Investing

[Screwball]

Strange ain't it?  I can't count the times a company laid off a bunch of people and their stock price shot up on the announcement.  People cheering and getting wealthy on the misfortunes of others.

Sick fucking world we live in.

[Deleterious]

We firmly believe paying people well, providing good benefits, and respecting them makes us more money long term.

We could slash pay/benefits today and probably make a fortune for the next few months.  But what happens six months from now when all of our top talent is gone?  The customer experience starts to suffer and we see a decline in business.  We have to now cut prices to bring people back or even just retain their business.  So now we are probably making the same profit margin on less revenue.  

Even if we are 100% wrong and we are missing out on some money, who cares.  Me and my partner both have more than we will ever need.  If a few bucks are slipping out of our pockets and helping other people, who gives a fuck.

[Screwball]

18 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

We firmly believe paying people well, providing good benefits, and respecting them makes us more money long term.

We could slash pay/benefits today and probably make a fortune for the next few months.  But what happens six months from now when all of our top talent is gone?  The customer experience starts to suffer and we see a decline in business.  We have to now cut prices to bring people back or even just retain their business.  So now we are probably making the same profit margin on less revenue.  

Even if we are 100% wrong and we are missing out on some money, who cares.  Me and my partner both have more than we will ever need.  If a few bucks are slipping out of our pockets and helping other people, who gives a fuck.

Good for you, but publicly traded companies don't think that way.  It's all about the bottom line.  Period.  It's just the way it is.

[oblong]

27 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

We firmly believe paying people well, providing good benefits, and respecting them makes us more money long term.

We could slash pay/benefits today and probably make a fortune for the next few months.  But what happens six months from now when all of our top talent is gone?  The customer experience starts to suffer and we see a decline in business.  We have to now cut prices to bring people back or even just retain their business.  So now we are probably making the same profit margin on less revenue.  

Even if we are 100% wrong and we are missing out on some money, who cares.  Me and my partner both have more than we will ever need.  If a few bucks are slipping out of our pockets and helping other people, who gives a fuck.

If I ran a business that's how I would do it, if I could afford to at least.  There's value in less stress. Isn't the first thing you need for success employees?  Keep them happy and you remove a barrier.  Have quality people and take care of them and  you can focus on other things instead of who's going to show up today or next week or month.

[Deleterious]

44 minutes ago, Screwball said:

Good for you, but publicly traded companies don't think that way.  It's all about the bottom line.  Period.  It's just the way it is.

Yeah, having to answer to shareholders would not be fun.

[Deleterious]

34 minutes ago, oblong said:

If I ran a business that's how I would do it, if I could afford to at least.  There's value in less stress. Isn't the first thing you need for success employees?  Keep them happy and you remove a barrier.  Have quality people and take care of them and  you can focus on other things instead of who's going to show up today or next week or month.

Exactly.  Not enough businesses understand you can't just throw any warm body into a position and expect success. 

[Screwball]

Just now, Deleterious said:

Yeah, having to answer to shareholders would not be fun.

It took me a while to find it, but I made this image a few days after I was retired (along with 113 other people in 2016).

I worked at the Findlay facility.

Until you have worked at one of the behemoths, deal with the budgetary demands, it's hard to imagine how bottom line focused they are.  

[oblong]

My old company was owned by several founders and it was a family type business with some big long term goals.  Those long term goals meant we would often do things for our major customer on the cheap.  Our goal wasn't to treat everything as it's own profit center but instead strategic.  It worked out.  The founders cashed out then the company became a slave to private equity.  I later got a job with that major customer and am much better off myself.  But the old company got swallowed up by someone else again and it's so much different now beyond being on the other side of the table.

[Screwball]

Private equity is like piranha.  I live in a small town in rural Ohio.  Back in the late 90s, I think it was, our largest employer was taken over by a private equity firm (Bain Capital).  They employed hundreds of people, who made a good living, and had for years.  I know many that worked there, and these people helped support so many other places in town.  Things were good for them, and the places they spent money.

Once Bain took over, it all changed (this was also a union plant).  One good friend of mine walked into work one day, expecting to go to his normal 20+ dollar an hour job (good money back then for general labor) but was told you now work on the shipping dock.  Oh, and you now only make $9/hr.  Thanks!

This happened to many that worked there. Then they got screwed out of pension money, and some even lost it altogether.

