Managing Your Company To Death 398
puppetman writes "This weeks I, Cringely is a frightening monologue on the plight of over-managed companies: VC's and professional managers who are looking to make a quick buck, even if it consigns the company to the rubbish heap. He praises companies like Oracle and Sun because the founder still runs the company, and is in touch with the core of the buisiness. He also makes an interesting aside about the founders of the Canadian company, Research in Motion (makers of the Blackberry) and their personal contribution of $120 million for research into particle physics, to illustrate what happens when technical expertise and business success can lead to."
Founders not necessarily necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
He praises companies like Oracle and Sun because the founder still runs the company
The founder's presence is not a guarantee at all for the flourishing of a company - how many companies (ok, most of them are the usual derelict dotcoms) have evaporated into thin air in the last two years despite the founder still leading the company ?
And what about cases like CMGI [cmgi.com], where it would've probably a better idea to get rid of the founder (David Wetherell) a long time ago ?
Just my $0.02...
Borland? (Score:2, Interesting)
good point (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Founders not necessarily necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
But if a company being run by the founder is flourishing it would probably be a bad idea to hire "professional" management to replace the founder.
Anybody forgot to mention Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)
>He praises companies like Oracle and Sun because >the founder still runs the company, and is in >touch with the core of the buisiness.
Anybody forgot to mention Microsoft?
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Make sure you got people who knows business. (Score:0, Interesting)
Take a look at the last couple of years pathetic business-models and how many technology companies have been run.
A couple of examples:
* We are going to expand. No matter if we have customers or not, we are going to expand just for the . DON'T EXPAND JUST BECAUSE ITS FUN!
* We are going to spend thousands of man hours (=gigantic cost) and then give our products away for free. Dot-coms and open source development companies are examples of this. FREE DO NOT PAY THE BILLS!
* We are going to give away this huge product and
sell this tiny thing thats optional. If you do this you have just teached your customers that a huge product doesn't cost anything, it doesn't make any sense to pay for a tiny part then. This is how peoples minds work. Any business-oriented person knows this but tech-people apperently does not.
* We are going to sell product X or service Y for this cheap stuff. Why do you think people pay so much for support for enterprise server software or enterprise databases? Because the products are expensive, that makes it possible to charge much for support or third-party software or other third-party products. When the products becomes cheap no one pays as much anymore, it indicate low value. You wouldn't pay $5000 for a car stereo in you fiat, right? Any business or sale-oriented person knows this but most tech-people don't.
Pump and Dump (Score:3, Interesting)
A big cause of this must be preverse incentives. If the new CEO gets lots of stock/options, the overriding incentive is to pump-and-dump the company, which is not a good plan for the long term. Responsibility for preverse CEO incentives lies with the Board.
I Agree (Score:4, Interesting)
Take Apple. Love or hate Steve Jobs, Apple tends to work as a company from the consumor point of view because everything has been thought of. From the Australian stone floors in the bathroom of Apple Retail Stores, to the brand dress on boxes and the look of OS X... everything works together.*
(*Note: Not to say that it all works perfectly, but for the most part, it does work)
Compare Apple to one of those companies that are ran by comitte. I would say Direct TV is a great example. They are in the middle of an access card swap and my DirectTV/TiVo has a banner on the screen telling me to 'Replace your access card now.' Only one problem, I haven't received it in the mail yet, and I can't clear the banner off the screen without replacing the access card.
I called customer service and was told that my card was mailed out on Oct 11, but they couldn't clear the banner off my screen at all. This, to me, is a symptom of a company being run by a bunch of suit wearing monkies-
Security Manager - "How are we going to make sure our moronic customers don't just throw the new access cards away?"
UI Manager - "Simple, we just annoy them with a big message across all their TV screens that won't go away until they replace the card."
Security Manager - "Great! But what if they don't have the card yet?"
UI Manager - "Fuck Em! It'll show up SOMEDAY."
As such, I have called customer support every hour, on the hour and asked them to clear the screen.
*sigh* (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why I left Intel. Plain and simple. When I suddenly became a mini-manager [not by choice, I assure you] and still had 3 managers immediately above me (who had, in turn, 4 or 5 more above them) I knew it was time to stop drinking the Kool-Aid and get the fuck out. I took a nice separation package and hauled ass without looking back.
