Vista Equity Partners revamps software companies by following detailed protocols(wsj.com)
wsj.com
Vista Equity Partners revamps software companies by following detailed protocols
https://www.wsj.com/articles/billionaires-secret-buyout-formula-110-instructions-and-an-intelligence-test-1531151197
97 comments
Yes. The future cash flows look great when gross Churn is less than 10% and net Churn is negative. But if you underinvest, eventually the tide turns. Look at Taleo as an example. I’m sure they had great Churn metrics once upon a time. Now it’s a signal that a company has obsolete technology.
i feel like if your theory was true then microsoft would be bankrupt by now. i don’t think the person who purchased the software ever ends up taking feedback or caring about the end user
It's fun to read glassdoor reviews from their acquirees.
Sounds like the formula is:
1) Buy the company
2) Shut down the main office and move it to some cheaper city, accept attrition
3) Fire all employees over 30 (using the patented "IQ" test as a cover), replace them with young kids or "HPELs"
4) Install a Glengarry Glen Ross style sales regime
5) Hold on for a few quarters while numbers are improved from all the cost cutting
6) Quickly bail and sell the thing off before anyone notices it's all being held up by duct tape and bailing wire
7) Wash hands. Repeat.
Sounds like the formula is:
1) Buy the company
2) Shut down the main office and move it to some cheaper city, accept attrition
3) Fire all employees over 30 (using the patented "IQ" test as a cover), replace them with young kids or "HPELs"
4) Install a Glengarry Glen Ross style sales regime
5) Hold on for a few quarters while numbers are improved from all the cost cutting
6) Quickly bail and sell the thing off before anyone notices it's all being held up by duct tape and bailing wire
7) Wash hands. Repeat.
I work at a company that was acquired by Vista a few years ago and I haven't noticed much of that.
The main office is in a pretty expensive location and it is currently being expanded to close to double the size it was when the company was acquired.
There are a lot of young kids being hired, but also a lot of older people as well. Attrition has been pretty low and I think only a handful of people at the entire company have been layed off.
Cost cutting does not seem to have been particularly extreme if it has occurred. The benefits package and travel policies have gotten slightly more generous since the acquisition and annual raises have continued the trends from before the acquisition which made it possible to keep reasonably close to what you could get by changing companies.
The main office is in a pretty expensive location and it is currently being expanded to close to double the size it was when the company was acquired.
There are a lot of young kids being hired, but also a lot of older people as well. Attrition has been pretty low and I think only a handful of people at the entire company have been layed off.
Cost cutting does not seem to have been particularly extreme if it has occurred. The benefits package and travel policies have gotten slightly more generous since the acquisition and annual raises have continued the trends from before the acquisition which made it possible to keep reasonably close to what you could get by changing companies.
Where does it show they are doing step 6? That seems to be critical to your thesis of this being a pump and dump.
Except the article says they haven't sold very many times.
Is this different from private equity / distressed asset investing in general, or standard activist investor asset stripping?
All that is missing is loading the company with debt to pay "management fees," to the acquirers before cutting and running, leaving the founders and remaining shareholders with the bill. Organized crime have been known to do this as well. A handbook of investment anti-patterns, common hustles, and ways to identify crappy investors would be really useful.
There seems to be a tier of capital that just needs somewhere to go. It is not allowed to take the direct risks of angel or seed rounds, but can participate in venture funds, or funds of funds that include hedge funds and alternative assets, participate in growth rounds, and some really sketchy penny stock RTOs, but it's like they are prevented from investing while exercising any specific expertise.
All that is missing is loading the company with debt to pay "management fees," to the acquirers before cutting and running, leaving the founders and remaining shareholders with the bill. Organized crime have been known to do this as well. A handbook of investment anti-patterns, common hustles, and ways to identify crappy investors would be really useful.
There seems to be a tier of capital that just needs somewhere to go. It is not allowed to take the direct risks of angel or seed rounds, but can participate in venture funds, or funds of funds that include hedge funds and alternative assets, participate in growth rounds, and some really sketchy penny stock RTOs, but it's like they are prevented from investing while exercising any specific expertise.
