be safe.

Let me give you a technical parallel. A couple of engineers/architects from Big Co. that's hugely successful leave and go to Hot Startup. There they proselytize their One True Way because honestly that's all they know. Everybody in Hot Startup goes along with it because they are Senior Engineers from Big Co. who are now plotting the course and Big Co. is HUGE so they know what they're talking about. Now because Hot Startup is suddenly using the One True Way everybody else in the market tries to copy them because that's obviously why Hot Startup is Hot. This leads to a job market where people optimize for things used by Hot Startup. This tilts the skill set of the general tech market towards the One True Way making it gospel to a lot of people. So hiring managers who don't know the first about anything suddenly start optimizing for One True techs and ask for 20 years experience with React. They think they're doing the safe thing by using the same tech stack used by everybody else - the industry standard. Never mind that the "industry standard" changes every time it's convenient.

This is the same thing for CEOs. Oh you're having a slightly down quarter and have to answer to investors? Say you're using AI. That's the in-thing and will give you that bump to ride out the quarter. You screwed up in 2021-22 and hired a fuckton of people who are just sitting on their hands costing the company money? Say AI and get rid of them because they're not productive. It's got nothing to do with collusion or anything like that. It's just that people have mismatched expectations and things happen downstream of these unmanaged expectations.

[sublinear]

> This tilts the skill set of the general tech market towards the One True Way making it gospel to a lot of people

That lot of people literally cannot get hired anywhere but startups because everyone else isn't so naive

> things happen downstream of these unmanaged expectations

It sounds like a metric fuckton of people need to retire or get out of the way already if they can't set expectations despite being in the exact position where they should be able to talk to multiple audiences

None of these excuses appease the investors nor the heads-down employees. Shit will have to change sooner rather than later. Many factors will make it so. This is exactly what defines a tech bubble.

[chartered_stack]

Sure, plenty of incompetence out there, but nobody wakes up thinking they’re doing wrong. They overpromise, they play it safe. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

As Picard says, "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life"