AM I NEXT? CAREER SUICIDE: YOUR CAREER GONE IN 60-SECONDS

Sixty seconds, the time it takes to compose and send an ill-considered tweet could cost you your family, friends, colleagues, and your job.

Here we have a cautionary tale of Video Game CEO John Gibson who was forced to leave his position at Roswell, Georgia-based Tripwire Interactive, an entertainment software developer and publisher, over a tweet apparently supporting a position on the newly-enacted Texas Heartbeat Act.

The September 6, 2021 Announcement...

Tripwire Appoints new Interim CEO, Alan Wilson, as Company Moves Forward

The comments given by John Gibson are of his own opinion, and do not reflect those of Tripwire Interactive as a company. His comments disregarded the values of our whole team, our partners and much of our broader community. Our leadership team at Tripwire are deeply sorry and are unified in our commitment to take swift action and to foster a more positive environment.

Effective immediately, John Gibson has stepped down as CEO of Tripwire Interactive. Co-founding member and current Vice President, Alan Wilson, will take over as interim CEO. Alan has been with the company since its formation in 2005 and is an active lead in both the studio’s business and developmental affairs. Alan will work with the rest of the Tripwire leadership team to take steps with employees and partners to address their concerns including executing a company-wide town hall meeting and promoting open dialogue with Tripwire leadership and all employees. His understanding of both the company’s culture and the creative vision of our games will carry the team through this transition, with full support from the other Tripwire leaders.

The September 4, 2021 tweet...

"Proud of #USSupremeCourt affirming the Texas law banning abortion for babies with a heartbeat. As an entertainer I don’t get political often. Yet with so many vocal peers on the other side of this issue, I felt it was important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer."

Condemned by social media, company employees, vendors, and others...

Norcross, Georgia-based Shipwright Studios, a game collaborator and co-developer commented,,,

While your politics are your own, the moment you make them a matter of public discourse you entangle all of those working for and with you. We have worked closely alongside the talented and passionate developers at Tripwire and your partners for the last 3+ years.

We know it is difficult for employees to speak up or act out in these scenarios, and they may not feel comfortab·le to speak their minds.

It is regrettable, but we feel it would be doing ourselves, your employees, your partners, and the industry as a whole a disservice to allow this pattern to continue without comment.

We started Shipwright with the idea that it was finally time to put our money where our mouth is. We cannot in good conscience continue to work with Tripwire under the current leadership structure. We will begin the cancellation of our existing contracts effective immediately.

Is it a matter of self-censorship or survival?

You should always differentiate between your personal and professional life. Professionally the answer should always be, even in the face of intense media and peer pressure, the objective of the company is to do [business mantra here] and I do not comment on areas outside of growing our business for the benefit of our customers, investors, employees, vendors, and our community.

Change is coming. There will always be a tomorrow, no matter how much you may try to ignore it. There are no guarantees in life or promises for a bright future. Just because something bad hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. It can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No one is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow and still have a job by evening. Are you now wondering, Am I Next?

FAKE NEWS AND THE BROKEN BUSINESS MODEL OF THE MEDIA

For those who wondered what happened to the mainstream media, it is not so much its engagement in toxic left versus right battles, but the failure of its original business model.

The old model was based on delivering information and analysis to individuals who had little or no access to contemporaneous news other than radio, the newspapers, and the longer form magazines. People had favorite sources and were pretty much loyal to their choices. Editorial content was divided into reportage and commentary and the commercial aspect of selling advertising rarely impacted editorial content. The sales ads for the various goods and services were numerous and repetitive. Classified advertising was a major moneymaker.

Enter the internet with its multiplicity of free information sources, many contemporaneous and many with accompanying audiovisual content.

Enter the internet with its ability to disintermediate, search and sort, classified advertising offers as well as offer long-form sales pitches that cost little or nothing to access.

Enter the corporate ownership of media outlets by companies that had other commercial interests regulated or dependent on government contracts. The pressure no longer came from advertising sponsors but from corporate executives fearful of jeopardizing government-derived income streams from grants, contracts, subsidies, tax relief, special interest legislation, and waiver relief from regulations and/or legislation.

With advertising income shifting towards online free classified advertising or the use of social media influences, reduced revenues impacted the bottom line. The content creators went hat-in-hand to the business side of the enterprise to plead for support. Unfortunately on a quid-pro-quo basis that changed the nature of the editorial content.