Of course... now I've said it out loud and the Blue Men will come hunt me down or something...
Re:The New Feudalism (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds like Metricom (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention other brain-dead tactics like disabling peer-to-peer connectivity between modems, forcing subscribers to migrate to more expensive 128kbps service, and selling modems at a loss in order to induce people to sign up.
That's one company that so obviously was run into the ground by management bozos. Superior product with manageable growth, replaced by unmanageable spending and excessive debt. Serves the bastards right when they passed up the inital bankruptcy bid of 20mil, and ended up getting bought out for only 8mil!
The sad thing is every corporate exec that worked for them is probably employed at some hapless company right now. There should be a blacklist of suits circulated around the geek community, so you know to bail when one of these idiots signs on to your company...
Stockholders are the problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
The people who actually care about companies are referred to as stakeholders these days - non-C*O level employees, customers, and the communities in which those companies do business. They all have an interest in the long term value of the company (much as sports fans care about thier favourite teams and the quality of the game). Stockholders don't.
The two problems with executives incentives are these:
1/ Anyone smart/devious/whatever enough to end up the CEO of a company like Tyco will likely understand very well how to screw the company (and owners, and stakeholders) for all they're worth. If you've hired someone who has a good understanding of the complexities of modern multinaitonal businesses and who is ruthless enough to, eg, fire thousands of people on your behalf, why would you assume that they won't look after number one? It's the rational thing to do.
2/ GTHe stockholder problem I alluded to above. Funds managers and VCs don't actually give a fuck if the company succeeds, nor do many investors. They care about maximising return, and if that means raping the company into oblivion, screwing staff, communities, and customers, they won't care - because they'll just shift their money elsewhere to someone who is doing it on their behalf.
Markets have become so efficient and rational in the short term, they're incapable of protecting the long term. And investors have gotten very good at socialising risks (bankruptcy, layoffs, etc) and keeping profits.
Ummmmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to stay in the tech industry, Microsoft and IBM are two great examples. Both much, MUCH larger than Apple and neither run by a fanatical leader. Bill Gates did exert a great deal of control over MS, however it was still not his singular drive running the company, just his overall vision. IBM, well they just defince the faceless corperation. I bet even most geeks can't name their CEO.
It's much the same in other industries. Take General Electric. They are, by most measures, the biggest company in the world. They do everything from aircraft engines to lightbulbs to health insurance (really, they are my provider). They have so many divisions it would be impossable for a single person to control them entirely, even if they wanted to.
I think many Mac fans are so personally facinated with Mac products that they loose sight of the overall picture. Apple is certianly a successful company, of that there is no debate, but they are not a giant, and probably never will be.
Apple is to the computer industry somewhat like Mackie is to the audio industry. They both make quality products, and make money doing it. They both have a storng following. However, ultimately, both are small time players.
Amen, brother! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Death imminent (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Founders not necessarily necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
Bob's got it wrong this week (Score:5, Interesting)
Companies do not exist to make traditions. Companies do not exist in order to secure basic technological research. Companies do not exist in order to provide decade long careers.
Companies exist because you can create more value by putting a number of people under one umbrella than by having everyone in the world make a freelance living. It's simple Adam Smithian division of labour, no more and no less.
It is always temptimg to decry 'short-term'policies. But the fact remains none of us has a long term crystal ball. Five year plans never happen. Short term thinking is absolutely rational.
I'm sure it's the case that many 'professional management' teams do a bad job. It may even be the case that they do a worse job than founders motivated by enthusiasm might have done. But there's no inherent caasal factor there. It may well be that Cringeley's unsubstantiated charge of cronyism creates worse teams than some more meritocratic proces might. But he does not demonstrate that.
Prodcutisng industries all work like Hollywood - one success pays for multiple failures. No-one really understands what will create success. All we are seeing is that in a tight economy people tolerate fewer failures before they become risk averse. That's natural, and rational. It'll swing back again.
And I am not an MBA
I disagree... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, maximizing shareholder wealth should be a goal. Shareholders are the owners of the company. If they aren't satisfied with the direction of the business, then you've got problems. Your board and management team don't mean anything if the shareholders decide to dump them.
Cringely overestimates managerial influence on the companies that he mentions, but disregards other factors such as economic conditions and competition. Most of those companies simply could not compete with industry leaders.
