I'll give you that, but I also don't think it was clear at the time that "next quarters profit" culture would destroy everything good.

The culture at the time was "growth is money" and "we can figure out how to monetize later."

Today we have the knowledge that monetization requires enshittification, but I think there were dreams that monetization could succeed without enshittification, and now those dreams have died.

But next quarter's profit always destroys everything good. Why should this have been expected to turn out any differently?

I don't think that was a part of the collective consciousness 10 years ago.

People said "but how are you going to monetize" and everyone said "we'll figure that out later."

So even if it was true back then (and it was), spez was probably 20-25 when he sold his soul? You don't exactly have the benefit of worldly wisdom when you are that young.

You might be speaking specifically about Reddit and the Q4 profit question, but otherwise I want to point out that the idea that immediate returns in business ultimately destroys good products has been in the cultural consciousness for much longer than 10 years.

This was not something I thought about, understood, or really had conveyed to me until I was in my late 20s and saw it happening first hand with product after product. When I asked "why" the answer was there, but I didn't get the answer until I asked the question. I didn't ask the question until I saw the harm.

So while what you say might be true, there is still the question of what culture your from, how these ideas enter that culture, and when those ideas are introduced to the people in that culture.

There is the subjective experience of "collective consciousness" to deal with and subjectively, I think that "growth is great" was louder than "short termism is bad".

We were drunk on VC funded growth, and now we are dealing with the hangover and asking how we got ourselves into the position. Getting drunk was great. The hangover is not.

... since when is Reddit public? What?

Actually that's true, Surprised it took so long to be pointed out. I guess I should have said take VC money