I find this post is awful, i mean don't people in Britain do have rights on Privacy? Their Photos etc?^^
Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
41–50 of 58 posts
Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
#42“We’re the biggest company no one has ever heard of”, aka "My huge company/daddy is bigger and more obscure than yours!".
Although in this case, they might actually hold a better claim on that title than others it is often given to
Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
#43I've resigned myself to the fact that most really rich people became so doing things I'd have never in a million years imagined you could get rich doing.
Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
#44Assuming 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?
It costs a meaningless amount for a company of this size. Perhaps the anonymity is more valuable though.
Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
#45I've resigned myself to the fact that most really rich people became so doing things I'd have never in a million years imagined you could get rich doing.
Many of these "I'd never have imagined you could get rich doing... (groceries|steel|lumber|shoes|silverware|bandaids|etc) examples take generations to build the business large enough to actually "get rich." They're definitely not "get-rich-quick" schemes but slow, methodical progress made on capturing a portion of industries with billions worth of turnover per year. Obviously counter-examples exist (Cotsco, etc.) but by and large these stories involve generational contributions to the business.
Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
#46Bloomberg acting like a mini little NSA. Finding rich people and violating their privacy.
Comments like these hurt the effort to fight back against the very real violations committed by the NSA.
It's not a joke, and your comment is not funny.
Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
#47Earlier 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
You should look into how the mayor of Beaverton, OR tried to annex the unincorporated land that the Nike campus sits on back in 2005.
Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
#48Bloomberg acting like a mini little NSA. Finding rich people and violating their privacy.
I hope that's a joke. As one reply here mentions, the financial press typically avoid pissing off the rich, but I would not include Bloomberg in that list.
Bloomberg have been battling the government in the courts for years over FOIA requests to disclose secret information to the public on a variety of issues.
For example they were very aggressive in investigating and publishing details of secret dealings between the largest US financial institutions and the government during the financial crisis:
Bloomberg Sues Fed to Force Disclosure of Collateral (Update1) [1]
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Loans [2]
Fed’s Once-Secret Data Compiled by Bloomberg Released to Public [3]
As well as publishing details on billionaires who manipulate the system from the shadows (e.g. the Koch brothers):
David Koch’s Chilling Effect on Public Television [4]
Koch Funneled $1.2 Million to Governors Battling Unions [5]
Koch’s Iran Link Causes Democrat to Send Donation to Charity [6]
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aKr.o...
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristoc...
[3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-23/fed-s-once-secret-d...
[4] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-09/david-koch-s-chilli...
[5] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-23/koch-funneled-1-2-m...
[6] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-18/koch-iran-link-caus...
Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
#49Self-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.
IBM was big into quantitative code metrics in the '60s through '80s, but the practice ended up developing a bad reputation, since the metrics inevitably created perverse incentives to game the metrics themselves, and sometimes got in the way of doing the right thing if it didn't fit the rigid model's idea of the right thing. This is basically a version of Campbell's law, from a 1976 paper by Donald T. Campbell: "The…
Or the "cobra problem". The British put a bounty on cobras in India (to reduce snake-bites). So the snake-catchers bred cobras (some of which escaped, making the problem worse).
Incentives are powerful things.
Re: Billionaire Revealed: The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of
#50> "[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 really doubt this, but random speculation. It reminds me of Gus Fring from Breaking Bad. Rich, stays under the radar as much as possible, and has a perfect front for smuggling stuff in his trucks.