I think it's a wash - some people would rather know before the holidays because they're filled with a lot of discretionary spending (travel, gifts) that are easy to cut in case of job loss. There's really no good time to fire someone.
Getting dropped on, say, Dec 1st sets you back about 6 weeks on being able to start your job hunt. That stuff all but shuts down in the second half of December, by the time you might really have your search rolling, plus many fiscal years, budgets, or hiring allocations are aligned to calendar years, and the first couple weeks of January are companies ramping back up after the break. Even skip-the-interview network-hires are likely to get a "yeah, I think I can get you in, check back a couple weeks into January and we can start that process" response if you message in December.
I would prefer to know before the holiday season, as a ton of spending, trip planning, and life conversations with family happen in that period. You might sacrifice time with family during the holiday season for on-call or to get a project done.
So you make all these plans for the new year and then the axe comes.
IMO, it's only nice to the extent that any severance payments and UI would start later.
If a company is going to lay me off with N weeks of severance starting on Jan 15, 2024 or N+4 weeks starting on Dec 18, 2023, I'd way rather learn about it on Dec 6th than on Jan 3rd.
> ″The shift to a business unit operating model is a continuation of our client-focused, balanced execution priorities and is designed to accelerate product and services, go-to-market, and corporate functions’ operating efficiencies across all geographies we serve,” Xerox CEO Steven Bandrowczak said in the release.
Gosh, I really feel like I understand the rationale and the forward plan now.
Yeah, these statements really don't inspire confidence for me either as an investor or consumer, but I'm not privy to some of the investor calls where they elaborate on how they define these terms. Typically things like "business unit operating model" will be illuminated / detailed in other presentations with a smaller audience, and are just referenced in the press releases as little reminders to the institutional investors.
I doubt that. This is a press release about a business. If press releases were illegally "giving information on how the business is operated to some investors" then, for example, Apple could never hold press events and would have to announce things on their investor page.
Parent said "but I'm not privy to some of the investor calls where they elaborate on how they define these terms. Typically things like "business unit operating model" will be illuminated / detailed in other presentations with a smaller audience". I'm saying that I think that Xerox can't be explaining things in this much depth to some investors but not others.
Certainly Xerox can give information to CNBC to release to all investors (who read CNBC) at roughly the same time. It's basically public since everybody has CNBC access but a private presentation is by definition not public.
> In principle the companies are not supposed to give the investors material nonpublic information during these conversations. In practice, the conversations are not social calls. The analysts hope to get something out of them. It's rarely "our earnings are going to be way better than anyone expected." It might be something vaguer and squishier than that: hints, body language, a general sense of how management thinks about the world, its industry, its competition, its opportunities. Or it might be something much narrower and more specific: The company might help the analyst with particular line items in her model, adding nuance to her sophisticated understanding of its financial situation.
Specific clarification on details of their new "business unit operating model" would be a relatively normal thing to talk about. It's not something that is a smoking gun for insider trading, but can be written off as just general clarification of an industry term of art. This would be a normal thing for business analysts to get a deeper dive into.
Bleh, I guess it's legal for now. We'll see if his opinion changes in the future since he seems on the fence already.
> These things are plausibly not "material nonpublic information." But they are obviously things that investors want. That's why investors meet with companies. That's why investors who meet with companies perform better than those who don't. And all of this is legal. Or legal-ish. Or at least in a broad gray area between legal and illegal.
The 2.5% profit margin, 94% dividend payout ratio, and 125% debt-to-equity ratio really don't inspire confidence in me as a consumer, either. And a meaningless statement like that makes me think things are not going to turn around anytime soon. Unlike, say, Intel when Gelsinger took over--it wasn't clear if his plan was going to work, but he articulated a pretty clear plan.
It used to annoy me but then I realised it's largely meaningless.
Nobody who really cares is reading the generic press release; if the performance of Xerox is strongly relevant to your interests then you have better sources of information.
The presser is just something for the comics to reprint verbatim, the more meaningless it is the better because that prevents it being in any way legally actionable.
Translates to "dividing the company by product, and evaluating each product independently". What's meaningful.
The rest of it is completely bullshit though. But I really liked "balanced execution priorities", that's an entirely antisemantic expression, you either have priorities or you don't.
Isn't profit more important than share price long term? There's plenty of junky SV companies that had insane share valuations during low interest rates rates and the pandemic bubble, but that are sinking now due to lack of profitability.