I work for a company that was acquired by Vista. Ask me anything.
How's your day going? Up to anything fun?
Also, whatcha think on the article? Do you feel the process was valuable or brought positive non-obvious changes faster than they might have otherwise occurred? Also given the "tastes like chicken" genericism comment in the piece, what's a story that you think could /only/ have happened there?
Thanks!
Edit: real question
Also, whatcha think on the article? Do you feel the process was valuable or brought positive non-obvious changes faster than they might have otherwise occurred? Also given the "tastes like chicken" genericism comment in the piece, what's a story that you think could /only/ have happened there?
Thanks!
Edit: real question
The article does a good job explaining Vista and their process. I took the intelligence test. It seemed trivial, but I suppose it's better than having nothing.
It very much reminds me of that show The Profit. Fix the books first, so you know where you're really at and what really needs fixing. Cut anything not making money. Focus on scaling the core business. I've seen all of these changes happen or are in progress.
Overall they've done a good job. As an old timer that's seen the good times and the money just spilling out, I can't help but want to grumble when they start cutting the fat, but it all makes perfect business sense.
It very much reminds me of that show The Profit. Fix the books first, so you know where you're really at and what really needs fixing. Cut anything not making money. Focus on scaling the core business. I've seen all of these changes happen or are in progress.
Overall they've done a good job. As an old timer that's seen the good times and the money just spilling out, I can't help but want to grumble when they start cutting the fat, but it all makes perfect business sense.
"Cut anything not making money," works great when you're a monopoly or your business wasn't built on customer service.
Customer support can easily be a competitive advantage.
I guarantee you that unless your company recently downsized (or is very small) there are things you can cut, because no one cared enough to fix them or they thought it was cool to have X even though X is not returning value.
I guarantee you that unless your company recently downsized (or is very small) there are things you can cut, because no one cared enough to fix them or they thought it was cool to have X even though X is not returning value.
Slack is an example of this. You report an issue and quickly get a personalized reply.
A million times better that GSuite.
A million times better that GSuite.
I used to work for company acquired by Vista. What you said is true, but in the end they were just another private equity buyout.
> "Cut anything not making money"
Does this mean unprofitable markets or things like janitors?
Does this mean unprofitable markets or things like janitors?
Small child in business school here - in our vernacular, this means remove lines of business not turning a profit. Many are kept around either in hopes they'll get better or because executives think they round out a basket of offerings and maybe people are more likely to allow us to perform their cancer surgery if they know we also do neonatal surgery. So even though our neonatal unit loses money, let's keep it. The Vista camp here would say - that's a bs theory, let's focus on getting better at what we're good at rather than trying to make a business line profitable we've already spent 5 years demonstrating we don't know how to make profitable.
What about lines of business that are returning a contribution but not a profit?
Projects were cut. They did not touch our benefits in any meaningful way. Take the 40 or so projects that are going on, sort them by profit/cost, and chop the bottom 2/3 off.
They were dumb projects anyway.
They were dumb projects anyway.
Yoga, free food, anything not required to contribute directly to the bottom line.
Where I worked, they had been shrinking through attrition, and there were no longer enough people to occupy two floors of a building. So one day they decided to consolidate on one floor. I had a thought and looked it up - yep, the bathroom was now below the statutory number of toilets per employee.
Of course, that was nothing that couldn't be solved through further attrition.
Of course, that was nothing that couldn't be solved through further attrition.
[deleted]
I thought the US A didn't tend to use IQ tests for a number of reasons, also IQ tests are gameable.
Also the liberal use of the word debt in the article worries me in the UK there have been a number of scandals where PE buys a company loads it with debt and flogs it to some dozy fund mangers and a few years later it all collapses - Debenhams is one example
Also the liberal use of the word debt in the article worries me in the UK there have been a number of scandals where PE buys a company loads it with debt and flogs it to some dozy fund mangers and a few years later it all collapses - Debenhams is one example
> I thought the US A didn't tend to use IQ tests for a number of reasons, also IQ tests are gameable.
