Startup with Conservative Accounting??
from the what-is-the-world-coming-to dept
Vignette, which makes a widely used content management system, is making news because of its conservative accounting methods. This scares me as well. It’s a very good thing that they are doing this. What scares me is that it’s newsworthy. That indicates that no one else is doing that and they’re all, in some sense, cooking the books. I know that it’s a popular thing to do around internet companies, with the rationale being “everyone else does it, so to be competitive we need to also”. To me, it highlights the very short time horizon that most companies are looking at. No one thinks long term. No one expects to still be around when the books get trashed and the company finds itself in hot water. By then, they expect to be off on the beach with their millions made from stock options.