this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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I want to know who hired that fucking CEO and put him up to purposefully tank Unity.
This can't be anything less than a blatant attempt to destroy a company so who would have a vested interest in destroying Unity? It can't just be for money.
Sadly, there often comes a time when a critical mass of the business leaders decide "you know what, I want to cash out and no matter how disastrous this will be long term, I think short term this will milk some revenue out of some captive audience".
In the IT industry, that time is usually when Broadcom buys you.
You've hurt me right in the vSphere.
What a lot of people at these companies don't understand is that other options existing means people will find a way to continue without you... The more that happens, the larger the community... the faster you fail.
When Broadcom announced buying VMWare, literally all the IT subreddits in unison looked for other alternatives. We're on Proxmox now, it's been a better product than VMWare in literally every way.
It's also called the trust thermocline. Once a certain level of exploitation is reached, customers leaving suddenly goes very quickly and usually unrecoverable. The straw that breaks the camel's back.
Or in the case of unity, you smash the poor camel with a baseball bat and are very surprised it tries to bite you.
And this is why we shouldn’t have monopolies. People shouldn’t be held hostage by one or two companies. When they go full stupid like Unity is, the customers grumble, shrug, and get to work with a different system.
Or not just monopolies, but companies in general have a dictatorship authoritarian structure where the c-suite has all the decision making power and employees or customers can go fuck themselves. Corporations should be made for the people by the people.
Aligning power over systems with stackholders impacted by those systems is usually good for avoiding hostile incentives which result in hurting people, yes. Plus to some it might axiomatically be morally good.
I'm forced to use VMware for cisco classes.
Sounds a bit odd... What networking class requires VM platform usage?
If I teach a class that needs a vm, I'm making damned sure everyone uses the same type.
The vm has "tools" preloaded and helps students experiment with configurations that don't end up causing the host computer to be badly configured. The host PCs are pretty restrictive and have no admin privileges. The VM is fully capable of being "free to mess with" in a sense. The idea behind it is to prevent unauthorized bad actions on the host pc. Creating a separation of students' abilities behind a vm. You can use your own PC, but that is cumbersome and unnecessary. The "forced to" is a bit loose, but it helps students start from a state where the teacher can help guide the students to what to do.
Good thing you're not a teacher then!
Edit: LMFAO the downvotes are astounding! So let's make students install VMWare... Who's gunna pay for that? It's funny because I actually did work full time lecturing in an R1 institution in several classes that required virtualization. It's really not hard to publish different images for all the major vm platforms.
Assuming this is college, requiring students to pay for software is part of the norm.
AdvancedAlgorithmicLigmaBalls201
I remember at the time that a presentation circulated on a previous Broadcom acquisition, as a preview of what was in store for vmware. I never saw analagous material for vmware exactly, and I can't remember what Broadcom acquisition it was.
Their analysis was that they predicted their changes would kill off any new business, and kill off 80% of the existing customer base. However, this was fine as the other 20% was so stuck that they could charge more than 5x to make up for it, and all without spending any money on R&D and reducing customer support load.
While I know nothing of the numbers... This was my understanding of it as well. That they'd make probably just as much if not more money because of the captive groups.
However, while they might be captive now... Doesn't mean they'll be captive forever. VMWare is going to lose the entire market over this very rapidly, then the rest slowly after.
Indeed. However all the key people making this call will have made a few million off the husk on the way down, and will have moved on to drain the next company.
In the software side of IT, this is usually when you start seeing layoffs and a mass replacement of talented developers with bottom-of-the-barrel offshore contractors. Beware the following fail cascade.
Kicked me right in the Reddit.
That's what everyone is saying but this policy will only cost them from lawsuits, so it can't just be about money.
It will cost them in future earnings... Companies won't want to work on their platform if these policies are still in place... and many will never want to work with them again since they've shown their hand.
That is what makes me think there's something more to this.
I think rival companies might groom CEOs that get hired by their competitors but whom, secretly, are paid by the rivals to destroy the companies from within.
Perhaps I'm wrong but that's the only explanation I've been able to come up with that makes any sense to me.
The CEOs don't need to be paid by other companies. All a competing company needs to do, is to convince some company's board members to hire a CEO with a track record that they know will tank the company... maybe through indirect lobbying, maybe by hinting they want to hire them because it's "such a valuable CEO"... and bam!
CEO ruins company, then bails on a golden parachute, and you only had to spend whatever it took to mislead the competing board.
(I've seen it done to tiny companies with as few as 20 workers, it's surprisingly easy to convince a board to hire someone who will destroy everything)
What's the point to do this ?
To destroy the competition.
How does one insulate a company from corrupted CEOs?
Technically that's what a board of directors is for. They are the ones who can axe a CEO and hire another.
Yet they're not capable of sussing out bad actors before hiring them, so how is a board a good system?
It's good on paper, so long as a critical number of them aren't bad actors. You kinda got the same problem with US politics at the moment. It works until it doesn't, like everything else.
It seems clearly nothing works.
Oh, plenty of business "geniuses" make some pretty boneheaded moves, especially when they feel a need to try to produce huge growth after saturating a market, or if their business results somehow fall short of some need (either actually losing money, or some arbitrary self-imposed "goal" not being hit).
Currently there's an epidemic of businesses making some pretty dubious long term decisions for the sake of trying to prop up numbers amidst a receding market reality. Recessions are, in part, a self-fulfilling prophecy, where whatever impetus exists, it's exacerbated by every participant screwing things up further.
Its the same ethos of those CEOs that are demanding everyone must return to the office. No ifs, or buts.
They damage moral which takes years to build up, they further announce layoffs which destroys whatever moral was left.
These idiots never seem to be held accountable.
Honestly, these management types need to be case studied.
We have to start holding them accountable ourselves, because the system sure ain't gonna do it.
Yeah, it's looking like 1776 time.
He's a VC CEO, he's there to pump the company for everything it's worth for maximum stock returns.
I just checked the stock ticker for Unity and it fucking tanked. So that can't be it.
I wouldn't put it past them to short their own stock while they make announcements then go long once things settle down...
How the fuck is that even legal?
It isn't. That would be Insider Trading.
But it doesn't stop people from trying (and sometimes getting away with) it.
No one said they were good at their job
Maybe it grew too big or the wrong way for their taste? Good reason to fire a few hundred and restructure.
Even though this is bad and many developers won't want to use Unity, I think there still may be enough devs that will comply and generate more profit.
If you were at the start of your journey right now and were trying my decide between Unity, Unreal or any other tool.... Would you be choosing Unity?
Let's hope not. We can't be complicit in our own subjugation any longer.
It is Big Godot pulling the strings to entice people to jump ship to their free and open source game engine. The plan is dastardly, but effective. Can't use other game engines if there are no other engines left standing.
You know, if Godot was actually a for-profit endeavor, I probably would believe you.
It's not only the CEO, it's all the board. Don't think he can do this kind of shit alone.
Lol (litterally)