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Comment by Travis | Hacker News Reader

This article almost reads like a list of stuff NOT to do, in my opinion.

Of course, I am more of the "build something lasting, and of quality, and get on with your life" school than the "money over everything I'm going to die here at work" type.

I would not want to work for, with, against, near, or around this guy. He advocates CHEATING his vendors, to force them to basically give you money. Well, I suppose it would only be fair to not pay his company, right?

Anyone else have any feelings other than general disgust at the idea of working with this guy?

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Yes.

"I feel that I should triple the size of the business over the next 10 years because I’m getting old. I’m a little dissatisfied we haven’t done that...".

Gee, I wonder why. I've seen companies with very lavish perks and non-micromanaged employees more than double every year they've been in business. So I'll take 300x the return over 10 years, treat my eventual employees with respect, and love my eventual wife more than my work thank you very much Mr. Grumpy Pants.

Yeah. And I did work for someone like this.

My theory is that small business owners are upset that the whole "owning my own business" wasn't as great as their imagination suggested beforehand. It turns out that being "the owner" doesn't make you rich, and it doesn't give you a lot of free time. You have to work harder than the "average joe", and you don't get much out of it except for the comfort of knowing you are in total control of everything. This tends to make people bitter, because "it's not fair".

One other thing I've noticed is that owners of small companies expect you to care about the company as much as they do. I personally find this to be quite irrational (and this apparently annoyed the owner of the last company I worked for).

>One other thing I've noticed is that owners of small companies expect you to care about the company as much as they do.

This annoys me too. At my last "real job", my supervisor informed me that the super-bosses were asking for ten hour work days in part to "test our loyalty to the company".

My response to that was something like, "Why should my loyalty exceed the bounds of our employment agreement? I'm here for eight hours of work a day. I don't have any stake in this business, I don't own any part of it, the super-bosses don't care or know me, and why should I sacrifice time with my family to make them richer when they won't even extend sick time?"

This did not please my supervisor.

To be fair, he didn't advocate cheating vendors, it was the reporter who claimed that he recommended not paying vendors on time.

His response was that he tells businesses to honor their word, but to negotiate terms. Of course, if you negotiate after you receive the goods, that's scummy, but I don't think that's what he meant.

Lots of big businesses extend their payables when negotiating with suppliers, why can't smaller businesses try to do the same?

It's quite normal in any company to avoid paying invoices until the very last minute. It only depends whether that is "on the day" or "when we get a letter from their lawyers".

It's entertaining, as an engineer, to see your accounts department deal with a vendor who doesn't threaten, they simply shrug and switch you off. The most entertaining example I ever saw of this was back in the 90s, when the company I was working for "lost" all its clients domain names... Of course I had kept copies of the email renewal notices I'd forwarded to them.

He's not only an asshole, but he wrote a book about why everyone else should be one. I don't even know if there's a name for someone who takes it to that level.

"Management Consultant".

Agreed!

Some of the biggest douche I have met in my life are Management Consultants. Makes me wonder if being a douche is a prerequisite to Management Consultant position.

It makes you want to double check if Scott Adams isn't pulling one of his pranks again just to see how far he can take it. Catbert?

Agreed, I wouldn't last a week. Sounds like the concept of: Management knows everything and the employees know nothing attitude.

Totally agree. This guy is the management equivalent of patent medicine - sounds great to amateurs but will kill you if you take enough of it.

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