Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
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"Tazzy, imagine if his "boss" the drug store manager was a high school dropout! OWWWW, that would hurt!"
I just had to jumpthrough to respond to this.
Depending on where you go and what you know, many might be surprised at how many successful business owners are dropouts, and even convicted felons. I attribute this to two main factors. Dropouts and felons have a harder time getting hired than most, well maybe not so "most" these days. What's more, those who do not respond well to a formal education don't necessarily stop learning. But it seems in some cases practical experience teaches more effectively than a classrom when it comes to certain subjects, or students.
I have no idea of Bill Gates' level of education. I know a few things about his claim to fame to see what he really did. The main thing he did was to compel payment for his product. Others did not, enabling him to steal the GUI. He bought DOS for a song and dance, and there is still a form of it underneath Gates' baby, Windows. It used to be considered just another DOS shell. I think it still is in reality. And when the Windows 9X series started, most of that had been already done by a company called Quarterdeck years before. It was called Desqview and had almost every feature of Win 95, several years earlier. They just didn't have two things. Security and promotion. For those two issues, he has become one of the richest people in the US. And even handling those two issues was not all him, they were delegated to the right people who did their job right.
How can a school teach that ? School may have taught Ross Perot how to program, but did it give him the idea that propelled him to his piece of the pie ? I think not. Farnswoth may have not dropped out, but concieved and designed the television before graduation. No letters after his name at the time. Bob Carver dropped out of MIT, became head of Phase Linear but had to go because he was at odds with the rest of the company about certain aspects of the design of their product. In about a year he had his own company with his own name on it.
Maybe it's true that many of these MBAs and such should be flipping burgers instead of holding many people's futures in their hand. And let's not even get into politicians, most of whom couldn't successfully run a lemonade stand.
Make me the head of GM and I'll show you. First thing I'll do is light a cigarette. They will say that it is not allowed, so I'll tell the head of the legal dept. to go make himself useful and change that, NOW. Then the rest get an earful. How the fuck are we getting beat in the market ? Because everybody else is selling something people need. They don't need a user configurable LCD dash that will fuck up in two years. If they don't get premium sound, don't give them any, just shave about $300 off the MSRP and 99% of them will have an aftermarket installed anyway. Don't waste our precious wire. Make the cars so that when the AC fucks up, they can just take the belt off. Put the alternator on the top of the engine, the 3.4 rat engine was a fucking embarrasment. A flea sized alternator which requires the removal of the engine to replace. That's' bullsit. We need an ECM, nothing more. We don't need to remember seven different personal setting for the seats, nor detailed records every time the window is open. Steel rims, no ABS and drum brakes in the rear. Get back to what worked. Because it certainly isn't working now. And we are getting out of the banking business. Let the unions handle retirement and the real banks handle the credit. Unless our dealers want to. We can make the arraingments for that once the head mouthpiece gets back.
And I am almost joking here - put ashtrays in the damn cars. People who don't smoke will throw spare change and candy wrappers in them. And give them floor mats, unlike Ford who tried not to include them except at extra cost. There is no way we can build these things for much under ten grand, so if we can't include ashtrays and floor mats shame on us.
We need a small class of cars and SUVs. Both 4 door and 2 door. Make them all identical in the front. Simplify, make the lenses for the tailights and other running lights all the same and available cheap. This makes insurance cheaper which will enhance saleability for some. In this small class of cars everything is identical from the front bumper to the dash.
Now everyone go drink lunch and we'll rap about this. In the next few days we will talk about our luxury line. And next week, we work on the truck problem. We make a decent truck, but Ford is kicking our ass and if you knuckleheads can't do something about it, I'll find someone who can.
And make them not rust so fast. Make the drivetrain good for at least 300,000 miles, I want a transferrable 150,000 mile warranty on everything that makes our cars go. I want them easily servicable. With these resale value holding up, in a matter of years maybe every motherfucker in the country will be driving our cars and trucks. Oh, and one other thing, I want the headlight switch to be like it was in 1965, pull the damn thing to turn them on. Turn for dash brightness, all the way to the left for courtesy lights. You can keep the wiper contol on the column though, and I want one of the literally hardest to steal cars in the world. I mean mechanically, not tied in with the ECM.
Then sit back and watch what happens. It is a simple idea. Instead of cost driven pricing, we are going to use price driven costing. The Japs did it to us decades ago, wake up or ship out. Get this done for us and expect bonuses. Don't, no golden parachute. Fired means fired. Get it got it good.
Show that to an MBA and he will think I'm crazy, at least in this country. Show it to execs at Toyota or Honda they will probably want to hire me. The idea is to give them the space and somewhat facilitate the addition of aftermarket accesories, which many people do anyway. Give them options. The small engine has to get exceptional mileage, and be "peppy" enough to get out in traffic. The bigger engine I want winning races. The trucks are a whole different story.
And let the dealers also put most of these accesories in, we build cars and we are going to stick with what we know. Hopefully we know it.
But no, a guy who has to work out the bracketry (to hold the alternator and shit) needs to know about geology and do equationms like 2pi^6.2/D*T, solve for D. Bunch of bullshit. Build the damn brackets and get the whole bunch of belts and just see what size fit if you must, just make it easy to service.
When the resale value gets so high, we will win. Not only because of the perception of the new purchasers, but the fact that our former customers won't sell their cars because they have some faith in them, that they will be reliable and easy to maintain.
I remember when my buddy was looking for a big Z71 back in like 1995. He could not find one for sale for love nor money. His choices were to buy a new one which cost big bucks, or settle for a Dodge. He settled for the Dodge and constantly bitched about it. As the head of GM I would consider it that we got our pockets picked for about twenty grand. And the culprit was us.
Show me one school that can teach me that.
Oh and don't get me wrong, options would be available out the gazoob, but would be pricey and of very high quality.
Choices are prime with the buying public. We need to have everything from a 40MPG shitcan to something like a 1990s Buick Roadmaster. Make them as big as a Lincoln. Just make less of them and charge more. Make a shitload of shitcans, intermediates and such, but all our luxury cars are a limited edition. Whatever design approach is taken, the core philosophy is to keep the resale value up. Keep parts available and cheap, we don't want our cars scrapped. Get it ?
Yup these school taughten wonders are just so successful aren't they. And then, each and every car or truck we build comes with a specific list of all foreign made parts in it, with their approximate price. Bring the option back to buy American. I can see fuel injectors from Germany, certain other things, but on the whole, make it all here. Make it known. It's getting so ridiculous now that foreign cars are likely to have more "American" made components in them than foreign cars. This is a bunch of shit.
T
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RE: You never know who's working at the drugstore. - 
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