Layoffs At Now-Private Dell May Hit Over 15,000 Staffers

schwit1 writes "Curious why Michael Dell was so eager to take the company he founded private? So he could do stuff like this without attracting too much attention. According to the Channel Register, the recently LBOed company is 'starting the expected huge layoff program this week, claiming numbers will be north of 15,000.' Of course, with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows in an environment of falling PC sales, a commoditisation of the server market and a perceived need to better serve enterprises with their ever-increasing mobile and cloud-focused IT requirements — things that do not bode well for Dell's EBITDA — and the result is perhaps the largest axing round in the company's history. But at least the shareholders cashed out while they could."

Comments

I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[haruchai]

At least they get health coverage for the next 18 months.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

At least they get health coverage for the next 18 months.

If they can afford it. The charming thing about COBRA is that you get hit paying 100% of premiums when you can least afford it. Heaven forbid that we become a bunch of commies like those Canucks. I've heard that even the snow is red up there.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[Critical Facilities]

But at least you're getting a group-policy rate that the employer had negotiated, rather than an open-market individual/family rate. It's better than (pre-ACA) open-market plans, I suspect

Not always. I worked for the largest commercial real estate company in the world a few years ago. When I put in my notice, there was going to be a lapse of about 30 days between when my insurance would expire with my present employer, and when my new benefits would kick in with my new employer. When I received the COBRA notification explaining the details of my coverage (if I were to have chosen to take it), I was shocked. My premiums more than tripled....not exaggerating. Coverage for me and my young daughter for a fairly standard health policy (which still had copays, co-insurance, and deductibles, mind you) was going to be well over $600 for 30 days.

Suffice to say, I was able to find a term based health insurance plan, and get us both covered for about $150-$175 for 30 days, with better co-pays and a much lower deductible.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

It's better than (pre-ACA) open-market plans

The ACA is, to put it charitably, a day late and a dollar short. I honestly hope it's better having that piece of garbage than not, but the only way that will really be true is if it leads to further changes. The US is the only country to rely on for-profit companies as the source of basic health insurance.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[CohibaVancouver]

At least they get health coverage for the next 18 months.

America is bananas. You lose your job with all the stress that entails, then on top of that you have to worry about whether you have the coverage required if your kid gets sick.

Hey USA, get with every other first world nation on earth (and a few second and third world ones) and get some universal healthcare for YOUR people.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[hendrips]

That's only guaranteed to be true if you coverage needs are the same as the plan your former employer offered, and if you are as risky or riskier than the average employee. To use myself as an example, I was laid off a couple of years ago from an employer which had a high average age and a high smoking rate (average age: late 40s to early 50s, 10%-20% smoked, if I had to guess). Their health plan had a 300$ per year deductible. As a result, their COBRA premiums were about $1500 per month for a couple. Pre-ACA that's probably still a better rate than a pair of 50 years old smokers in questionable health would have gotten on the individual market.

My wife and I, on the other hand, were nonsmokers in our 20s with no preexisting conditions. We also have a sizable emergency fund saved up because I hate spending money, so a $300 deductible would have been ridiculous for us. When we bought open market insurance, it cost us less than $200 per month. Obviously, that's just an anecdote, but it illustrates how hard it is to make blanket statements about American health insurance*.

*Other than "it sucks," which I think everyone on both sides of the spectrum would agree on, even if they argue about why or what to do.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

I was laid off a couple of years ago from an employer which had a high average age

A charming aspect of our for-profit health insurance system is that this is a concern for employers, which leads to age discrimination. Even under Obamacare you can have a 3:1 range depending on age. If we're going to have that kind of crap, why not go back to the old system where insurance would cost a fortune if you had existing health problems. How is that any more discriminatory? No other country does it this way. In Germany for example, where insurance is mostly handled by non-profit insurance companies, you can only vary premium costs depending on where you live. Like other countries, the per capita health care expenses are at least a third less than the US (as a %/GDP - the difference is greater if you use exchange rate or PPP).

Yes, I'm in my 50's. If I have to go back to COBRA or "open market", that will cream me. It's ok to screw me because of my age, but the fact that I'm in good health doesn't buy me anything. Basically I spent decades subsidizing the health care of those who were older or less healthy than me. I'd be fine with that, except now that I'm older it's a big "SCREW YOU".

