Learning to live with enshittification

Thursday was an interesting day: a group of my MBA students at IE University gave a class presentation on the enshittification of Amazon using as their starting point the now famous article by Cory Doctorow, that I had assigned as a recommended reading for my innovation course.

Thanks to my privileged vantage point as a professor who has been using Amazon as a case study for many years, the presentation prompted me to reflect on how perceptions of the company have evolved over the years, from two decades ago, when students practically cheered and made the wave when a photo of Jeff Bezos appeared in a presentation, to now, when they identify his company with a loss of values, confusion of priorities and short-sighted and short-term focus on results. In a word, enshittification.

Later the same day, I came across these very interesting comments on the personal page of Ian “Hixie” Hickson, a well-known and respected software engineer at Google, who is leaving the company after 18 years. He outlines the decline of the culture and values of what was once a deeply idealistic organization with a clear mission to what it is today, a shell totally lacking in principles or a moral compass. In his words:

“The deterioration of Google’s culture will eventually become irreversible, because the…