The primary reason is that protected minorities score lower than average on IQ tests; without a legitimate business reason to set an IQ cutoff, you can be sued for discriminatory hiring. And because IQ is so granular, you don't want to argue in court that 1 point is a business necessity when you set a threshold of 110, and you reject a minority candidate with a 109 score.
The primary reason is that protected minorities score lower than average on IQ tests; without a legitimate business reason to set an IQ cutoff, you can be sued for discriminatory hiring. And because IQ is so granular, you don't want to argue in court that 1 point is a business necessity when you set a threshold of 110, and you reject a minority candidate with a 109 score.
Which college someone went to serves as a decent proxy for min IQ (assuming SAT scores correlate with IQ).
So how come the ones that seem to do well on visa's test come from less stellar backgrounds.
But it's a binary decision -- do they have a degree or not?
That stops working when minority candidates are admitted with lower SAT scores.
> I thought the US A didn't tend to use IQ tests for a number of reason
Any employment requirement that produces a disparate impact has to be proven to be reasonably related to job performance. In practice, that probably means some kind of validation study tailored to each specific job catagory. That’s expensive.
Any employment requirement that produces a disparate impact has to be proven to be reasonably related to job performance. In practice, that probably means some kind of validation study tailored to each specific job catagory. That’s expensive.
Not sure why I got marked down here the Debenhams PE issue I mentioned was reported with more negative slant by the Daily Telegraph (a Right Wing Paper) in its business section.
Do you think the company actually improved by it or do you think they bought the goose that lays the golden eggs only to kill it while trying to choke more eggs out of it?
They are certainly at risk of killing it. I don't think they realize how razor thin everything was already cut to make the sale to them happen. And they want to cut more. I'm afraid they might make one cut too many and a type of systemic failure will happen as a result. It reminds me of this article about how escaping poverty requires 20 years with no mistakes.[1] The company is doing well externally, but the internals are without much of a safety net.
[1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/economi...
[1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/economi...
Did anything change from an on-the-ground software development/project management perspective? Certainly reporting requirements would increase at the highest levels, and some of that would trickle down to imply more structure at all levels of the organization. But does Vista bring specific directives on how to manage low-level teams and add increased structure to the development process? I imagine that many software companies are successful in spite of their PM practices, not due to them, so I wonder if Vista injects specific culture there.
Most of the project management staff has been replaced, with various open positions remaining. Other than executive level hires, they've stayed hands off of engineering. There are high level directives to reduce overhead costs and leverage some third party tech, but nothing in regards to development practices. They bring in a good CTO and let him set the culture. Vista's culture is all about recording the metrics.
What metrics are they recording? Besides IQ scores.
Amidst cost cutting, how are new capabilities, like machine learning, explored? Does the Vista "formula" allow for speculative research and development?
They have a process for handling machine learning specifically, and integrating machine learning into existing business processes where best suited. The types of data and problems machine learning solve are well defined.
We do quite a bit of general research and proof of concept as a part of our backlog, so the budget is there.
We do quite a bit of general research and proof of concept as a part of our backlog, so the budget is there.
> The types of data and problems machine learning solve are well defined.
What do you/Vista consider to be the well-defined problems that machine learning solves? My understanding is that it is less well defined but I'd like to know what you think.
What do you/Vista consider to be the well-defined problems that machine learning solves? My understanding is that it is less well defined but I'd like to know what you think.
I forget all of them but two I remember are classification problems and anomaly detection.
Regarding the personality / aptitude tests, do they tell you your score, relative performance, and likely status prospects as a result?
Nobody gets to see their score. It's a pass/fail.
What are the Vista Best Practices? Also what are the “critical factors for success”?
What kind of questions were asked as part of the cognitive test?
It's a timed, multiple choice test. "A car is driving 50mph and drives for two hours. How far did it drive?" Like, really simple. I had more trouble with ambiguous wording than anything. Almost nobody finishes as they don't give much time.
