This is it. The economic incentives are totally towards lying.
Some institutions are less perfect than others. There are, of course, good people in the financial industry, but I've never worked in any profession like the financial industry where rewards to bad actors are baked into the system. I recall an interview where Rick Ferri described his shock moving from being a fighter pilot where truth was essential to Wall Street where lying was normal. It is much easier for the good to go bad in one system than the other. So, I think Bernstein's warnings are harsh but have a fair element of truth to them.
The other professions I see that in are public relations/ PR, and also tech on the marketing level but many CEOs have a reality suppression field about bad news (in all sectors).
The documentary about Theranos ("Bad Blood") & Elizabeth Holmes was fascinating. Clear the C-Suite culture was about overpromising and using clients as unwitting beta testers (just like software) but this was healthcare, not software. In healthcare you can kill people that way.
All of the docs/ films about charismatic entrepreneurs have that streak -- the Steve Jobs movie, the Social Network (Facebook), the documentary about WeWork (Adam Neumann), Bad Blood as above. Enron - the Smartest Guys in the Room -- also.
Statistics: Posted by Valuethinker — Sun Mar 10, 2024 6:57 am — Replies 50 — Views 5028