Of course, I never take Cringely seriously...
Re:Ummmmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
In my experience, Wall Street tends to reward all the wrong things. Hell, 2 out of the 3 companies you mentioned (Microsoft and GE) are damn near downright evil cancers on this society's existence. I don't need to defend that statement in regards to Microsoft here on Slashdot, but GE makes nuclear reactors, WMD components, guns (I have a t-shirt with a picture of a GAU-8A cannon from an A-10 Warthog on it with the tag line - "GE We Bring Good Things To Life"). GE is the poster child for the multinational conglomerate.
I mean, don't you think that there is something funky going on when a company provides both health care and manufacturers guns and nuclear reactors?
Of course, to Wall Street, that doesn't matter one iota. They make money, lots of it, world be dammed, and that's all the stock market cares about.
I like companies like Apple, BMW and Bang & Olufsen because they are small companies that have a laser focus on making great products, they treat their customers/employees well and operate very responsibly in an economic environment were making profits at all costs is all the rage. Their secret is quite simple: focus on the higher end of the market, stay small and be happy as a profitable nitch player.
150 years ago, companies like those would be par for the course, but today, I am an arrogant prick because I purchase their products.
Re:The New Feudalism (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's have a look at some world class companies.
The management board of Daimler-Chrysler:
1x Engineering and Economics
1x Engineering and MBA
2x Economics
2x MBA
2x Law
4x Engineering
John Palmisano, President of IBM, is has graduated with a Bachelor in social and behavioural sciences.
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Chairman of the Board, has a bachelor in engineering and a MBA.
The first non-engineer CEO at Sony was Nobuyuki Idei, in 1995. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Economics.
The president of Sony from 1989 to 1995 was Norio Ôga, graduate of Tôkyô National University of Fine Arts and Music.
The prime requisit of the best managers are very good social skills and a good judgement. A good knowledge of economics is plus, without doubt, but a good knowledge of the matter at hand, too.
Of course, this doesn't negate your quite correct observation, that there are several managers, which jump of the sinking ship, with their "golden parachute".
It makes me wonder, how many of those managers are MBAs.
Managing a company to death and research at work. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've worked at DEC, IBM, and Lucent's Bell Labs and all three had the problem of promoting to management people who were either not skilled at dealing with people or who were less than technically competent.
Sometimes the companies would allow these folks to terrorize the staff with rants and threats. Often they judged these managers by how large their group or department was -- not by the work output and timeliness of project results.
Groups of folks would kiss up to them and they were rewarded with raises and promotions.
I thought working for a small startup would be better -- but I found the same problem with a computer start-up and a telecom one -- since the managers were all trained in the above big companies.
I've worked for one good manager in the last 12 years -- in 3 jobs in 3 companies including two of the above biggies. If you get a good manager try to hang on tight...Most of them are more even clueless than the HR staff.
I think I could run a company better by just running it like the budget was my checkbook.
I saw the contents of the Enron bankrupcy auction and it sickened me. Piles of what looked like under-used computer equipment and aeron chair I bet the janitor had a laptop and docking station.
As far as basic research... there are few companies doing anything but product oriented work now. The days of Bell Labs doing a lot of serious research are long past. It's been less than spectacular for more than 5 years.
That was a byproduct of the regulated telecom industry and the profits it brought.
IBM has always done work with a serious connection to their current and future businesses.
--BillScot McNealy in touch ?!? NOT !!! (Score:4, Interesting)
What a hoot! Scott McNealy has defined himself by being anti-microsoft instead of pro Unix/Solaris. Just google the guy. He never talks about Solaris, only about how bad Microsoft is.
Maybe if Sun brought some geeks to the front office, they could bring back some excitement to the Solaris community. Who knows?! Dare I suggest that Sun could even win a benchmark or even make a sale ???
I think the article is on target even if his examples aren't. Cisco is a classic example of the original visionaries being pushed out.
*Disclaimer - I have been unemployed for 6 months as a result of my company being bought and subsequently being laid off.
Re:Hang on a minute! (Score:5, Interesting)
Easier to fail than to succeed (Score:4, Interesting)
The wealth of a business owner does not come from income but from the value of his or her stake in the business. Ultimately this wealth is "paper" wealth untill the company is sold.
