Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
"Cook is maintaining, by words and actions, most of Apple's unique corporate culture. But shifts of behavior and tone are absolutely apparent; some of them affect the core of Apple's critical product-development process"
Facebook, Google and others have latched onto wheeze of having two classes of share, so they can sell ownership stakes while keeping voting rights for themselves. Why? Because they can. And it's part of a significant shift in power
Tick-tock on the London Whale fiasco. Jamie Dimon personally authorised the trading strategy that may end up costing JP Morgan $5bn. But he didn't follow closely its execution. Until he noticed the bank was losing $100m a day
JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail; it operates with the implicit backing of the US government. So its recent trading losses should be investigated independently. In the same way as air crashes and near misses are investigated
"I know Dimon isn’t resigning. But maybe someday someone in his position will. And maybe they’ll actually say, 'What I did wasn’t good for America.' And maybe we’ll become a society again, not just an amalgamation of consumers"
"This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr." A revolutionary photo sharing service, destroyed by Yahoo
"He is so charming and gracious, yet all the while lobbying, cajoling, pushing, and wheedling to eviscerate any semblance of real reform on Wall Street." Well, now the chickens have come home to roost for JP Morgan's boss
The workplace is beset by "managerialists". You know the type. They speak in jargon and don't understand what their staff do. Their internal communications are propaganda, "consultation" amounts to advance notice. And they bleed us
Murdoch media empire is in full damage-control mode. But the pain and revelations keep on coming. As employees realise that self-preservation trumps loyalty, more and more spills into public view. How will it end?
"For a decade now the company has seemed more like a tawdry reality show than one of the world's great enterprises. It is in the midst of an existential crisis." Can Meg Whitman, HP's third CEO in seven years, put it right?
New management doctrine: Keep it simple. "Successful companies make great efforts to keep their business model as simple as possible. And they apply it relentlessly to new opportunities." Examples: Ikea, McDonald's, Apple
"We claim to believe that there is an objective method by which all right thinking people would, with sufficient diligence and intelligence, arrive at a good answer to any complex problem. But there is no such method"
"Give us a world where half our institutions are run by women"
Barney Frank, on JP Morgan's $2bn trading loss
"JP Morgan Chase, entirely without any help from the government has lost, in this one set of transactions, five times the amount they claim financial regulation is costing them"
