4 ms·
Extraordinary Organizations: $170M company with no titles except “plant” manager
- pmorici 18y agosounds a bit like the company that makes GoreTex... http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/WL-Gore-amp;-Associates-Inc-Company-History.html http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/WL-Gore-amp...
- wheels 18y agoThis seems to be patterned after the Brazillian organization, Semco. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2003/apr/27/theobserver.observerbusiness7 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2003/apr/27/theobserver.o...
- lazyant 18y agoYes, I wonder why Ricardo Semler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler and Semco is not mentioned more frequently. I enjoyed his book "Maverick" a lot: http://tinyurl.com/7l6mfp http://tinyurl.com/7l6mfp , the newer 'Seven day weekend" is not bad either.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoOfficers and directors: Ferdinand E. Megerlin Ph.D. > Chairman of the Board Allen J. Carlson > President, Chief Executive Officer, Director Tricia L. Fulton > Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Cooper > Officer Peter G. Robson > General Manager of Sun Hydraulics Limited http://finance.google.com/finance?q=sun+hydraulics http://finance.google.com/finance?q=sun+hydraulics I guess they don't have many titles.
- gruseom 18y agoBut aren't these simply reporting requirements for a public company?
- byrneseyeview 18y agoI didn't think of that! But it appears not to be true; Royalty Trusts (e.g. http://finance.google.com/finance?q=pbt http://finance.google.com/finance?q=pbt) list very few executive officers. Edit And here's a non-Royalty Trust with fewer executive offices than Sun Hydraulics: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=AMEX:SOC http://finance.google.com/finance?q=AMEX:SOC But it does seem that they have fewer executives than any operating company of a similar size.
- jsrfded 18y agoTheir employment page also lists jobs titles that they are hiring for: CNC Machinist / Senior Product Design / Outside Sales Engineer Clearly they have titles. Perhaps the vagueness of the article is actually indicative of it not being very accurate or telling the whole story.
- dgabriel 18y agoMy first instinct was also to verify the "no titles," thing at the employment page.
- nivi 18y agoThanks for the diligence guys. I pinged the original author of the article. He says: http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2008/01/no-titles-excep.html#comment-143744892 http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2008/01/no-titles-exc... "They do have the handful of titles required as a public company... CEO, CFO, and the like. As of last January when we visited, that was it. Presumably they also have to "title" job postings so people know roughly what skills they're asking for!"
- stella 18y agoWhat is it called when a blog reposts 80% of the content from another site? Anyway, this is the original article: http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2008/01/no-titles-excep.html http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2008/01/no-titles-exc...
- wmf 18y agoBlogspam. It would be interesting if HN could reparent/merge votes and comments in the case where two links to the same thing get submitted.
- alaskamiller 18y agoDaringFireball?
- gjm11 18y agoEr, no. John Gruber posts a lot of links, but what he doesn't generally do is to copy-and-paste someone else's stuff and try to make it look like he wrote it.
- aditya 18y agoReminds me of Nucor. It is twisted and surprising that companies that think about their employees' happiness first are not the norm, what we do have is megacorps with CEOs that make billions and let everyone else suffer, especially customers. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982075.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982075....
- diN0bot 18y agoindustrial democracy is awesome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_democracy
- diN0bot 18y ago"The company recently held a party to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the last time [Semler] made any decision at all. " http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2003/apr/27/theobserver.observerbusiness7 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2003/apr/27/theobserver.o...
- jderick 18y agoIt makes some sense. It seems to be to be a sort of "fine grained capitalism". Not too different from the Silicon Valley, if you think of that as one big company. What I wonder is what prevents more companies from going this route?