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

Health care ended up being tied to employment because everybody worked.

You're ignorant of history. Health care ended up being tied to employment because there was a wage freeze during WWII, but a loophole let employers add benefits.

It was our grandparents who made this nation the greatest in the world.

And it was our grandparents who fought (sometimes literally) for better wages and working conditions, Social Security, and a host of other evil things. If it hadn't been for the employer based health insurance in WWII, we'd likely have gotten UHC in the late 40's. We also would have saved trillions of dollars because of it.

Universal Healthcare will be part of that after Obamacare fails

Let's hope we don't become a socialist hellhole like Canada, Australia or Japan.

Just join the Occupy Wallstreet crowd and stand in line for a government handout.

If you want a handout you'd be better off on Wall Street. The banks got handouts that are beyond the wildest dreams of anybody in the OWS crowd.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[TWiTfan]

Agreed. We won't be competitive again until we go back to the days when children had to beg for food on the street.

As someone who is pretty well-off I also can't WAIT to get slavery back too! Let's here them complain about me calling them "Boy" when I OWN their black asses!!!!

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

The real problem is that people think that there is a free lunch.

I don't know anybody who thinks there is a free lunch, but I do know people who ignore facts. For example, all those countries with their evil socialist healthcare pay at least 1/3 less (%/GDP) than the US for universal coverage and outcomes just as good. I'm not so much an evil socialist as a cheap bastard. I'm tired of getting ripped off.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[operagost]

Note how government, once again, claims it's the solution to a problem it created. If it wasn't for the unconstitutional wage freeze, we wouldn't have been relying on employer-subsidized health care.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[TheGratefulNet]

'people' in the US are doing fine.

oh, you mean real human beings and not companies, didn't you?

nevermind.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[pnutjam]

There are so many variables when you buy insurance. I'm blessed with good health myself, but I have seen it happen to people.

I had a friend who had a brain tumor which meant he lost his job (truck driver). So, of course he lost his insurance and you can bet that insurance companies weren't jumping out of the wood work to cover him. Even Cobra is little help in a situation like that.

It's really stupid for insurance to be tied to employment. Only a single payer system makes sense. I would much rather pay taxes today to insure I am covered when I need it, vs our current system of paying premiums so 2 or 3 middlemen have a job and when you need the insurance you can't have it.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[m.ducharme]

Sorry no, you've entirely neglected the fact that private healthcare leads to higher per-capita costs as insurers fleece their clients.Insurance companies aren't taking a little profit off the top, they're taking massive profits compared to their costs.

  The idea behind a universal health care system is that in such a system, you get the same or better health care for a lower price. It's not a matter of the government subsidizing your health care, it's a matter of giving increased power to the consumer, to prevent them from being fleeced in a transaction where otherwise they would have no bargaining power. And it works. In 2008 (the last figures I've seen, care of the WHO I believe), US health care cost per person was I think $6000/person, while the next-closest was Switzerland (which has a semi private system somewhat like the ACA) where health care costs were half of what they are in the US (I may have the figures wrong, but the proportion is correct, the Swiss pay half per person what Americans pay).

The long and the short of it is that the free market doesn't work as intended where one party has the choice of paying or dying. Government regulation is supposed to (and in most of the world, does) equalize the playing field so that the consumer doesn't get hosed by the insurance company or the service providers.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ShanghaiBill]

It's really stupid for insurance to be tied to employment.

Indeed. During the communist era in China, each factory ran a school for the children of their workers. If someone changed jobs, their children had to change schools. Americans laugh at how insane that was, but the way we run our healthcare system is just as stupid. It is absurd for your employer to be involved in your healthcare.

Here is a complete, exhaustive list of everything that an employer should provide to their workers in exchange for their labor:

1. Money

Everything else (healthcare, pension, etc.) should be obtained elsewhere.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[haruchai]

I'd be more inclined to believe what you say if you could explain why per-capita healthcare is so much more expensive in America than any Eurotrash country or the Frozen North above the 49th parallel but the outcomes are about the same.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[monkeyFuzz]

And the republicans were smart enough to realize it was crap and did not pass it when they controlled all three branches.

Sorry, but the blame lies solely with the democrats on this one.

