To: Gall who wrote (2595 ) 7/14/1998 2:40:00 PM From: Doughboy Respond to
Gall, you keep denying and back-tracking, but your words are all here for everyone to see. However, I'll be big about it and let bygones be bygones. IMHO, your observations of CA, once one wades through all the garbage and petty insults you throw in, are valid, but they miss the point: CA has made a ton of money doing the stuff that you accuse them of doing. <They collect licensing revenue, therefore they are not high tech.> So what? I know that most "high tech" companies out there envy CA's licensing revenue stream; it's guaranteed money in the bank. <CA has feet of Clay.> To the contrary, they've been surprisingly nimble recently. Unicenter revenue is growing faster than the other parts of their business. Wang is focussing on acquisitions in the consulting service area. If anything, I would be happier if Wang would let the moss grow under his feet once in a while (the CSC acquisition was a problem with being overly ambitious). <CA is not people-friendly.> Again, so what? It makes its employees rich, as you even admit, and that in the end is the measure of a good employer. After mergers, CA sloughs the dead wood and buys the loyalty of key people. If anything, the growth of CA over the last decade proves that this strategy works. And let's not forget, I'm not working for CA, I'm buying the stock. I don't care how they treat employees until it has an adverse affect on future performance, and you haven't shown me -- beyond your anecdotal examples -- that CA has any trouble retaining the talent that it needs. Simply, nothing has fundamentally changed with CA. They've always treated employees like that. <CA doesn't have home-grown talent; it buys it from others.> That's all part of the plan. Who said that growing your own is better than buying proven talent and products. I defy you to show me that investing in R&D is a cheaper means of getting product to market than buying proven ideas that are already generating revenue. Also, look at the rest of the industry today. Very few software companies grow talent; they pay hired guns just like CA has done. Why? Because software engineers prefer being free agents; they make more money. The trend is CA's friend on this one. <The stock has had trouble breaking through 60> I'm a long term investor, so I don't worry about that. CA has done me right with an 88% ROI in about a year.
