The adventures of Norway's most radical billionaire | Hacker News Reader

The adventures of Norway's most radical billionaire

fortune.com

104 pointsduck37 comments

So a company that made TIMers for EXplosives was called Timex after a magazine and tissues. I suppose it's not impossible :-)

From the article:

"a Connecticut-based manufacturer of bomb fuses for the British government, the Waterbury Clock Co. A few years later Thomas Olsen would rechristen the company Timex"

"Recalls Fred: “My father always loved to noodle with words. He liked to read Time magazine, and he used a lot of Kleenex, so he put the two names together and got Timex.”

A perceptive point. The whole piece felt like a paid for PR piece to me.

Being an adept sailor is practically a requirement for the upper classes in Norway. The maritime culture is in the DNA of the country. The king himself is a world champion sailor.

Don't forget walking fast on skis. It's a weird place...

Also "walking fast on skis" and then shooting things:

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

I don't think that's a thing normal people do. Rich Norwegians don't shoot much with guns, neither for hunting nor otherwise. It's at best a lower-class or farmer thing. Combining it with skis is really only done in the military and professional sports.

> Rich Norwegians don't shoot much with guns, neither for hunting nor otherwise.

Disagree, - some of them are well known for it.

Unrelated to parent but still interesting: As far as I know Norway has (had?) one of the most well armed populations in the world. They learned a lesson after WW2 and until late 90ies weapons (G3-s at that time) and ammunition where stored in private homes (at least three of my best friends from childhood grew up with those in the house.)

Per 100 people the level in Norway at 31.3 is slightly less than Sweden (31.6) but much less than the US (90) and much more than the UK (6.6):

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

NB Not trying to make a point - just found your comment interesting, looked up the numbers and thought I would share them!

Thanks! I thought we were at about the same level as US so this was interesting to me as well.

Average ownership rates don't tell the whole story, of course: there are a lot of Americans with many guns and a lot with none, whereas other countries might have a more even rate.

Percentage of households with firearms would be interesting; median ownership would be interesting too.

Walking fast on skis is a requirement of everyone.

It's more functional than "going down a slope on skis, fast", at least. :)

Actually, don't the Norwegians have their own way of doing that as well?

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

Of course, since it predates modern carving skis for alpine skiing ;)

I can't imagine skiing with stiff carving boots in the age before the ski lift.

The telemark turn is more stable than other methods, particularly in soft snow, when your boots aren't attached at the back, which is necessary for efficient movement on flat and uphill areas. The introduction of lifts opened up exploration of specialized equipment just for descending, leading to the fixed alpine boot and popularity of the parallel turn.

His presence galvanized and terrified employees in equal measure. [...] “He could be really rough when he was mad about something. He could shame you. But you knew why, and you knew you’d screwed up. If you were as passionate as he was, he loved you, but if not, you were gone.”

Reminds me of someone...

Draft for an Ayn Rand novel?

Steve Jobs?

I was thinking him or Gates.

Gates was famous for flogging his engineers in front of other staff members in meetings and telling them they didn't know what they were doing.

Hard to say the constant questioning of ideas didn't make either company incredibly successful.

That's poor management technique. You flog someone in private and praise them in public.

While Jobs is famed for his scathing treatment of employees in general, from everything I have seen Bill Gates was extremely technical and known for drilling employees on the technical issues in scheduled meetings that they knew to expect and prepare for. This is entirely different. There is a good recounting of just such an instance from Joel Spolsky here.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html

>But you knew why, and you knew you’d screwed up.

I find these justifications for personality types like these to be more than a little revisionist. The reality is when you deal with a short tempered person at the top of the food chain, anything sets him off. A bad mood, arbitrary shit, "who moved my cheese" mentality, etc.

Then we expect the workforce to shame themselves and assume they did wrong because Mr. Temper Tantrum is always right? Of course he is, afterall we still want to collect a paycheck. So now the web team is up all night rolling back the website design because Mr. Temper Tantrum woke up one day and some of the navigation was slightly different and he decided to chew out the CTO. Yes, this has actually happened to us.

Please stop pretending guys like Jobs or Torvalds are these ultra-honest truth tellers and because they're so honest and visionary that basic manners dont apply to them. They're flawed jerks just like the rest of us; the thing is they're in a position where their jerkism can't be questioned. That's not to be celebrated.

I'm kind of an expert in this as I have staff under me and am a short-tempered person. Its my worst trait. I work on it (I suffer from sleep apnea and its related moodiness), but its slipped at work a few times. Treating people poorly, even if they've done wrong, is inexcusable in a professional setting. The people I have gone off on just sit there and take it. They know if they push back then their paycheck could be on the line. Its not worth it to them, so it gives me all the freedom I want to be an ass. Its really, really unfair to them and I hate myself for the times I've done it. No level of apology really brings back the trust and comradery we once had.

