[mistrial9]

I distinctly recall a USA top-ten business school with an ad for "Financial Engineering MBA" (yes, real math) showing a small, smiling brown-skinned woman in Fortune 500 business attire. At the same time, top management at GE mentioned "financial engineering" as a strength in the business press.

Perhaps it is an obvious evolution of their complex asset leasing models from forty years ago to "financial engineering", but the implications of a USA engineering firm, outsourcing all the work and focusing on money tricks instead.. it just shouts everything that went wrong with American Business, to me.

[stickfigure]

I think it's a mistake to imagine GE as some sort of monolithic "engineering firm". GE is a huge conglomerate with business in countless different industries (trains, nuclear plants, chemicals, light bulbs, jet engines, health care, missiles, oil & gas... the list just goes on). There's no way the MBA team at the top can have the faintest idea what's going on in each of those companies, engineering-wise.

It's better to think of GE as a mutual fund. Management and financial engineering is what holds it together.

[hogFeast]

2007 called. They want their insight back. GE sold off GE Capital over a decade now. None of the "financial engineering" relates to leases (although the dodgy accounting often does...but that is something else).

Financial engineering is usually concerned with building and valuing pointless derivatives.

In most cases, the derivative will pay equity-like returns with low volatility or income (stupid financial advisers go nuts for both). Invariably, these products self-destruct in a crisis (when the lads are off in their Ferraris) due to some bizarre optionality that is built in.

The other side is valuation which is about employing a combination of inapplicable maths with a wilful ignorance of common sense (usually to satisfy regulators who will approve your bullshit and then come to work with you next year to make up more nonsense).

The first task is dressing the pig up. The second task is inventing a mathematical formula that explains why the pig is actually a human. French banks are pretty much ground zero for this (I have no idea why).

Also, nothing is particularly wrong with American business. Most firms are not involved in anything like this, and when they do get involved it is rarely a case of them deciding to do so. They do so because they feel they have no other choice (i.e. engineering firms provide finance so that people buy their stuff, GE Capital existed because of the torrent of cheap money that flooded the market in the 2000s). The general move to greater financial efficiency, however, has been a massive boon (look at places that haven't done that...Japan is a great example, you want to work 12 hours for a day for like $35k/year?).

[msbarnett]

> GE sold off GE Capital over a decade now.

They did? TFA (and Markopolus’ report) doesn’t seem to reflect that:

> In January 2018, GE reported a $6.2 billion charge based on liabilities in its long-term care business, which is run by the company’s financial services unit, GE Capital. To make up for the costs, GE Capital said it needed to set aside $15 billion to hold against potential losses, and stopped paying a dividend to its parent company for the “foreseeable future.”

A cursory glance at Wikipedia suggests some subdivisions were sold off between 2015 and 2017, which is...not the whole thing and definitely not “over a decade ago”

[rockinghigh]

GE did not sell all of GE Capital; they are still in business and part of GE. From GE's answer to Markopolos:

> The Company ended the second quarter with $16.9B of Industrial Cash excluding BHGE, $12.5B of liquidity at GE Capital and access to $35B of credit facilities.

https://www.genewsroom.com/press-releases/ge-addresses-claim...

[nosianu]

> nothing is particularly wrong with American business

I am in no position to argue and it is not my intention to do so. Instead, I have a question based on things I (causally) read.

For example, this piece from a conservative source: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/americas-mo...

Sample quote serving as TL;DR:

> In fact, the destruction of America’s once vibrant military and commercial industrial capacity in many sectors has become the single biggest unacknowledged threat to our national security. Because of public policies focused on finance instead of production, the United States increasingly cannot produce or maintain vital systems upon which our economy, our military, and our allies rely.

It is not really only about the military, but about a larger context. They seem to be quite concerned about the industrial base of the US, including in high-tech industries. In support of their point, when I look up chip manufacturing capacity worldwide - https://anysilicon.com/semiconductor-wafer-capacity-per-regi... - Asia is 75% and the US ~10%.