That means if it is best for owners to sell, they'll "package" the company for sale (this often involves actually reducing the value of the company to a level that someone will buy it). What's more, a lot of the actions that appear shortsighted are acutally long term maneuvers to sell out. Closing down R&D to make your books look attractive is one way to do this. With businesses, "let the buyer beware" is the rule, not the exception.
One condition that universally sucks is when something happens that makes it appear that the owners of a company's wealth is at risk. Then owners pressure managers to make shortsighted decisions to protect their wealth and often attempt to prematurely sell the company. The results are often mass layoffs and the buyer gets a firm that is cancerous and consumes their company or personal wealth as well.
At present I own a company. I know my employees will not like it when I decide to sell it. I can't guarantee that they will all come out ahead, but I'll try my best. The reason I started this company was to build it up, and then sell it so that I and my fellow investors could get rich. My employees benefit by having great jobs and some, through ownership options, will be rewarded when the sale happens.
$G
Re:Ummmmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
How do you like it when:
A company sells you a crap product, and you can't return it?
A company's customer support line has a 45 minute hold time?
A company doesn't even publish their support number online?
A company voids your product warranty for a bogus reason?
A company pays off politicians to get a piece of unconstitutional legislation passed?
A company plays a culpable part in someone's death because of lax product testing?
A company pollutes the environment?
Nobody likes any of these things, probably not even the executives who run the companies that execute strategies involving the above. But do you know why, in part these things happen? Because shareholders (that's you and your 401(k)) demand absolute maximization of shareholder value.
I think that's wrong and very greedy, and I happen to be an entrepreneur. I refuse to be involved in an organization that puts $$$ in front of everything else and I refuse to be involved in a publicly traded company.
Small company's fate (Score:5, Interesting)
Then we went public, lots of money burned, but the product didn't fly high, and the grey-haired managers showed up. The VCs & large institutional investors that now controlled the company brought in management to wring as much money out of the company as possible. Since we weren't a high flyer the large investors didn't care about keeping us alive anymore, they just wanted as much money as possible extracted from it.
By this point I had bailed, I didn't like the way things were going. As fate would have it, I jumped from the frying pan into the fire, but that's another story.
It survived for a few more years. Pieces of the company were spun off & sold off. The large investors had gotten a sweet deal on stock, but had to hold it for a several years. A few months after they could legally sell it I noticed the company's stock skyrocket -- then drop .... for 3 days it rachetted up on low volume then dropped on high volume. Several times the outstanding share volume changed hands over those few days.
By the end of that year the company was dissolved
Re:Larry Ellison (Score:2, Interesting)
MySQL is good at what it does but don't kid yourself into thinking that it is anywhere near as reliable as Oracle.
It's similar to MS SQL Server. If you are a developer and want to get a database up and running quickly then it's great. If you're a sysadmin and want to be able to tune your application to your OS, or to resolve performance issues then you are screwed.
I'm not saying Oracle is the be all and end all of databases - as with anything it's horses for courses. But just try debugging errors with MySQL. We are currently having issued with MySQL replication. The documentation doesn't give us an indication of what our error is caused by or how to resolve it.
And looking through the documentation there is no versioning. Is his function / parameter available in my version? I have frequently seen the suggested resolution to problem as "upgrade to this version". That may be practical on some systems but on applications developed by a third party, which may depend on some "feature" of the behaviour of a version of MySQL then it is not practical.
Inverse relation between MBAs and profitability (Score:5, Interesting)
Since most MBAs lack domain expertise and since the much of the behaviour taught in business school is geared towards stripping a company of assets, I'd have to guess that you're better off without them.
Cisco, Anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is obvious that you can't run a technology company if you don't understand technology, just as you cannot run Walmart if you don't have a clue what a department store is.
(Disclosure, I am an MBA.)
I have been providing services to high-tech companies for a decade, and my business has outlived those of most of my clients, and from my experience, the #1 failing point of companies is developing technology that is really cool but nobody wants, or developing technology that is really useful and not knowing how to make it into a real product. I can't tell you the number of companies I've worked for who have either never heard of a version freeze, or who freeze a version every month only to defrost it a day later.
