Interestingly, the short term solutions, cooking the books, laying off most of the workforce etc.. often have very negative long-term consequences. I believe there have been recent Wall Street research that concludes that companies that lay off employees tend to be 'also rans' after a few years. I always admired the old HP's stance of having their employees volunteer to take a pay cut with the expectation that the rewards would be there when things turned around. This probably doesn't matter when a disruptive technology is in progress but it seems to me that the real assets of most high tech companies are there employees. I suspect once a company has outsourced most of it's employees, there isn't much left in real terms. They would be very vulnerable to pressure from the very people that they outsourced to.
-Alex P.S. Dell is an interesting example of a company with an inovative financial/business model but otherwise commodity products. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jerry Feldman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Greater New Hampshire LUG" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 2:13 PM Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete? > I don't think so. > The Board of Directors are looking at essentially growth in the value of > their respective investments (not their personal, but the constituency they > represent). They hire a management team to do this. > Take a producer of commodity goods, like PCs. Your margin is shriking. You > must (1)increase volume, (2) cut costs. At the same time, customers are not > very loyal. Why would a customer buy otherwise identical systems from > Compaq, Dell or Gateway, Much of that is consumer marketing. Right now, > Dell has a successful marketing edge. In any case, the CEO must cut both > costs and increase revenue in the short run. If support can be moved > offshore at a significant cost savings without any reduction of service, it > will happen. The same for software development. > Another cost that gets reduced is R&D. Cutting R&D normally helps short- > term profits and hurts the long term viability of a high tech company. > On 13 Aug 2002 at 13:31, Paul Iadonisi wrote: > > And herein lies the stupidity, arrogance, and ignorance of most US > > businesspeople. This is an INCREDIBLY short sighted point of view. I'm > > with the CEO of Chick-Fil-A: People and Principles before profits. The > > profits will come when you have a satisfied workforce that will gladly > > devote themselves to your company. Many other factors must be in place, > > of course, but this is paramount. > > -- > Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Associate Director > Boston Linux and Unix user group > http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 > PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9 > > _______________________________________________ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss > _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss