

The Perfect Stimulus: Bad Management - elptacek
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704353504575596372042140924.html

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billybob
More funny than true. Sure, bad management makes lots of talented people leave
lousy jobs and try starting a business. Which leads to more competition,
innovation, etc.

Then again, bad management makes perfectly good companies run themselves into
the ground, destroying economic value and making lives miserable in the
process.

Also, "bad management" is somewhat a matter of opinion. Those talented people
who go on to start companies (and don't forget that some of them will fail)
may soon have their own employees who inwardly grumble about their incompetent
leadership. News flash: sometimes the boss is right. Not always, but
sometimes.

Adams' outlook on corporate America is extremely cynical; he views
incompetence as the surest path to promotion. To some degree, that is part of
his personality, and he's very funny when he expounds his view. But
realistically: to some degree, we hate work because it's work. If it was all
cotton candy and rainbows, you'd pay to do it, not the other way around. Some
of us can find careers we mostly like, and for some of us, that involves being
our own boss. But work is still work, and being your own boss may just mean
that you LIKE the sociopath who tells you what to do.

~~~
quanticle
Its also a reflection of the specific places in corporate America he was in.
Adams worked in banks and telecoms during the seventies and the eighties. Even
today, these industries are quite slow moving, and back then, the pace of
change was absolutely glacial. Its not hard to imagine that one's experience
would be colored by dealing with people who know they have a job for life no
matter what they do, simply because their corporation is a monopoly in its
field.

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credo
_> >the media was giving the phone company a lot of heat because almost all of
the managers and executives were white males. So, he explained, promoting me
would only make things worse._

Adams mentions that this experience was repeated in both the large
corporations that he worked in.

Clearly, this excuse wasn't used to stop the overwhelming majority of
executives who shared his skin color and gender. So perhaps, it might have
been instructive for him to think about why he was being singled out for this
excuse.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Banks and telcos weren't adding many executives between 1979 and 1995 [1] (he
never said he was considered for a _new_ position), so it's plausible they
were all hired before race and gender quotas would have required shunning
them.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams#Office_worker>

~~~
jbooth
Yeah, but the point is it was still just an excuse. They could have fired any
of dozens of white male incompetents and promoted Adams, but they didn't,
because they were protecting the existing power structure. I wonder how many
other people got told the same line? I haven't done a census of phone company
executives ever but I'd be willing to bet there aren't more than a token
handful of minorities in leadership positions (half of them with titles like
diversity officer). So it was just a line.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Regardless of who he's replacing, promoting Adams would make things worse for
them, because they'd be seen to still be promoting white men. They created the
problem by discriminating, so they are required to discriminate differently
until the problem is resolved. This is going to take a long time, because they
are also not expanding their management ranks, so it only proceeds at the pace
of turnover.

I'm sure Adams' contention would be they can't fire incompetents because it
takes someone competent and powerful to identify them.

~~~
jbooth
All agreed. Just providing a little pushback against the notion that it's all
"political correctness"'s fault when the primary obstacle to achievement is
the fact that nobody's getting out of the way.

~~~
patio11
If you stopped hiring blacks, specifically, because the Chilean subsidiary
missed its numbers on account of an earthquake and now you have to make budget
cutbacks, your black non-employees are not being inconvenienced by an
earthquake. They are being inconvenienced by the fact that you took
circumstances you had no control over and decided to address them with a
policy you could control, and your policy was racial discrimination.

CC: American universities with a pallette swap.

~~~
jbooth
What, Chile? If they stop hiring everyone, they stop hiring everyone. That's
not a discrimination issue either, just like the general lack of room for
advancement in mature industries that are run by lifers.

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lockem
First of all i don't think this is really about bad management, but about
employees with a choice.

You have disgruntled employees everywhere. I think the real difference is that
in places like the U.S (And Israel) people where raised with a sense of self
entitlement, they all KNOW they deserve better (And IMHO they do!).

Some cultures have a sense of self-deprecation, which basically means you
should be glad to have even the crappiest job even if it is frozen manure
shoveling.

On a personal level, everything said reflects on me perfectly. I just quit the
job i had for the past 3 years (IT manager/Support/Trainer), since upper
management decided to replace our very loved manager with a douche. Our
current manager knew how to take a small team, get them to work hard (even
very hard at times) and still come back to work the next day with a smile. My
salary was lower than what i could get working in a similar position in a
different place (and i was constantly getting offers to let me know that), but
i was happy - so i stayed.

Now that i have left, i am joining a relatively new business as a partner - an
offer that i politely declined until now.

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jeffreymcmanus
I was wondering why a piece like this would have been selected for inclusion
in the Wall Street Journal, that is until I came across the phrase "white
males".

~~~
Goladus
Maybe, but it is also exceptionally well-written.

~~~
sp4rki
Not only is it exceptionally well written, it's also holds true to a certain
point to this day.