What is your opinion about the point made by the article? In the larger context, not necessarily the military focus.

[coliveira]

The US has since the 80s adopted an economic strategy that favors financial investments instead of industrial production - for example, very low taxes are charged for financial investments. The advantage of this is that financial investments give higher returns. The disadvantage is that such investments are detrimental to industrial production, as capital will try to relocate industry to places where production is cheaper and concentrate only on the financial engineering of the business. This is effectively what happened, since there is no advantage for American capital to start producing things when investors can just put their money in other places for higher returns. This affects even companies such as Apple, which is not at all concerned with finance. As a result of such policies there will be with very little industry left in the US (other than the essencial that cannot be relocated) and production will continue going to other places -- and those places are in Asia.

[cc439]

I'm glad to see that article is slowly making the rounds through circles such as this. The implications of the facts presented by that author should terrify anyone concerned about the future of the US and yet the clearly detrimental practices of a company like TransDigm are virtually unreported despite investigations conducted against them at the highest level. The picture painted by Stroller and Kunce is very bleak, so bleak in fact, that I'd say part of the reason issues like this go unreported is because there would be mass panic should the public at-large ever become aware of just how broken everything is.

[yold__]

> GE sold off GE Capital over a decade now.

No, they spun off some of their LTC and Life Insurance business into Genworth, which, incidentally is suffering from some pretty severe LTC woes themselves.

LTC is literally the textbook case study in shitty actuarial assumptions. A combination of low interest rates, huge medical expense inflation, adverse experience (i.e. people staying on claim for 2x as long), and low lapse rates have bankrupted at least one insurer in the last two years (Coloniel Penn). Genworth may be next.

GE's auditor KPMG has had some "strikes" against them in recent years that are bad enough to draw attention from the PCAOB.

[hangonhn]

It's inaccurate to say that GE outsourced all their engineering. That's not true at all. GE Aviation is a powerhouse and their engineering abilities is still world class. Despite all of China's advancements, creating engines like the type GE Aviation created is still beyond their reach (although they will eventually catch up).

GE Power made a bad bet against renewables and went with gas but that's a business mistake, not an engineering one. They recently hit a milestone with one of their biggest wind turbines. So they're slowly fixing themselves. This is again a management error, not a lack of engineering abilities.

GE Healthcare is still a leader in their field and also VERY valuable (along with Aviation, these two parts are the best parts of GE).

What the problem for GE is that they've saddled themselves with financial engineering and moved away from their core competency to generate the numbers they want. At one point that made a lot of sense because it enabled their customers to make those large capital investments but then GE managers started using GE financial engineering to smooth over earning reports. Anyone remember when GE was the darling of Wall Street? GE was touted as this well managed firm that gave steady dividends. Well part of that steady dividend and growth came from these financial engineering methods and rather opaque accounting practices (to be fair other companies did similar things).

I can't tell you if GE is a good investment or not. I am long on GE but this new report is pretty damning but as someone pointed out, the person behind the report is far from neutral. Then again, having followed GE for so long (I was long on them starting 2008, sold it all before the plunge, and now long again), there are no real neutral voices in this debate. This though is the fault of GE management, which is not as transparent as they should be.

[swframe2]

I'm curious. Why are you still long on GE given today's news? Do you disagree with Markopolos' findings?

[hangonhn]

Some of the counter points to the report holds water. The interest of Markopolos isn't neutral. And some long time observers have pointed out mistakes in his report. Accusation of accounting issues with GE isn't entirely new. GE is a beast and it's not transparent enough so that leaves a lot of room for speculation. It's probably one of the most divisive stocks out there (strong opinions on both sides). I think people with an interest in shorting it assumes the worst and vice versa.