Case in point, a good friend called me to ask me in what cases you should translate the user manuals to a different language, for example Portugese. He works for a small hw developer with real international sales. I said "well, you know how much you sell in Brazil, and your salespeople tell you how much more they might sell if people could actually use the product, and you can figure the cost yourself" (this is a system that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars; read, even one extra sale would justify the cost). I continued "You know, just like you figure out whether to add a feature to the product -- you figure out how much it costs to develop the feature, and how many extra sales it will make you over the competition, and then you know if it is worth it, right??" and he was like, "Uh, well, that is a different way of thinking about it. We kind of have a meeting and discuss what to put in the product and usually we are right." Yeah, but it turns out that they don't document the new feature and nobody uses it unless they call the help desk. Etc., etc. This is a company that has been in business 15 years and has had sales for more than 10 of those years and they just went through a first round of layoffs. The obvious only reason they are laying people off is because of poor management by the founders. They should be profitable by now but they are still living off of venture capital.
You talk about the dotcom boom as if it were some kind of freak accident, but it wasn't. The eager engineers who founded all these companies really truly believed that their ideas and products had added value. And it wasn't only dotcoms -- look at all the telecom and wireless stuff. The dotcom bust was what happens when all those tecchies working out of their garages get a hold of real money. Now they are back working out of their garages, and 1% of them will emerge with something that makes money. Why 1%? Because that is the percentage of leaders out there who can be geeks and managers and marketeers, or who have the common sense to get someone to fill the gaps they don't do themselves. If you are the kind of founder who can't give real power to people who make up for your shortcomings, your company will go belly-up even quicker than the companies with managers who don't understand technology but can at least doctor the numbers.
Ars Digita a classic example of Cringley's point (Score:3, Interesting)
http://eveander.com/arsdigita-history [eveander.com]
Even though it's "just one side of the story," the consensus is that it's pretty close to what really happened.
In the end, the VCs cut a deal with Redhat, who hired a few of Ars' staff to make it look like the company was successfully sold. Fortunately, Ars' great products live on as open source software, OpenACS [openacs.org], and Redhat's CCM [arsdigita.com]. Though Ars' incompetent management pushed CCM as the next, great version of their software, it was never more than vaporware. Redhat has continued to develop it, but it's still not finished.
Re:Ummmmmmm WTF (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple treats its customers well? Three words - Apple Two Forever.
DIY or Die. (Score:5, Interesting)
In short, I trusted that someone knew what they were doing in the big corner office, and now I'm fucked. And it's all my own damn fault, because I forgot the work ethics that brought me into computers and technology in the first place. Time for some of that olde timey religion:
1) SLACK! The world does owe you a living.
Screw 80+ hour workweeks for fat checks. I want 10 hour workweeks for fat checks, and a reasonable assumption that the fat checks will keep rolling in with minimal effort. I don't mind hellacious effort up front... being a lazy sysadmin, I know ten hours of scripting and testing can lead to a hundred hours or more of prime goof-off time. (Or, as the case was, time to write more scripts and to string more cable for my corporate overlords.)
So, by putting in a lot of work that's actually just fucking around with the computer up front, I can spend more time reading comics, posting trolls to
2) If it's worth doing, it's worth DIY.
The suit-wearing weasels sold me out. I'll never trust another. "Professional Management" means "porfessional backstabber." Screw 'em. I will learn the fundamentals of business management from one of the many excellent books at my local library, used book store or web bookseller.
I will learn how to market what I make, and how to balance the books. I will learn how to grow a company. I will never hire employees, but I will pay co-conspirators, and I will figure out a way to make this legal. I will figure out how to run a health insurance/HMO co-op with local small businesses. I will do all this with the meager funds from my teensy, just-above-minimum-wage non-computer job, and I will make any interested Venture Capitalists drink a bottle of robitussin, and I will laugh at them as they hallucnate and tell them to get the hell out. MY company, damnit!
Because if it's worth doing, it's worth doing my own damn self.
But first! I will learn Java and low-level C programming, for the things I am now interested in require that knowlege. I'll fake the rest as I need to. In a year, I'll come back to let you know how well I've succeeded. (I can't fail, as I'm already at baseline failure state right now. Any change is an improvement.)
Slack!
SoupIsGood Food
Is HP going to be another example? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, IBM is run by the same group of identical white men who's real identity is irrelavent because they're all IBM men. Dell is still run by Michael Dell; same with Gateway and Ted Waitt. (And somehow, the commercials with Teddy talking to a cow that sounds suspicously like Maurice LeMarche taking over the world once again [imdb.com], probably is a prime example of founder-led companies doing silly, if not stupid things) And as we all know, Jobs the radical is driving Apple again. And, if you belive RXC, they're going to be around for awhile. Doesn't mean that they'll make good computers, but that they'll be around for a while.