That's a common technique in multiple choice tests and not like any of the IQ tests I have taken which a more abstract
It's the CCAT.
https://www.criteriacorp.com/resources/ccat_prep.php
Source: myself. I also work for a Vista company
https://www.criteriacorp.com/resources/ccat_prep.php
Source: myself. I also work for a Vista company
[deleted]
[deleted]
[deleted]
As an Android user, I perceive discrimination against my tribe in the provision of only an iOS test-prep. :-) (Search for JobFlare.)
Is it Greenway?
Unlikely, given their statement on leaving engineering alone. I worked at Greenway. They let a lot of people go, most recently with a relocation effort that saw 70-80% of R&D from the old main campus leave vs. relocate to another state. This was apparently a very high retention rate too; they did offer relocation assistance, which probably helped.
I know something similar happened at another Vista owned company I have peers at. They don't always leave engineering alone.
[deleted]
"Before it buys a company, Vista evaluates whether its software is “mission critical” and whether it has control over its “critical factors for success,” or the key drivers of its performance." If this was true for your company, why go the route of a buy-out exit? Why not continue onto ipo?
Vista has companies it hasn't sold and doesn't plan on it. I could be wrong, but I don't believe they plan on selling ours. If the company they bought helps them be a better private equity firm, they keep it. How do you know which company to buy next? With all of the data you just bought from the previous company.
Full article here:
https://outline.com/6kWxDs
https://outline.com/6kWxDs
i personally prefer the l.php workaround as it preserves the site layout and formatting
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...
Alternative: If you're on Firefox, this addon automatically adds "Facebook" to the referer so you can bypass the FT and WSJ paywalls
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/read-ft-wsj/
How do publishers feel about this?
Same way they feel about this [1], they are simply unaware.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Billionaire’s+Secret+Buyout+...
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Billionaire’s+Secret+Buyout+...
That doesn't work for the Wall Street Journal any more, and hasn't for a year: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-05/wsj-ends-...
I don't question your source but my personal experience is that it still consistently works. It works just now in fact.
I worked for a company that was acquired by Vista. Was there for a few years before the acquisition and ~18 months after.
I'll just say this - whatever Vista's top secret directives are, they didn't seem to have any sensible directives around employee retention for individual contributors. IMO their policies actually encouraged people to leave. The team I was on lost 6 people in 6 months and it became comical to watch my manager try to hire people as upper management constantly froze/unfroze hiring, destroying hiring pipelines and providing a terrible experience to some great candidates.
I've kept in touch with quite a few of my colleagues from those years and there's a clear pattern. People who have left (including me) have gotten promotions, large pay raises, are working for companies with better brand recognition, etc. People who stayed are doing the same jobs for basically the same pay, but have a much higher workload to fill all the gaps that came from multiple rounds of layoffs and higher than expected (the CEO stated this in an all-hands call) attrition.
Lesson I learned in all this: Private equity acquisition = Immediately find a new job. If you have a good manager ask them to lay you off so you get a severance package and help the manager hit their headcount reduction quota. Unless you are in a privileged position, you're not going to get anything for sticking with the company through tough times.
I'll just say this - whatever Vista's top secret directives are, they didn't seem to have any sensible directives around employee retention for individual contributors. IMO their policies actually encouraged people to leave. The team I was on lost 6 people in 6 months and it became comical to watch my manager try to hire people as upper management constantly froze/unfroze hiring, destroying hiring pipelines and providing a terrible experience to some great candidates.
I've kept in touch with quite a few of my colleagues from those years and there's a clear pattern. People who have left (including me) have gotten promotions, large pay raises, are working for companies with better brand recognition, etc. People who stayed are doing the same jobs for basically the same pay, but have a much higher workload to fill all the gaps that came from multiple rounds of layoffs and higher than expected (the CEO stated this in an all-hands call) attrition.
Lesson I learned in all this: Private equity acquisition = Immediately find a new job. If you have a good manager ask them to lay you off so you get a severance package and help the manager hit their headcount reduction quota. Unless you are in a privileged position, you're not going to get anything for sticking with the company through tough times.
