I believe these actions will make us stronger and deliver significant value for our shareholders
Yeah, fuck people, it's all about the shareholders
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
232 points (97.2% liked)
Technology
59039 readers
3763 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I thought that quote satire. Nope it's real. JFC. π©
Are you trying to tell us you care for your ceo and you expect the same from him? Lmfao
Legally, they aren't even allowed to care.
They have a duty to maximize profits.
What's the alternative though, hire as many people as possible and fail?
If you are losing market share and profits then something needs to change, if you can cut costs of that. It's a ridiculously big number and incredibly unfortunate but it's unrealistic to think it'd be anything else
That's a drop in profit, right? Not an actual loss
Yes, one quarter of decreased profits. Sales for the same quarter are only down 20%.
Another article says βThe company still expects full-year net sales in a range between 23.2 billion euros and 24.6 billion euros, sticking to its forecast.β
I understand that itβs sometimes necessary for companies to trim the fat. But with annual net sales still on track and the company making healthy profits for many quarters running, it sure sucks for those 14,000 people that one bad quarter is being used as the reason that theyβll no longer be able to pay their bills.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/10/19/nokia-to-cut-up-to-14000-jobs-after-profit-plunges-.html
Itβs what hedges and private equity investors want to see. Trimming the fat is easy financial engineering to make the books look better in the short term since they usually only stick around for 2 to 4 years before divesting.
Yep, and it results in lower employee morale, reduced efficiency, higher turnover, and long-term project abandonment. You can't trim the fat off a workhorse without slaughtering it.
Remember, this isn't because they're at record losses, or that they're breaking even.
It's literally because they're not making enough profit.
This is the freemarket system functioning as intended.
A company can still be making money, still be above water, but decide their shareholders need to be even better off and they will decide they deserve money more than people struggling and making it by barely check-to-check.
Not quite. Ultimately it's the shareholders making this decision. They twist arms on the board of directors, who in turn twists on the CEO. If the CEO doesn't make a call like this, they simply fire him and find someone who will.
And it's not necessarily that the shareholders want more money. But they sure as hell don't want to lose money. And they are ATM.
NOKIA -6.44% NOK -5.16% ERIC.B -0.80%
Hell, I might be one of those shareholders. Maybe there's a spot of Nokia stock in my Roth IRA, hell if I know. But the people managing my IRA know, and they'll drop Nokia if it keeps losing value. And if Nokia keeps losing value, they won't make payroll, those people are getting fired anyway.
If they were a private firm, there wouldn't be any of this horse shit, but then they couldn't raise capital to expand, take on a major initiative, etc. Sucks either way doesn't it?
Thank you!!
It's the way the system is designed. That executive had no option but to maximize profits. Otherwise, the stock manager will sell their stock. And, the stock manager has no option but to pick the best stocks. Otherwise, investors would just go with a better performing financial product.
All these "shitty" business decisions made by executives are to increase stock value/dividends because their only goal is to do so. Any products or services a publicly-traded company provides is a side effect. To motivate this further, executives are often heavily paid in stock. Combining all these factors together, society ensures we place the greediest and most ruthless people in charge of our economic decisions.
That's why I never care for news of a particular CEO. If they weren't in that position, another asshole would gladly take their place since that CEO is surrounded by other relentless subordinates that want the position. Basically, our society encourages psychopaths to engage in their deranged egoism. It's also why Trump doesn't trigger me. He's a victim of the system also, because he never faces the consequences he needs to experience in order to develop a healthy, complete, and stable personality. He will always feel deeply insecure, be delusional, and never know mental peace. Unfortunately, we're the ones that have to suffer the consequences of his madness instead.
IIUC, profit doesn't include obligations to investors.
Possibly helpful graph to show what this actually means https://www.statista.com/statistics/275358/number-of-nokia-employees-since-2005/
I wish these news articles always included this information. For public companies, it's a minute of googling.
What happened in 2015/2016?
They acquired Alcatel-Lucent, which had about 50k people at the time.
Still made a profit, but have to fire all you. Sorry, gotta keep Wall Street happy. Byeeeee
This is the crux of the problem with public companies, and why they all do extremely stupid things.
That's how they made the profits
Nice.
Nice.
Do we have to recycle everything from Reddit?
Incoming βplay stupid gamesβ¦β
That's just how the internet do. Not unique to lemmy.
Nice.
I thought Nokia was dead after Microsoft gutted it.
Nokia is not just a phone company, it is also a telecommunications equipment provider. IIRC both those departments are 2 separate companies. They set up towers, 5G hardware etc and that part of the company is basically B2B.
And a very healthy patent portfolio.
This is a different company. They shuffled names around.
What does Nokia even sell these days?
They mainly make telecom equipment. Also the modern Nokia phones are made by a company called hmd global. Not Nokia proper.
TiL Nokia had enough 14000 employees still
It sucks all those people lost their jobs but...
69
Heh.
I had to check the date of the article, I thought it was one from 2013.
But as I can see Nokia only laid off 10,000 in 2013, they surpassed themselves and lay off 14,000 this time.
69% is the number to decide in such businesses.
Make your products indestructible again.
Only 31% profit instead of 100%? Outrageous!
That's not how it works
Lol yeah. 100% profit would mean literally no operating expenses.
^Most ^economically ^literate ^Lemmy ^user.
I think he compared two years. You knowβ¦like the headline does.
Niceee
Last time I wanted to buy a smartphone from Nokia they didn't even have a phone in the higher price segment. I think the highest was 500 Euro and the components were worse or only slightly better than my old phone. If they had better phones, I'd buy them.
I don't think Nokias main business is phones these days but I may be wrong. I was under the impression it was telecommunications. Microwave wireless, networking equipment etc.
Nokia is not making phones anymore. Those on the market are from HMD Global, a Chinese company which bought the brand name Nokia for mobile.
HMD Global is a Finnish company, run by ex-Nokia executives. It's pretty nuch the old Nokia, seperated enough to not bankrupt the original company if it goes bad.
The phones are no more Chinese than Google and Apple.
I wish that failing company would come back!
comes back
fails
π
If I recall well the phone conception is done in China. The only Finn part is the company itself and its management.
They've fallen so far since the indestructible Nokia 2280
Nice