Also, the CEO purchased a whole bunch of shares before the report and again after the report. He is probably well positioned to know GE fairly well. It's not a necessary move on his part but it does signal some confidence in GE. Also, having watched him, I can see some inflection points. If you were to graph "sentiment" of news for GE for the past couple of years, it would be kind of a parabola: lots of negatives, then less negative, then it's mixed, and now it's more of "not good enough" (although today was a hugely negative one).

In the end it's still a gamble. I'm not betting the house on it -- it's in fact a tiny percentage of my portfolio (I generally stick with index funds) but sometimes I like to keep myself honest by putting some skin in the game along with my opinions.

[piva00]

> Also, the CEO purchased a whole bunch of shares before the report and again after the report. He is probably well positioned to know GE fairly well. It's not a necessary move on his part but it does signal some confidence in GE.

Couldn't this be seen as a PR move to do damage mitigation and earn market confidence? As you mentioned that it's an opaque company accounting-wise it'd be hard to evaluate this objectively but the CEO of a possibly fraudulent company buying stocks to earn the market confidence seems to be a very low price to avoid the possible side-effects if the allegations are true.

[hangonhn]

It's totally a PR move but it certainly does increase his exposure to the fortunes of GE. His ability to sell his shares are limited by his position as CEO. I also imagine that if the frauds were real and gone on for as long as the report states, the first thing a new CEO would do is to expose them because otherwise he will be on the hook for the frauds committed by his predecessors. (Culp was a successful CEO at a very successful company before taking the helm of GE)

[breck]

It makes me sad every time I see strong American businesses getting into the "financial engineering" business. It's not just GE. Every time I take a flight nowadays the attendants come around pitching some airline branded credit card; you buy a shirt at a clothing store and are asked to sign up for a credit card; buying diapers at Target--"do you want to sign up for the Target debit card"?

American banks and "financial engineers" are good at screwing over the 80% of the population, and transferring wealth to the 1%, and the fact that they are able to pull in great American companies into their schemes is embarrassing, disheartening, and in the case of GE Capital, foreboding.

For decades they were screwing me over and then when I joined the 1% it was suddenly, "hey, come open a bank account with us and we'll give you $5K!" Shameless.

[mikestew]

The onslaught is so constant, I sometimes just want to scream at a clerk, "JFC, what happened to just exchanging money for goods and calling it a day?!" Of course, it's not their fault, the person I want to scream at is well insulated from screaming customers in some corporate office somewhere. But $DEITY forbid the clerk not ask, because someone's numbers will be down. That part will filter right the fuck up to the correct person.

Ignore your twitching knee when I say this, but it's one of the things I like about Apple: "here's some money. Might I have one of those fine devices you have on display?"[0]

"Certainly my good sir! Let me fetch one from the back...here you are. Apple Care? No? A fine choice, sir! Have a nice day!"

No cajoling about some card. If you don't want the extended warranty, it's a simple "no" and done. No popups on their internet properties asking to join their mailing list. I give money, they give me stuff. I'm sure there's some dark pattern I've missed, but for the most part the experience seems to be free of such jackassery.

[0] Admittedly, this part needs work lately at their retail stores.

[mey]

Not sure how this will evolve but I will leave this with you

https://www.apple.com/apple-card/

[option]

Yes please, this is the only card I actually want mostly for security, privacy, zero fees and expense tracking reasons.

Disclaimer: I used to work at Apple in their online services division, and I know first hand that (at least during that time) they cared a lot about privacy (often against short to medium term financial gains)

[breck]

This does make me sad. The shift away from hardware and software to "services" and "financial products".

Despite the fact that I want the banks to be disrupted, I'd rather have a Stripe or Square or Coinbase etc do it, and have Apple focus on other things.

[nothatsfalse]

Oh God no! Not Square at least. They'll happily send your financial statements to random other people, then act like it's completely normal that they did that, and really weird that you're upset about it. Plus their customer service (for end users who buy products, not the merchants) is extremely adversarial. They have a really shitty chat bot that is the only way to contact them to get help when they screw something up. It's awful and very anti-consumer.