Focus on high share price seems more important for speculators who wanna make a quick buck on the short term regardless if the company dies in long term.
The other parts of the function include the expectation someone else will buy it at a higher price, which may or may not be based on their own expectation of someone else to buy it from them at a higher price, and so on.
Projected unlevered free cash flows (discounted back to today, plus a discounted terminal value) is IMO the best long-run model for an enterprise value. Share price equilibrium is a consequence of that, after a current liabilities offset, and a division by share count.
Profits are related to UFCF, but not the same thing.
Being in Rochester, I always wonder how this will affect the local community here, where the Xerox was founded and where the majority of its workforce still is [1]. Still, I'm surprised they announced this after the holidays. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse, or even says anything about the company itself, but it doesn't seem like the norm of other larger technology companies.
Interesting that the official headquarters is in Connecticut even though employees are in Rochester.
Every business I can think of that has a “headquarters” separate from their largest employee pool seems to be in decline… GE, Boeing being big obvious examples. It seems like moving the executives away from the day to day work is a sign the business doesn’t care about itself anymore. I’m curious if there are any other examples, or any counter examples to this.
Lumen (AKA CenturyLink) has their HQ in Monroe, LA despite all of the execs being in Denver. I always assumed this was some sort of lucrative tax scheme.
I don’t see what that scheme could be, it’s not like they can avoid state taxes by doing that.
The only benefit given by the state in exchange for “headquarters” is employing a certain number of people at a certain income. But if all your payroll stays somewhere else, then what could possibly be the incentive for tax breaks?
States will probably bend over backwards when you are 1 of their 2 Fortune 500s
"To secure the latest corporate retention project, the State of Louisiana offered CenturyLink a competitive incentive package that includes an annual performance-based grant, subject to company payroll performance. In addition, the agreement creates funding for information technology faculty, curricula and education at Louisiana Tech University, where the state has supported the Clarke M. Williams Professorship in Telecommunications in honor of the company’s founder."
I was an intern at CenturyLink the summer they opened their new building in Monroe. Monroe was not fun to live in but the building was gorgeous and great to work in. From my understanding, the building sadly sits more or less empty now as more and more of the workforce moves to Denver (aka home of Level 3 who more or less took over CenturyLink after being acquired).
Tesla? Their HQ is in Texas but their “engineering HQ” is in the Bay Area. Since the Fremont factory has more employees than the Texas gigafactory (according to their wikipedia pages), that probably holds true for Tesla.
Boeing moved their HQ to Chicago in 2001, and experienced wildly successful growth from 2001 until 2019. Seems like it might be recency bias to correlate Boeing decline with its HQ location.
Exxon is another example I can think of. Until recently, their HQ was in a tiny building in Irving, TX while the majority of their workforce was elsewhere.
There's also a whole slew of companies that have a lot of employees "in the field" that are separate from their corporate workforce and would inherently be HQed in locations other than where their large employee bases are, eg manufacturing companies, Intel, car manufacturers, Walmart, UPS, several airlines, banks... Even Boeing would fall into this category. I'm not sure how those factor into things.
Aircraft design and build has a very long lead time. It's plausible that Boeing success in the early 2000's was the result of sound decisions and long-term planning that were made early on. The emphasis on immediate shareholder returns you get from squeezing R&D or QA would take a long time to manifest itself in the actual product.
It's worth noting that the product and sales cycle for commercial aviation is measured in many years. And...2001/2002 was quite a bad time for commercial aviation as well.
That’s the point. Is “being near the CEO” a sign a weakness. That the CEO cares more about their own comfort instead of being close to the people that make the business work.
It's better for employees to do layoffs in Q1. Many large companies impose hiring freezes in Q4 in order to meet annual financial targets, plus key people are more likely to be out on PTO so it's harder to make hiring decisions. In Q1 the budgets get reset and job searches tend to progress more quickly.
This, and even if it maybe does not change much it is not nice as the employee to get that as Christmas present and to take home over the holidays in late Q4.
If this comes after the close of the company’s fiscal year then the employer is doing their employees a favor, taking a hit for the team. A completed fiscal year means the employer must wait yet additional quarter to claim the savings from trimming head count and allows those employees a bit more time under their employer provided benefits and compensation.
Xerox has been laying off people in the Rochester area for over 2 decades now. The local economy has adapted to it decently. I doubt this situation will be any different.
