The brewing trade war can't make running the company easy for Ma, considering Alibaba does more volume than eBay and Amazon combined as a portal to Chinese manufacturers. Taking into account that the company's listed on a US stock exchange yet still has to answer to government regulation back in China, I can't imagine he's having a good time being caught in the middle.
Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba
11–20 of 134 posts
Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Chinese company is probably a bad example since their real wages have been increasing, but do you think relative charity might be increasing because the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer? More people need help and the rich feel the pain less.
Just to be super clear, I don't think that the increasing gap is a good thing. I was just commenting on the fact that surprisingly many super rich people decide to go into philanthropy instead of letting their wealth dissolve within their families. Buffet had a nice, pretty old article about why leaving huge loads of money to your children is a bad idea but I can't find it at the moment.
Philanthropy is in many cases personal PR for the rich, or just something easy to do rather than work or do nothing.
I’m sure Buffett and Gates are doing it for other reasons. But generic_billionaire donating paltry amounts of money is just buying goodwill from the public, other rich people, the local community, politicians, etc. A rich person donating 1% of their wealth each year may be donating a lot in absolute terms but very little relative to what they have
Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba
#13>Among China’s biggest companies, Alibaba is viewed as one of the firms with the deepest ranks of management talent. Claim going perpendicular to experience of every Alibaba employee I met. A person who was singlehandedly running both business development and operations for all of Aliexpress has left the company after 5 years without a promotion. The co has a reputation for squeezing work enthusiasm out from even mos…
Wouldn't that follow? If your talented management ranks run deep the only way up is out. He may be fantastic at what he does but if everyone above is also fantastic, the best thing you can do is raise compensation. Is that what happened?
Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba
#14The brewing trade war can't make running the company easy for Ma, considering Alibaba does more volume than eBay and Amazon combined as a portal to Chinese manufacturers. Taking into account that the company's listed on a US stock exchange yet still has to answer to government regulation back in China, I can't imagine he's having a good time being caught in the middle.
They'll be ok, even with the trade war. The majority (about 90%) of Alibaba's sales are domestic (Chinese). The rest is exports (not just to the US though):
https://www.statista.com/statistics/226793/e-commerce-revenu...
And read this if you want to get an idea of where their revenue comes from: https://www.nasdaq.com/article/alibaba-baba-misses-q1-earnin...
Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not at all unusual for senior execs to rarely get promoted, since there are so few roles to promote them into. Look how long Sheryl Sandberg has and will be COO of Facebook.
The thing is, the guy was a no name "overseas business development manager" for all 5 years. He was one of first foreigners in the company.
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Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Chinese company is probably a bad example since their real wages have been increasing, but do you think relative charity might be increasing because the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer? More people need help and the rich feel the pain less.
The gap is increasing but the poor are overwhelmingly getting richer, not poorer. I'm talking about in real terms, standard of living has gone up across the world for decades, even as the population has grown.
But considering the gap, it could be better. This is like the tax-cuts-- "Oh, you should be happy you're getting a few hundred dollars back!". Well yeah, but if the cuts had been made fairly across income brackets, I'd be getting thousands.
Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Chinese company is probably a bad example since their real wages have been increasing, but do you think relative charity might be increasing because the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer? More people need help and the rich feel the pain less.
Just to be super clear, I don't think that the increasing gap is a good thing. I was just commenting on the fact that surprisingly many super rich people decide to go into philanthropy instead of letting their wealth dissolve within their families. Buffet had a nice, pretty old article about why leaving huge loads of money to your children is a bad idea but I can't find it at the moment.
Considering that the gap also means increasing disdain against the rich, I'm not that surprised. Not saying it's all just PR and getting on the good side of the mob, but it's still true that before being revered for his philanthropy, Bill Gates was one of the most hated people in tech.
Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba
#18The brewing trade war can't make running the company easy for Ma, considering Alibaba does more volume than eBay and Amazon combined as a portal to Chinese manufacturers. Taking into account that the company's listed on a US stock exchange yet still has to answer to government regulation back in China, I can't imagine he's having a good time being caught in the middle.
Well that and he hasn't been running the company for a while. He stepped down as CEO in 2013. This is very similar to Bill Gates leaving Microsoft (who Ma has actually mentioned as an influence).
Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Chinese company is probably a bad example since their real wages have been increasing, but do you think relative charity might be increasing because the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer? More people need help and the rich feel the pain less.
The gap is increasing but the poor are overwhelmingly getting richer, not poorer. I'm talking about in real terms, standard of living has gone up across the world for decades, even as the population has grown.
It's gone up in the developing world. It hasn't gone up in the US. Infrastructure that the common man relied on is crumbling or is just gone, ie Flint water, and the rich are just importing everything they need to themselves
Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba
#20It ain't working that bad so far. I mean we have increasing gap, but the 0.0001%, which arguably is pretty smart, is in the end using both their wealth and wisdom to try to selflessly make the world a better place. I just checked the numbers and indeed, relative amount of money spend on philanthropy seems to be increasing[1][2], I couldn't find any global numbers though. 1. https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?…
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