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Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of

#21

Post by mjn »

adaml_623 wrote: post #18

Bloomberg acting like a mini little NSA. Finding rich people and violating their privacy.

Unless Bloomberg is coercing internet providers into handing over his emails and getting secret court orders to record his web traffic, it doesn't seem like a very good comparison.

Investigating people, especially those with any kind of political, economic, cultural, academic, or other influence, based on publicly available information and whatever people are willing to tell you if you ask, is a pretty traditional part of American public life. There's no right to force people to be disinterested in what you do and refrain from writing articles about it, as long as they collect the information by legal means.

Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of

#23

Post by andersonvieira »

systemizer wrote: post #19
tbrownaw wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you quantify whether someone is solving a problem the wrong way, just because that way will score better on the metrics?

I don't have a good answer for you, but let me shoot a question back at you: "How do you determine whether the code you're looking at is good or bad?" Surely, there's an algorithm you run in your head that looks at specific features of the code and analyses them. All I'm saying is that there may be a way to automate that algorithm and use it to drive incentives. Even if the algorithm is as simple as "make sure X and…

I recommend reading http://www.amazon.com/Measuring-Managing-Performance-Organiz... for an analysis of how motivation systems based on measurements often become dysfunctional.

Dysfunction may arise when you are unable to measure all the relevant dimensions of the work being performed. People will often shift their effort to the dimensions that are being measured and ignore the remaining tasks, no matter how important they are. This results in less value being delivered compared to a scenario with no measurement based incentives.

The author mentions software development as an area that is specially prone to dysfunction.

Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of

#24

Post by simonk »

rocky1138 wrote: post #16
_delirium wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took the comment as meaning "go public", somewhat confusingly, in a colloquial sense of "not be stealth" or "go public with their numbers" rather than "becoming a publicly owned, stock-market-traded company". The latter is indeed not the case in Canada; you can have a large privately owned company. But above a certain threshold you have to at last disclose annual revenue figures.

Sorry, yes, I meant become publicly trade-able. I assume this is done to force companies over a certain size to open their books? Maybe I've misunderstood how it works in Ontario/Canada as well, considering the other comments mentioning the number of shareholders.

No, in Canada you never need to open your books at any size.

Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of

#25

Post by awjr »

tbrownaw wrote: post #10
systemizer wrote: post #8

Self-maintained groups and incentives based on performance. It would be interesting to adopt this in the tech area: the amount and quality of your unit tests means you get paid more. You can also do code analysis: look at branching factors; code duplication; runtime performance; etc This might be hard to implement in a company setting; but it may be easier to apply with contracting work.

How do you quantify whether someone is solving a problem the wrong way, just because that way will score better on the metrics?

I can remember in the 90s being part of a team where Software Lines of Code (SLOC) was a monthly metric. Highest won a bottle of champagne. People actually stopped writing loops. It got a bit crazy.

Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of

#26

Post by bch »

> "[Cohen] has lots and lots of customers. And he delivers all of his goods in unmarked trucks, so that's how he stays secretive. C&S... does not have its branded trucks as other companies, like Sysco (SYY), its competitor, would so he's able to stay under the radar."

This makes no sense. "Under the radar" from who? Joe and Jane Average on the street maybe, but stores that are making orders are going to have reps dropping by, and the suppliers are going to KNOW that if Store A is carrying product XYZ, and it's not getting it from (e.g.) Sysco, it's coming from somewhere else. I can't imagine unmarked trucks keep C&S off the radar from anybody who actually cares.

Edit: On re-read, maybe it -is- supposed to be stealth from Joe and Jane Average. Initially I thought they might be attributing "stealth" to the success of C&S. I guess they really just wanted to be quietly (to the public) doing their work. In that case: great job invading privacy Daily Ticker. "Nobody's Business" indeed.

Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of

#27

Post by pmorici »

bch wrote: post #26

> "[Cohen] has lots and lots of customers. And he delivers all of his goods in unmarked trucks, so that's how he stays secretive. C&S... does not have its branded trucks as other companies, like Sysco (SYY), its competitor, would so he's able to stay under the radar." This makes no sense. "Under the radar" from who? Joe and Jane Average on the street maybe, but stores that are making orders are going to have reps dro…

Perhaps under the radar from politicians who would otherwise demand political donations as protection against onerous government actions? It says the local town council was even unaware of how major an employer the company was.

Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of

#28

Post by pmorici »

rocky1138 wrote: post #4

Assuming this is why he is a former president: “I tried to put our name on the trucks and he didn’t want any part of it,” said Edward Albertian, a former C&S president, to Bloomberg. “He wanted to continue to be stealth and operate in this little, dinky Keene, New Hampshire, marketplace.” Little, dinky marketplace that brings in over a 1 billion dollars in sales...

Seems like the no names on the trucks thing could also be about efficiency. How much does it cost to get a truck painted with the company logo?

Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of

#29

Post by hudibras »

rocky1138 wrote: post #3

I thought once companies got to a certain size they were forced to go public? Or is that in Canada only?

Cargill had over $130B in revenue last year. Their exact profits are unknown (obviously) but probably around $4B a year.

Not bad for a family-owned business.

Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of

#30

Post by tptacek »

bch wrote: post #26

> "[Cohen] has lots and lots of customers. And he delivers all of his goods in unmarked trucks, so that's how he stays secretive. C&S... does not have its branded trucks as other companies, like Sysco (SYY), its competitor, would so he's able to stay under the radar." This makes no sense. "Under the radar" from who? Joe and Jane Average on the street maybe, but stores that are making orders are going to have reps dro…

Did you just suggest that reporting on a billion dollar business was an invasion of privacy, or was that just a joke too dry for me to pick up on?
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