Posted inInformation Technology

Disposable Management

seasoned_geek by seasoned_geek
rusted rubbish bin

In the days of old, in order to get into upper management you had to start off at the bottom of the company and work your way up to the top. Companies hired individuals straight out of high school (sometimes before they graduated) and started them off at the bottom. For companies with large office buildings, this was usually in the mail room. When the company was construction or heavy manufacturing it was which ever job was deemed the dirtiest and most disgusting.

There was a philosophy and a wisdom to this methodology. Nobody wanted to stay at the bottom. They would try and work their way up. The wisdom was even brighter when it came to the most disgusting job. The company was getting a fresh perspective on the job, and would perhaps obtain several useful ideas about how to fix that process from a fresh perspective.

Today’s management goes through cookie cutter MBA programs at Harvard, Yale, or mail order. Sometimes they simply buy their degree on-line. They start out in management and have absolutely no idea what the company does or how it does it. They think a degree in management means they can manage anything. In truth, they have become disposable.

We can safely off-shore each one of these jobs to countries where wages are $10/day and have only a positive impact on the bottom line. We can even pay those people $20/day if we want, saving hundreds of millions for the share holders. No more back dated stock options scams. Hundreds of millions will be saved for asset acquisition and paying of people who have real skills which are needed to make the company work. Heck, for that $20/day, we might even hire people who have ethics. Won’t that be a novel concept for mahogany row?

Simply try to envision just how much better off the country will be when we don’t hand out 360 million dollar golden parachutes to a smile and a hair cut that sat at a desk for 6 months waiting for another smile and a hair cut to replace them.

Ethics, I remember them fondly.

Featured image by Madun Digital from Pixabay

If you like essays like this you should read my latest book.

Another essay you might like.

Roland Hughes started his IT career in the early 1980s. He quickly became a consultant and president of Logikal Solutions, a software consulting firm specializing in OpenVMS application and C++/Qt touchscreen/embedded Linux development. Early in his career he became involved in what is now called cross platform development. Given the dearth of useful books on the subject he ventured into the world of professional author in 1995 writing the first of the "Zinc It!" book series for John Gordon Burke Publisher, Inc.

A decade later he released a massive (nearly 800 pages) tome "The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer" which tried to encapsulate the essential skills gained over what was nearly a 20 year career at that point. From there "The Minimum You Need to Know" book series was born.

Three years later he wrote his first novel "Infinite Exposure" which got much notice from people involved in the banking and financial security worlds. Some of the attacks predicted in that book have since come to pass. While it was not originally intended to be a trilogy, it became the first book of "The Earth That Was" trilogy:
Infinite Exposure
Lesedi - The Greatest Lie Ever Told
John Smith - Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

When he is not consulting Roland Hughes posts about technology and sometimes politics on his blog. He also has regularly scheduled Sunday posts appearing on the Interesting Authors blog.