Bain got them deeper in debt, broke the company into pieces they could sell off, then moved what manufacturing that was left and the jobs to Mexico.  Within two years it was all gone, now sitting as blight on the edge of town.

Our population has decreased by maybe 10 percent since then.  Some of the businesses that relied on the spending of these workers have closed as well.  And of course the city itself has lost tons in tax revenue.

But Bain made a shitload of money, the shareholders of this company made money.  The workers got fucked, as well as the city and many small businesses.  This is NOT a single example - this happens all over the country, has been, and will continue.

Funny, when Mitt Romney ran for President, he was in the area campaigning, but avoided our town.  Good thing - they would have strung his ass up - I have no doubt.  These people were pissed, bitter, and wanted revenge.  I can't say I blame them - even with their union - they were treated like shit.

[Dan Gilmore]

Are you saying corporations aren’t people? 😎

[chasfh]

4 hours ago, oblong said:

If I ran a business that's how I would do it, if I could afford to at least.  There's value in less stress. Isn't the first thing you need for success employees?  Keep them happy and you remove a barrier.  Have quality people and take care of them and  you can focus on other things instead of who's going to show up today or next week or month.

It also depends on the kind of business you have and where you have it, doesn't it? If you have a business that's high touch like, say, an insurance agency or a beauty salon, then you definitely have a vested interest in treating your employees well enough to retain them for years. To a fast food franchisee or car wash, employees are fungible so who cares how they're treated, because treat them well or treat them not well, they're going to be gone at the first other opportunity.

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, Screwball said:

Private equity is like piranha.  I live in a small town in rural Ohio.  Back in the late 90s, I think it was, our largest employer was taken over by a private equity firm (Bain Capital).  They employed hundreds of people, who made a good living, and had for years.  I know many that worked there, and these people helped support so many other places in town.  Things were good for them, and the places they spent money.

Once Bain took over, it all changed (this was also a union plant).  One good friend of mine walked into work one day, expecting to go to his normal 20+ dollar an hour job (good money back then for general labor) but was told you now work on the shipping dock.  Oh, and you now only make $9/hr.  Thanks!

This happened to many that worked there. Then they got screwed out of pension money, and some even lost it altogether.

Bain got them deeper in debt, broke the company into pieces they could sell off, then moved what manufacturing that was left and the jobs to Mexico.  Within two years it was all gone, now sitting as blight on the edge of town.

Our population has decreased by maybe 10 percent since then.  Some of the businesses that relied on the spending of these workers have closed as well.  And of course the city itself has lost tons in tax revenue.

But Bain made a shitload of money, the shareholders of this company made money.  The workers got fucked, as well as the city and many small businesses.  This is NOT a single example - this happens all over the country, has been, and will continue.

Funny, when Mitt Romney ran for President, he was in the area campaigning, but avoided our town.  Good thing - they would have strung his ass up - I have no doubt.  These people were pissed, bitter, and wanted revenge.  I can't say I blame them - even with their union - they were treated like shit.

And sadly, Biden and the Dem still couldn't hold their ground on repeal of Carried Interest, without which Bain probably wouldn't exist - at least in is current formulation.

[Screwball]

Carried interest is only a small part of the problem, which is why they talk about it.  Money magician shit, with a dose of propaganda via the usual subjects. 

[Deleterious]

Now that is funny.

 

[Screwball]

Yes it is. If nothing else, this guy is a hoot.  He might lose his ass being one as well.

[gehringer_2]

12 minutes ago, Screwball said:

Yes it is. If nothing else, this guy is a hoot.  He might lose his ass being one as well.

I don't know if Musk was ever clever on his own or just had a big enough birthright bundle to buy his way to success initially, it doesn't really matter, the fact remains that for any person, no matter how smart, if they aren't careful they will find themselves having to deal with something none of their previous expertise prepared them for. Sure looks like Musk has found his.

[oblong]

3 hours ago, chasfh said:

It also depends on the kind of business you have and where you have it, doesn't it? If you have a business that's high touch like, say, an insurance agency or a beauty salon, then you definitely have a vested interest in treating your employees well enough to retain them for years. To a fast food franchisee or car wash, employees are fungible so who cares how they're treated, because treat them well or treat them not well, they're going to be gone at the first other opportunity.

Maybe. But then your time as an owner is constantly spent finding and training people and then worrying if they will show up.  Have a stable staff then maybe you can focus on expansion. 

