I once asked someone at a large Bay-area tech company why they did not invest more in fundamental R&D, and they told me, "We just buy the winners. 'All of Silicon Valley is our research lab'" (the last being, I believe, a quote from their CEO). You don't even need to do it with your own money. Just use debt and equity.
The economist Ha-joon Chang likes to quote the statistic than in the 1950's, companies reinvested 65% of their profits back into growing the business, and today that number stands at 5%. The stock market overall returns more cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends than it raises from investors by selling equity. It is no longer primarily a funding mechanism for companies. It's how investors cash out.
I don't even think it is about making Ph.D's write production code: I support that, as it makes them much more realistic about what is technically feasible (I say as a Ph.D who was written a lot of production code, and has had to work with Ph.D's who haven't). It is that whatever you are doing must be able to be tied directly to near-term revenue. Even just cost-savings is rarely attributed back to the people who created it, because no one wants to give you credit for money they didn't spend. And certainly no one wants to fund something that will not generate a tangible return for 5+ years, or that might not even succeed.
At one point I was asked, as a research Ph.D focused on very low-level software, to come up with subscription-revenue generating product ideas, because "subscription revenue" was the latest buzzword among upper management. They wanted me to build the next TikTok for them. And all I could think was, even if I had the product design talents to be able to do that, in a ZIRP era, why would I build it for you? We are not in that era any longer, but it lasted a long time, and its passing has only made people more near-term focused.
The economist Ha-joon Chang likes to quote the statistic than in the 1950's, companies reinvested 65% of their profits back into growing the business, and today that number stands at 5%. The stock market overall returns more cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends than it raises from investors by selling equity. It is no longer primarily a funding mechanism for companies. It's how investors cash out.
I don't even think it is about making Ph.D's write production code: I support that, as it makes them much more realistic about what is technically feasible (I say as a Ph.D who was written a lot of production code, and has had to work with Ph.D's who haven't). It is that whatever you are doing must be able to be tied directly to near-term revenue. Even just cost-savings is rarely attributed back to the people who created it, because no one wants to give you credit for money they didn't spend. And certainly no one wants to fund something that will not generate a tangible return for 5+ years, or that might not even succeed.
At one point I was asked, as a research Ph.D focused on very low-level software, to come up with subscription-revenue generating product ideas, because "subscription revenue" was the latest buzzword among upper management. They wanted me to build the next TikTok for them. And all I could think was, even if I had the product design talents to be able to do that, in a ZIRP era, why would I build it for you? We are not in that era any longer, but it lasted a long time, and its passing has only made people more near-term focused.