5 ms·

Out of interest, which companies do you think were great?

by Balero 6y ago

artsyca 6y ago
Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, the Medici, Nintendo and Apple in the early days, a lot of Canadian and probably American banks in the sixties and seventies and eighties.. Airlines before the economy model.. Lots of iconic hotels and restaurants, Ma Bell.. all kinds of companies have been great it's just that as people we think we're above it all somehow and our attitudes have brought us to a point where it's understood we're only trading time for money and we're selling ourselves short at every turn and all our corporations are merging into one megalocorp where it's just mediocrity and toxicity and even this forum is nothing but an echo chamber of the neurosis Another problem is that CEO's don't understand what they're really in it for -- they're not in it for the mind state that comes with being a leader but only for the profits they can extract from the bargain it's obvious by their actions and their dress In short a company that has high alignment and high autonomy the two are not mutually exclusive and indeed form the basis of what I'd call the American Way
- morelisp 6y ago
  > Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce What?
  - switch007 6y ago
    Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is the name of a fictional advertising agency in the TV series "Mad Men", in case anyone is confused by this confusion
  - hcknwscommenter 6y ago
    A fictional advertising firm from the television series "Mad Men." A "great" place for heterosexual men in suits to work, a not-so-great place for anyone else.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      I suspect the average person would actually find that a much worse place to work than most modern white collar companies. You wouldn't want those main characters as your boss, especially not if you're a woman.
      - morelisp 6y ago
        It would nearly as bad as Google's C suite!
      - artsyca 6y ago
        What irks me the most is the current crop of so called white collar is populated by people who don't have a fraction of the dress sense and don't even wear white collars or when they do it's combined with something preposterous like a fleece vest or puffer jacket I have witnessed a vice president at a danged top five bank in Canada dressing like he was going clubbing
        ShroudedNight 6y ago
        For most Canadian financial institutions, does 'Vice President' mean anything more than someone who works in b2b sales? They seem to be a dime a dozen.
        ashtonkem 6y ago
        The 1960s are long past, thank god, and we have a lot more personal freedom than workers did back then. If you wanna wear a suit, be my guest, but I’m going to stick with t shirts and my weird toe shoes. They’re more comfortable.
        artsyca 6y ago
        I wear toe shoes and a tailored shirt bro You're acting like the t shirt is the pinnacle of shirt technology it's literally two tubes of flimsy fabric aren't you even a little ashamed of your bare arms after all these years? Do you like that feeling of leaning in close and rubbing arm hair with your neighbour? Ever consider that bare arms might be rude on some level naw you likes what you likes I guess we should be grateful you wear toe socks most days By the way you have zero freedom -- these companies are eating you from every angle and you're taking it on the chin https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2016/07/07/are-staffers-showing-too-much-skin/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2016/07/07/... ^^ contributing to falling standards since '97
- salawat 6y ago
  So much this. Thank you. I've never heard it put more succinctly.
  - artsyca 6y ago
    Well there's a lot to it -- we've been duped into thinking our work is a service when it's really an investment Once we've been paid a generous pittance we're divorced from the fruits of our labour which are then flipped into astronomic profits while we continue to slave over features and slowly suffocate in meeting rooms similar to interrogation chambers If we actually had ownership and took our rightful due we'd be far better off The difficult part is that academia doesn't prepare us for these realities and let's face it the whole curriculum is a joke compared to real world professional activities It's just that every year there's a new crop of naive youngsters willing to sign their rights away for the privilege of coming in wearing a hoodie and sweatpants
    - salawat 6y ago
      How to stop that though? You'd basically have to include contract law as a gen ed or primary education course. Or some sort of, "Business/Professional Survival" course. Which then runs you into the problem of, who curated a truly representative sample of how businesses operate, and what their rhetorical agenda is in terms of what image or philosophy of business they fancy. I mean, I was in FBLA for a while, and it did zilch for communicating what the realities of modern business were.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  So, a fictional company, a family before capitalism was conceived, two startups that made it big but before they became big, and pretty much everything else defined by nostalgia for a time during which your fictional company was supposed to have existed. I agree that the current crop of MBA CEOs are detrimental as a whole. Perhaps it's just starting off with a fictional company but this really reminds me of someone being asked to list heroes and naming John McClane and the guy who said Nuts to the Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge. Which I got to give props to the second guy of course, but it feels like the viewpoint is limited and not securely tied to reality.
  - setpatchaddress 6y ago
    Nintendo's early days were in the nineteenth century (1890's, if I'm not mistaken). Not quite a startup.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      thanks, I didn't know that.
  - artsyca 6y ago
    Touché my dude! I'm trying to describe companies that were hardcore about branding and would retain people aggressively under penalty of death for dishonor Look it may be idealized but what makes us think that we can grow complacent all of a sudden what happened to the cold war and the arms race? Just because we declared peace and came from a generation of acid heads doesn't mean that we're not operating in a war zone The most dangerous weapon is intelligence and intelligence operative is another word for knowledge worker
  - kthejoker2 6y ago
    To give another fantastical yet limited viewpoint, the extremely short period of time in human history where A) large scale production and innovation were required B) but globalization hadn't arrived so there was an extreme lack of supply of educated and experienced individuals to deliver the objectives of A Produced a lot of "great" companies in the sense that they offered for both labor and knowledge workers good jobs with upward mobility, and a strong sense of self-identity and orderly progress. As soon as point A was subsumed by corporatism (patent and copyright wars, debt servicing) and B faded away (so labor lost its seat at the table) companies have become "commoditized" - there's absolutely zero point in establishing or aboding by a corporate identity today when you may have new masters tomorrow.
- zcw100 6y ago
  It reminds me of the Gervais Principle https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Out of interest, which companies do you think were great?

by Balero 6y ago

Out of interest, which companies do you think were great?

Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, the Medici, Nintendo and Apple in the early days, a lot of Canadian and probably American banks in the sixties and seventies and eighties.. Airlines before the economy model.. Lots of iconic hotels and restaurants, Ma Bell.. all kinds of companies have been great it's just that as people we think we're above it all somehow and our attitudes have brought us to a point where it's understood we're only trading time for money and we're selling ourselves short at every turn and all our corporations are merging into one megalocorp where it's just mediocrity and toxicity and even this forum is nothing but an echo chamber of the neurosis Another problem is that CEO's don't understand what they're really in it for -- they're not in it for the mind state that comes with being a leader but only for the profits they can extract from the bargain it's obvious by their actions and their dress In short a company that has high alignment and high autonomy the two are not mutually exclusive and indeed form the basis of what I'd call the American Way

morelisp 6y ago
> Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce What?
- switch007 6y ago
  Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is the name of a fictional advertising agency in the TV series "Mad Men", in case anyone is confused by this confusion
- hcknwscommenter 6y ago
  A fictional advertising firm from the television series "Mad Men." A "great" place for heterosexual men in suits to work, a not-so-great place for anyone else.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    I suspect the average person would actually find that a much worse place to work than most modern white collar companies. You wouldn't want those main characters as your boss, especially not if you're a woman.
    - morelisp 6y ago
      It would nearly as bad as Google's C suite!
    - artsyca 6y ago
      What irks me the most is the current crop of so called white collar is populated by people who don't have a fraction of the dress sense and don't even wear white collars or when they do it's combined with something preposterous like a fleece vest or puffer jacket I have witnessed a vice president at a danged top five bank in Canada dressing like he was going clubbing
      - ShroudedNight 6y ago
        For most Canadian financial institutions, does 'Vice President' mean anything more than someone who works in b2b sales? They seem to be a dime a dozen.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        The 1960s are long past, thank god, and we have a lot more personal freedom than workers did back then. If you wanna wear a suit, be my guest, but I’m going to stick with t shirts and my weird toe shoes. They’re more comfortable.
        artsyca 6y ago
        I wear toe shoes and a tailored shirt bro You're acting like the t shirt is the pinnacle of shirt technology it's literally two tubes of flimsy fabric aren't you even a little ashamed of your bare arms after all these years? Do you like that feeling of leaning in close and rubbing arm hair with your neighbour? Ever consider that bare arms might be rude on some level naw you likes what you likes I guess we should be grateful you wear toe socks most days By the way you have zero freedom -- these companies are eating you from every angle and you're taking it on the chin https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2016/07/07/are-staffers-showing-too-much-skin/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2016/07/07/... ^^ contributing to falling standards since '97
salawat 6y ago
So much this. Thank you. I've never heard it put more succinctly.
- artsyca 6y ago
  Well there's a lot to it -- we've been duped into thinking our work is a service when it's really an investment Once we've been paid a generous pittance we're divorced from the fruits of our labour which are then flipped into astronomic profits while we continue to slave over features and slowly suffocate in meeting rooms similar to interrogation chambers If we actually had ownership and took our rightful due we'd be far better off The difficult part is that academia doesn't prepare us for these realities and let's face it the whole curriculum is a joke compared to real world professional activities It's just that every year there's a new crop of naive youngsters willing to sign their rights away for the privilege of coming in wearing a hoodie and sweatpants
  - salawat 6y ago
    How to stop that though? You'd basically have to include contract law as a gen ed or primary education course. Or some sort of, "Business/Professional Survival" course. Which then runs you into the problem of, who curated a truly representative sample of how businesses operate, and what their rhetorical agenda is in terms of what image or philosophy of business they fancy. I mean, I was in FBLA for a while, and it did zilch for communicating what the realities of modern business were.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
So, a fictional company, a family before capitalism was conceived, two startups that made it big but before they became big, and pretty much everything else defined by nostalgia for a time during which your fictional company was supposed to have existed. I agree that the current crop of MBA CEOs are detrimental as a whole. Perhaps it's just starting off with a fictional company but this really reminds me of someone being asked to list heroes and naming John McClane and the guy who said Nuts to the Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge. Which I got to give props to the second guy of course, but it feels like the viewpoint is limited and not securely tied to reality.
- setpatchaddress 6y ago
  Nintendo's early days were in the nineteenth century (1890's, if I'm not mistaken). Not quite a startup.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    thanks, I didn't know that.
- artsyca 6y ago
  Touché my dude! I'm trying to describe companies that were hardcore about branding and would retain people aggressively under penalty of death for dishonor Look it may be idealized but what makes us think that we can grow complacent all of a sudden what happened to the cold war and the arms race? Just because we declared peace and came from a generation of acid heads doesn't mean that we're not operating in a war zone The most dangerous weapon is intelligence and intelligence operative is another word for knowledge worker
- kthejoker2 6y ago
  To give another fantastical yet limited viewpoint, the extremely short period of time in human history where A) large scale production and innovation were required B) but globalization hadn't arrived so there was an extreme lack of supply of educated and experienced individuals to deliver the objectives of A Produced a lot of "great" companies in the sense that they offered for both labor and knowledge workers good jobs with upward mobility, and a strong sense of self-identity and orderly progress. As soon as point A was subsumed by corporatism (patent and copyright wars, debt servicing) and B faded away (so labor lost its seat at the table) companies have become "commoditized" - there's absolutely zero point in establishing or aboding by a corporate identity today when you may have new masters tomorrow.
zcw100 6y ago
It reminds me of the Gervais Principle https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...