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To: Alomex who wrote (12594)5/4/1998 6:10:00 PM
From: J R KARY  Respond to of 213177
 
>" goes to the core of my main criticism of him: he did not cut deep enough, including his own perks. " <

Alomex you criticism is well founded .

Amelio could not continue to "down-size" , firing people from AAPL's mail room , after collecting his 4Q "fraudulent" bonus .

Must consider the "source" of GA's autobiographical book .

Jim K.
PS: Not a criticism of Travis' or Eric's reading of the book



To: Alomex who wrote (12594)5/4/1998 8:34:00 PM
From: Travis  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 213177
 
<<But you see a company that is on the doldrums should not be flying it's CEO from lake Tahoe>>

Hmmm.....the only jet flights i've heard so far are for very important meetings where the jet flights were valid. IE, a big meeting with Bill Gates. Actually, let me quote from the book:

Shareholders and financial analysts support the economics of travel by chartered or comany-owned aircraft because it makes financial good sense. Do the arithmetic: Multiply an executive's hourly earnings by the additional time he or she would spend making the same trip by commerical airline, then add the further savings of the two or three other company personnel that so frequently also need to attend the same meeting or conference. Apple execs had been traveling for years on jet aircraft chartered from .... However, I already owned the Citation (the jet). There was no longer a need for using Mike's plances, since Apple executives could now make business trips on my aircraft at a lower cost to the company. And I ordered cutback on executive travel, so executives were using my aircraft less than they had been using Markkula's...Newspaper and magazine stories repeated the accusations so often that Apple employees began to become disgruntled, believing that the deal on my airplane was lining my pockets while gougning the company when in fact at the price I charged Apple, I needed to subsidize the operating expenses heavily out of my own pocket.

He goes and makes some very poignant remarks about the press that I wanted to include, but won't for brevity. Although he may not have been totally in the right, he clearly wasn't trying to waste Apple's money.



To: Alomex who wrote (12594)5/5/1998 9:36:00 AM
From: rhet0ric  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 213177
 
when times are tough you cut deep, and you start by setting an example.

I completely agree. The personal jet issue aside, Amelio negotiated a huge pay and golden parachute package for himself before taking the CEO job. This is documented in Jim Carlton's book. Now Amelio, as a board member, knew that Apple was in trouble. And, as Carlton tells it, Amelio had them over a barrel because the board basically agreed to give him the job before they had finalized his package; Amelio used this as an opportunity to increase his demands. That goes completely against the spirit of turning around the company.

I have mixed feelings about Amelio. As someone posted recently (Adam?), product cycles are very long, and clearly Amelio should take most of the credit for the G3s, desktop and notebook. But even these wouldn't have put Apple in the black without Steve's severe cutting. And without Steve's salesmanship, I doubt that the launch would have gone as well.

rhet0ric