Southwest Virginia Blogs

When things are going great, there's little pressure to do things differently.  We've all seen it.  Great results in business or politics can hide some really serious problems.  Usually by the time the hidden problems are uncovered, things have unraveled to the point that disaster can be just around the corner.

I've been in companies during great times and bad times.  The truth is that companies, like governments or even individual operate a little better when everything isn't going their way.  They become more open to exploring alternatives or looking at things from a different perspective.

We gotten to be a society where it's hard to admit you're wrong without supposedly losing face. Yet I believe failure only counts against you if you don't learn from it.  In the post, "On being an observer," I said the following.

The great who have never failed are probably not so great...

Not owning up to your failures or mistakes is not part of the recipe for success that a leader should follow.

Of course we all know far too well the example of the current administration in Washington which has refused to admit any mistakes in the Iraq war.  If appears that "Stay the course" has finally been retired, not because of any willingness to admit mistakes, but because it appears the Republican majority is in danger of disappearing.  This was in the Washington Post this morning.

But the White House is cutting and running from "stay the course." A phrase meant to connote steely resolve instead has become a symbol for being out of touch and rigid in the face of a war that seems to grow worse by the week, Republican strategists say. Democrats have now turned "stay the course" into an attack line in campaign commercials, and the Bush team is busy explaining that "stay the course" does not actually mean stay the course.

Businesses are no different.  They often blindly follow strategies because there is more ego involved than business savvy.  It's easy for a CEO to cruise along with business strategies whose only tests are the current quarter.  Yet businesses are different from government in one important distinction. 

Businesses, even large ones, sometimes change strategies like individuals change clothing.  Government, however,  is like a huge container ship.  Change is really hard in government.  Once the ship of state is going in one direction, getting it moving in another direction takes some serious pressure, something on the order of a disappearing majority.

As individuals, we often face the need to change without the resources to accomplish that change.

No matter what the situation, those who accept their own fallibility are much more likely to implement successful change.  It will be interesting to see how much change the coming election can bring to our government. 

We certainly have plenty of American companies who desperately need to change. 

Personally I'm hoping to change careers during the next year. So far it hasn't been easy, but my hope is that I'll respond as I have in previous pressure situations.  After all, the change from being a cattle breeder to a technology sales manager was not exactly an easy one.

I know one thing, I'm approaching my new career, chronicled in "You can teach an old dog new tricks," knowing that I have a lot to learn.  I've seen enough folks pretending to have all the answers to understand that it's a road to failure, even if it takes a long time to show up.

In case you haven't been near a computer department at one of the big box stores, prepare yourself for the holiday push.  My guess is that it is "AIOs" or what is actually a printer, scanner, copier, and fax device all in one piece of equipment.

Over the last couple of months I've been trying to set up a small home office in our coastal location.  With an office view that you'll see if you click the link, there is also the challenge of not nearly the amount of space that I have in my Roanoke office where I have a real copier, a real scanner, and multiple printers in a huge basement office with a view that often leads to the photos that I post on my photography site.  Since we had to redo my basement office, "The Saturday afternoon technologist, electronic hair," due to flooding, it seems like I have been setting up home or business offices all year.  That even got me to do a post, "The Instant Economy,"  on how easy things are today when it comes to going into business.

Yet not all of this happens without challenges as any technology user will tell you.  Being mostly a Mac OS X user with occasional forays into Linux and some necessary trips to Windows, I've been suspicious of most AIOs which have traditionally not worked well with Macs.

Part of my suspicions have come from seeing some rather full open box shelves at local electronic stores in Roanoke.  I generally find that open box shelves are a good predictor of what people are having trouble getting to work.

My own self demo experimentations on some of the all in one products confirmed that they aren't the most intuitive products.  Yet they are very compelling and almost a necessity to people like me who are trying to cram a lot into a small space.

I'm pretty picky about technology or a wouldn't be a Mac user.  I'm also methodical and not afraid to ask advice and do lots of Internet research.  Researching AIOs on the Internet turned out to be very frustrating with no real consensus opinions unless I went to a site that was trying to sell me something.

