Shortsighted motherf***ers.

October 29, 2002

Thanks, Dissociated Press, for the link about The Case Against Professional Management. Reminds me of another article I’ve mentioned here before, the Memo to: CEOs.

A lot of people looked at me funny in the 90s when I said I wanted to work for a company that was not public and was not planning an IPO. Publicly traded companies give me the willies. Let’s see: you’re going to turn over the direction of your company to a board of directors who might visit the office four times a year and thousands of stockholders who probably don’t even have a solid idea of what your company makes? That seems about as bright as… as bright as… well, as bright as a really not-bright thing.

Public companies are valued only if their stock price goes up. The result is, as Cringely points out, short-termed strategy. For a lot of large companies it’s easier to do a wholesale staff reduction to raise the perception of profits than it is to do the hard work of focusing on realistic goals and tuning the staff to those ends. The result is a lot of waste: wasted effort cutting staff, wasted talent when good staff is forced out, and continued waste when the deadwood that was there before is still there anyway. Because they weren’t in the decimated department, and wasted hours while confused and demoralized employes try to figure out who’s job they have to do now in addition to their own.

The really sad thing is these large companies are still stuck in everyone’s minds as models of efficency. Non-profits and government agencies are encouraged to operate the way they do, and sometimes they pay former CEOs lots of money to come “work their magic” for them.

When will people wake up? Current laws and regulation have removed all of personal responsibility from the Capitalist system. The result is pretty damn abusive.

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