The irony which sometimes happens is that those who work for Xerox (or Kodak, who has been doing the same demise, just on a grander and faster schedule) end up working for a contracting firm and then get "rehired" back to do the same job they used to do, just now not as an employee of Xerox. I'm not convinced this saves Xerox any actual money but it must work out to their benefit somehow as TONS of people doing work for Xerox are not Xerox employees but used to be.
Originally governments didn't just give out corperations whilly-nilly so if you weren't doing something that benefited the public you just didn't get one.
Which really wasn't a big deal since you could always do business as yourself although you (and not the corporation) also got liability then.
I don't see why this matters. Whether they "give out corporations" or they regulate corporations, they can still choose to throw you in jail because they have power. Corporations should obey the law, but they should chase shareholder value.
That doesn't mean short-termism at all costs, which is what some people hear when that is said, but it means, say, if you're Disney don't release a string of movies that all lose incredible amounts of money. Or if you do, then senior management needs changing pronto.
It's really not. Profits are taxed. Losses are lost by investors. The environment should be protected by regulations, not by relying on good will. That way the boundaries are clear and companies can do what they do best: allocate resources efficiently, towards demand, within rules.
Regulations should be a backstop after decency and goodwill fails. No one facet of the structure society is made of can support all of society, there needs to be safety factors in the building materials.
> Regulations should be a backstop after decency and goodwill fails
People won't know the implications of decisions without regulations to help them. Of course businesses are populated by people, who will try and do the right thing if that's how they are, but that doesn't mean they know what the right thing is.
> No one facet of the structure society is made of can support all of society, there needs to be safety factors in the building materials.
I can't parse this, sorry. Happy to have a read if you reword.
> People won't know the implications of decisions without regulations to help them.
That's a pretty expansive view of government; I'll grant that regulations are one mechanism for communicating the implications of decisions, but to say that people can't know the implications without regulations? That just seems silly to the point that I'm unsure if I'm intended to legitimately engage with that viewpoint; is that your actual opinion?
Friedman's assumption was that regulations work towards social/general good so a company can just focus on maximizing shareholder value within existing law and that combination would keep everything OK. However, in practice regulation was often faulty so the maximization of shareholder value often led to many negative internal and external effects. It's like applying machine learning trained at times of plenty to times of crisis.
Or more specifically, it assumes that those two systems remain completely separate from one another.
In reality, as the system for maximizing shareholder value can interact with the system creating the regulations. Thus:
> in practice regulation was often faulty
wasn't a coincidence of a situation, but rather was a direct result of the shareholder-value-maximizing machine working towards the removal of regulations that hindered shareholder value.
This is a huge letting off the hook of the people who write the regulations. Companies always want regulations changed, because regulations are not handed down from on high as perfect stone tablets full of rules. They're sometimes bad. So there needs to be a mechanism by which companies lobby to have them changed.
If that is misused, the blame lies with the regulation writers. They get to take free money from people as taxes solely so they can be impartial and write good regulations. If they can't even do that, then why give them free money?
My intention is not to let regulation writers off the hook, but rather to share the blame between the regulation writers and the corporations that lobby to have regulations changed in a way that they know is bad for society but good for them.
Everybody hates corrupt government officials already, but as a society (in the US) we tend to handwave away companies doing destructive self-interested things as "oh of course they do that", when it's not actually something we need to tolerate.
Oil companies in the 70s knowing that they were causing global warming but engaging in a campaign to pretend that didn't exist? Should be jail for the regulation writers, and jail for the oil company execs who signed off on it.
The Sacklers pretending that their special opioids aren't addictive and causing the opioid crisis? Should be jail for the regulators they bribed, and jail for the people at the company who knew.
Cause the 2008 financial crisis by deliberately mis-grading subprime mortgages? Should be jail for everyone who let that fly.
> but rather to share the blame between the regulation writers and the corporations that lobby to have regulations changed in a way that they know is bad for society but good for them.
That's interesting. Everywhere I read (including in HN comments) the focus is on lobbyists and not regulation writers. I've never read anyone ever put the blame on the people who were given free money from taxpayer pockets to be impartial experts, and only ever on people trying to advocate for their companies.
> as a society (in the US) we tend to handwave away companies doing destructive self-interested things as "oh of course they do that", when it's not actually something we need to tolerate
I don't believe "as a society" exists :-) It's one's perception of what happens, but wrapped in an impartial-sounding phrase. I've seen far more tolerance of regulation-writers than I would expect. And there is a clear difference between a company (legally) trying to change hearts and minds and regulation writers allowing their minds to be changed for perks.