Going to the local stores in Roanoke was no better and almost convinced me that customer service is dead and that people under twenty five aren't nearly as technologically astute as some of the media would have us believe.  Perhaps their technical expertise doesn't go beyond iPods. The experience visitng the big box stores certainly made me wonder how the Roanoke area could be classed as a "Technology Corridor."

We could find no one in two local Staples, the Circuit City or Best Buy, who could actually make one of the AIOs work properly.  One young Staples sales person finally admitted that he hated AIOs because something was always broken.  We also had the misfortune in that store of running into a hostile young clerk when we actually purchased some other office items.  She wasn't very subtle about the irritation I caused by questioning the pricing she gave me on some folders which came from bins clearly marked with other pricing.  She was still snarky even after another staffer went back to check the pricing and confirmed what I said.  Obviously this wasn't a very auspicious beginning to our hunt for just the right piece of equipment.

Thinking that being armed with more information would help, I consulted with a couple of my trusted technology advisors and got mixed advice.  Andy of DesignNine first gave me a Xerox recommendation and then when he learned of my budget and space problems suggested a Canon.  I read some good reviews of the Pixma which is by Canon, but there were also some bad reviews.  My friend Russ, one of the great technologists in Happy Valley up at Penn. State, told me he had enjoyed some good experiences with HP products.

Armed with that information, I headed up to the local Staples in Morehead City, NC.  It was there that I actually had my faith in sales people renewed.  We had been in the store only moments when a Staples staffer probably in her early thirties approached us.  We told her what we were looking for and that we wanted to see the products actually work.  She immediately set off to get what she needed to make that happen.  She got the first test, a simple copy done quickly. 

That was actually more than anyone else had been able to accomplish.  I asked about why the next model up was $100 more, and she came up with a reasonable answer, Bluetooth.  I next challenged her with actually showing us a photo print.  She told me that if I had a memory card with an image, she would be glad to oblige. I went out to the car and got my digital camera, and she quickly got the HP6180C working on the task.  We got a photo printed on regular ink jet paper about a minute later.  I then suggested that I would like to see the machine actually produce a 4X6 print as advertised on photo paper. Another quick trip and she came back with some properly sized photo paper.  About a minute and a half later, we were looking at the print.

They had no Canon products in stock, but as you'll find out if you start looking, the Cannons don't have fax capabilities and also don't come with built-in networking, so they aren't a complete solution by any means.

I'll be reporting on how the HP does with my Macs, Windows, and Linux machines. I would be glad to review a Canon if they want to send me one for a comparison.  The traditional web can't seem to keep up with the slew of new products.  Most of the reviews I saw were from 2005 and on machines that are no longer on the market.

However, the real story today is that having knowledgeable customer sales people sells products and results in happy customers.  I congratulate Staples on having at least one very knowledgeable customer helper in their Morehead, NC store.  It was a real pleasure talking to someone who actually understood the technology and could demonstrate it.  That's something which is getting a little rare these days as big box stores dig deeper and deeper to find warm bodies.

I wonder if they'll ever figure out that having people like the lady in the Morehead City store is a better way of doing it than making their open box shelves larger?

In case you haven't been near a computer department at one of the big box stores, prepare yourself for the holiday push.  My guess is that it is "AIOs" or what is actually a printer, scanner, copier, and fax device all in one piece of equipment.

Over the last couple of months I've been trying to set up a small home office in our coastal location.  With an office view that you'll see if you click the link, there is also the challenge of not nearly the amount of space that I have in my Roanoke office where I have a real copier, a real scanner, and multiple printers in a huge basement office with a view that often leads to the photos that I post on my photography site.  Since we had to redo my basement office, "The Saturday afternoon technologist, electronic hair," due to flooding, it seems like I have been setting up home or business offices all year.  That even got me to do a post, "The Instant Economy,"  on how easy things are today when it comes to going into business.