"Vista has yet to unload some of its biggest bets,"
Translation - the majority of the returns reported here are based on estimated valuations calculated by Vista rather than actual returns resulting from business sales. It goes without saying that 99.99% of the time this means the returns are inflated. It is possible that they've only calculated returns based on companies sold, but unlikely.
So not only can they manipulate the valuation on firms they haven't sold to make their funds look better. Even with that + the ability to fudge IRR numbers, their last few fund returns are not so mind blowing that we should believe these guys have a magic formula.
Translation - the majority of the returns reported here are based on estimated valuations calculated by Vista rather than actual returns resulting from business sales. It goes without saying that 99.99% of the time this means the returns are inflated. It is possible that they've only calculated returns based on companies sold, but unlikely.
So not only can they manipulate the valuation on firms they haven't sold to make their funds look better. Even with that + the ability to fudge IRR numbers, their last few fund returns are not so mind blowing that we should believe these guys have a magic formula.
If i ever encounter a situation where I'm selling my company and the buyer asks me to submit to a "proprietary cognitive assessment" ..I think there are going to be more $ involved. I'm not at all convinced one should give that information away for free - meaning this is a separate fee negotiated outside of the business price.
So, here's the complication - I can speak for myself in this regard, but i'm not sure how a principal could or should navigate this issue with coworkers or on behalf of employees.
ideas?
So, here's the complication - I can speak for myself in this regard, but i'm not sure how a principal could or should navigate this issue with coworkers or on behalf of employees.
ideas?
> Vista is currently trying to raise $12 billion for a new buyout fund.
Ok
Ok
Companies come up with all sorts of reasons to fire people. Especially after they go through years of excess.
A friend who works at ANZ tells me that they have come up with another way of culling jobs. They have embraced Agile wholeheartedly. And every employee has to be certified in Agile. Once an employee is certified he has to apply to be part of a squad, chapter, tribe etc.
Now to ensure that people are fired for "performance" reasons, there are only 800 openings up for grabs for 1000 odd people.
I think it is a nightmare when after spending years in a company you have to re-apply back to just keep your job.
A friend who works at ANZ tells me that they have come up with another way of culling jobs. They have embraced Agile wholeheartedly. And every employee has to be certified in Agile. Once an employee is certified he has to apply to be part of a squad, chapter, tribe etc.
Now to ensure that people are fired for "performance" reasons, there are only 800 openings up for grabs for 1000 odd people.
I think it is a nightmare when after spending years in a company you have to re-apply back to just keep your job.
"The ultimate gauge of success for any private-equity firm, however, is the price at which it cashes out of its investments."
Is this correct? That sounds like the measure of success for a VC, I thought PE was about a consistent return better than the public markets, I didn't think that had to mean "cashing out".
Is this correct? That sounds like the measure of success for a VC, I thought PE was about a consistent return better than the public markets, I didn't think that had to mean "cashing out".
Can't different PE groups have different strategies? A note from Buffett on PE:
Unlike LBO operators and private equity firms, we have no “exit” strategy — we buy to keep. That’s one reason why Berkshire is usually the first — and sometimes the only — choice for sellers and their managers.
Some years back our competitors were known as “leveraged-buyout operators.” But LBO became a bad name. So in Orwellian fashion, the buyout firms decided to change their moniker. What they did not change, though, were the essential ingredients of their previous operations, including their cherished fee structures and love of leverage. Their new label became “private equity,” a name that turns the facts upside-down: A purchase of a business by these firms almost invariably results in dramatic reductions in the equity portion of the acquiree’s capital structure compared to that previously existing. A number of these acquirees, purchased only two to three years ago, are now in mortal danger because of the debt piled on them by their private-equity buyers. Much of the bank debt is selling below 70 ¢ on the dollar, and the public debt has taken a far greater beating. The private-equity firms, it should be noted, are not rushing in to inject the equity their wards now desperately need. Instead, they’re keeping their remaining funds very private.
https://www.quora.com/Is-Berkshire-Hathaway-a-private-equity...