But HP . . HP is now being run by Carly Fiorina, a professional manager- who's engaged in corporate warfare against HP's founding heirs . . in a battle to swallow Compaq that had dubious value except to keep Fiorina at the helm for another couple years; and now in the late stages of merger, both companies "redundant" capacities and divisions are being cut. Based on the premise of the article, HP's days are numbered. It may just take a few years for the behmoth to fall down.
Re:Much of this is because of the Stock Market (Score:4, Interesting)
Your control system model of the economy is dead on. After all, what isn't a control system? Economic systems have gains, oscillations, inertia, delays....
Interesting that you phrase it "cap" gains tax. Because essentially you would be implementing a lowpass RC filter with a capacitance dumping high frequencies to ground (the bottomless pit of taxes).
Sounds like a really interesting way to look at economics. Maybe someone should write a book about it.
Re:good point (Score:2, Interesting)
So the problem is not only management's short-term view, but also the market's. Even if I wanted to take a stretegic (long-term) approach, my stock-holders would make pretty sure that I will deliver or otherwise get replaced. It's a structural problem also, and not necessarily only a managerial.
The main problem with manager's payments is that they usually gain when the company is profitable but rarely lose when it is not. The idea of stock options should have dealt with this problem, but we all know how this can be handled (bring profits forward, overvaluation of assets etc.). Furthermore, stock options which are not in the money only mean that they will earn less, not that their income becomes zero or negative (like the company's).
In order to bring management back into closer relationship with reality (and the company's/market situation) would be to tie them completely to the company's situation. In times where the company is profitable they can rake in the doe, but at times the company is ailing, management will also lose (private) money. This way managers will have an incentive to think twice (or more often) about the decisions they are taking. Currently only stockholders and employees pay the price, and these people are hardly influential.
Re:Much of this is because of the Stock Market (Score:3, Interesting)
When you exercise (buy) incentive stock options, you incur a tax based on the value of the stock at the time you exercise them. Unfortunately, the amount of this tax does not change, even if the value of the stock changes.
As an analogy, suppose you buy a car for $1000, but the fair-market value for that car is $11000 at that time. If cars were taxed the same way that incentive stock options are taxed, you would then owe tax on the difference between the value and the price at which you bought it. For this example, let's assume the tax is 30%, so you'd owe 30% tax on the difference ($10000), or $3000 in taxes.
Now, let's suppose that by the end of the year, the fair-market value for the car has changed to $1. You would still owe $3000 in tax on that car. Strange but true: you'd owe $3000 in tax on a car worth $1 for which you paid $1000.
This is the Alternative Minimum Tax at work.
As far as I know, the only way to avoid this Alternative Minimum Tax, is to SELL the stock (or, in this example, the car) before the end of the tax year in which you bought it. If you do sell before the end of the tax year, then any profit you make is taxed as income. If you don't sell before the end of the year, then it's too late -- you owe the tax even if you sell it later.
This is what happened to stocks in the year 2000. Everyone who had exercised their options were forced to sell their stock to avoid being stuck with an impossible tax burden. I imagine that this is one big reason why the market crashed.
How do I know this? Because I'm one of the idiots who did NOT sell his stock by the end of the tax year (I didn't understand the AMT as well as I do now, and didn't believe that the tax law could be so broken). As a result, I now owe over $140000 in tax for stock that is worth about $2000. As a result, I will be in debt and paying every penny I earn to the IRS for the next 10 years. And when I sell the stock, I'll get taxed on it again. Sad but true.
So, I like the idea of the BFT (Big Fat Tax) on people who dump their shares early; but you'd have to repeal/fix the Alternative Minimum Tax as well so that people are not forced to dump their shares, and people like me are not sent to the poorhouse.
-- D
Re:Ummmmmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hang on a minute! (Score:4, Interesting)
This actually happened. We were a shop doing embedded development hosted on a Unix platform. We got a contract to do ActiveX development for NT. I told my manager it would take XX man-months plus 4 months calendar (learning curve). I was actually told by my manager's boss to "work smarter, not harder". (I should have quit right then, but I have a wife, 2 kids and a mortgage).
