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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rairden who wrote (63764)	4/30/2003 5:50:17 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 77397

I make a living off people who priced themselves out of the market. They have unyielding labor laws. They are inflexible and they cost too much for what they get. Some of them were plain bloody lazy. So the companies in this business I do, decided to pay me instead of them because I am a better deal. John is right. Those guys have to price themselves into the market. I am the man to beat. So just try. It is a free market. The most important point John makes is that Chambers is being a politician rather than a CEO. Like Perot's "sucking sound of jobs going down south". He's just using a tool politicians are master of using: fear, by saying: Either I have my way or the alternative is terrible. I don't think I am going to take people insulting the intelligence of Thread participants claiming a geographical area has the monopoly of anything. Or is someone trying to say that there is something on the air they breath or the water they drink that make them special. I know what marketing -and a good one for that matter- is about. Look at it! We just went from the guys calling to the end of HB1 visa scheme, against plane loads of foreign techies landing in the valley to the 'sucking sound of the jobs going south'.

To: rairden who wrote (63764)	4/30/2003 11:13:30 AM
From: Stock Farmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77397

How is employee morale and loyalty these days? Well, that depends. I know a few folks who are breathing a sigh of relief to be offered a job at only a 30% cut in pay, and their morale is VERY high. Morale of the very high kind or the very low kind tends to be a fleeting thing. I also think it depends on big companies versus small companies. Feedback from inside the rabbit hutches is that morale is much lower than when carrots were plentiful. However, people are spending a lot of time being VERY productive in order not to join their friends in the Hasenpfeffer. And if you ask them, they are VERY VERY loyal. If you measure loyalty by the number of "I Quit's" per capita per unit time, then employee loyalty has not been so high in many many years. But if you measure loyalty by the number of people without up-to-date resumes, then it has never been lower. Loyalty is an artifice of convenience, apparently. Loyal or not, most folks are very busy doing what used to take two people a day to wade through on top of their normal day's job. So that could be defined as "productivity". Although that is a false productivity, and will probably manifest itself as a slow down in the sigh-of-relief kind of way as soon as companies start hiring again in a big way. It is hard to run at full tilt when constantly looking over one's shoulder. But if it is a gun at the back from which one is running? Well, after the initial fright wears off and the futility of looking at the gun sets in, it is amazing how far and how fast one can run. When they stop to catch their breath, will they be farther ahead or behind if they'd just kept up the walking pace? A very complex equation. Folks working in startups? For many it is terribly demoralizing 'cause they aren't. Or they are, but their company is about to go out of work faster than it should have in the first place and they know it. Although perhaps, they concede, the company was doomed anyway and the whole evolution process has just been sped up. Either way, the productivity of the wounded or walking wounded is negligible. For those who are in small companies and not out of work or clinging on until the inevitable happens, it's a don't care situation. In fact, the other way around. They are amongst the survivors and it lends a certain high-five chin-up big-grin confidence that maybe indeed they just might grasp that brass ring... 'cause if the "economy picks up", then anything is gonna get better than this!!! Theirs is the environment of random fatality anyway, so more random fatality... well, it just heightens the sense of urgency. Adrenaline... the spice of life! You asserted "productivity scales accordingly [to morale]", and in general, I agree with you. But again, looking back at 2000, we had a lot of people hard at work "productively" making a go at YetAnotherOneOfThose.Com having just closed millions in financing on the basis of a chart deck their brother in law had used after changing all the names in all the boxes on all the drawings and on the charts but leaving everything else substantially the same... And we had many a "productive" assistant deputy vice president of lightbulb inventory quality control (pausing briefly between following the free real-time-quotes to see how much his stock options were changing in value) calling meetings to review the charts in preparation for the meeting at which the agenda for next month's luminaries will be set. Which meetings were always well attended, for some reason. I'm not sure that stopping such nonsense isn't a huge boost in productivity all in itself. And the consequential moaning and groaning... kind of like the acrid smell of stressed brake pads after a drive down the mountains... it dissipates. It is only a matter of time before people begin to realize that as technology shrinks the planet, there are a BILLION people who would just about kill to have their job at half of the pay, or less... if only they would blink for a second and give it up... ... those who pause to stop and catch their breath are at risk of being trampled in the rush. I think productivity will improve if merely as a consequence of a technologically facilitated Darwinian selection process. The loudest moaning and complaining probably won't come from those most fit to survive. John