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

finance.yahoo.com

31–40 of 58 posts

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

#31

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?

Just make the metric to be money and it will work. It takes a big re-org to put the tech tasks in terms of profits, but it's possible to a big extent. Break the software into ownership domains that are peer reviewed and monitored on how much money they contribute. Then sell the software in packages assembled by customers or your internal marketing and solution consultants. This way you encourage the developers to talk to the customers or marketing to collect input and requirements what needs to be done next. Developer can choose to work on something profitable or something cool and obscure, but make no money on it, it's his choice. In both cases, the developer is motivated to be efficient.

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

#32
post #27
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.

That's not exacty how polticians treat billionaires, or anybody really. I'm not saying its free of corruption by any means, but almost nothing that transparently corrupt occurs

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

#33
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…

Most B2B businesses are little known to end customers. In this case I think more so because they would only deal with a small number of people running and managing shops by name. Something like salesforce for example though has products used by a large number of employees so is probably more well know amongst non tech people.

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

#34
post #32
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not exacty how polticians treat billionaires, or anybody really. I'm not saying its free of corruption by any means, but almost nothing that transparently corrupt occurs

Sure it is. They wouldn't describe it as I have in plain language but that is basically what goes on albeit with the veneer of propriety provided by campaign fundraising events and congressional horse trading.

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

#35

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

The financial press rarely acts to piss off rich people. This article was probably written with the billionaire's consent. I don't know why, but I would not be surprised if they planning to take the company public.

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

#36

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…

Except, it's impossible to write something that can tell if code ever stops which would seem like a much simpler problem.

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

#37

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.

[deleted]

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

#38
post #30
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?

If there was actually any reporting of note...

HEY GUYS A BIG COMPANY!!!

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

#39
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…

I almost wonder if he supplies Sysco and other companies like that.

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

#40

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

Not at all. What you're referring to has to do with exceeding a certain number of shareholders. In fact many Fortune 500 companies are privately held. Koch, SC Johnson, etc[1], not to mention the myriad large companies that are taken private by private equity firms.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/largest-private-companies/

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