And, the last straw was the need to boost audience and ratings in this new environment. No longer could one claim immediacy, the excellency of analysis, or a unique selling proposition. There were too many sources freely available and one needed to rise above the noise to be noticed.

Hence, we are now presented with a business model that is dependent on outrageous assertions and the cult of personality to deliver an audience. The more outrageous the assertion, the more it is passed from person-to-person. And, hopefully, it will reach the holy grail of "going viral."

So unless the media can develop a new business model with fresh and valuable content, they will simply be disintermediated into nothingness. Meanwhile, the mainstream media will be filled with the bizarre and exploited news -- much of which is synthetically derived and can be legitimately described as fake news.

Are you wondering, Am I next?

UPSIDE-DOWN BUSINESS MODELS

Efficiency not competition is often the biggest existential threat to companies with an upside-down business model.

The fight for business is about to get incredibly ugly as companies with upside-down business models realize a fundamental fact: efficiencies available to customers reduce the company's revenues, not the company's operating costs. 

Thus in a rush to preserve the income-generating ability of legacy capital assets, you will find companies turning to corrupt politicians to preserve whatever is left of their business and to overlook the confusing and dishonest predatory pricing that is often found in highly-regulated and tariffed industries.

Deception becomes the norm. 

One example can be found at Sparkletts where the initial offer of a free cooler (regular and cold water) has given way to an almost surreptitious rental cost to the customer. In the beginning, the company raised the price to $1 per month and explained it as imputed taxes demanded by "the government." Now, years later, the same cooler is costing the consumers $6 per month, and there is no pretense that this is a government-mandated tax. The same with the strangely-calculated "energy fees" to compensate for higher gasoline costs, but which never seem to shrink as the cost of fuel dramatically decline in an age of declining oil prices. Anything to overcome the fact that water has been commoditized, brands are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and lower-cost options are now becoming more available. 

Of course, just looking at the fees on some utility bills is almost an exercise in futility. Southern California Edison, when challenged over a single line item claimed that the item was a charge in anticipation of higher costs and was not a government-imposed fee.  One such mysterious fee is labeled the "Competition Transition Charge" and is defined as "a non-bypassable charge applicable to all existing and future SCE Bundled Service Customers, all Direct Access Customers, and all Departing Load Customers for recovery of SCE’s transition costs." 

In a second document, here is how the charge is explained...

"Once again, additional generation charges are listed in a column on the right underneath the extra delivery charges. Our example shows only a competition transition charge."

"Below this are your overall energy charges, which also boil down to a single item, franchise fees. The fees and the competition transition charge are just a reflection of the cost of business for your utility. By buying electricity from a utility, you are paying for all maintenance, repairs, special programs, and incentives, not to mention salaries and pensions. When any of those costs go up the utility just spreads the cost across its many thousands of clients, resulting in increased rates."

One might think that the utilities' costs would be bundled into the total cost of energy, but apparently, to avoid scaring the customer with a big number, they break the bill into smaller numbers, each when taken individually does not seem so onerous as the one big number.
So what does this have to do with real competition? Very little since most utilities are operated as monopolies and where the customer is faced with Hobson's choice: Pay the fee, accept the rules or do without. Pretty tough when you are speaking about the hard delivery of water or electricity. Not so much when you have choices of telephone or cable providers. 

it appears that home solar panels, LED lighting, and the increased efficiency of new buildings is taking a cut of their revenues without altering the cost structure. Some of this loss of income can be counterbalanced by the avoidance of CAPEX (Capital Expenditure) in building out additional capacity. You can see the very same thing happening in the water markets where drought-resistant landscaping and drip watering systems are reducing water usage and ultimately revenues. In these instances, efficiency is more damaging than the competition, if there is any in a monopolistic business.

So it is not uncommon to penalize customers for this efficiency with artificial tier-rates. The utility calculates, on some basis, what it believes is the efficient use of its resource and surcharges any overages. Unfortunately, most utilities do not make their revenue and operational statistics available to the public in a usable form so that we can know how much revenue is generated by so-called inefficient use. In some cases, utilities who have long-touted solar power are surcharging customers for administrative costs in attaching their solar installation to the grid. 

The takeaway ...

The takeaway is to look out for upside-down business models based on legacy assets and a revenue base that is being eroded by technological efficiencies on the consumer side like LED lighting and DRIP watering systems. Because the easiest way to compensate for declining revenues -- at least in the short term -- is to automate and to reduce costly personnel.

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