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The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

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Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#201

Post by gaius »

gridspy wrote: post #199
gaius wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really - the suit and the watch would fit onto a fairly normal credit card, for example. You'd be a fool to go into debt for them, of course, but people do, status symbols, even misguided ones, can be powerful lures. Rolex and TAG in particular are now almost anti-brands for that reason (same with Louis Vuitton luggage, Porsche, Burberry, etc). The guys who signal to each other with these accessories are subtle a…

I like to think that when I am rich and successful I'll wear jeans and T-shirts fulltime.

Yeah, a large part of an investment banker's job is playing this game so that his or her client's don't have to. Of course they charge a fee for that.

Even Richard Branson puts on a suit from time to time tho'.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#202

Post by praptak »

nfnaaron wrote: post #182
praptak wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't want to defend cargo-cults, but people copy because it works." My definition of cargo-cult is when you copy everything except the parts that are hard or make you face unpleasant reality .

... except the part that actually makes the difference.

Indeed, I even thought of adding "...except the part that makes it work" as more accurate.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#203

Post by barry-cotter »

jeremytliles wrote: post #175
microcentury wrote: post #39

"At my salary level, and with my expected advancement path, I could comfortably retire in my thirties." I've heard this or statements like it in quite a few articles over the years, but I've never actually met a retired thirties business consultant. Do they exist and am I just missing them? The only ones I know are well into their thirties, working 70+ hours a week, and looking forward to making even larger boatloads…

I forget his name at the moment, but the author of "The Management Myth" retired early from management consulting to write a book on philosophy.

To summarize in English: Stewart started an unnamed firm, and tried to exit mid-bubble four years later; his partners didn't want to buy his equity, so he sued them. By the time he got his shares bought three years later the firm had imploded.

http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/05/12/the_myth_of_the...

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#204

Post by Retric »

eru wrote: post #165
yummyfajitas wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shareholders used to try to improve a company - it was quite popular in the 70's and 80's. Ever watch the movie "Wall Street? What happened since then is that legislators and courts have become hostile to corporate raids, and have mostly made it toothless. We would have plenty of shareholder activism if it wasn't for that.

Yes. I also never understand the reason behind poison pills (part from shielding management). Why should shareholders limit their own rights to sell the company to somebody who wants to run it? `Corporate raid' is a term as backwards as `piracy' for copyright infringement. Those `raiders' buy a company with their own money (or money they borrowed) from shareholders willing to accept their price. They should be allowe…

The only problem is they rarely buy the whole company, often they just get a controlling share. At which point they can do a pump and dump which is great if you sell at the right time but it tends to hurt long term investors.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#205

Post by yummyfajitas »

Retric wrote: post #204
eru wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I also never understand the reason behind poison pills (part from shielding management). Why should shareholders limit their own rights to sell the company to somebody who wants to run it? `Corporate raid' is a term as backwards as `piracy' for copyright infringement. Those `raiders' buy a company with their own money (or money they borrowed) from shareholders willing to accept their price. They should be allowe…

The only problem is they rarely buy the whole company, often they just get a controlling share. At which point they can do a pump and dump which is great if you sell at the right time but it tends to hurt long term investors.

How do you pump and dump a large company that you just purchased at a premium?

Incidentally, if such a pump and dump scheme was performed, the guilty party is completely obvious. A minority shareholder lawsuit would be readily forthcoming.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#207

Post by Psyonic »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #197
Psyonic wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't. I was just curious why you thought the market was any different. That said: the government does make an effort to prevent it, which I'm not sure can be said for the free market.

Hmmm. I gave this a little thought as I drove home, and I think I've got the answer. On the whole , both regulation and the free market are able to deal with most of slavery. But at the margin, it becomes cost-ineffective to mop up the very last instance. In both cases, the instance is low enough that most of us will never come face-to-face with slavery. But ferreting out one more evil person costs society more than…

I'll give you that. I wouldn't expect to see rampant slavery in a truly free-market society. There aren't many people who would voluntary choose to become one, though no doubt they exist. And I definitely agree with you that it's too expensive to try and eliminate ALL slavery (not just in dollars, but in rights.)

The thing that scares me about a truly free market without regulation are issues of coercion. Force may be eliminated, but there are so many other ways to take advantage of compromised people. Drug addicts, homeless, desperate parents, etc. Also, for a truly free market to work, you need enough information on both sides for people to make educated choices, but either side would prefer he have the information advantage.

Basically, I just don't see it working any better than the current system, but perhaps it would.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#208

Post by Retric »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #205
Retric wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem is they rarely buy the whole company, often they just get a controlling share. At which point they can do a pump and dump which is great if you sell at the right time but it tends to hurt long term investors.

How do you pump and dump a large company that you just purchased at a premium? Incidentally, if such a pump and dump scheme was performed, the guilty party is completely obvious. A minority shareholder lawsuit would be readily forthcoming.

There are several approaches you can use on large company's including Enron style accounting fraud but clearly it's much simpler with small ones. Other options include http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html where you try to hype the market segment not any of it's products. But a far more legal approach is to simply kill off the R&D program and look for a sucker/greater fool to buy the rotting shell which looks great on paper.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#209

Post by api »

duhprey wrote: post #171
api wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's worse than that. I have seen this before. There is an entire portion of the business world that merely goes through the motions of being successful businesses rather than actually being businesses at all. It's really weird. You could look at it as investment fraud with plausible deniability. Take money, hire consultants, look busy. The only thing is, I don't think it's that explicit or intentional. I think t…

There's always been something wrong, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it, with the idea of getting a degree solely in "business"... I think I get it now. Reminds me of a shirt I saw somewhere from a cartoon I've never seen: "What's this? I'm going to go do some Science on it!" Seems very similar to: "I'm a business man"

I could not agree more. Business is something you do with stuff, but you have to have stuff to do business about. Business is not something that can be done in a void.

A lot of the fakers and cargo cultists are trying to do business about business to do business... they're not delivering any value because they don't know how.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#210

Post by Uchikoma »

edster wrote: post #61

Here is my best story about business consultants... I was contracting at a big three automaker and they had retained just such a firm, possibly even BCG, to "restructure" the IT department. So they had a team of overpaid consultants come and perform an analysis. I won't even get into the pointlessness of all that. However, the leader of the pack, the alpha male of the consulting team, would physically walk his laptop…

This relevant how?
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