> Oil companies in the 70s knowing that they were causing global warming but engaging in a campaign to pretend that didn't exist? Should be jail for the regulation writers, and jail for the oil company execs who signed off on it.
Oil companies don't have a legal responsibility to tell the truth about the climate, I think. Also, the understanding of climate has changed quite a lot since then, so even I might go easy on regulators in this instance.
> Cause the 2008 financial crisis by deliberately mis-grading subprime mortgages? Should be jail for everyone who let that fly.
This is a good example of regulation being to blame, though. You'd go to jail if you didn't allow a certain percentage of subprime mortgages[0].
Sounds neutral to the layman while legitimizing the "brushing under the rug" of all the sins possible without severe legal recourse. Then promptly followed by some hand waving that really puts the you-know-what in fiduciary, Mr. Potter.
If I remember anything from my high school social studies class, the reason was the ability to spread investment risk across multiple investors while also shielding the investors and employees from some personal legal liability. I think I even remember that companies/corporations predate stock exchanges.
> Remember that companies/corporations predate stock exchanges.
While not definitive, ChatGPT says that:
> The idea of organizing a group of people to work towards a common goal for profit or mutual benefit has evolved over centuries. The modern concept of a company, with legal structures and formalized business practices, has its roots in the emergence of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Wikipedia doesn't have a history section on it's page for company, but it says this:
> By 1303, the word company referred to trade guilds. Usage of the term company to mean "business association" was first recorded in 1553, and the abbreviation "co." dates from 1769.
You can tweak your definition by the means you'd like, but I think an honest assessment would be at this point to say they were concurrent.
A company isn't the same as a corporation. A corporation is a legal privilege granted by the government to give a company legal personhood. Thus the word "corporation", from latin "corpus", signifying that the state considers this specific company to be a single, legal body.
Corporations aren't a free market concept, it's a way for the state to give special protections to certain companies that need it for some prosocial reason.
Basically, the original idea is, a corporate charter is granted to create a corporation, which acts on behalf of its shareholders (who the government trusts, have some worthy interest in mind).
Yup companies exist to make money, people work jobs to make money, investors invest to make money, we all just really love to move $s around from one bank to another or trade pretty green bills. No other reason nah.
Doesn’t this fundamentally guarantee the enshittification of every company driven this way?
If you must grow by x% every year, and infinite growth is impossible, you begin shoving more and more low quality ads into your search results, partake in more legally and ethically grey activities, and eventually rupture?
Are there any examples of large corporations that have said, “we make billions in profit each year. We’re going to focus on maintaining that enormous success. We’re not going to focus on growth.” (I can already hear the spreadsheet squinting logic about how growth is necessary for some reason)
No, I don't see that it does. Basically the idea is that a company should operate in a way that is beneficial to its owners (shareholders). This is what any sole proprietorship or partership also does. Growth is not the only way to measure that. Many companies do focus on maintaining success and return value to the owners by paying dividends. Driving the company to failure by relentlessly cutting costs in the name of "growth" is not in the interests of the owners.
> We’re going to focus on maintaining that enormous success. We’re not going to focus on growth.” (I can already hear the spreadsheet squinting logic about how growth is necessary for some reason)
Where is Xerox going to get the money to do R&D to not be obviated? Replace Xerox with any other business.
All the businesses obviated by spreadsheets, mobile networks, smartphones, GPS? Maintaining success is continuing to make bets and moving forward, and bets require money. More money means bigger bets.
Another example, you have two businesses, one with a 5% profit margin (because they feel like 5% is enough), one with a 10% profit margin. The one with 10% profit margin is going to be able to continue renovating the business, upgrading the facility, buying more land, hiring better employees with higher payrates.
What will happen to the 5% profit margin business? Do you think customers will keep rewarding them (assuming the 10% profit margin business is worth the additional marginal cost)? You can insert restaurant, hotel, retail store, etc in here.
Note that having a higher profit margin is not the only way to survive, having a lower profit margin to better compete on price and gain market share is another way too. Balancing the two and delivering the right product at the right price for your customers is the key skill, but it’s a moving target.
The issue is that this leads into Dutch Disease. When a single tulip bulb can buy you a house, why bother becoming a carpenter? Society needs carpenters way more than it needs tulip growers.
That 10% growth rate may or may not be factoring in some externalities that the 5% growth has to
I think we're broadly in agreement but I'm responding to the bit about "What will happen to the 5% profit margin business? Do you think customers will keep rewarding them?".
