Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2020 8:07 pm As stated previously, waddling up to the window for a bailout is the most in demand skill in America.

Shares of Eastman Kodak Co <KODK.N> jumped more than 20% in premarket trading on Thursday after ballooning nearly 16 times in value this week, following a $765 million loan from the U.S. government to produce pharmaceutical ingredients.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat May 26, 2012 4:28 pm Regarding whether there's a shortage of competent people within an organization, I have witnessed the demise of Eastman Kodak Company over a 40 year period. When I was a kid, probably half the people I knew had parents who worked at Kodak. 30 years ago, Kodak was one of the largest businesses in the world and part of the Dow 30. Many of my classmates in turn worked for Kodak. 3 years ago, I got a fairly complete list of my former classmates with their occupations. I was especially interested to see who still worked for Kodak. Turned out there were 3 or 4 people who still did. I knew them all personally and in fact talked to two of them briefly that year and corresponded with one. Those 3 or 4 people were all unremarkable so far as I could remember. For sure, none of them were in the top 10% of the class and it is likely that none were in the bottom 10% either. My best guess is they were average students and of average competence. They seemed to have a nagging feeling that they should have done something different with their lives. On the other hand, I was aware of several who had left Kodak and who almost for sure were more competent than the ones who still worked there.

Cicilline: (00:00)
Mr Bezos, you may begin.

Jeff Bezos: (00:03)
Thank you. Chairman Cicilline, ranking member Sensenbrenner and members of the subcommittee. I was born into great wealth, not monetary wealth, but as said the wealth of a loving family, a family that fostered my curiosity and encouraged me to dream big. My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17 year old high school student in Albuquerque. Being pregnant in high school was not popular. The school tried to kick her out, but she was allowed to finish after my grandfather negotiated terms with the principal. She couldn’t have a locker, no extracurriculars and couldn’t walk across the stage to get her diploma. She graduated and was determined to continue her education so she enrolled in night school, bringing me, her infant son, to class with her throughout.

Jeff Bezos: (00:54)
My dad’s name is Miguel. He adopted me when I was four. He was 16 when he came to the US from Cuba by himself, shortly after Castro took over. My dad didn’t speak English and he did not have an easy path. What he did have was grit and determination. He received a scholarship to college in Albuquerque, which is where he met my mom. Together with my grandparents, these hardworking, resourceful, and loving people made me who I am. I walked away from a steady job on Wall Street into a Seattle garage to found Amazon fully understanding that it might not work. It feels like just yesterday I was driving the packages to the post office, myself, dreaming that one day we might afford a forklift. Customer obsession has driven our success, and I take it as an article of faith, the customers notice when you do the right thing. You earn trust slowly over time by doing hard things well, delivering on time, offering everyday low prices, making promises and keeping them and making principle decisions even when they are unpopular.

Jeff Bezos: (02:06)
And our approach is working. 80% of Americans have a favorable impression of Amazon overall. Who do Americans trust more than Amazon to do the right thing? Only their doctors and the military. The retail market we participate in is extraordinarily large and competitive. Amazon accounts for less than 1% of the $25 trillion global retail market and less than 4% of US retail. There’s room in retail for multiple winners. We compete against large established players like Target, Costco, Kroger and of course, Walmart, a company more than twice Amazon’s size. 20 years ago, we made the decision to invite other sellers to sell in our store to share the same valuable real estate we spent billions to build, market and maintain. We believe that combining the strengths of Amazon’s store with the vast selection of products offered by third parties would be a better experience for customers. And to the growing pie of revenue and profits, would be big enough for all.

Jeff Bezos: (03:12)
We were betting that it was not a zero sum game. Fortunately, we were right. There are now 1.7 million small and medium sized businesses selling on Amazon. The trust customers put in us every day has allowed Amazon to create more jobs in the United States over the past decade than any other company, hundreds of thousands of jobs across 42 states. Amazon employees make a minimum of $15 an hour, more than double the federal minimum wage and we offer the best benefits. Benefits that include comprehensive health insurance, 401k retirement, and parental leave, which includes 20 weeks of paid maternity leave. More than any place on earth, entrepreneurial companies start, grow and thrive here in the US. We nurture entrepreneurs and startups with stable rule of law, the finest university system in the world, the freedom of democracy and a deeply accepted culture of risk taking. Of course, this great nation of ours is far from perfect.

Jeff Bezos: (04:16)
Even as we remember Congressman John Lewis and honor his legacy, we’re in the middle of a much needed race reckoning. We also face the challenges of climate change and income inequality, and we’re stumbling through the crisis of a global pandemic. Still with all of our faults and problems, the rest of the world would love even the tiniest sip of the elixir we have here in the US. Immigrants like my dad see what a treasure this country is. They have perspective and often can see it even more clearly than those of us who were lucky enough to be born here. It is still day one for this country and even in the face of today’s humbling challenges, I have never been more optimistic about our future. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today, and I’m very happy to take your questions.

20 years ago, we made the decision to invite other sellers to sell in our store to share the same valuable real estate we spent billions to build, market and maintain.

OLD1953 wrote: Fri May 25, 2012 11:00 am I honestly do not believe there is a shortage of competent people. Competent people are usually kept hidden by their immediate management and used to make the manager look good. Incompetents are thus promoted and rewarded and get all the limelight, while competent and worthwhile people are the ones most companies regard as "low level, can't be promoted" and are first to be released in layoffs. And that is a large part of the reason why so many say there is no reward for hard work in the USA, there isn't. The rewards go to the lazy and incompetent who have been allowed to rise to the top, propped up by competent underlings who are regarded as worthless by the corporate management level, because they can't progress.

Moreover, some incompetent managers will do everything in their power to get rid of a worker they know could take their job. I've been on the receiving end of that unpleasantness myself, and it's not fun. You think there is a shortage of competent people because the structure in place does everything possible to not hire them, prevent them from advancing, and get rid of them at first opportunity so there is no more risk to the upper management chain.

To be utterly blunt about it, competent people are not a good fit in the current management structure as practiced in the USA. The current structure is friendly to those who will not make decisions, who change positions frequently (so nobody can see how badly they've screwed things up), who utterly defer to the hierarchy and who express everything in powerpoint slides. Powerpoint slides are, IMHO, a device for making people who know absolutely nothing about the subject they are discussing look like they really understand it. Beware the person who can't tell you about their job without powerpoint, they do not know anything about what they are supposed to be doing but they have tasked their competent workers to make up some slides that will make them look good. It's amazing to listen to them speak, every question will be deferred to Mr. or Ms. XXXXXX who is the person working on that project. Ahem. Just what is the boss doing, playing farmville on facebook? Ah, well, one major high end office I personally know about showed over 100 hrs of access to farmville from that location over six days by network logs, so I'd say that's not too far off the mark!

This isn't Atlas Shrugged, this is more like Atlas Broke Wind. The truly wealthy can pretty much do whatever they please, if they want to make the proper political donations (both parties) and they've go no real problems. The competent can't work, not because of government, but because we built a corporate structure that is hostile to competence, but very friendly to empire building and "good old boy" systems hidden in the workplace. It's no wonder so many simply pack up and leave, the US is a very unfriendly place to competence now. I've certainly considered it, and hang the higher taxes! I'll make twice as much in two or three years just from getting out from under this "Harvard Business School" model of business.