Okay then the users aren’t subscribers, thier boss or the boss above that are. And that person doesn’t really care how hard it is to use. They care about the presentation they gave to other leadership about all the great features the software has. And if they drop it now, they look like a fool, so deal with it.
They do care, %100 they care. If you take longer to do task X because the SaaS solution crashes or is unavailable, or causes issues in finance, or a dozen other things then the company will very much care. I literally work at a SaaS company and hear complaints from clients. Money is all that matters, if your solution isn’t as good at making/saving them money as another solution, you get dropped. And reliability is a big part of that. A solution that frequently has issues is not a money-making/saving system that can be relied on.
It’s not about looking like a fool; it’s about what your P&L looks like. That’s what actually matters. Say you made a nice slide deck about product X and got buy-in. Walking that back is MUCH easier to do than having to justify a hit to your P&L.
What experience do you have to be making these claims?
I have 30 years of work experience on both sides of the equation with companies of varying size. Once a company gets to somewhere between 500 and 1000 employees, the 2nd level managment starts to attract professionally ambitious people who prioritize thier career over the work to a more a more extreme degree. They never walk anything back. Every few years they will often replace a solution (even a working one) so that they can take credit for a major change. Anyway, you get enough of these and they start to back each other and squeeze out anyone who cares about the work. I have been told in one position that it doesn’t matter if you are right, you don’t say anything negative about person X’s plan. And many other people from other companies and such have echoed that over the years.
Now small companies often avoid this. But most software targets the big companies for the big paydays. Of the ones I have worked at, some even openly admitted that financially they couldn’t justify fixing a user issue over a new feature that might sell more product because the user issues don’t often lead to churn, where as new features often seal a deal.
You seem to be basing how the entire industry works on some people you’ve encountered who want to climb the ladder. Again, when you stand in front of a board and have to justify your EBITDA, it doesn’t matter how good your PowerPoint slide was. They don’t have to walk it back, the P&L is numbers, they have to justify those numbers or deal with not hitting budget. A company runs off numbers not initiatives people want to push.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that you have to report metrics to investors. Spend, rev, output, etc. And a poor SaaS solution that has poor quality negatively impacts those numbers. Numbers don’t lie, no matter how much spin you put on them. You say you have 30 years of experience both consuming and delivering SaaS solutions but seem to ignore that you have defended your P&L and your performance, all numbers, not office politics. Investors only care about money, dollars and cents, numbers. So what happens when solution X that Bob pushed and no one can talk bad about tanks your topline, or your EBITDA? Then what? You tell the board not to say anything bad about it? That just doesn’t make sense.
I haven’t been in the board room, but I have seen the department heads deflect by focusing on different numbers that do look good for unrelated reasons. Then blame the poor performance that was the result of a bad decision as an expected outcome of a long term decision. These people at those levels are pros at this. And the board cares about the stock price. Guess what, the stock price is not based on numbers, it is based on speculation. If the ceo can spin it, it doesn’t matter what it is.
Like how layoffs often make the stock price go up. “We are reducing expenses to accelerate progress and be more nimble…” no they are firing people because they can’t manage to use those people to make money.
And I wish it was just me who has encountered these people… but sadly it isn’t. If you want an example. Look at Google, and read up on how the culture changed over time as it got bigger. It probably staved off the change longer than most and grew faster, so the number of employees that triggered the change is a lot higher than average, but it’s easy to read about.
So you’ve seen dept heads, not been one, and that’s make you confident is saying how all businesses operate?
The stock price is not just based on speculation, Jesus dude. Your revenue massively impacts stock price, saying it doesn’t is just straight stupid.
You seem to be giving a lot of options that on their face make no sense while never having been in a position where you would actually have to understand and manage these things.
Stock price is all speculation. Revenue yesterday doesn’t mean revenue today. And you don’t buy stock in a company that stays the same, you buy stock in a company that you speculate will go up in value. Revenue can be going up, and the stock price down because people think the price will go down. How do layoffs make revenue go up? Yet they often make the stock price go up. If the stock prices was super dependent on metrics, algorithms would be making soo much money we wouldn’t have anything else picking stocks. But the algorithm traders can’t predict human speculation. So they tend to work much better on smaller companies where there is less attention and less speculation.
And not all companies by any means just the big ones. And I am sure there are some exceptions, there always are.