If you only ever reward investments with high rates of return it leads to atrophy in boring yet essential sectors of the market. Supermarkets, like you mentioned, have a very low profit margin (usually 1-3%). Can you imagine what would happen if no one was willing to invest in a supermarket?
Yes, well customers evaluate different products and services at different price points. Grocery store experiences and products are fungible enough that it drives margins down that low:
>Note that having a higher profit margin is not the only way to survive, having a lower profit margin to better compete on price and gain market share is another way too. Balancing the two and delivering the right product at the right price for your customers is the key skill, but it’s a moving target.
I am reluctant to say I am glad a comment has been down voted, because I am wary of mob mentality, but in this case I am very glad this comment has been so thoroughly down voted.
There are numerous reasons for companies to exist. Off the top of my head I can think of a few. To provide goods to populations. To provide services for populations. To give the owner something to do. To perpetuate themselves. To provide something to do for employees. To do something an individual can’t.
None of these require investors. There are countless businesses that can be started that don’t even require a significant outlay of capital.
On top of that there are differing philosophies that might suggest investors should be last in line for benefits from a business. I could make a strong argument that society allows businesses to exist and as such society should benefit first and foremost. Businesses typically fail to exist without employees, so I could argue employees should come before investors.
Please don’t perpetuate the naive notion that investors are somehow more important than anything else. I am a dyed in the wool capitalist and while I tend to highly value profitability, even I don’t believe shareholder value is some sacred edict.
A DE Shaw hire has a much, much higher probability of being technically inclined than a McKinsey hire. You probably are not going to find the “finance bros” you are thinking of at DE Shaw.
Sundar Pichai was a Materials Scientist at Applied Materials before he did his MBA.
He did his MS in Materials Science at Stanford.
Also, plenty of STEM background people join McK later in their careers (especially in the electronics space) because there is plenty of demand for Strategy and Management Consulting in the industrial world, as LDPs aren't as popular anymore
A surprising number of people think that MBAs have never had a job before or that STEM people don't do MBAs. They think it's like regular grad school where you can enroll straight out of college.
That's the reflexive "blame corporate!" response. Layoffs? Blame MBAs! But spare a thought for the CEO who must have been strong-armed into this by you know who!
Sundar lets the SVPs report directly to Ruth while he looks in the mirror at repeats “AI is the new fire” until he’s ready for the next soft focus interview.
I am sure McKinsey has lots of technically inclined people too, but if we consider back when Bezos was working at DE Shaw (early 1990s), almost all of the (few) employees must have been highly technical (it is considered the first quant fund), while McKinsey's headcount was already 2,900 when Bezos left DE Shaw.
Today it is 2,500 people versus 45,000 people, and I would guess it is still probably true that a greater proportion of DE Shaw is technical than McKinsey.
An Petroleum Engineer, Materials Engineer, Industrial Engineer, Chemical Engineer, Biopharmaceuticals Researcher, etc will always have the option to work at an MBB, as those industries heavily use McK to help with their own businesses.
On top of that, McK hiring even at the undergrad level skews STEM. If you attend a feeder school like MIT, Stanford, or Berkeley, it's EECS/Applied Math/Physics majors that land Associate interviews, because management is much more technical now. McKinsey literally has recruiters devoted only to candidates from Berkeley and UMich Engineering for strategy roles.
It isn't the 1980s anymore when some random schmoe with an Econ or Business degree can land an MBB role anymore.
Now take a look at MBA admissions for a top 20 program - 35-45% of undergraduate degrees tend to be STEM (primarily Engineering, with a bit of Math/Sciences)
Maybe he should have stuck with that rather than running a sprawling corporate behemoth into the ground with purely short-term, market-based, decision making and the world wouldn’t be laughing hysterically at the abomination that is Bard.
Google's stock valuation has returned to it's COVID high. By most standards he's managed the stock well, which is all that matters as the CEO of a F10. I know my 401k is happy.
People compare against peers, not the broad market. When AAPL/MSFT/AMZN have 10 year 25% to 28% annual returns, GOOG/META does not impress with 17% returns, especially for people who decided or are deciding which RSUs to work for (unless otherwise made up for with extra pay or quality of life at work). The 5 year numbers are probably more relevant and look way worse.
Exactly, and the culture premium of Google has evaporated so they can only compete on comp alone.
