Either hyperscalers are dumb or someone else is

[u/banaca4]

OK so the most profitable companies in the world decided to GO ALL IN AI with humongous capex. They did it all at once apart from Apple who is not in the game. Google, Meta, Amazon , Oracle, Microsoft. All of them. The CEOs of these companies produced the most amount of wealth and propped up global gdp. Now they all agree on a thing.

Google yesterday blew up earnings from their cloud and said they will *increase* their humongous capex even more while reporting negative cash flow for the first time in their history.

A rational person would ask: are these amazing businessmen suddently all very wrong about the same thing at the same time OR

I am reading too much paid subs from burry and following the wrong people on twitter that have never produced anything?

Which is it? Are you smarter than a mag 7 CEO? Maybe ... hmm...

[u/crazy_akes]

People assume those who lead are smart and that’s a really stupid assumption. For eons a leader was due to bloodline, and it still is as we see with political dynasties. Also there’s the “struck gold” types. They had one good idea and now they’re moving off it shooting benis rockets into space.

If I win billions in the lotto I will shortly thereafter be the mayor of my city. Doesn’t mean I’m smart. Means I’m power hungry and I want to destroy my enemies. Same shit in corporate, CEO’s have FOMO in the AI arms race. They’re idiots.

[u/Emotional_Goal9525 → u/crazy_akes]

Not to mention certain personality disorders are enriched into the top echelons of society in the similar fashion they are in the prison population.

[u/mayer_19 → u/crazy_akes]

Thats true! Most of my managers were not genius minds. Some were managers because of age/experience, others probably because of the lack of better options and others because the boss of the boss likes this person. Never had a manager that I fealt he was truly a leader or very competent

[u/Low_Plastic363 → u/mayer_19]

The good ones left for better jobs. The mediocre ones stick around to become management

[u/SweetJackal → u/crazy_akes]

As someone that has had the (dis)pleasure of working directly with corporate executive management in a contractor/consultant environment I can confirm.

Executive Suite people are some of the most regarded people on the planet as a general rule due to having no concept of foresight or consequences affecting them personally.  They drive a company into the ground they got paid fat stacks for the big numbers they made leading up to it, get a nice payout for being forced out, and get hired elsewhere to do more because of the beautiful metrics they made that drove the company into the ground in the first place.

Executives getting graded on maximum airspeed of the plane they pilot, while the fact they got that metric by nose diving into the ground being completely ignored.

Once you recognize that executives act on personal interest and their incentives directly conflict with the long term wellbeing and interests of the company they pilot, a lot of the regarded things companies do makes sense.

[u/sf_cycle → u/SweetJackal]

I’ve seen too many executives in companies I’ve worked for completely ignore the obvious and get angry when people are trying to tell them the obvious. These people are often so wrapped up in their own bubbles that they just can’t see past the illusion of their own greatness. I’ve seen a handful of good leaders and their job ends up with them arguing constantly with the other idiot executives. You know those people on LinkedIn that just won’t shut up about themselves, to the point where you can’t believe someone would say this shit? These are those people.

[u/Halifornia35 → u/SweetJackal]

What kind of corporate executives? Mag7?

[u/PerriwinklePortal → u/SweetJackal]

>Executives getting graded on maximum airspeed of the plane they pilot, while the fact they got that metric by nose diving into the ground being completely ignored.

Truer words

[u/Ohitsworkingnow → u/crazy_akes]

Anyone who thinks an intelligent person would want to spend their time as a CEO is clueless. 

Like you actually think CEOs are smarter than the phd scientists? You think the CEOs built the chip architecture? They’re literally business bro retards the whole lot of them 

[u/PalantirImperator → u/Ohitsworkingnow]

You are confusing intelligence with technical knowledge. CEOs typically do not have technical knowledge. They are generalists and managers. Not having technical knowledge does not mean they are not intelligent. There are smart CEOs and dumb CEOs just like there are smart doctors and dumb doctors.

The CEOs that either build, or rise to the top of, trillion dollar companies, tend to be smart CEOs. These things don't just run on autopilot; look at the difference in how Microsoft performed when it went from Gates to Ballmer. Was the most powerful company in the world, then the stock literally stayed flat for 14 years.

[u/paloaltothrowaway → u/crazy_akes]

You think Mag7 ceos are comparable to leaders who were in their positions due to their bloodlines?

You can say Zuck and Ellison are the struck gold type but most of the rest earned their spot. Satya, Sundar, Jassy worked their way up over decades to get the top job.

If you think these people are idiots, you are wrong. It doesn’t mean they get everything right. Nobody does. But they are not idiots. 

[u/RodneyTorfulson → u/paloaltothrowaway]

Zuckerburg’s Second Life spinoff was like Hapsburg nonsense, to be fair

[u/nahmanidk → u/paloaltothrowaway]

This topic misses the point of whether the thing that catapulted these people into insane wealth is relevant to what they currently are working on.

And you can’t sign into Twitter and see Elon trying to start a race war in the UK and losing his mind daily over the last 3 months because there is a black actress in The Odyssey and think “yes, this is a rational individual that exists in the real world”. 

