Executive Decisions

DETROIT - Ford Motor Co. is selling its storied Jaguar and Land Rover brands to India's Tata Motors Ltd. in a deal that will net the U.S. automaker $1.7 billion — roughly a third of the price it paid for the two luxury brands.

For some reason, it's assumed that the highest paid executives in business are not complete retards. That is not the case.

How much money do you think the top executives received for a business deal that lost some 5 billion dollars? I'm sure.. millions and millions.

Ultimately, executive pay is a scam, and most of these "wise" and "professional" executives are just idiots like everyone else.. but have a skill for worming their way through the corporate political climate.. through making deals with one another.. until they eventually end up in a place where they convince people to pay them absurd money.

Nearly every manager I've ever worked for was in every way intellectually inferior to myself, and that's not blowing my own horn. It's just the reality that when managers decide what to do with a retard, the easiest way to keep them from fucking up the work is to make them a manager that doesn't do the work anymore.

I worked 7 years for a company where the "executive vice president" was really stupid. We'll call this company JLA. That's actually an abbreviation for the actual company name. She just happened to be friends with the company founder, JL, but was dumb as a box of rocks. We all kept wondering why she kept hiring managers that were also dumb as a box of rocks. It occurred to me that Jan (may or may not be her actual name), didn't want to hire any middle managers that were bright because it would make her look stupid. Jan didn't understand we already knew she was stupid.

Eventually, the company founder sold the company to another company, but Jan stayed on, desperately trying to demonstrate to the new company management that she wasn't an idiot. This worked for a couple years until she moved on to god knows where.

The company founder was divorced, but both her and her husband still "managed" the company. I was good friends with a middle manager who started an affair with the ex-husband. They eventually married. The company founder decided to sit in her running car in a closed garage one day, ending her involvement with the company she founded. Her ex-husband had a massive heart attack and died a year or so later.. and the hot piece of ass middle manager friend of mine ended up inheriting everything.

And I LOL'd when I showed up at her house for the wake. She went from nothing to a mansion in like a year and a half because she knew who to fuck.

Oh.. and the company was committing massive fraud of government funds for years. I was young and stupid and didn't realize that you can turn them in and get a cut of the recovered fraud funds. I always miss out on the good opportunities.

Anyway.. 'nuff with the story..

Ultimately, there's two ways of getting wealthy in business. If you're a super smart geeky type, you invent something and patent it and sell it for a mint. If you're not so smart, it helps to have "people" skills.. that is, the ability to convince people you are not full of shit, even when you are. This is an interesting skill, because the people that you are bullshitting are generally not very bright, so you kind of dumb yourself down to their level.

I've always been thought of as arrogant, because I refuse to dumb down for other people. It's kind of nice that most of the people I work with now are roughly on my same level, so that's not much of a problem anymore.

Anyway.. the point is.. the sad state of American business where losing vast amounts of money is highly rewarded. When you have a president who is a fucking moron, it sort of defines the climate of the right-wing movement in business and politics.

I need coffee.