Of course, the conventional wisdom is to dump the privates and keep the
generals, because you can get new privates more easily than you can get new
generals. And in a variation of the Ma Joad philosophy, in a pinch a general
can do a private's job, but a private probably cannot do a general's job.
And this doesn't factor in the differences in value of an incompetent
general vs. a high-achieving private.

But "corporate memory" is a valuable asset: if you hire a new machinist, he
generally doesn't need to know anything about the company in order to
immediately become productive. All he needs to know is how to run his
particular machine (and I am not denigrating the contributions of
machinists). However, the production manager that the machinist works for
doesn't need to know very much about the machines on the shop floor, but he
does need to know a great deal about the company, notably such things as
seasonal variances in production requirements, new products that will
require shop floor changes, things like that.

So it goes...

And on a personal and unrelated note: George, based on a misidentification
on my part, a short while back I insulted you ("argue with a fence post"). I
have since become aware that it was someone else who had that unpleasant
characteristic, and I feel I owe you an apology. Please consider one
extended...




"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message
...


Jay Honeck wrote:

Perhaps this is why they are no longer employing so many people?

There was certainly a distinct feeling to that effect amongst low-level
employees. I
recall during some of the 2002 layoffs, it was explained to a friend of
mine that
they were laying off low-level employees, but they were keeping their
managers so
that they would have their strategy layer intact and could "spring ahead"
when the
economy improved. Her opinion of this was that the people they were
keeping were the
people who were responsible for the company's problems.

I still wouldn't go that far, but I *did* roll over the company stock in
my 401K to
another fund a while back.

George Patterson
If you don't tell lies, you never have to remember what you said.