Yet not all of this happens without challenges as any technology user will tell you.  Being mostly a Mac OS X user with occasional forays into Linux and some necessary trips to Windows, I've been suspicious of most AIOs which have traditionally not worked well with Macs.

Part of my suspicions have come from seeing some rather full open box shelves at local electronic stores in Roanoke.  I generally find that open box shelves are a good predictor of what people are having trouble getting to work.

My own self demo experimentations on some of the all in one products confirmed that they aren't the most intuitive products.  Yet they are very compelling and almost a necessity to people like me who are trying to cram a lot into a small space.

I'm pretty picky about technology or a wouldn't be a Mac user.  I'm also methodical and not afraid to ask advice and do lots of Internet research.  Researching AIOs on the Internet turned out to be very frustrating with no real consensus opinions unless I went to a site that was trying to sell me something.

Going to the local stores in Roanoke was no better and almost convinced me that customer service is dead and that people under twenty five aren't nearly as technologically astute as some of the media would have us believe.  Perhaps their technical expertise doesn't go beyond iPods. The experience visitng the big box stores certainly made me wonder how the Roanoke area could be classed as a "Technology Corridor."

We could find no one in two local Staples, the Circuit City or Best Buy, who could actually make one of the AIOs work properly.  One young Staples sales person finally admitted that he hated AIOs because something was always broken.  We also had the misfortune in that store of running into a hostile young clerk when we actually purchased some other office items.  She wasn't very subtle about the irritation I caused by questioning the pricing she gave me on some folders which came from bins clearly marked with other pricing.  She was still snarky even after another staffer went back to check the pricing and confirmed what I said.  Obviously this wasn't a very auspicious beginning to our hunt for just the right piece of equipment.

Thinking that being armed with more information would help, I consulted with a couple of my trusted technology advisors and got mixed advice.  Andy of DesignNine first gave me a Xerox recommendation and then when he learned of my budget and space problems suggested a Canon.  I read some good reviews of the Pixma which is by Canon, but there were also some bad reviews.  My friend Russ, one of the great technologists in Happy Valley up at Penn. State, told me he had enjoyed some good experiences with HP products.

Armed with that information, I headed up to the local Staples in Morehead City, NC.  It was there that I actually had my faith in sales people renewed.  We had been in the store only moments when a Staples staffer probably in her early thirties approached us.  We told her what we were looking for and that we wanted to see the products actually work.  She immediately set off to get what she needed to make that happen.  She got the first test, a simple copy done quickly. 

That was actually more than anyone else had been able to accomplish.  I asked about why the next model up was $100 more, and she came up with a reasonable answer, Bluetooth.  I next challenged her with actually showing us a photo print.  She told me that if I had a memory card with an image, she would be glad to oblige. I went out to the car and got my digital camera, and she quickly got the HP6180C working on the task.  We got a photo printed on regular ink jet paper about a minute later.  I then suggested that I would like to see the machine actually produce a 4X6 print as advertised on photo paper. Another quick trip and she came back with some properly sized photo paper.  About a minute and a half later, we were looking at the print.

They had no Canon products in stock, but as you'll find out if you start looking, the Cannons don't have fax capabilities and also don't come with built-in networking, so they aren't a complete solution by any means.

I'll be reporting on how the HP does with my Macs, Windows, and Linux machines. I would be glad to review a Canon if they want to send me one for a comparison.  The traditional web can't seem to keep up with the slew of new products.  Most of the reviews I saw were from 2005 and on machines that are no longer on the market.

However, the real story today is that having knowledgeable customer sales people sells products and results in happy customers.  I congratulate Staples on having at least one very knowledgeable customer helper in their Morehead, NC store.  It was a real pleasure talking to someone who actually understood the technology and could demonstrate it.  That's something which is getting a little rare these days as big box stores dig deeper and deeper to find warm bodies.

I wonder if they'll ever figure out that having people like the lady in the Morehead City store is a better way of doing it than making their open box shelves larger?

