Joel Spolsky: Management, Doogie Howser and Y Combinator Kids

Joel Spolsky should probably have done more research. When Townsend was building Avis, he worked crazy hours -- when he sold to ITT, he started slacking off (showing up late, if at all, and leaving early). His bosses didn't like it; he didn't like them. He got away with saying what he did because Harold Geneen wasn't a very sympathetic character, but Townsend's failure was Townsend's fault, and ITT (which made some stupendous sums as a conglomerate) only screwed up to the extent that they underestimated his ability to be obtuse. More information: http://www.amazon.com/Itt-Management-Opportunity-Robert-Sobel/dp/1893122441

And Google, Yahoo, etc., are only barely conglomerates. They've figured out what the conglomerates got right (if you give customers every kind of product they want, they'll have no reason to consider working with anyone else) without repeating the same mistakes (overpaying, buying utterly unrelated businesses). The Google/Yahoo/Microsoft model of conglomerates is great -- it predates the word 'conglomerate' (which, I think, was coined in a Fortune article in the late 50's), since it's what US Steel and GM did early in the last century. The conglomerates Townsend complains about were an artifact of the accounting rules and financial culture of the late 1950's through early 1970's, and there's no reason to consider them a useful analogy with any business trend before or since.

Edit: Also, has anyone seen anything written by Casnocha that's in any way remarkable? It it just the age thing?

Ben Casnocha just says things that have no real value or meaning. I don't think it's just an age thing but I think the arrival of blogging has made a lot of younger entrepreneurs think they are a lot more important than they really are. Everyone has an opinion on VCs, consultants, lawyers, convertible debt, etc. Casnocha amazingly has an opinion on absolutely nothing except organic blueberries and Zen Buddhism. He's too caught up in the San Francisco world of trust fund babies like himself.