The Meh-taverse

The job of a tech CEO is equal parts therapist and fortune teller. 

They must simultaneously motivate a bunch of tech employees in the near term (a near impossible task unless you have a masseuse and green juice handy) while also making sure those employees are working on the things that will be beneficial in a far-off horizon. The CEO balances the present needs of employees with preparing the organization for a future that only the leader can see. Not easy. 

The best executives are able to either accurately time trends or motivate their employees better than their peers can when trends become obvious. 

To help in this effort, executives often resort to vague, verbal gesticulations I call meta-narratives. These are stories that become popular, regardless of their relation to the truth, and can be used to convince lemming-esque employees and investors that the company is doing the right thing. Meta-narratives are huge, sweeping statements. You can always tell one is happening when, rather than solid math, company presentations are filled with grandiose soliloquies about the way the world will be in the future. A recent example is big data versus machine learning. Look at the Google trends data below (big data=blue, machine learning=red)

The golden years for the “big data” companies were 2012-2016. I remember so many earnings calls and strategy decks at the time, all purporting the value for big data. It was the meta-narrative that execs would cite to justify their strategy. Around 2018, with the rise of Waymo and autonomous vehicles, the meta-narrative shifted to machine learning. Yet again, the same song and dance were trotted out. “This will change everything!” “We are an AI company now.” etc., etc. 

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