I like to think of myself as an optimist.  It's a little hard to hang on to your optimism these days with death lurking in our spinach and lettuce, but I still like to see the bright side of things when possible.

That doesn't mean that my concern level doesn't go up when I see a movie like Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."  After all I'm writing this in a chair just a few feet above sea level.

Yet I have to wonder if too many people including many of the politicians are painting a picture just a little too gloomy.  Many in the media are often rightly accused of loving negative stories and ignoring the positive ones.  The old saying is "bad news sells."

When I worked for Apple Computer, we used to roll our eyes every time someone predicted the death of Apple.  The business magazines took turns having cover stories predicting the imminent demise of the company.  Yet my best years at Apple were those when the company was fighting the hardest to survive.  The company was much more open to customer concerns, and when times were bleakest, certainly worked hard at keeping its best employees.  Today while Apple is at the top of its game, my guess is that profits are what they think of most, while employee retention might have moved down the list a little.

We've had lots of rain in the last few days, but there has been plenty of blue sky if you just take the time to look for it.  I snapped the opening shot today between rain storms. The NC Seafood Festival even managed to survive the series of storms.  Today I found the blue sky I hoped to see, but I had to look for it.  It would be nice to see more blue sky thoughts about the positive possibilities in life and in our country.  Yet our leaders are setting are pretty bad example.

This morning I read an article, "The Paranoid Style," by Paul Krugman.  Paul's NY Times article had this to say.

More generally, Mr. Hastert is a leading figure in a political movement that exemplifies what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style in American politics.”

Hofstadter’s essay introducing the term was inspired by his observations of the radical right-wingers ...

As a result, political paranoia — the “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” Hofstadter described — has gone mainstream. To read Hofstadter’s essay today is to be struck by the extent to which he seems to be describing the state of mind not of a lunatic fringe, but of key figures in our political and media establishment.

I think maybe that's what I liked about the Canadian system which ran pretty well even without a constitution. Things just muddled along, and they even figured our how to provide universal health care.  I'm not saying we don't face problems, I'm saying life is too short to obsess on all the bad things that can happen.  We need positive possibilities to balance some of the negative scenarios that we hear about all the time.

Our time in life is short.  I don't plan to measure my life by how safe I've been.  When I'm sitting back a few years from now looking back at what I've done, I don't want worrying to be my number one activity or even in my top ten.

Now walking on the beach should be well up on the list.  It's a great way to restore the soul and to think about how to achieve things most people assume are impossible.

I like to think of myself as an optimist.  It's a little hard to hang on to your optimism these days with death lurking in our spinach and lettuce, but I still like to see the bright side of things when possible.

That doesn't mean that my concern level doesn't go up when I see a movie like Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."  After all I'm writing this in a chair just a few feet above sea level.

Yet I have to wonder if too many people including many of the politicians are painting a picture just a little too gloomy.  Many in the media are often rightly accused of loving negative stories and ignoring the positive ones.  The old saying is "bad news sells."

When I worked for Apple Computer, we used to roll our eyes every time someone predicted the death of Apple.  The business magazines took turns having cover stories predicting the imminent demise of the company.  Yet my best years at Apple were those when the company was fighting the hardest to survive.  The company was much more open to customer concerns, and when times were bleakest, certainly worked hard at keeping its best employees.  Today while Apple is at the top of its game, my guess is that profits are what they think of most, while employee retention might have moved down the list a little.

We've had lots of rain in the last few days, but there has been plenty of blue sky if you just take the time to look for it.  I snapped the opening shot today between rain storms. The NC Seafood Festival even managed to survive the series of storms.  Today I found the blue sky I hoped to see, but I had to look for it.  It would be nice to see more blue sky thoughts about the positive possibilities in life and in our country.  Yet our leaders are setting are pretty bad example.

This morning I read an article, "The Paranoid Style," by Paul Krugman.  Paul's NY Times article had this to say.