Unlike LBO operators and private equity firms, we have no “exit” strategy — we buy to keep. That’s one reason why Berkshire is usually the first — and sometimes the only — choice for sellers and their managers.
Some years back our competitors were known as “leveraged-buyout operators.” But LBO became a bad name. So in Orwellian fashion, the buyout firms decided to change their moniker. What they did not change, though, were the essential ingredients of their previous operations, including their cherished fee structures and love of leverage. Their new label became “private equity,” a name that turns the facts upside-down: A purchase of a business by these firms almost invariably results in dramatic reductions in the equity portion of the acquiree’s capital structure compared to that previously existing. A number of these acquirees, purchased only two to three years ago, are now in mortal danger because of the debt piled on them by their private-equity buyers. Much of the bank debt is selling below 70 ¢ on the dollar, and the public debt has taken a far greater beating. The private-equity firms, it should be noted, are not rushing in to inject the equity their wards now desperately need. Instead, they’re keeping their remaining funds very private.
https://www.quora.com/Is-Berkshire-Hathaway-a-private-equity...
It both VC and PE firms try to value their investments while still holding equity in companies. This can be a challenge though as these investments are often illiquid and there is a lot of uncertainty about the future.
Ultimately investors in both kinds of operations want to eventually sell their holdings for cash. It is only at that point that one can truly judge the success or failure of an investment.
That's all this is really saying. Vista owns a bunch of stock that will probably be valuable but they won't really know for sure until they turn it into cash.
Ultimately investors in both kinds of operations want to eventually sell their holdings for cash. It is only at that point that one can truly judge the success or failure of an investment.
That's all this is really saying. Vista owns a bunch of stock that will probably be valuable but they won't really know for sure until they turn it into cash.
Isn't a return on your investment a slow cash out? Over time you receive money in return for your up front investment. Either way, you don't invest money to lose money.
Well in addition to reflection of the problems of rampant short-termism, bubble-surfing, and crash-and-burn corporate raiding as opposed to creating something of lasting value there is a more charitable and sensible explanation for that mentality: risk and returns tend to correlation for many reasons that all add up to the same thing.
As a company becomes big the risk goes down but the growth goes down as well by necessity as it saturates its niche. Look at say Cellphone manufacturers - when everyone has a phone already growth potential is limited vs selling everyone a phone. On the other hand it becomes far harder t be wiped out when a behemoth. Corporations that were pretty much dead and everyone else knew it zombied along for decades. Even if they closed operations tomorrow they would still have a large amount of capital and collateral and thus investments are more protected and less risky.
You can turn a restaurant into a franchise chain or have it go bankrupt or but short of managing to get the entire chain seized as a front for illegal activity or similar extremes you can't lose all of the value of an entire franchise.
They technically can hold onto their early successes as the start-up became google but then they aren't really venture capitalists anymore and have shifted into being company stockholders. In order to see those types of exponential returns again you need to fund new businesses. However there is also the growing expense of all of the failures making it not a free lunch. If their total returns between all of their failures and successes are less than just holding their existing ones it is clear in retrospect that they should shift their funding to just the safer investments and they should have quit while they were ahead.
As a company becomes big the risk goes down but the growth goes down as well by necessity as it saturates its niche. Look at say Cellphone manufacturers - when everyone has a phone already growth potential is limited vs selling everyone a phone. On the other hand it becomes far harder t be wiped out when a behemoth. Corporations that were pretty much dead and everyone else knew it zombied along for decades. Even if they closed operations tomorrow they would still have a large amount of capital and collateral and thus investments are more protected and less risky.
You can turn a restaurant into a franchise chain or have it go bankrupt or but short of managing to get the entire chain seized as a front for illegal activity or similar extremes you can't lose all of the value of an entire franchise.
They technically can hold onto their early successes as the start-up became google but then they aren't really venture capitalists anymore and have shifted into being company stockholders. In order to see those types of exponential returns again you need to fund new businesses. However there is also the growing expense of all of the failures making it not a free lunch. If their total returns between all of their failures and successes are less than just holding their existing ones it is clear in retrospect that they should shift their funding to just the safer investments and they should have quit while they were ahead.