I quit and don’t regret it at all, everybody I talk to there basically just says they have zero inspiration and shuttle between pointless meetings and are only there for a big paycheck. In my view, that’s a pretty miserable existence - one needs passion to thrive.
Exactly my point, he and Ruth optimize for short term market gains and have literally no vision for the future of the company short of killing adblockers.
Kodak was also doing great, until suddenly they weren’t. My own personal experience of the last year is my search engine use has about halved in favor of GPT, with most of my friends reporting the same.
If Google is ever forced to admit in an earnings call that search volume is down the stock will crater on the spot.
Tim Cook is also a brilliant strategist at using Apple's strength with suppliers. For example, Apple has first dibs on TSMC's cutting edge process. But even gambles he lost, like making huge sapphire crystals for screens and maybe even phone bodies, are daring and innovative.
I think its more because they are in a commoditized business that is also in a shrinking market. People don't print much anymore and their cash cow is directly related to printing. It really doesn't matter who is running the place when you're selling horse supplies and the majority of people are now driving cars.
Didn't have to be that way. At one point they had the gui & mouse when the rest of the world was using paper tape for computer I/O. It's all about vision & execution.
Apple commercialized what Xerox PARC was heading towards. But a decade later they were on the ropes. Doing things right one time doesn't guarantee longevity.
Yes, they manufacture/sell/service printers and multi-function copy/print/scan/fax machines. They also do some "services" things, although not as much as before since they divested the horrible ACS merger/acquisition a few years back.
A decent number of the actual machines sold under the Xerox name are designed and/or manufactured by 3rd parties (some are subsidiaries or former subsidiaries like the old Fuji/Xerox group) but a handful of the high end machines are still fully designed and manufactured in the USA. Lots of the toner is manufactured in the USA, too.
Last I'd heard (2018?) they were researching the 3d printing business, but since their main site doesn't say anything to that note I have to believe it's not going too well.
I have a Xerox laser printer, it's fine. I'd buy another one if I ever needed to, which is not something I can say for HP (unless it was a used Laserjet 4).
Didn’t they invent GUIs by isolating the creative techies from corporate BS at their own campus on the far side of the country and let them run wild? At which point the corporate folks completely failed to commercialize on their inventions?
The corporate folks picked one of their inventions (laser printing) and commercialized it to the point of being forced to release patents by the govt. No company could have successfully executed on a dozen new technologies, I mean look at how many things are in Google's graveyard and how much their cash flow is dependent on their original product - search with ads.
This "From digitizing documents to managing complex data, and everything in between." is the tagline on their website landing page.
The rest of the website is like urbexing a dead mall. The job postings tell a story of hollowing-out. You can't say it is strange though. So many organizations follow the same trajectory of under-allocating to product development and find themselves coasting on the R&D already done, then shrinking, slowly at first, then quickly.
I got dumped and retired by Xerox some months after Y2K. There were a number of cuts before the axe swung my way.
Yep, there's a heavy MBA focus on financials as opposed to doing what's best for customers. Funnily enough you're shipped off in your first weeks to an indoctrination course on quality, but later catch on that MBA speak is holy writ.
Every few years there's transformative change and more folks get dumped.
Xerox is like Google where they made more money than they expected quite early, and for a while could afford to pursue a few potential opportunities that were not really their core competency to begin with. They had lots of good people who were coming up with new ideas all the time, but it doesn't take much of a downturn for efforts initiated during a windfall to turn out unsustainable and eventually be jetissoned.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 224 ms ] threadSo you make all these plans for the new year and then the axe comes.
If a company is going to lay me off with N weeks of severance starting on Jan 15, 2024 or N+4 weeks starting on Dec 18, 2023, I'd way rather learn about it on Dec 6th than on Jan 3rd.
Gosh, I really feel like I understand the rationale and the forward plan now.
I suspect any explanation of those terms would need to be on their investors page.
https://investors.xerox.com/news-and-events/presentations-we...
Parent said "but I'm not privy to some of the investor calls where they elaborate on how they define these terms. Typically things like "business unit operating model" will be illuminated / detailed in other presentations with a smaller audience". I'm saying that I think that Xerox can't be explaining things in this much depth to some investors but not others.
Certainly Xerox can give information to CNBC to release to all investors (who read CNBC) at roughly the same time. It's basically public since everybody has CNBC access but a private presentation is by definition not public.