More generally, Mr. Hastert is a leading figure in a political movement that exemplifies what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style in American politics.”

Hofstadter’s essay introducing the term was inspired by his observations of the radical right-wingers ...

As a result, political paranoia — the “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” Hofstadter described — has gone mainstream. To read Hofstadter’s essay today is to be struck by the extent to which he seems to be describing the state of mind not of a lunatic fringe, but of key figures in our political and media establishment.

I think maybe that's what I liked about the Canadian system which ran pretty well even without a constitution. Things just muddled along, and they even figured our how to provide universal health care.  I'm not saying we don't face problems, I'm saying life is too short to obsess on all the bad things that can happen.  We need positive possibilities to balance some of the negative scenarios that we hear about all the time.

Our time in life is short.  I don't plan to measure my life by how safe I've been.  When I'm sitting back a few years from now looking back at what I've done, I don't want worrying to be my number one activity or even in my top ten.

Now walking on the beach should be well up on the list.  It's a great way to restore the soul and to think about how to achieve things most people assume are impossible.

I like to think of myself as an optimist.  It's a little hard to hang on to your optimism these days with death lurking in our spinach and lettuce, but I still like to see the bright side of things when possible.

That doesn't mean that my concern level doesn't go up when I see a movie like Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."  After all I'm writing this in a chair just a few feet above sea level.

Yet I have to wonder if too many people including many of the politicians are painting a picture just a little too gloomy.  Many in the media are often rightly accused of loving negative stories and ignoring the positive ones.  The old saying is "bad news sells."

When I worked for Apple Computer, we used to roll our eyes every time someone predicted the death of Apple.  The business magazines took turns having cover stories predicting the imminent demise of the company.  Yet my best years at Apple were those when the company was fighting the hardest to survive.  The company was much more open to customer concerns, and when times were bleakest, certainly worked hard at keeping its best employees.  Today while Apple is at the top of its game, my guess is that profits are what they think of most, while employee retention might have moved down the list a little.

We've had lots of rain in the last few days, but there has been plenty of blue sky if you just take the time to look for it.  I snapped the opening shot today between rain storms. The NC Seafood Festival even managed to survive the series of storms.  Today I found the blue sky I hoped to see, but I had to look for it.  It would be nice to see more blue sky thoughts about the positive possibilities in life and in our country.  Yet our leaders are setting are pretty bad example.

This morning I read an article, "The Paranoid Style," by Paul Krugman.  Paul's NY Times article had this to say.

More generally, Mr. Hastert is a leading figure in a political movement that exemplifies what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style in American politics.”

Hofstadter’s essay introducing the term was inspired by his observations of the radical right-wingers ...

As a result, political paranoia — the “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” Hofstadter described — has gone mainstream. To read Hofstadter’s essay today is to be struck by the extent to which he seems to be describing the state of mind not of a lunatic fringe, but of key figures in our political and media establishment.

I think maybe that's what I liked about the Canadian system which ran pretty well even without a constitution. Things just muddled along, and they even figured our how to provide universal health care.  I'm not saying we don't face problems, I'm saying life is too short to obsess on all the bad things that can happen.  We need positive possibilities to balance some of the negative scenarios that we hear about all the time.

Our time in life is short.  I don't plan to measure my life by how safe I've been.  When I'm sitting back a few years from now looking back at what I've done, I don't want worrying to be my number one activity or even in my top ten.

Now walking on the beach should be well up on the list.  It's a great way to restore the soul and to think about how to achieve things most people assume are impossible.

I like to think of myself as an optimist.  It's a little hard to hang on to your optimism these days with death lurking in our spinach and lettuce, but I still like to see the bright side of things when possible.

That doesn't mean that my concern level doesn't go up when I see a movie like Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."  After all I'm writing this in a chair just a few feet above sea level.

Yet I have to wonder if too many people including many of the politicians are painting a picture just a little too gloomy.  Many in the media are often rightly accused of loving negative stories and ignoring the positive ones.  The old saying is "bad news sells."