As misguided as this statement is, even if one were to accept its veracity it at face value, it is a meaningless one. You do realize that republican vs. democrat is a distinction without a difference. There has been, and is, only one party, and that is the party of Big Business. Follow the money and the policies it purchases and it should be painfully obvious.

Re:I'm sure they're grateful for COBRA

[ebno-10db]

Ever heard of blue cross blue shield? Non profit.

Not for many years. They're simply an umbrella organization that sells a branded product. Many of the companies providing the insurance are for-profit. Moreover, the behavior of even some of the non-profits under the umbrella is questionable, because they're loosely regulated and/or the regulation isn't enforced. I mentioned that one of the reasons the German system works is that the insurers are very tightly regulated.

insurance was much cheaper when you were in your 20s, than it is for someone who is in their 20s today

Insurance for anybody was cheaper when I was in my 20's. The problem is medical costs increasing much faster than inflation for decades, not that I was lucky to have been born earlier than you.

It is the young who are getting screwed by Obamacare.

The young and healthy. But even that's not right. Everybody is getting screwed, or at least the problem isn't being addressed, by Obamacare, because it does so little to bring down costs to those in other countries.

The same group that is being screwed by social security (broke in 2033) and medicare (broke in 2024).

Social Security is going to go broke 19 years in the future, because it's always been going to go broke 19 years in the future. When the economy is bad the date pulls in a little (it was 2038 before the GFC), and then goes out again when the labor economy improves (since it's funded by payroll taxes). Even "going broke" is BS. If it "went broke" it would still be able to pay out greater than 2/3 of the benefits. That doesn't fit my definition of broke, as in no money.

As for Medicare, if it goes broke then we'll all go broke, because the big issue isn't Medicare itself, but rising health care costs. Medicare funding is no different in that respect than any other healthcare funding.

We could have tried to do something about the healthcare cost curve. "Universal coverage" was chosen as a goal instead, so healthcare costs will continue rising.

What makes you think that those goals are mutually exclusive? Every other developed country has universal care and pays at least 1/3 less than the US. It helps if you don't kiss the ass of the for-profit insurance and pharma companies. Why do you think their stock prices went up after Obamacare passed?

Wrong

[u38cg]

This should have been done by the previous management. Dell is running a company whose business is in serious decline where no-one really knwos where the market will be in five to ten years time. Doing anything else would be commercial suicide.

Re:Wrong

[Herkum01]

If this were done by the previous management, the stock price would have gone up and M. Dell would not have been able to purchase the company. Hence, leaving the company limping along was probably the plan all along.

Just another way management can screw over the stockholders.

Re:Wrong

[ppanon]

Um it said in the title that Dell is now a privet company there are no stockholders to screw

Guess you missed the part where he implied deliberate mismanagement to keep the stock price down when it was still public in order to keep market capitalization lower and make the leveraged buy-out possible. I'm not saying that he's right, but if he was then his characterization that it was a failure to uphold the fiduciary duty to those shareholders seems reasonable. Finding enough evidence to prove it in a court of law as part of a (past) shareholder's lawsuit would be the tricky part.

Re:Wrong

[capedgirardeau]

Of course people want to lay off 15% of the workforce. That is very typical in leveraged buyout processes and part of the plan from square one.

You are take out big loans to buy the company, knowing you are going to immediately gut it maximize profits in the short term so you can pay off the loans. Then you continue to milk what remains as profit, letting the business decline knowing you can sell off chunks to get the last drop of value out of the company, and then at the very end, when you have loaded it up with debt again, you declare it bankrupt and walk away.

Re:Wrong

[tlhIngan]

Dell is running a company whose business is in serious decline where no-one really knwos where the market will be in five to ten years time.

Uh, the IT sector has changed drasticly every 5-10 years, so no one knows where anything is headed.

10 years ago, Symbian, PalmOS and Windows Mobile were king (hell, Microsoft released PocketPC 2003, considered to be first "real" version of Windows Mobile competitive with PalmOS). 5 years later, they were in serious decline (iPhone, 2007). And yet, during those times, all three were in serious peaks - customers demanded Windows Mobile, PalmOS devs were cranking out serious apps, S30 and S60 were popular phone OSes.