[mikestew]

Yeah, I signed up for that the day the beta invite hit my inbox. See above for reasons why. We'll see how it goes.

[listenallyall]

When you get the device home you'll need (edit: be asked) to sign up for an Apple ID and an iCloud account, I believe? They may not bother you at the point of sale but that's only because they know you'll be giving up your private info soon enough.

[nothatsfalse]

You believe incorrectly. If you want to use some other services for email, streaming, etc., you need neither an AppleID nor an iCloud account to use any of your Apple devices. They may ask you to enter or create one, but I haven't seen a case where there isn't a (small hard to see) way to opt-out.

[listenallyall]

They're still asking you for all that info. Saying no to a checkout clerk is easier and faster than finding the "hard to see" (your words) opt-out, which may only suppress the request for a week or month before popping up again.

[CamperBob2]

Your examples are an inherent part of the value proposition. With an Apple ID and an iCloud account you can do much more with your device than you otherwise could. Customers who buy into the Apple ecosystem need to be assigned an identity within that ecosystem, and most people understand that. If it bothers you, you can always decline, or buy some other phone or computer.

There is no room whatsoever to compare Apple IDs with being force-fed sales pitches for unrelated items while trapped in an aluminum tube at 30,000 feet.

If you wanted to tilt at this particular windmill, Microsoft account IDs would be a better horse to ride. They provide little or no value to most Windows users, but the company does everything it can to drag you into their ecosystem.

[listenallyall]

All your examples are marketing ideas and promotions. Nothing at all to do with financial engineering. As much as you seem to enjoy complaining, surely your favorite companies engage in the practice -- hedging currency risk, locking in stable fuel prices, avoiding interest rate shocks.

[breck]

> - hedging currency risk, locking in stable fuel prices, avoiding interest rate shocks.

I like these things. I have a lot of friends who are very passionate about finance and do very hard and valuable work in domains like that. Some do truly extraordinary work that goes on completely behind the scenes and makes markets serve businesses better.

I guess what I don't like is when non-financial businesses get into the business of offering financial products. I would hope operationally they take advantage of smart financial engineering on the backend, but instead of spending valuable time in front of customers talking about credit cards, they should be talking about the thing they make (engines, air travel, clothing, retail, respectively).

(Note: perhaps there's a better term for what I'm complaining about than "financial engineering")

[rolltiide]

Airline branded credit cards are not the same as store branded credit cards and none of this has to do with financial engineering. None of the comments in this thread do.

[ilikehurdles]

You're probably right about that not being "financial engineering", as I wasnt familiar with the term prior to this article.

But other than airline rewards being generally valued more than store rewards, how are they different? I guess I can always tell the store worker "no thanks" before they start the annoying pitch, while the loud sales pitch on airlines is unskippable, blasted through everyone's audio system, and often happens when people are trying to sleep.

[rolltiide]

just more fungible and improve travel experience and status. the cards themselves are more prestigious too and also accepted everywhere. not too much of a difference after that.

consider noise cancelling headphones that aren't connected to the airplane media system

[ryanjshaw]

> it just shouts everything that went wrong with American Business, to me.

Quite the opposite. Sound financial management implies financial engineering. I recommend you study and understand the field before criticising it; it's not "tricks" at all.

[jacobolus]

As an uninformed outside observer, I have seen a large number of companies that used to pride themselves on product quality, customer support, and treating workers well get bought by private equity or other finance guys (or maybe sometimes just taken over from inside), shed everyone competent, focus on cost cutting and nickel-and-diming customers, and start producing garbage products with no support, transforming the relationship with customers into a largely adversarial one.

In many cases the finance guys have (legally?) embezzled large amounts of money while loading the companies with debt and then dumped them, leaving customers, employees, suppliers, and other investors holding the bag.

I’m sure this process is considered to be “sound financial management” by some.

[ryanjshaw]

There seems to be an insane amount of misinformation and misunderstanding on this topic. What you and others are describing is not financial engineering. It's corporate raiding, fraud, etc.