> In principle the companies are not supposed to give the investors material nonpublic information during these conversations. In practice, the conversations are not social calls. The analysts hope to get something out of them. It's rarely "our earnings are going to be way better than anyone expected." It might be something vaguer and squishier than that: hints, body language, a general sense of how management thinks about the world, its industry, its competition, its opportunities. Or it might be something much narrower and more specific: The company might help the analyst with particular line items in her model, adding nuance to her sophisticated understanding of its financial situation.
Specific clarification on details of their new "business unit operating model" would be a relatively normal thing to talk about. It's not something that is a smoking gun for insider trading, but can be written off as just general clarification of an industry term of art. This would be a normal thing for business analysts to get a deeper dive into.
0: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-07-31/when-c...
> These things are plausibly not "material nonpublic information." But they are obviously things that investors want. That's why investors meet with companies. That's why investors who meet with companies perform better than those who don't. And all of this is legal. Or legal-ish. Or at least in a broad gray area between legal and illegal.
Nobody who really cares is reading the generic press release; if the performance of Xerox is strongly relevant to your interests then you have better sources of information.
The presser is just something for the comics to reprint verbatim, the more meaningless it is the better because that prevents it being in any way legally actionable.
> shift to a business unit operating model
Translates to "dividing the company by product, and evaluating each product independently". What's meaningful.
The rest of it is completely bullshit though. But I really liked "balanced execution priorities", that's an entirely antisemantic expression, you either have priorities or you don't.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/XRX/xerox-holdings...
Focus on high share price seems more important for speculators who wanna make a quick buck on the short term regardless if the company dies in long term.
The other parts of the function include the expectation someone else will buy it at a higher price, which may or may not be based on their own expectation of someone else to buy it from them at a higher price, and so on.
Profits are related to UFCF, but not the same thing.
I am partially shocked. Thought they were no longer a company.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox
Every business I can think of that has a “headquarters” separate from their largest employee pool seems to be in decline… GE, Boeing being big obvious examples. It seems like moving the executives away from the day to day work is a sign the business doesn’t care about itself anymore. I’m curious if there are any other examples, or any counter examples to this.
The only benefit given by the state in exchange for “headquarters” is employing a certain number of people at a certain income. But if all your payroll stays somewhere else, then what could possibly be the incentive for tax breaks?
"To secure the latest corporate retention project, the State of Louisiana offered CenturyLink a competitive incentive package that includes an annual performance-based grant, subject to company payroll performance. In addition, the agreement creates funding for information technology faculty, curricula and education at Louisiana Tech University, where the state has supported the Clarke M. Williams Professorship in Telecommunications in honor of the company’s founder."
https://news.lumen.com/2019-04-02-Gov-Edwards-And-Centurylin...
> subject to company payroll performance.
Exxon is another example I can think of. Until recently, their HQ was in a tiny building in Irving, TX while the majority of their workforce was elsewhere.
There's also a whole slew of companies that have a lot of employees "in the field" that are separate from their corporate workforce and would inherently be HQed in locations other than where their large employee bases are, eg manufacturing companies, Intel, car manufacturers, Walmart, UPS, several airlines, banks... Even Boeing would fall into this category. I'm not sure how those factor into things.
The irony which sometimes happens is that those who work for Xerox (or Kodak, who has been doing the same demise, just on a grander and faster schedule) end up working for a contracting firm and then get "rehired" back to do the same job they used to do, just now not as an employee of Xerox. I'm not convinced this saves Xerox any actual money but it must work out to their benefit somehow as TONS of people doing work for Xerox are not Xerox employees but used to be.
Just goes to show what happens when MBAs run a product-centric company.
This is what happens when all you think about, all you focus on, is returns to investors. You spreadsheet the shit out of everything.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_value
> "...In it, he argued that a company has no social responsibility to the public or society; its only responsibility is to its shareholders."
the demon friedman strikes again.
Which really wasn't a big deal since you could always do business as yourself although you (and not the corporation) also got liability then.
That doesn't mean short-termism at all costs, which is what some people hear when that is said, but it means, say, if you're Disney don't release a string of movies that all lose incredible amounts of money. Or if you do, then senior management needs changing pronto.
People won't know the implications of decisions without regulations to help them. Of course businesses are populated by people, who will try and do the right thing if that's how they are, but that doesn't mean they know what the right thing is.
> No one facet of the structure society is made of can support all of society, there needs to be safety factors in the building materials.
I can't parse this, sorry. Happy to have a read if you reword.