[gehringer_2]

Musk had one idea I think could might help him successfully build Twitter into a subscription based service, and that is to make Twitter a sort of one stop destination for people looking for one off news from paywalled sites that they aren't interested in enough to subscribe to on a regular basis. The idea, as I understood it, was that Twitter negotiates some limited access rights for its uses to access otherwise paywalled sources such as local newspapers etc. It's a theoretical win/win if the originating site can get some revenue from Twitter for the single hits they just otherwise woudn't get, and it would provide twitter with something of sufficient and unique enough value to offer uses that they would pay for it. Of course the problem is that negotiating access rights to enough sites for it to get off the ground could be a herculean taks, and there is no guarantee the content originators share the belief that it would be good enough for their business to be interested.

But it is at least an idea that might be attractive to a fairly large customer base.

meanwhile, he seems to have forgotten that both Ca and the US have layoff notice requirements (60 daya) for enterprises of Twitter's size, which Twitter has pretty obviously violated. Class action suit has already been filed

 

Edited November 5, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Crazy Cat Gentleman]

7 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Class action suit has already been filed

I'm reading that the laid-off employees are remaining on payroll until Feb to meet NY's 90-day WARN law.

[Tigeraholic1]

1 hour ago, Crazy Cat Gentleman said:

I'm reading that the laid-off employees are remaining on payroll until Feb to meet NY's 90-day WARN law.

Yup, on payroll not allowed on property.

[chasfh]

12 hours ago, oblong said:

Maybe. But then your time as an owner is constantly spent finding and training people and then worrying if they will show up.  Have a stable staff then maybe you can focus on expansion. 

That’s right, and some businesses get themselves into that treadmill, to the detriment of the rest of the business.

BTW, just to be clear I wasn’t intending to imply that’s how fast feeders and car washes should treat their employees. I’m suggesting that’s how many of them do. Although there’s this one car wash nearby I suspect might be using undocumented immigrants as more or less indentured labor, obviously a different ball of wax.

Edited November 5, 2022 by chasfh

[gehringer_2]

4 hours ago, Crazy Cat Gentleman said:

I'm reading that the laid-off employees are remaining on payroll until Feb to meet NY's 90-day WARN law.

I hope two or three months of severence in today's tech market end's up being  good deal for a lot of those folks.

[Deleterious]

It doesn't really have anything to do with the type of business you are in.  

Each type of business has a certain pool of employees they draw from.  If you pay and treat people better than your competition you will draw the best people from that pool.  That should give you a leg up on your competitors.  At least on the labor side of things.

[Crazy Cat Gentleman]

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

I hope two or three months of severence in today's tech market end's up being  good deal for a lot of those folks.

It's kind of shit from a company of that size. I got 4 or 5 months from a company of ~2500 when I got laid off in 2020. (Of course it was fewer than 20 people getting axed, not half the company.) Stripe gave their folks a similarly sweet deal the other day, as did Mozilla in late 2020.

[Screwball]

4 hours ago, Crazy Cat Gentleman said:

It's kind of shit from a company of that size. I got 4 or 5 months from a company of ~2500 when I got laid off in 2020. (Of course it was fewer than 20 people getting axed, not half the company.) Stripe gave their folks a similarly sweet deal the other day, as did Mozilla in late 2020.

Here's how it works, from experience I talked about above (big companies).

They whack 113 people across the company.  You get a "separation agreement" of about 20 pages.  Spells out your buyout, insurance coverage, for how long, then the alternatives. And whatever severance they decide to give you.

Then the bold and small print. By law, they must include a breakdown of who were eliminated, who stayed, and their ages.  It wasn't even close - all the old people were gone.  Imagine that!

Bold print tells us we can't sue the company for age discrimination, or waive this offer. It was so obvious they wanted to rid themselves of us old people. I was one of 6 in my discipline, and the youngest at 59.  I read another where 4 got whacked and the youngest was 62. It was obvious.

Then you were told you couldn't work for a "competitive" company due to non-disclosure agreements for a year.

And you had 45 days to sign it.  Or not.  My better half worked in a law firm who had an attorney who did corporate law.  He looked it over, wrote notes, told me what to try.  He said this is nothing but cutting us old poops.  Of course.

I tried to bargain - they quickly told me to pound sand. LOL!  I expected that, but why not.  It was fun dicking with them.

We are nothing but a number in a process mapped out to shovel money to the top.

But you know that going in.