10 years before that, Windows was maturing, with Windows 3.1 being the in thing. Except for gaming, of course, since they still wanted DOS. Even 5 years later many games were still DOS focused, but were transitioning to Windows. It took a few years after that before gaming under Windows was the norm with Windows 2000 having decent DirectX support, and Windows XP coming out that forced everyone to adapt. (There were still games under that era that refused to run under NT based OSes).

Who knows what happens in 5-10 years? About the only certainty is that there'll still be demand for computers as we know them - either desktops or laptops. A much smaller demand as many uses of them are replaced by smartphones and tablets, but you'll still need them. Though instead of everyone needing their own, it'll probably be reduced to a shared PC.

Heck, 10 years ago people were saying consoles just don't have it to do "serious" gaming.

Now that it is private?

[alexander_686]

Of course, with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows ......

How is it different now that they are private? Don’t public firms try to maximize profits? I know back in the 80’s, LBO tried to generate as much as cash flow because they have mortgage everything and were up to their eyeballs in debt. Dell is nowhere near that.

No, this is because Mr. Dell wants to take Dell Inc. in a new direction as fast as he can – away from the low profits of a commodity business.

Re:Now that it is private?

[Anonymous Coward]

News Flash: Businesses exist to make a profit. This is not a charity. He is acting rationally.

Re:Now that it is private?

[murdocj]

Is this really true? I seem to recall the markets applauding big companies that "slashed costs" by layoffs, even though the long-term results might be disastrous.

Re:Now that it is private?

[Sockatume]

To serve their stakeholders, private companies must maximise net revenue, while publicly traded companies must maximise share price. The means to achieve those two goals are not always the same, because very often the market price is decided by idiots.

Re:Now that it is private?

[Junta]

On the one hand, layoffs are frequently considered a 'good thing' by investors, if they believe the company may still be capable of functioning afterward. I don't think Dell is in this boat, but layoffs have upon occasion been taken as a sign of the end times for a particular enterprise.

As to your point about taking it in a new direction as fast as he can, away from a commodity business; the challenge is Dell has yet to show capability in any candidate market. Investors eat up announcements by IBM for decreasing stake in the hardware business because they have shown data that they have already established themselves in other markets. Contrast to when Apotheker announced an intent for him to take HP away from hardware and be a software company. HP's stock took a nosedive because they were not seen as a credible software company, but giving up on their bread and butter to chase a dream. Even if that hardware business isn't as profitable, it's better than nothing.

Re:Now that it is private?

[ebno-10db]

I seem to recall the markets applauding big companies that "slashed costs" by layoffs, even though the long-term results might be disastrous.

Believe it or not, once upon a time layoffs would cause a company's stock price to fall. The markets figured, usually correctly, that layoffs meant the company was in trouble. In Dell's case I'm afraid the layoffs might be necessary, as the company is in serious trouble, but when profitable companies have needless layoffs, it's ridiculous. You can almost always make the company's finances look better in the short term with layoffs.

The best analogy I've heard (and this from a serious business analyst) is that many of these companies are like the participants in a body building contest. For those that don't know, they usually take lots of diuretics and what not for a few days before the contest to increase muscle definition. It also leaves them weak as hell. You could probably knock them over with a feather. That's the way a lot of companies are these days. Superficially they look great on the balance sheet, but they're actually quite weak when it comes to anything beyond the next quarter.

Re:Now that it is private?

[DoofusOfDeath]

I would think that private companies can maximize whatever the hell they want: short-term profit, long-term profit, the number of frogs in Ohio, etc.

Re:Now that it is private?

[alexander_686]

Slashing costs can take different forms.

Are you slashing costs because you business is going down the tubes? You trim costs to match reduced revenue. To overstate the case, the PC market is going down the tubes.

Are you trying to make yourself look good? There are companies that need to lose weight. Some do it via the crash diet method – not very effective but it looks good in the short run. Some do long term cuts. In Dell’s case they can cut a good number of accountants because they no longer need to be SOX complaint.

In Dell’s case, it is because they want to head in a different direction. I know some of their divisions have been hiring and are continuing to hire as Dell expands into new markets. I am going to guess that over 5 years that these will more or less net to zero. (I am making a lot of assumptions here – like Mr. Dell’s plan works and Dell grows.)

Re:Now that it is private?