I'll list some examples in the field of financial derivatives (speaking here in my personal capacity, not an expert, this is not advice, disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer):

* An oil production company knows they can comfortably operate at a particular price level, P/BBL. They're willing to forego any additional profits provided they can guarantee receiving P/BBL. Commodity swaps make this possible, and it means that people in the industry get to have a reliable job despite the volatility in the market.

* The national airline of a small, poor developing country depends on tourists buying plane tickets in a foreign currency, often months in advance. How can they manage the risk of the exchange rate volatility, when one of their biggest costs are fuel and they have to pay this in yet another foreign currency? Currency derivatives make this possible, and it means this developing country can reliably operate an airline and thereby receive an economic boost from tourism, helping at least some of its citizens make it through another day.

* The CEO of a F500 company knows some bad news is about to hit the market and negatively impact the value of his stock. But he can't sell his shares because he'll be guilty of insider trading. Instead he enters into an equity swap arrangement with some poor sucker who doesn't know about this bad news, and because it's a pre-Dodd Frank Act deal, nobody is the wiser, and our CEO gets to enjoy another stress-free day on the golf course.

As I hope my last tongue-in-cheek example demonstrates, these are just instruments. How they get used and abused is a problem for regulators; they are not inherently evil.

[bumby]

I can appreciate your breakdown and agree with the basic sentiment but the last sentence sounds like a cop-out.

Guns are just tools that poke holes in things. We can't hold the manufacturers responsible for the way they get used.

Fentanyl is just a medical drug. The pharma companies aren't responsible for addiction.

I don't even disagree with your sentiment and I don't necessarily agree or disagree with my silly examples. But I hope you can see why some people would see calling them 'just instruments' can come across as washing ones hands from any responsibility.

[la_barba]

Computers aren't "just tools", you can use them to stalk people online, harass them, hack into computers, etc, etc. Maybe Dell should be checking your mental history, criminal history before selling you a computer too? Just because you can list all the bad things people can do with any object, doesn't give any credence to your argument.

[bumby]

They are "just tools" in the context of the way that term was used in the comment I was responding to.

I'm not sure you were following the point. It was about the culpability of the manufacturer/creator. In your example, it would mean Dell should shoulder some responsibility for somebody misusing their product. The fact is some people think use/trading of certain financial tools should be illegal and that those who caused problems with them should be held responsible. I'm not sure where that line is for financial tools but we already have guardrails in other areas of society to address similar concerns.

[goatinaboat]

Financial Engineering 101

- borrow some money, use it to buy a company.

- transfer the debt onto the company. Now, somehow, you own the company but paid nothing for it.

- break up the company, sell off the parts, keep the money. The company goes bankrupt and the original lenders get nothing

- repeat. Bizarrely you can keep on doing this over and over again, people will still keep lending you the money!

[geodel]

I agree with what you said. I notice that 'engineering/engineered' term have positive connotation as opposed to 'doctoring/doctored'. But with this Financial engineering thing scam artists have taken over 'engineering' now.

[wskinner]

What are your two favorite examples that illustrate this pattern?

[notyourday]

GE would be one.

The other... EAK Ramen in NYC (small chain that landed here a couple of years ago out of LA so I'm sure it is financial engineering at work, not just an owner experimenting). They removed what used to be a standard part of the ramen that came with it ( egg, some toppings ) and started offering removed parts as "customize your own ramen! Add an egg for a $1! Add corn for a $1! Add X for a $1 ) as a way to raise prices by wrapping that into "customization". As if their customers are stupid and don't notice that the same ramen now costs not $14 but $18.

[bumby]

I'm willing to guess the disagreement here is due to the definition what constitutes 'financial engineering'.

I would say most laypeople would agree that using applied mathematics to hedge investments and reduce risk is okay. Most would probably also say that creating overly technical mechanism to obfuscate what is really going on would not be acceptable. I think this is why people cringe at the prospect of more and more derivative financial products being 'engineered' to create value.