When I worked for Apple Computer, we used to roll our eyes every time someone predicted the death of Apple.  The business magazines took turns having cover stories predicting the imminent demise of the company.  Yet my best years at Apple were those when the company was fighting the hardest to survive.  The company was much more open to customer concerns, and when times were bleakest, certainly worked hard at keeping its best employees.  Today while Apple is at the top of its game, my guess is that profits are what they think of most, while employee retention might have moved down the list a little.

We've had lots of rain in the last few days, but there has been plenty of blue sky if you just take the time to look for it.  I snapped the opening shot today between rain storms. The NC Seafood Festival even managed to survive the series of storms.  Today I found the blue sky I hoped to see, but I had to look for it.  It would be nice to see more blue sky thoughts about the positive possibilities in life and in our country.  Yet our leaders are setting are pretty bad example.

This morning I read an article, "The Paranoid Style," by Paul Krugman.  Paul's NY Times article had this to say.

More generally, Mr. Hastert is a leading figure in a political movement that exemplifies what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style in American politics.”

Hofstadter’s essay introducing the term was inspired by his observations of the radical right-wingers ...

As a result, political paranoia — the “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” Hofstadter described — has gone mainstream. To read Hofstadter’s essay today is to be struck by the extent to which he seems to be describing the state of mind not of a lunatic fringe, but of key figures in our political and media establishment.

I think maybe that's what I liked about the Canadian system which ran pretty well even without a constitution. Things just muddled along, and they even figured our how to provide universal health care.  I'm not saying we don't face problems, I'm saying life is too short to obsess on all the bad things that can happen.  We need positive possibilities to balance some of the negative scenarios that we hear about all the time.

Our time in life is short.  I don't plan to measure my life by how safe I've been.  When I'm sitting back a few years from now looking back at what I've done, I don't want worrying to be my number one activity or even in my top ten.

Now walking on the beach should be well up on the list.  It's a great way to restore the soul and to think about how to achieve things most people assume are impossible.

There are always consequences even if they might not appear at first.   There is no free lunch.  Much of what has kept inflation at bay can be directly related to goods produced in China where wages are unbelievably low.

Finally I have decided that they're trying to get back at us in a very subtle way.  We're setting up a new house, and every bedroom seems to need a clock.

Granted my sample, three clocks, is very limited, but I've found two of the three clocks came with the alarm turned on and set to twelve midnight.  Not being aware of this insidious trap, I installed two of the clocks one day.  I set the time and forgot about them until one of them starting ringing at midnight.  My wife claimed not to hear it, so I ended up getting up and turning if off.

I thought the alarm was a random event, but I was to learn the next night that the fun would continue and that this time it would be upstairs.  The third clock I installed also had the subtle alarm trap turned on and ready for unsophisticated installers like  me.

Again my wife managed to sleep through the whole procedure and to act like nothing had happened.

The next time you buy a new alarm clock, watch out, it maybe armed and dangerous.

I really don't know much about David Brooks who writes for the New York Times, but I'm willing to bet that he has never spent much time doing work besides writing in a large corporation.

His article today, "The Populist Myths on Income Inequality," (NY Times Select required) asserts that workers are actually doing well and that jobs aren't insecure.

I actually know a fair number of corporate refugees who would argue with many of Brooks' statements.  The one that really gets me is the following.

In other words, the market isn’t broken; the meritocracy is working almost too well. It’s rewarding people based on individual talents. Higher education pays off because it provides technical knowledge and because it screens out people who are not organized, self-motivated and socially adept.

Most people that I know believe that Scott Adams of Dilbert fame lives within their organization.  I have little doubt that our corporate culture is in much poorer shape than Mr. Brooks would have us believe.  If you haven't seen a corporation where promotions are more related to whom you know than the skill level of the people trying for a promotion, you probably haven't done a lot of looking.  I'm sure there are good corporations out there, but there are plenty who aren't using their people effectively specifically because the whole idea of "meritocracy" is broken.