[alexander_686]

Not in Dell’s case. Private does not mean personal property. Dell has other owners then Mr. Dell and owes other people fiduciary duty – such as the bond holders. So not frogs, and there is less of a difference between short term and long term profits.

Risk is one thing that Mr. Dell has better control, as in “let’s dump or PC business and strike out for new grounds.” Dell could squeeze a lot of profits out of a declining PC business at low risk. Warren Buffett was able to do so with Berkshire Hathaway – you know – the company that made broadcloth.

Re:Now that it is private?

[Talderas]

Cash flow is similar but different from profit. It's even more important than profit. In general, your cash flow is a much better indicator of the healthiness of the business because it represents the ability to purchase goods and make investments. Dell recently made a lot of acquisitions which cuts severely into their cash flow. When you hear that they're trying to maximize cash flow there's trying to recover a drop, likely significant, in cash flow due to all those acquisitions.

Cash flow represents the company's ability to fund its operations. Let's look at an example. Let's say a company has $5,000,000 in cash. They produce widgits which sell for $10,000 and cost $5,000 to produce meaning each unit sold has a profit of $5,000. Right now the company has the ability to produce 1,000 widgits a year and has currently has 250 widgits built and delivered on net terms (a profit of $1,250,000). The company is seeing demand for their widgits and they can't produce enough to meet the demand. So they get a loan to expand their operation by another 100 units and spend $4,000,000 of their cash. They now have $1,000,000 in cash and the capacity for 1,100 widgits a year. The problem the company has is that it can only produce 200 widgits with its on hand cash which is only 18% of their annual production. Translated that means they can run the business a maximum production for just over 2 months. At this point its entirely on accounts receivables to hound the buyers for them to pay for the widgit. That $1,250,000 could run production for another couple months and if they fail to get those payments in the company is going to have to lower production to preserve cash (taking loans for operating expenses is not usually a good idea). That means fewer units produced which means fewer employee work hours which means employee hours are cut or employees are laid off.

But they still need more H1-B Visas, right?

[TWiTfan]

I bet he'll still go to Congress this year and tell them that he needs more visa to import more indentured servants.

And?

[Dan East]

PC sales have been steadily declining for years. Large PC maker lays off employees. And? Same thing happened at record player companies. And typewriter companies. And factories that produced film. If you want to complain about something, the complain about how Dell couldn't turn itself into Apple or Google. Laying off people is the only way to save the company at this point in time.

This is slanted wrong

[rjejr]

Usually when big companies make big moves like this their stock price goes up as they are cutting costs. This article makes it osund like it would have been a bad thing to fire people while it was still a publicly traed company. Publicly traded companies fire people all the time, it' snot better or worse or different now that they are private.

To make an omelette...

[The123king]

you have to break a few eggs. Dell is one of the american computing greats, and it would be a very sad day to see it taken over or file for bankruptcy. So in order to turn a company with more money leaks than a welsh allotment, you have to fire people and rearrange departments. Apple did it in 1997, Microsoft will do it in the next few years (hopefully), IBM's been doing it since IBM made computers. If Dell wants to become more than just a hardware manufacturer and OEM for Windows, they need to cut back and re-evolve. I have great expectations of Dell since it's gone private. I hope my expectations are realised...

We are ALL Temporary employees

[Moof123]

The head of engineering at a former job told the crowd after a nasty layoff "We are ALL temporary employees" several times over.

Get used to it. In most jobs your loyalty is purchased in 2 week increments. Check your contract, or rather your lack thereof.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[ubersoldat2k7]

That's one of the reasons I cannot feel any sort of loyalty to any company I've worked for ever and I laugh at those who do.

I'm a "soldier of fortune" (yes, I've been called that in pre-job/post-job interviews) but it's all business at the end of the day and your beloved company won't feel any regret of firing my or your ass when the gods of the spreadsheets declare their thirst for blood. Hell, even Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, which the guy founded.

Also, all that crap about corporate values: I don't give a fuck! The only way I'm staying somewhere is because I'm either better paid or because I have better conditions, if that's not the case, I'm gone. And so do you.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[some old guy]

That's probably the best piece of advice you could ever give any kid embarking on his/her career. My son is still in middle school, and he's free of any delusions about employer-employee relationships.