I personally say it gets gross from the standpoint that it is almost entirely a field of contrived rules of convenience. In other words, the 'system' is entirely human-created which comes with all the shenanigans humans bring to the table. This is in contrast to traditional engineering disciplines that are generally rooted in some sort of physics. A mechanical engineer can improve their understanding of reality, but cannot wave a magic wand and make different a different reality for their system to operate within.

[StanislavPetrov]

You're right that the definition of "financial engineering" varies widely based on the interests and understanding of the parties flinging it around.

One thing I'd like to point out that not all "financial engineering" involves complex mathematics. For example one of the most widespread instances of "financial engineering" across many if not most large corporations is the issuance of corporate bonds. While some corporations do this because they truly need the cash, most do so as a financial calculation based on their growth projections, the rates of returns on government bonds and other investments. The huge influx of cash raised by this sale of corporate bonds can then be used to buy back stock (inflating the stock price), paying a dividend or even taking straight cash payouts for executives. This all looks good on paper until growth projections turn out lower than expected, there is a disruption in the bond markets, currency markets or anything else that threatens to reduce the ability of the corporatation to make bond payments. This can lead to defaults, liquidation of company assets to pay bond holders or even bankruptcy. However, those executives and stock holders who made massive amounts of cash from the bond issuance, either directly or indirectly (through buybacks which artificially raised the price of the stock) walk away with all that money while the corporation itself (and the workers) are SOL.

[bumby]

All good points. I was considering something like your bond scenario as an example of obfuscation. E.g., a company can fund dividend payouts through debt mechanisms, fooling the uninitiated into thinking they are more profitable than they really are

[hitekker]

For those momentarily misled by this condescending comment:

> Despite its name, financial engineering does not belong to any of the fields in traditional professional engineering

> It is generally (but not always) a disparaging term, implying that someone is profiting from paper games at the expense of employees and investors.

>Many other authors have identified specific problems in financial engineering that caused catastrophes: Aaron Brown[23] named confusion between quants and regulators over the meaning of “capital”, Felix Salmon[24] gently pointed to the Gaussian copula, Ian Stewart[25] criticized the Black-Scholes formula, Pablo Triana[26] dislikes value at risk and Scott Patterson [27][28] accused quantitative traders and later high-frequency traders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_engineering#Criticis...

[TheOtherHobbes]

Except when it is. See also Enron, the Trump "empire", Libor, gold price fixing, the 2008 crash, S&L, and many more.

[ryanjshaw]

Fraud != financial engineering.

[crispyambulance]

GE was once a mighty company with amazing technology and R&D.

Now they're a sad shell of what they used to be and consist of way too many bored finance people on a slowly sinking ship.

[jhayward]

Is that a definition, or a statement that financial engineering has nothing in common with fraud, or some other statement?

From my view the greater the degree of 'financial engineering' in a company's P/L the greater the likelihood that some kind of fraud upon the investor or business partner is being conducted.

[lonelappde]

Let's just say that the fact you thought it important to mention the height of the person in the ad is the first of several clues that your comment is... suspect.

[papito]

"Financial engineering" is pillaging the company while diverting money into ludicrous bonuses and raises at the corporate office.

The top skill of most MBAs is sorting an Excel sheet by salary, in descending order, and deleting the top 10 rows to "restructure".

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

...and the top skill of most tech people is spreading superficial, malignant stereotypes of professions they fail to understand. Those include everything that is not a direct derivative of classical logic and mathematics, because they refuse to consider any creative or social domains to be "real".

Because of this narrow view of the world, the tech crowd is constantly perplexed by the continuing dominance of that other tribe in their organisations as well as society at large. This inferiority complex causes them to indulge in ritualistic in-group demonisation, whereas the reverse manifests mostly in brief interludes of eye-rolling whenever the internet goes down.

[manicdee]

Heh heh.

