EnderMB , 1 month ago

I can answer this!

There’s a term in tech called “empire building” where middle management looks for promotion up the chain towards directorships or VP roles. If, for example, you have a CEO that’s nuts for AI all you’ll want to do to get on their good side is to build a team around AI for some random service you already have (e.g. AI in Google Search) and you’ll get a ton of funding and HC. Suddenly you run a huge division and get a fancy important title because you can shit some metrics about how well you’re performing while customers say “wait, search is shit now”. That’s the search team’s problem, your AI stuff performs great!

It’s everywhere in big tech, and it’s why so many big tech companies seemingly work extremely hard and have nothing to show for it.

The IC’s at the bottom of the ladder are just minding their own business, trying to do the best work that they can, while the leader of the empire sets ridiculous timelines and goals because they’re trying to cement a legacy, rather than build the right thing. Naturally, the product flops, the director gets moved to a new division to protect them, and the IC’s are laid off - with the CEO saying that they didn’t meet expectations or cost too much.