alt Hacker News> It’s a cynical way to view the C-staff of a company. I think it’s also inaccurate: from my limited experience, the people who run large tech companies really do want to deliver good software to users.
People who run large tech companies want one thing: to increase shareholder value. Delivering "good software" (a very, very squishy term) is secondary.
I don't even think "good" is a quantifiable or effective measure here. C-level executives are deviating from reality in terms of what they say that their products are capable of versus how their products actually perform. If you're a CEO shipping a frontier model that adds some value in terms of performing basic technical tasks while simultaneously saying that AI is gonna be writing all code in 3-6 months, you're only doing good by your shareholders.
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Oh, I glossed over that in my response. I've had people at the C-level admit that they don't care about ethics to me, and I especially see startup CEOs lie a lot, or otherwise be so self-deluded to make sales easier that it's hard to tell if they know they're lying.
I think Sean is right that, in the abstract, they prefer good software to bad software, but they won't make any sacrifices if those sacrifices require losing money or status. It's the same "do your what your manager wants" playbook, but run up to board level.
Meritocracy at work.
This is the type of cynicism the post is talking about and it's just trivially untrue.
It's like saying that employees only want one thing: to get their paycheck.
I can tell you that everyone I’ve met whose job it has been to communicate with and guide C-suiters across many companies has regarded them as basically super-powerful young children, as far as their reasoning capacity, ability to understand things, and ability to focus. Never met more cynical people about the c-suite than the ones who spend a lot of time around lots of them, without being one of them or trying to become one of them (any time soon, anyway). Like they truly talk about them like they’re kindergarteners, and insist that if you want to reach them and be understood you have to do the same.
A lot of very cosplay/play-pretend (and sometimes expensive!) tactics I’ve seen in high level enterprise sales made a lot more sense after being exposed to these views. Lots of money spent on entire rooms that are basically playsets for high level execs to feel cool and serve no other purpose. Entire software projects executed for that purpose. I didn’t get it until those folks clued me in.