How does Mitt get a reputation for business acumen?
If the guy hasn't had a job since 1999?
Around here a 65 year old guy who hasn't had a job in the last 13 years would not be considered a captain of industry.
= new reply since forum marked as read
.... makes things or brings a product to market. Romney's business acumen has to do
with mining capital from existing businesses by loading them with debt after a leveraged
buy out.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829
It was the 2nd highest paying job I've ever had (good money, mind you), but it was also easily the worst.
The owner's father was a surgeon and a rather wealthy one at that. That's where this guy's money came from. He drove one of those ugly little BMW roadster-like things and also had a huge SUV. Within a week of taking over the department, I realized that there was no way in hell it was pulling it's own weight. Our costs far outweighed what we were taking in. I brought it to his attention and he immediately (and angrily) accused me of questioning how he finances his company.
The major problem was a lazy slob who wouldn't share the passwords for the critical servers (read: "job security"
. Basically, I was brought in to break that horse. I did. The server room was a disaster of biblical proportions. You couldn't even slide a server out of the rack because the wires were so tangled. One weekend, I came in (spent the whole weekend there), shut everything down, rewired it all with labels, and used wire ties to straighten it up. The slob wouldn't, or more likely couldn't do it - (rather rotund individual who couldn't fit behind the racks). I had to wash after touching keyboards he had been on. It was gross. Oh, and I couldn't fire the slob because he was the son of one of the owner's cronies. I broke into root level access on the main server from home with a dial-up modem ON THE FIRST TRY! All I did was put in his last name for the user and "bob" for the password. Anyone who knew him would know to try that. Man did I throw a fit the next day.
I also brought in a shitload of new revenue by attending sales meetings with the reps. They were good salespeople, but you can't expect them to know the intricate details of the systems. They all told me that they closed far more deals with me along than they ever had before. Several of them were in the million dollar range for multi-year contracts. Some were just $5K or so. It was still new revenue either way.
I had a 120 day period before health insurance would kick in. After all I'd done to keep the company going, I was let go on day 119 - right before Christmas (clearly to avoid the insurance issue). I met the office manager for breakfast a few days later and told her flat out that the slob would go back to his old ways and the company was doomed. She basically agreed and admitted the insurance was the issue with the timing. Three months later, the company closed. All of the companies we were providing hosting services for lost everything they'd been relying on (web pages, back-end code, everything) - and some of them were MAJOR businesses and government divisions. The owner made no effort to transfer the hosting. He just fired everyone (no severance), shut off the power, and abandoned the building.
I ran into one of the sales reps a few months later and he told me the owner was forced to sell his BMW and SUV because he was so far in the hole. He was also facing a multitude of lawsuits for breach of contract. Can't say I didn't warn him. Nice case of "silver spoon meets reality", eh? Yeah, I got used, but he dug his own grave on that one. It's been years since I've heard anything about him, but I wouldn't be shocked to find out he fled the state.