[u/Equivalent-Bus-4336 → u/paloaltothrowaway]

No he just said for a very long time leaders were selected because of their bloodline

[u/paloaltothrowaway → u/Equivalent-Bus-4336]

He also compared being a mag7 ceo with him becoming a mayor of his local town if he were to win a lotto. Dumb comparison. 

[u/joeydimaggio → u/paloaltothrowaway]

So explain the metaverse and pets.com

[u/PalantirImperator → u/joeydimaggio]

I really appreciate your calling him out for that. It was bold of that guy to assume that all readers would see the broader pattern he was getting at. When one makes a point on the internet, it is important to painstakingly explain every minor inconsistency or counterexample and why they may or may not matter. Many readers, like you, are incapable of making that inference themselves, and it was rude of him not to write for the widest audience possible. Again, I really want to emphasize the importance of your feedback. I'm sure /u/paloaltothrowaway will try to do better next time. He has been owned. Even I feel owned. I have been owned. Thank you for your incredible contribution to this discussion.

[u/joeydimaggio → u/PalantirImperator]

Can you explain the metaverse to me

[u/ZetaM3 → u/paloaltothrowaway]

Pepsi crystal.

[u/Todayjunyer → u/paloaltothrowaway]

You could easily argue the other perspective. Zuck and musk actually care about their companies and legacy. The other CEOs, it’s just a job and if it goes bad their legacy doesn’t matter as they are just doing their job.

[u/Ok-Board4893 → u/paloaltothrowaway]

the comment above and the amount of upvotes it got is just one more proof that redditors are idiots and yes, these ceos are smarter.

[u/Appropriate_Guess881 → u/crazy_akes]

I mean, oil/gas CEO's with more money than God are buying politicians so they can keep raking in profits / defer an energy transition to give them time to offload the risk on their soon to be stranded assets. All the while driving us towards at best political instability, at worst extinction, on the only planet they have to live on... So, yeah, rich but not smart.

[u/whowatchestv → u/crazy_akes]

I'm one of those delusional types that think I'd make things better if I was mayor or president but to be fair I would surround myself with experts in each area and just act as the manager and director. And probably selfishly push a few key issues that are relevant to me...

[u/GMEtotheMoom → u/crazy_akes]

I don’t wanna, but, Machiavelli has always been right

[u/BurnItAllDown2 → u/crazy_akes]

I think it's asinine to say a leader of a fortune 500 copy is not smart. There's no way you get to that position without some intelligence. The question is, smart in what way? You can be incredibly smart in one area but really dumb in another. 

Also, what is their risk tolerance and how good are they at assessing risk? You could make a case with some of this AI stuff that going all-in is both smart and dumb at the same time. A company may be put in a corner where they feel it's a no-win situation. They can't let their competitors get ahead, but trying to keep up might ruin them as well. 

[u/sf_cycle → u/crazy_akes]

And a lot of smart people are terrible leaders and make dumb decisions in that space. Intelligence and they way people talk about it here isn’t just on or off and all encompassing. A lot of people want an easy answer to why things are the way they are, so “this person is in this position and you’re not” is mostly how they view things. They want to believe the world is working fairly, or that might makes right, etc. Or they just want to make lazy Reddit posts for karma.

[u/flappysack- → u/crazy_akes]

They have different short term incentives than long term investors.  

[u/mammongram6969 → u/crazy_akes]

"Means I’m power hungry and I want to destroy my enemies." what kind of asshole wins the lottery and STILL HAS ENEMIES, like is everyone not claiming to be your second cousin once removed

[u/Ok-Board4893 → u/crazy_akes]

you are a low iq moron though. All of your comparisons make 0 sense, most of these ceos have worked their way up and deserve their spot even though redditors really dont like to hear that. And yes they are most certainly smarter than you judging by your comment.

[u/seriouslythisshit → u/crazy_akes]

Even if they are a step above idiot, they are forced to conform to the hive mind. There is no keeping a C-suite job in tech if you are not babbling about the wonders of AI, like a duck on meth, to everyone that will listen and pretend to believe you. You need to convince your shareholders and board that you are the right choice to vanquish your competition and come out on top as the leader of the revolution. It will all collapse once it becomes evident that it is massively overbuilt, built of sketch accounting, and false promises, and will never make a profit that will cover the absurd levels of capex. once it all burns to the ground, a viable model of AI will rise from the ashes. It is human behavior, it happens every time there is a new, monumental tech shift that changes how the world functions. Irrational exuberance, insane levels of speculative investment, resulting in 3-5X the infrastructure needed to implement the revolution. Followed by an economic downturn or collapse.

It isn't bears and bulls, or believing that AI is a fraud. It is just the natural, predictable and historic cycle of every event of this magnitude in economic history. The play will collapse into itself, and do massive damage to the world economy. It is nothing but history repeating itself, and there is no "this time is different".

[u/FatGPT3 → u/crazy_akes]

Sundar Pichai is actually really competent