It’s actually crazy how incredibly wrong that is.

What is the CEOs job? To make profit? To select winning products? To chart a long term course?

Nope.

Nope Nope Nope.

Thier job is to increase the value of their outstanding stock. That’s it.

Now, given the fact that the stock market is a fucking casino… sure. Making profit is A way to TRY and increase your stock price. Making wise product decisions is A way to do that. This is a Warren Buffet type of CEO.

You also need to “read the room” (the room being investors) understand what they want to hear, and start saying it. No matter how stupid it is. No matter if you know full well it’s stupid.

You’re bringing an incredible product to market, but the markets are demanding headcount reductions? You start firing people that you desperately need to keep. You’re an office supply company and the market is rewarding IT investment? You hire 100 devs to build an app that a team of 5 people could have made and nobody will ever use anyways. It’s like that meme of the dude on the assembly line saying “guess we doing X now”.

If the whims of investors are convinced using AI is what is valuable, they will spend more on AI than humans for as long as it’s the case that the market will reward them for doing so… despite it being objectively inefficient.

You gotta remember that company stock is like a currency they can print at will. As nice as it is to have a profitable business… it’s even nicer to have the luxury of being able to just print money.