[TheForge] OT Union Rant (Was Re: concrete)

[Andy Vida]

Connsmith722@aol.com wrote:
> 
> The distance between
> corporate head salaries and the workers wages grows by the minute,
> somewhere there will be a breaking point, but when or how will be seen
> 
> This is a terrible argument. First of all to become a "corporate head" is the
> equivalent of becoming a professional football player. You have to put in
> long hours at much lower wages and basically sell out your life till you are in
> your mid thirties till you see any return on your efforts. You have to work 50,
> 60 and 70 hour weeks with no overtime and in fact no extra pay at all! And
> you do this week in and week out, this is all on top of getting yourself through
> graduate school because no senior corporate officers are running around
> without an MBA.

	This is generally right on, though there are exceptions.  All
	those silly little dot-commies that had idiot-child CEO folded
	because it takes some serious knowledge and experience to be a
	real CEO.  There's more stuff to know than you can shake your
	stick at, and a lot of it is very counter-intuitive.  Many of
	the seemingly insane things that some companies do are actually
	founded in very solidly proven business practices.  Of course,
	a lot of it is simply the workings of boards gone insane.

	One of the big VPs at either AT&T Labs, whose name escapes me
	at the moment, doesn't even have a HS diploma!  I'm NOT lying.
	He's a joke, but well connected to the CEO.  What a world.

> You then have to fight up a corporate ladder without any
> protections what ever, and you can be fired because you got on the wrong side of a
> showdown between rivals.

	All true.

> With all of this you still have to show that you are
> something special to rise above your fellows,

	More true than five years ago, but not categorically so.  Many
	CxOs are absolute idiots.  The CIO at Nautilus, whose name I
	suppose I will omit, sore tempted as I am to say it, was an
	absolute fycking no-account, no-brains lowatt imbecile.  He
	would hold a monthly staff meeting, give out a few mugs or
	Palm Pilots to those who did such a good job and then start
	talking about what he did as CTO at Egghead software and
	Electric Lightguide.  Big whoop... he did shyte at Nautilus
	and caused them to spend about $35M on a project that should
	have cost no more than perhaps $7M, $10M tops.  He was fired,
	but the damage was done.  The CEO played it hands off, what
	a grave error.  The board fired him, too.  Funny that the CFO
	survived... he was most responsible for the debacle, but I 
	guess they couldn't fire their buff TV ad star.  And so it goes.

> this is why corporate and worker
> sides do not understand eachother... they are alien to each other...

	That's a mouthful.  But bear in mind that the interests of
	the board and the workers are diametrically opposed, just 
	as is the case between workers and shareholders.  That is,
	they are diametrically opposed in the clued-out minds of
	board members and shareholders who do often fail to grasp
	the concept of penny-wise and dollar foolish.  Believe it or
	not, there is in fact such as thing as too much efficiency
	and corporate American is hip-deep in it and the head of
	feces is getting higher by the mintute.  these days, many
	boards look as employees only in terms of cost and almost
	never as assets providing benefits to the business, forget
	about realizing that it's the employees that help make the
	business possible.  Because the ROI of treating one's
	employees well is often very difficult to quantify, boards fail
	to make the case to the ever whining do-nothing shareholders
	whose only interest is either the next quarterly dividend or
	the artificial jacking of stock prices to they can dump
	their shares and walk away with a pile of cash, the rest
	be damned.  The key is how to strike a balance between these
	so that the shareholder has a strong incentive to see that
	the employees are regarded as themost important assets the
	company holds.  That's a tall order in this culture.  Wish I
	had the answer.  I'd sell it to companies for $50M a pop and
	we'd all profit greatly.  Ah well, perhaps people far smarter
	than I will figure it out one day.