Reminds me of one CEO of mine proudly holding up a Nokia n95 Navigator and telling us how the iPhone was trash and the n95 was the future of mobile phones. This was his excuse for not signing our retail provider up to sell Apple phones.

Within a couple of years he had left to join the board of a small credit union with his crowning achievement being the introduction of low-balance fees and cash withdrawal fees.

So yes, I am perplexed at how people like this keep getting highly paid executive positions while I am stuck in a damp cell in a poorly lit dungeon.

[papito]

Once you are C-level, you are in the club. It's when you start failing upwards.

[papito]

In all seriousness, my opinion is shaped by experience. I once worked at a startup burning through VC money, run by a Harvard MBA CEO. It was ridiculously wasteful. And these things were obvious to us down in the trenches.

Granted, they don't teach frugality, and these degrees are fairly useless for startups in particular, if not harmful.

[papito]

All correct as well. Hey, I own it.

[jiveturkey]

All large companies, certainly 100% of the Fortune 500, are engaged in financial engineering. That GE does it is not at all surprising.

To specifically call it that, publicly, is interesting. Was this a recent ad?

[api]

I've said for years that the MBA is the Western capitalist equivalent of the Soviet "apparatchik."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparatchik

I wonder if the bullshit taught at top tier business schools starting in the 1980s isn't as responsible or perhaps even more responsible for the destruction of American industry than outsourcing, bad trade policy, and other more familiar villains. A generation or two of business leaders were systematically educated on how to trade away deep proficiency and substance for financial smoke and mirrors. GE is a microcosm of what the entire country has done.

[throwaway156503]

It would be helpful if people commented on why you were downvoted.

Americans have no appreciation for businessmen and businesswomen with experience. Sales people at Levi's who don't know how to measure your waist, roofers who don't know how to repair roofs, only replace them, dealerships who don't know how to repair, only upsell to the newest car.

Too much bullshit and not enough hardwork. Too many charlatans and not enough seasoned tradesmen, salesmen, and otherwise.

[ineedasername]

It goes back further than the 1980's. It had its advent with the rise of business/managerial "science" that thought trained middle & senior managers could become standardized units of productivity to be swapped in & out of any position as equivalent units. It left out the fact that good managers have strong knowledge of the operations under them and the business as a whole, not just a managerial rule book.

[bumby]

It's been a while since I read it but I think the book "The Firm" about McKinsey talked a bit about this movement and how business studies became a graduate degree.

[i_am_proteus]

The contemporary "top" MBA is a class reinforcement mechanism, nothing more, nothing less.

[arethuza]

My own theory about MBAs is that it seems to be a signalling mechanism where people are saying "I want to stop doing <stuff> and want to manage people doing <anything>" - spending the time and money being a way of signalling that you are serious about being committed to management rather than being a practitioner.

[nguoi]

I have no idea what the colour of her skin has to do with this story

[intuitionist]

Or her gender. Or her size?

[salex89]

Visualization sake? I often write like that, possibly under the influence of Russian/European 18th and 19th century literature I read during most of my life, thanks to education around here. It excels in overly detailed visualizations.

Please don't start ringing alarms, not everyone is a biggot. Not saying the commenter isn't, just don't judge.

[esoterica]

Brags about being a super duper educated person who reads 18th century literature and can’t spell “bigot”. Lol.

[salex89]

First of all, English is not my native language nor I live in an English speaking country. Second, I didn't choose to read those books, the education system made me :). I don't read them that much today, but did enjoy it. Third, this is not bragging as I don't consider myself being super duper educated. I just read some books from time to time. I honestly thought it was the proper way to spell it, because I've seen it like that.

The style just looked to me as people around me describe events, often starting with the look of the scene, including the person.

Nevertheless, thanks for learning me how to spell a new word.

[dk1138]

Perhaps just to call out if it triggers a memory for others who may recall the story?

[oarabbus_]

Found that a bit odd as well