Thanks for the insight…

I knew that the new boss, and I mean this quite literally, had no idea what I did for a living. Literally could not say what my job entailed.

I said to my pals/co-workers, “If I were him, I would say, ‘I’ll take this job, but have someone do it on an interim basis for a few months. I’m going to go spend a week or two working in every single department in the company to see how it works. Then I’ll be able to run this place effectively.’” I hadn’t learned the importance of this yet, but now I would add: “And give me some time to learn some management skills while I’m at it.”

I was about 27 at the time, and this was my first real job.

Needless to say, the new boss never did any of this. He was spectacularly bad at managing people, and, at least in the few years I remained at the company, he never learned what the worker bees did all day. The company is now foundering. This can’t be laid at the (now former) boss’s feet. The industry itself is in crisis. But suffice to say this guy had zero chance of being a leader who could buck the trend.

These past few days I’ve been reading interviews with the likes of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, so it’d be best for me to stay away from the spoiled Suits of today.

I’m curious about your thoughts on the wage/salary difference between the workers and the top-dog. It seems to me that executive compensation has grown much more steeply than the wage scale for front-line people.

So much is written about the need to attract the best executives to corporate leadership positions, but wouldn’t a company be more profitable if it raised the standard of living for rank and file workers?

Without considering the ethical inequities, might companies not see improvements in productivity if bottom wages came up and higher wages came down?