Yah, clients are subscribers
Okay then the users aren’t subscribers, thier boss or the boss above that are. And that person doesn’t really care how hard it is to use. They care about the presentation they gave to other leadership about all the great features the software has. And if they drop it now, they look like a fool, so deal with it.
They do care, %100 they care. If you take longer to do task X because the SaaS solution crashes or is unavailable, or causes issues in finance, or a dozen other things then the company will very much care. I literally work at a SaaS company and hear complaints from clients. Money is all that matters, if your solution isn’t as good at making/saving them money as another solution, you get dropped. And reliability is a big part of that. A solution that frequently has issues is not a money-making/saving system that can be relied on.
It’s not about looking like a fool; it’s about what your P&L looks like. That’s what actually matters. Say you made a nice slide deck about product X and got buy-in. Walking that back is MUCH easier to do than having to justify a hit to your P&L.
What experience do you have to be making these claims?
I have 30 years of work experience on both sides of the equation with companies of varying size. Once a company gets to somewhere between 500 and 1000 employees, the 2nd level managment starts to attract professionally ambitious people who prioritize thier career over the work to a more a more extreme degree. They never walk anything back. Every few years they will often replace a solution (even a working one) so that they can take credit for a major change. Anyway, you get enough of these and they start to back each other and squeeze out anyone who cares about the work. I have been told in one position that it doesn’t matter if you are right, you don’t say anything negative about person X’s plan. And many other people from other companies and such have echoed that over the years. Now small companies often avoid this. But most software targets the big companies for the big paydays. Of the ones I have worked at, some even openly admitted that financially they couldn’t justify fixing a user issue over a new feature that might sell more product because the user issues don’t often lead to churn, where as new features often seal a deal.
You seem to be basing how the entire industry works on some people you’ve encountered who want to climb the ladder. Again, when you stand in front of a board and have to justify your EBITDA, it doesn’t matter how good your PowerPoint slide was. They don’t have to walk it back, the P&L is numbers, they have to justify those numbers or deal with not hitting budget. A company runs off numbers not initiatives people want to push.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that you have to report metrics to investors. Spend, rev, output, etc. And a poor SaaS solution that has poor quality negatively impacts those numbers. Numbers don’t lie, no matter how much spin you put on them. You say you have 30 years of experience both consuming and delivering SaaS solutions but seem to ignore that you have defended your P&L and your performance, all numbers, not office politics. Investors only care about money, dollars and cents, numbers. So what happens when solution X that Bob pushed and no one can talk bad about tanks your topline, or your EBITDA? Then what? You tell the board not to say anything bad about it? That just doesn’t make sense.
I haven’t been in the board room, but I have seen the department heads deflect by focusing on different numbers that do look good for unrelated reasons. Then blame the poor performance that was the result of a bad decision as an expected outcome of a long term decision. These people at those levels are pros at this. And the board cares about the stock price. Guess what, the stock price is not based on numbers, it is based on speculation. If the ceo can spin it, it doesn’t matter what it is. Like how layoffs often make the stock price go up. “We are reducing expenses to accelerate progress and be more nimble…” no they are firing people because they can’t manage to use those people to make money.
And I wish it was just me who has encountered these people… but sadly it isn’t. If you want an example. Look at Google, and read up on how the culture changed over time as it got bigger. It probably staved off the change longer than most and grew faster, so the number of employees that triggered the change is a lot higher than average, but it’s easy to read about.
So you’ve seen dept heads, not been one, and that’s make you confident is saying how all businesses operate?
The stock price is not just based on speculation, Jesus dude. Your revenue massively impacts stock price, saying it doesn’t is just straight stupid.
You seem to be giving a lot of options that on their face make no sense while never having been in a position where you would actually have to understand and manage these things.
Stock price is all speculation. Revenue yesterday doesn’t mean revenue today. And you don’t buy stock in a company that stays the same, you buy stock in a company that you speculate will go up in value. Revenue can be going up, and the stock price down because people think the price will go down. How do layoffs make revenue go up? Yet they often make the stock price go up. If the stock prices was super dependent on metrics, algorithms would be making soo much money we wouldn’t have anything else picking stocks. But the algorithm traders can’t predict human speculation. So they tend to work much better on smaller companies where there is less attention and less speculation.
And not all companies by any means just the big ones. And I am sure there are some exceptions, there always are.