Large corporations typically reward those know how to manage upwards.  I'm not sure that's a great skill for companies to cultivate.  If things are working so well in corporations, why are our auto companies doing so poorly and why do we have a huge options backdating scandal? Perhaps Mr. Brooks needs some real corporate experience on which to base his opinions.

Maybe after he watches a corporation get rid of some of their best people like I've recently seen, he might understand that corporate reality and what he is writing about are two different things. As one person commented recently on someone who got a promotion, "He got the job because he'll do whatever he's told, no questions asked."  That's not exactly a "meritocracy."

Since I wrote this last night, Paul Krugman has come out with a piece,"Whining Over Discontent," that does a really good job of putting some real perspective on the issue with numbers to back up his argument.

More broadly, right-wing commentators would like you to believe that the economy’s winners are a large group, like college graduates or people with agreeable personalities. But the winners’ circle is actually very small. Even households at the 95th percentile — that is, households richer than 19 out of 20 Americans — have seen their real income rise less than 1 percent a year since the late 1970’s. But the income of the richest 1 percent has roughly doubled, and the income of the top 0.01 percent — people with incomes of more than $5 million in 2004 — has risen by a factor of 5.

I don't always disagree with David Brooks as my posts, "Agreeing with Mr. Brooks" and "Agreeing ten times over with David Brooks on immigration" indicate, but this time he's off base again with his rosy colored view of the corporate world.  Krugman's view is much closer to what I have seen in my corporate days.

I really don't know much about David Brooks who writes for the New York Times, but I'm willing to bet that he has never spent much time doing work besides writing in a large corporation.

His article today, "The Populist Myths on Income Inequality," (NY Times Select required) asserts that workers are actually doing well and that jobs aren't insecure.

I actually know a fair number of corporate refugees who would argue with many of Brooks' statements.  The one that really gets me is the following.

In other words, the market isn’t broken; the meritocracy is working almost too well. It’s rewarding people based on individual talents. Higher education pays off because it provides technical knowledge and because it screens out people who are not organized, self-motivated and socially adept.

Most people that I know believe that Scott Adams of Dilbert fame lives within their organization.  I have little doubt that our corporate culture is in much poorer shape than Mr. Brooks would have us believe.  If you haven't seen a corporation where promotions are more related to whom you know than the skill level of the people trying for a promotion, you probably haven't done a lot of looking.  I'm sure there are good corporations out there, but there are plenty who aren't using their people effectively specifically because the whole idea of "meritocracy" is broken.

Large corporations typically reward those know how to manage upwards.  I'm not sure that's a great skill for companies to cultivate.  If things are working so well in corporations, why are our auto companies doing so poorly and why do we have a huge options backdating scandal? Perhaps Mr. Brooks needs some real corporate experience on which to base his opinions.

Maybe after he watches a corporation get rid of some of their best people like I've recently seen, he might understand that corporate reality and what he is writing about are two different things. As one person commented recently on someone who got a promotion, "He got the job because he'll do whatever he's told, no questions asked."  That's not exactly a "meritocracy."

Since I wrote this last night, Paul Krugman has come out with a piece,"Whining Over Discontent," that does a really good job of putting some real perspective on the issue with numbers to back up his argument.

More broadly, right-wing commentators would like you to believe that the economy’s winners are a large group, like college graduates or people with agreeable personalities. But the winners’ circle is actually very small. Even households at the 95th percentile — that is, households richer than 19 out of 20 Americans — have seen their real income rise less than 1 percent a year since the late 1970’s. But the income of the richest 1 percent has roughly doubled, and the income of the top 0.01 percent — people with incomes of more than $5 million in 2004 — has risen by a factor of 5.

I don't always disagree with David Brooks as my posts, "Agreeing with Mr. Brooks" and "Agreeing ten times over with David Brooks on immigration" indicate, but this time he's off base again with his rosy colored view of the corporate world.  Krugman's view is much closer to what I have seen in my corporate days.