[rescue] Do you remember when? Security software.....

Phil Stracchino alaric at caerllewys.net
Sun Aug 17 15:53:50 CDT 2003


On Sun, Aug 17, 2003 at 03:10:00PM -0500, Roger Walkup wrote:
> [Arnie] has a bachelor's in business from University of Wisconsin - 
> Superior, my alma mater and current employer

I have a lot more faith in that than I do in a Harvard MBA.  IMHO, the
Harvard Business School has played a major part in destroying American
industry over the last 30 years or so.

I'm not sure quite which is the most damaging part of the Harvard MBA
mindset -- the idea that nothing is more important than the bottom line
on the upcoming quarter's balance sheet[1], or the idea that a total
outsider with an MBA can step in and run any arbitrary company with
nothing more than the theoretical knowledge of how to run some kind of
abstract "ideal corporation"[2], without any understanding of the
company's market, product, expertise base, or processes.


[1]  This leads to the corollary that anything you can't assign a
     straight dollar value to on the corporate asset sheet is
     unimportant, which leads in turn directly to the idea that all
     mere employees are fungible and interchangeable, and that it
     therefore makes good financial sense to fire the engineer with
     20 years' experience designing the company's products and replace
     him with some kid fresh out of college at a third of the salary ...

[2]  ... While this leads to the idea that paper qualifications are
     everything, while real-world experience is meaningless.  After all,
     if it works for the CEO, why shouldn't it work for the IT staff and
     the production engineers?


-- 
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 : phil stracchino : unix ronin : renaissance man : mystic zen biker geek :
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