volski

In more extreme cases, look at John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Rockefeller used to be the wealthiest person in the world (according to some, if you inflation adjust his money, he may have been the wealthiest person in the last 200 years). His company was broken into parts in order to promote competition.

John D. Rockefeller actually ended up being a lot richer because the courts broke up Standard Oil[1]. He went from having a controlling stake in the most powerful company in oil, to having a controlling stake in most of the powerful companies in the whole oil industry (ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell). I just wanted to clarify that point because the order in which your statement was crafted kind of made it seem like the courts broke up his wealth when they actually expanded it.

1.Rockefeller, who had rarely sold shares, held over 25% of Standard’s stock at the time of the breakup. He, as well as all stockholders, received proportionate shares in each of the 34 companies...The companies’ combined net worth rose fivefold and Rockefeller’s personal wealth jumped to $900,000,000.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller

>That he complained that he "never even got a card" meant that he was not even appreciated by his manager

"I kind of forced him" to celebrate holidays, Rogers said.

That quote kind of puts a different perspective on it. His roommate had to force holidays on him, so is it a wonder his manager didn't give him cards? Maybe that's just the way he came off.

"He might not have meant something to somebody else, but he was like family to us. He meant something to us." - Dayhoff, his boss at Crab Shack. That sounds like he appreciated him to me. Quit acting like you guys care about Neil Smith more than his no-wage-raising, no-bonus-giving, no-card-giving manager. That guy actually lost somebody, you guys didn't. So don't be so quick to call him uncaring.

The real question you should be asking is if his pay is so low, why didn't he get another job? There's a reason he stayed.

Did he deserve it? Maybe, the article mentioned he started out as a waiter and (moved up?) to dishwasher. Maybe dishwasher paid more, who knows. But my whole point is a manager in a restaurant has less control over raises than you seem to suggest.

Yea I'm sure the manager who probably makes 10 an hour can just start giving people raises at will. How aggravating indeed.

>Of course I can always ask on the web, but having to break off from coding, pose a question, and then wait for it to get answered before I can continue really breaks up my learning curve.

You're skipping a vital step. Searching for the answer on the web. Most of the time the question you want to ask has already been answered.

He has a PhD in physics, not math.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Witten

When looking at an idea it’s useful to ask yourself: “Would it have been possible to build this company 12-18 months ago?”

This reads like a list of stuff that has been possible for a lot longer than 12-18 months:

  Direct Access To Customers
  Anything as a Service
  Always Connected
  Zero Barrier Distribution
  Social Context
  Assume The Device Is Portable
  Location Aware...

Windows Live, Bing, Xbox, Servers, Cloud Services...

It's easy to bash on them, but they make quality products in a diverse range of markets. Sure they fail and fail big, but who the hell doesn't? If you have made anything successful, you've probably failed 100s of times. It comes with the territory.

Maybe that's the problem at Microsoft: they think they can solve problems by throwing lots of people at them. They put together large teams to build products. And large teams require managers.

I didn't know Microsoft had a problem, they seem to be doing pretty well. They have some good products. Apple being successful doesn't necessarily translate to Microsoft sucking. They are both damn good companies.