Why are WSJ links still allowed on HN?
Or any paid-reader only sources?
Or any paid-reader only sources?
Paywall bypass link:
http://archive.is/UUhj6
HN FAQs [1]:
It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
http://archive.is/UUhj6
HN FAQs [1]:
It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
> A personality test aims to determine which of them are suited to which jobs. Salespeople are better off being extroverted, and software developers more introverted.
If my eyeballs were rolling any harder at this they'd pop out of their sockets and race off over the back of my head.
That's the thing about billionaires. Everyone agrees with them. Just ask them: everyone they knows agrees with them. Every brainfart is the golden truth, hand-delivered by Minerva. The idea that people might be nodding at any halfbaked notion to get a fullbaked paycheque seems to have slipped their mind.
> Vista, which has done more than 300 deals, tells investors it has never lost money on a buyout
I can't tell who they're kidding here, their customers or themselves.
If my eyeballs were rolling any harder at this they'd pop out of their sockets and race off over the back of my head.
That's the thing about billionaires. Everyone agrees with them. Just ask them: everyone they knows agrees with them. Every brainfart is the golden truth, hand-delivered by Minerva. The idea that people might be nodding at any halfbaked notion to get a fullbaked paycheque seems to have slipped their mind.
> Vista, which has done more than 300 deals, tells investors it has never lost money on a buyout
I can't tell who they're kidding here, their customers or themselves.
>300 deals...never lost money on a buyout
That does sound completely absurd. They must have some very specific definition of what it means to "lose money on a buyout".
That does sound completely absurd. They must have some very specific definition of what it means to "lose money on a buyout".
> That's the thing about billionaires. Everyone agrees with them. Just ask them: everyone they knows agrees with them.
Then they pay large sums for "proprietary" signals, like satellite image analysis.
Then they pay large sums for "proprietary" signals, like satellite image analysis.
Is that controversial? Software development doesn't have a lot of human interaction, compared to, say, sales, golf instruction, or professional basketball, so introverts like it more.
If humans use the software, it may be useful to interact with humans to understand human requirements.
So? It's still way less interaction than sales.
It’s not about hours of interaction. One poor sales interaction can hurt one transaction. One poor requirements interaction can have years of software consequences.
So what? Introverts are perfectly good at doing that. And they're happier than extroverts at a job where there's less of that.
Being comfortable meeting new people every day, constantly, outside the company vs. being comfortable interacting with people you know within your department and occasionally elsewhere in the company may divide people, but should it really be called extroversion vs. introversion? Is this the normal meaning of the words?
If one person is sustained by issuing fake smiles to strangers, and another by exchanging real ones with colleagues, how is that extroversion vs. introversion?
If one person is sustained by issuing fake smiles to strangers, and another by exchanging real ones with colleagues, how is that extroversion vs. introversion?
If they're lying about their track record, this coverage/claim should bring out the refuting evidence, right?
[deleted]
People loves their plutocratic masters.
This is nothing new. The socio-economic hierarchy was there in every human society throughout history. Some times journalists don't have any imagination.
Not everything requires imagination. Sometimes explanation is good too. While it may be obvious to you, other people find it enlightening and interesting.
1. I agree with the "tastes like chicken" argument, especially for enterprise software. Most enterprise software is basically CRUD apps with a data analytics component where most of the complexity is in integrating with existing 3rd party systems and processes. It really is mostly plumbing.
2. I think this article does a fairly good job in raising the red flag that most of the profits are on paper. I say this because a funny thing about enterprise subscription software is that companies can spend a lot of money on it, but the purchasers are often not the people actually using the software. This can create a situation where things look OK for a while as the revenue rolls in, until one day when the folks with purchasing decision power actually talk to the end users, and the end users say how much they hate the product and all they are doing is working around it with an inefficient process (yes, I've been involved with enterprise software before). Then the software subscription is cancelled, and the subscription revenue can have a huge decline over a very short period.