From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.5 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1116ece181be1aea X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-09-10 13:08:43 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!wn13feed!wn11feed!wn14feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi.com!sccrnsc01.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3F5F84C4.70902@attbi.com> From: "Robert I. Eachus" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada? References: <9keolvs9tjbbbuv1ndnsr69af7mtddemhk@4ax.com> <3F5F1ADB.1070008@noplace.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.34.139.183 X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-Trace: sccrnsc01 1063224522 24.34.139.183 (Wed, 10 Sep 2003 20:08:42 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 20:08:42 GMT Organization: Comcast Online Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 20:08:42 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:42359 Date: 2003-09-10T20:08:42+00:00 List-Id: Marin David Condic wrote: > Anyone wishing to bitch about management ought to be required to show > credentials as having had a turn in the driver's seat. ;-) My parents ran a family-owned manufacturing company which was started in 1907. I have three sisters and a brother. We all worked at least one summer during high-school and college at the family company. When I was about 35, my mother told me: "You know, you kids all complained about the archaic way Macbeth was run when you worked here. Now every one of you has had experience working in management of a large company, and every one of you has told me how poorly they are run compared to Macbeth." It was true. Macbeth Arc Lamp Company was run very conservatively. But when my father took over, he worked with the CPA who audited the company books to come up with a bookkeeping system that let him know today as much as could be known about the few things that were important in managing the company. (Cash, Cash flow, P&L, receivables, liabilities, and open orders divided into in manufacturing and awaiting materials.) That adoption of standard accounting methods to provide a one page summary of the health of the company, and what needed to be done was a very engineering oriented approach to accounting. But it worked very well. I've thought on occasion about trying to sell companies on keeping books that way. But you have to have someone at the top with an engineering background to understand why instantaneous state is so much better than quarterly or monthly numbers. And in every case, the biggest complaint we had was "mushroom management." Managers not knowing what the state of their department was from one month to the next trying to tell their subordinates what to do. -- Robert I. Eachus "As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." -- Jacques Chirac, President of France "As far as France is concerned, you're right." -- Rush Limbaugh