SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - This is what happens when HR and marketing run your company.

Actually HR and marketing have very little to do with it. HR has no idea how a company makes its money, they're too specialized to see the big picture at all. They are a service industry within a company, not one which determines the direction a company goes. They do as they are told and that's about it.

Marketing also is a service function. They take products shoved at them by the real decision makers and make silk purses out of sows' ears. They don't decide which products to market. They're strictly a propeller, not a rudder.

The problem now is the ascendancy of the bean counter: the yellow brick road from CFO to CEO that shifts companies' focus from service to customers, support of their community, value to society and ethical treatment of employees to simple manipulation of dollars and cents. Without the sense to realize the source of those dollars and cents.

These bean counters are a certain personality type. They don't get along well with others, they view success in terms of power and control. They have no idea how their company makes money (by serving its employees and customers). They don't know how to motivate people except by fear and uncertainty, the very two things that kill companies dead. Instead they know how to manage ledger accounts, the most important of them being expenses. By cutting expenses they can produce an immediate spike in company profits.

Of course they have achieved that by dumping their oldest, most experienced employees who care deeply about their company, replacing them with cheap outsiders who couldn't care less and are going to engage in a destructive backstabbing routine to get to the top by any means necessary. They kill research and development as "too expensive." They eliminate non-core functions like cafeterias, in-house maintenance and construction, employee credit unions, anything that lends a positive culture to the workplace. They're unneeded expenses.

So based on the products the former workforce produced, the company is mondo profitable for five years. The fearless leader retires with big multi-million dollar pension, a hero in his own crippled mind. And the company either ceases to exist or is a decimated hulk with the old name on it in 10 years.

You can't get fat by eating your own tail. Eventually you run out of tail and begin eating vital organs. But by then you've already convinced yourself you're fat and happy with no need to find food. And you die.

Unfortunately, thousands of workers also suffer first before you get your just reward. Poeple should be in prison for this crime against civilization.