I wonder if being at the top of the food chain like that spoils some people. Instead of trying to reflect on how and why they get annoyed or are easily irritable, they are excused for letting it out and taking it out on other people, so they don't have to. Maybe if they couldn't indulge in those things, they could get over all the things that annoy them.

Same way with how "primadonnas" can get away with being picky and demanding. People indulging them exaggerates every impulse and preference they have.

See Clarkson, Jeremy:

http://news.sky.com/story/1443812/suspended-clarkson-to-appe...

"According to reports, he lashed out because he was unable to order a steak at the Simonstone Hall Hotel near Hawes, North Yorkshire, where the production team were staying.

The Sun and Daily Mirror said the hotel's chef had gone home by the time they arrived and they were only offered cold meat platters, although Clarkson had ordered a £21.95 steak.

The papers quoted a source who claimed Clarkson blamed Mr Tymon for not arranging hot food and said there had been a "scuffle"."

Props for recognizing such a character flaw, being open about it and working on it. Another short tempered person here, I know how hard this can be, especially when the threads have already been frayed by some other cause.

"Jobs wants the most useable design out there and mine isn't usable enough. He's such a jerk!"

"This guys is such an asshole! Oh wait, his name is Steve? Oh I must suck."

Excellent analysis!

99% of jerk behavior I know is done towards people who are not in position to push back.

Enjoyable article.

I'm sure it doesn't matter a great deal, but I was interested to see that the Fred. Olsen & Co. web site is nearly as spartan and antique-looking as Berkshire Hathaway's: http://www.fredolsen.com vs. http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

(The former looks like they did briefly employ a web developer once, perhaps in the late '90s, while Berkshire Hathaway's suggests to me that Mr Buffett may very well update it himself.)

I once tried to interview Warren Buffett and was connected to his personal secretary, who very kindly said it was unlikely to happen. No phalanxes of PR folks, just her. Maybe she updates the site for him. :)

To respond to your spartan web page point, let's compare the page load times vs. Apple.com, which most of us might agree is beautifully done.

Berkshire Hathaway speed (Google PageSpeed): 99/100

Apple.com speed (Google PageSpeed): 62/100

Berkshire Hathaway speed (via Pingdom): 476 ms

Apple.com speed (via Pingdom): 1.68 sec

There's something to be said for a 3.4KB web page...

Wow, I work in O&G here and knew nothing about this.

I also guess he's quite right that in many cases you are better of skipping school though of course it helps a lot more that you come from a smart wealthy family.

Business school is special in that it's a lot about learning vocabulary and networking. If you're born into the network and don't need to impress anyone with your vocabulary then the value proposition of business school is pretty low.

funny, I had the exact same conversation with some nyc guy on a flight to SF a few months ago. He was convinced I should go to back to school get get MBA, so I could know the vocabulary to speak intelligently with management. I mentioned how ridiculous it is to spend so much money to learn a handful of concepts and words. The social network expansion is certainly compelling, but I'm just not sure the value is there for experienced folk: they typically already have a social network.

I did a specialized MBA, and for the experienced business owners, it did add value in the form of a "free" consultancy - they could use their own companies as case studies, run things past the professors and classmates (which were sometimes much more useful than the professors), have access to a wide pool of different skills.

And classes helped by forcing students to apply standard methodologies or tools to their existing businesses, you can always uncover some angle :) . It's not "just vocabulary", and yes, some of the classes can be fluffy/"soft", but I think that even the most jaded businessman can derive some value - in the case of the jaded businessman, maybe a fresh or naïve look at their business ! Or a honest assesment from outside you might not get from employees or consultants.

I think that you could argue the opposite: if an MBA is made up entirely of fresh graduates looking to enter consultancy, you're losing out. I think a good MBA student mix would be made up by diverse backgrounds, and I was lucky to have that.

In a way with how expansive the internet is you can get the same results by sourcing that yourself. For example, regarding your first 2 paragraphs, you get those kind of results by posting 'Show HN: ' threads to get assessment and constructive criticism on your product or business. Additionally you are getting a varied response from people all over the world and at all different experience levels and perspectives.

However where online environments are still lacking but getting better is networking. Although places like this are a little better than trying to go on reddit for networking and business advice for example. More transparency behind who is behind the words will usually net better results in that regard.

There are program tiers for all types (cost, years of experience, already-netoworked folks, lifestyle, specialization, etc.) With the abundance of variety, generalizations about opportunity cost don't hold up as well.

My understanding's that you don't just "learn a handful of concepts and words," though some go to b-school for the stamp.

I know it was just an aside arc to the main story but having just listened to an interview* of Sam Simon, he mentioned that he was the creator of Mr. Burns look. The original character was more 'fat cat' style but he turned Mr. Burns into more 'vulture' like after seeing the sketch.

* Marc Maron's WTF podcast.

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