this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
498 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
70395 readers
5669 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't think this is as dramatic as a lot of you are saying it is. It works or it doesn't. This is what VC should do
Have you ever used a chatbot for technical support? It's infuriating. Yet the industry is barreling in that direction before the tech is ready, customers be damned. This is not what VC should do.
Have you ever had to use an indifferent college student that barely speaks English for technical support
Sometimes the people who barely speak English are more technically competent than English speakers. Sometimes not. They are just people. But I'd rather work with a person
I wouldn't
Then you need to look into how private equity works.
They buy mature companies, often with borrowed capital, and then place the debt on the purchased company. They essentially make companies take on a massive loan to buy themselves from themselves, except the private equity firm ends up the owner.
The company then goes into overdrive trying to pay off the debt, while the firm makes changes intended to make the company "more efficient". All while paying themselves "consulting fees" and "bonuses" for stepping in and "helping" the company do better.
This usually means mass layoffs, dumping assets, paycuts, restructuring...
Best case scenario, the company was already failing, and now it fails faster.
Worst case... The company was doing perfectly fine, making a sustainable living for its employees. And then it gets purchased by a private equity firm.
Suddenly everything is on fire. Not a single penny can go unpiched, workplace comfort unsacrificed, or employee unoverworked. And that that is the new norm, is the good ending.
Private equity makes money by killing the golden goose, and then finding another. And then another. And then another.
example of a parasitoid, unlike parasites, they kill the host.
I don't know much about private equity. So I appreciate the explanation. But that all just sounds like modern business to me. It's a product of who we are and what we allow.
thats whats happening to red lobster, SEARS was done by scummy parasitic ceo of sears, toysrus,kmart?,,,etc
What do you mean "but"?
This doesn't produce anything. It removes jobs instead of creating them. And by the end there is one less company in the system.
I wrote in response to you saying this is what they "should" be doing. That it would either work, or not.
But this is working sustainable businesses being butchered for their value on the meat market, rather than operated long term.
It most certainly isn't what they "should" be doing.
If this is the best way to make money, the rich will continue to do it instead of starting new companies. That is not going to have pleasant long-term effects on the world.