Guess what? The project took exactly 4 months longer than they bid it. Surprise, surprise.
I'm seeing it too (Score:4, Interesting)
Cringly is insane... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Easier to fail than to succeed (Score:3, Interesting)
You might want to consider an ESOP. [esopassociation.org] This was recently implemented at my company (They're aiming for 50% ownership over then next 5 years), and I think it's the greatest thing since slice bread.
In a nutshell: The employees buy shares of the company from the founders. The founders are then able to get equity out of the company w/out selling out to a bunch of outsiders who don't care about long term health of the place, and the employees get to become "stakeholders" in the place that they work. Everybody wins. You might want to consider it.
Re:Stagnation can be an enemy, too. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Larry Ellison (Score:3, Interesting)
MySQL is good at what it does but don't kid yourself into thinking that it is anywhere near as reliable as Oracle.
That would appear to be the point: most people don't need Oracle. For example, Mythic runs Dark age of Camelot on MySQL According to Gamasutra [gamasutra.com] (javascript user auth) and, if you don't like MySQL, you might consider Postgres as an intermediate solution.
Re:Larry Ellison (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets imagine it is a year a go.
You went with MySQL and something goes wrong. You better pray that you set it up with transactions turned on. But being small you probably took what RedHat or Mandrake has by default (no transaction support). I hope that you have good backups. Oh yeah, forget any database triggers. I do realize that these have been addressed, but I still believe that the triggers can only be in ONE language. PHP I think. And there doesn't appear to be a gui equivilant to DbaStudio, at least for data entry.
Lets say you went with Microsoft SQL server- Well you would be real good at upgrades by now. EVERY Microsoft Shop I know has had to do tons of upgrades to their database. Oh yeah in case you haven't noticed their pricing model keeps getting more and more expensive. Also, I hope that you like Windows servers, because that is all it will run on. If you are a Microsoft'er then you don't care though... Also it is my experience that it doesn't scale well at all.
How about PostGreSQL - This actually wouldn't be that bad of a choice, but when you have a problem, you better hope that a newsgroup or the Web can help you. From what I have seen the primary OS for this is Linux, so you better like Linux.
How about if you went with FileMaker Pro? Not a bad choice, BUT still no transaction support AND I believe that it has a limit of 100 tables per database.
How about DB2? Great Database, good support. Not a bad decision. Oh the cost is as much as Oracle though, and IBM tends to be slow on getting new features out. Also, IBM tends to only like you if you buy their hardware and if you are running on one of THEIR NOSes.
How about Microsoft Access? A lot of companies run their business on it! No transaction support and serious multiple user support. I kinda like to think of it as the Titanic. It looks great and is easy to jump on, but it WILL go down and take you with it.
Lets see have I left anyone out.. I won't go in to relational databases like Gemstone, because if you think Oracle is complex...
Well it seems that every decision for a small company sucks. Yes you will find small companies that run EVERY one of the databases I mentioned and then some. All of them have their issues, good people work around those issues. I have built small systems that use MySQL, PostGreSQL, FileMaker Pro and Oracle. They all have their issues, but for what I do Oracle on Linux seems to work well if you can afford it.
Re:Inverse relation between MBAs and profitability (Score:1, Interesting)
The Compost Management Model (Score:3, Interesting)
The "Compost Company" is characterized by the frequent addition of fresh, green layers of management on top, in the hopes that something useful will form at the bottom. Appointments of Senior Managers and Vice Presidents who have never worked for the company, "acquisitions" where managers of failed companies get senior appointments (to "save" the company from its own employees), and a general feeling that experience and technical skills are irrelevant are hallmarks of this type of organization.
"Demote from within" is the rule here, where experienced employees gradually lose standing and are pushed out. Perhaps the only promotion from within that I saw in several years was one of the ops people to manage the group because no one else would or could do it; he now has a fresh, green VP above him who wants to move all hosting onsite(!).
Dead layers are left to rot, perhaps due to the principle that managers never get fired. Simply adding an additional layer during each reorganization is the norm.
I lasted through several waves of this pattern, but when I eventually ended up working, four or five levels down from the CEO, for someone who hadn't been with the company for more than six months, with ten other people on a project that didn't require more than three, I could see the severance check coming.