In a sense we're all just prostitutes peddling our time and assets to sleazy, uncaring creeps.

This is in no way meant to be insulting to prostitutes. I can respect a good honest hooker.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[ebno-10db]

Get used to it.

Fuck getting used to it. You should deal with the reality of it, but "getting used to it" means thinking of it as something that's reasonable. That's bull. A few decades ago this was not the norm. Large successful companies didn't do it. IBM started a "no layoffs" policy during the Great Depression and IIRC they did okay afterwards. This "we are all temporary employees" has nothing to do with any essential new business requirements, and everything to do with politics and a shift back towards the Gilded Age.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[RabidReindeer]

Our employees are our greatest assets.

And we think we'll liquidate some assets today.

Re:We are ALL Temporary employees

[floobedy]

Fuck getting used to it. You should deal with the reality of it, but "getting used to it" means thinking of it as something that's reasonable. That's bull.

It certainly is reasonable. A company which sees its business decline, needs to lay off employees, or it will go out of business and everyone will get laid off.

Unless you as a consumer (and many other consumers besides) are willing to commit to buying Dells every few years no matter what, Dell may undergo a decline in sales and may need to lay off employees.

Large successful companies didn't do it.

Dell is not a successful company, or it wouldn't be in these circumstances. The question is what the large unsuccessful companies must do.

Large unsuccessful companies have always laid off employees in the face of declines. There is no way around it. For example, GM had one million employees in the 1960s and has 1/4th that number now. The railroad industry was shedding massive numbers of employees in the 1970s. The shipping industry was shedding massive numbers of employees after containerization arrived. IBM was shedding massive numbers of jobs during the 1990s, as mainframes did poorly. This has always been a part of capitalism.

I'm not a young man, and I knew an old guy who was a telegraph operator for much of his life. Unless you, as a consumer, are willing to pay about $1 for 10 bytes of data transmitted, it was necessary to lay him off, and for him to get a different job. Unless you as a consumer are willing to pay far more than is necessary to support redundant jobs, layoffs will be necessary. It isn't even up to the company. It's a matter of accounting. No business can take large losses and survive for very long. If layoffs are disallowed then the business will just go under more quickly.

Company's soul is no longer owned by the Devil.

[jageryager]

This is slanted wrong. Public companies have share holders to answer to. They've sold their soul to the devil, AKA: Share holders who almost always buy shares to make money.

A private holder, a guy who is already rich, he can do what he wants. Maybe try to make money. Maybe try a long term growth strategy that won't make money for a few years. Maybe keep people on the payroll who should be layed off now, just so they will be ready to go to work in 6 months. I'd be way more critical of what public companies do to make money than I would be critical of private companies.

There are quite a few examples of privately held companies going the extra mile for their employees at the expense of short term profits.

Re:good

[Chrisq]

maybe a house in austin will be affordable again

Compared to most of America, in fact the Western world, its pretty affordable anyway.

Re:For Example

[ShadyG]

"In November 2001, Malden Mills declared bankruptcy after the recession at the beginning of the new year left the company unable to pay creditors—related to its rebuilding and payroll commitments."

Such a terrible summary

[tom229]

... with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows. ..

I'm going to assume the author meant "recently private company", and "maximizing revenue" as this would be the only way that sentence would make sense. Of course, even after the corrections, the author is still wrong. The major problem with public companies is that shareholders only care about relatively short term profits. This usually narrows the focus of any business to doing whatever makes this quarter better than last quarter. Being private is a huge advantage precisely because it allows you to look at the bigger picture beyond short term profits. Terrible summary.

Come on

[Workaphobia]

Jesus, the summary's written like an indictment of capitalism. "The only thing that matters now is money", as if that weren't the stated purpose of every company. Dell's not a charity created for its employees. And even if it were, can you argue that this wouldn't be in the best interest of the remaining ones, so that the company still exists a few years from now?

I get the whole Let's-hate-on-private-capital bent. Sure, Mitt Romney was a tool. But you're really not helping your credibility with this Corporations-are-evil hippyism.

Moderator Help

[briancox2]

Could someone help me figure out how to mod this story as flame bait?

Seriously. Claiming that only private companies can "get away with doing this" is so ridiculous that it can only be construed as an attempt to rile people up.