Think Big. Eradicating the reorgs, Part 2

This is a continuation of the article Eradicating the cancer of "reorgs" and "rif

On January  10, 2014, US Bureau of Labor unemployment report said we still have 10.4 million unemployed people in US. But in addition to them, the number of persons employed part time was 7.8 million in December. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time work. We gained 72,000 jobs in December, which is peanuts

Behind the numbers there a tragedy of those overqualified high tech workers out of the productive workforce. On Fox News satellite radio channel they added that the churn rate in 2013  is 25%. Most under-employed people are forced to take bitter tasting jobs, with no medical benefits, if they are lucky enough to find them. The people who look for work are not only the unemployed, but most employed people keep an eye waiting for an opportunity to change jobs and escape lack of creativity, boredom and insecurity.

In 2010, I started  petition on Change.org Revive the high-tech start up on Silicon Valley and US


The goal was to create alternative employment, creative, fulfilling, happy employment to absorb the all rifed highly trained professional population and the university graduates.

Sure startups can create new jobs, but most startups come from incubators. They are created by investors not interested to grow long term into  large companies. They create companies to flip them off to a buyer for shorter term profit.

On January 1, 2014 on this blog, in the article Focus on breakthrough products to heal Europe and US economies I quoted Dries Buytaert the co-founder and CTO of Acquia, a Drupal shop in Europe.

One of the things Dries said which struck me  as a phenomenal insight was to create BIG companies, 25 billions or more. Small starts up up to 1 billion dollars are not sufficient.

In Europe the job situation is disastrous. Half Of Spain's Young People Would Be Happy To Take Any Job and IKEA Spain received 100,000 applications for 400 jobs.

But how do we start a BIG company? This is easier said than done. It all started with Rashi Glazer my marketing teacher at UC Berkeley Haas Business School during the first ever executive program in Product Management.
Prof. Rashi Glazer
You MUST THINK BIG, he said. America is famous for thinking big. The highest rewards comes from taking the biggest risks. This is not everybody cup of tea. Many creative people have a low tolerance to risk and psychologically they can not stand the incertitude.

Amazon is looking at drones to make deliveries at home. The founder of Tesla car company is an ex PayPal founder.

So there is not only a question of having startups. Sure startups remain key to the economic growth.

Companies like Microsoft and Dell and HP and Oracle and IBM, how can they reinvent themselves to become even bigger than they are today?.

The Business Insider in 2012  says Facebook was worth at that time, 2x plus HP, 4x Dell, 100x New York Times, 3x Target, 10x Nokia  and so on. The article states
Not much of a surprise, though. Facebook is making a world-changing piece of technology, and it also happens to pay its engineers better than most other companies in Silicon Valley — so it attracts the best talent.
I read the news of the search of a  new CEO for Microsoft, as if one hired hand gifted and famous can change around a culture that stopped thinking big? They think are big enough.

If I were an outside consultant able to listen humbly, I would simply ask : How do you create desire for people to have Microsoft product X? Is there anyway to triple the market worth in 4 years?

Microsoft is too large and arrogant. No one will ask me or other small forward thinking consultants. They may deal with  the big boys, who all they do is covering the cracking and patching.

The unemployment numbers hint to unhappiness. The unemployed lost hope and the employed live in fear of becoming disposable. I don't mean "happiness" as complacency. I mean that uplifting moments when  we feel life is worth living and work is part of it.

My petition got 51 signatures four years ago. All I can do is to preach as a consultant and hope that other will follow soon.


Comments

Popular Posts