That's a pretty expansive view of government; I'll grant that regulations are one mechanism for communicating the implications of decisions, but to say that people can't know the implications without regulations? That just seems silly to the point that I'm unsure if I'm intended to legitimately engage with that viewpoint; is that your actual opinion?
In reality, as the system for maximizing shareholder value can interact with the system creating the regulations. Thus:
> in practice regulation was often faulty
wasn't a coincidence of a situation, but rather was a direct result of the shareholder-value-maximizing machine working towards the removal of regulations that hindered shareholder value.
If that is misused, the blame lies with the regulation writers. They get to take free money from people as taxes solely so they can be impartial and write good regulations. If they can't even do that, then why give them free money?
Everybody hates corrupt government officials already, but as a society (in the US) we tend to handwave away companies doing destructive self-interested things as "oh of course they do that", when it's not actually something we need to tolerate.
Oil companies in the 70s knowing that they were causing global warming but engaging in a campaign to pretend that didn't exist? Should be jail for the regulation writers, and jail for the oil company execs who signed off on it.
The Sacklers pretending that their special opioids aren't addictive and causing the opioid crisis? Should be jail for the regulators they bribed, and jail for the people at the company who knew.
Cause the 2008 financial crisis by deliberately mis-grading subprime mortgages? Should be jail for everyone who let that fly.
That's interesting. Everywhere I read (including in HN comments) the focus is on lobbyists and not regulation writers. I've never read anyone ever put the blame on the people who were given free money from taxpayer pockets to be impartial experts, and only ever on people trying to advocate for their companies.
> as a society (in the US) we tend to handwave away companies doing destructive self-interested things as "oh of course they do that", when it's not actually something we need to tolerate
I don't believe "as a society" exists :-) It's one's perception of what happens, but wrapped in an impartial-sounding phrase. I've seen far more tolerance of regulation-writers than I would expect. And there is a clear difference between a company (legally) trying to change hearts and minds and regulation writers allowing their minds to be changed for perks.
> Oil companies in the 70s knowing that they were causing global warming but engaging in a campaign to pretend that didn't exist? Should be jail for the regulation writers, and jail for the oil company execs who signed off on it.
Oil companies don't have a legal responsibility to tell the truth about the climate, I think. Also, the understanding of climate has changed quite a lot since then, so even I might go easy on regulators in this instance.
> Cause the 2008 financial crisis by deliberately mis-grading subprime mortgages? Should be jail for everyone who let that fly.
This is a good example of regulation being to blame, though. You'd go to jail if you didn't allow a certain percentage of subprime mortgages[0].
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20080928095759/http://www.invest...
Sounds neutral to the layman while legitimizing the "brushing under the rug" of all the sins possible without severe legal recourse. Then promptly followed by some hand waving that really puts the you-know-what in fiduciary, Mr. Potter.
The invisible hand of the market seems to mostly be involved in sweeping problems under the rug.
While not definitive, ChatGPT says that:
> The idea of organizing a group of people to work towards a common goal for profit or mutual benefit has evolved over centuries. The modern concept of a company, with legal structures and formalized business practices, has its roots in the emergence of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Whereas the first stock exchange is somewhere between 1300 and 1600: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_exchange#History
Wikipedia doesn't have a history section on it's page for company, but it says this:
> By 1303, the word company referred to trade guilds. Usage of the term company to mean "business association" was first recorded in 1553, and the abbreviation "co." dates from 1769.
You can tweak your definition by the means you'd like, but I think an honest assessment would be at this point to say they were concurrent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company#Semantics_and_usage
So your statement seems incorrect. I'm no expert, just curious.
Corporations aren't a free market concept, it's a way for the state to give special protections to certain companies that need it for some prosocial reason.
A short history: https://newint.org/features/2002/07/05/history
Basically, the original idea is, a corporate charter is granted to create a corporation, which acts on behalf of its shareholders (who the government trusts, have some worthy interest in mind).
They can't vote, can't get married, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization
If you must grow by x% every year, and infinite growth is impossible, you begin shoving more and more low quality ads into your search results, partake in more legally and ethically grey activities, and eventually rupture?
Are there any examples of large corporations that have said, “we make billions in profit each year. We’re going to focus on maintaining that enormous success. We’re not going to focus on growth.” (I can already hear the spreadsheet squinting logic about how growth is necessary for some reason)
And yet, a bad quarterly earnings report will tank a stock...
> Driving the company to failure by relentlessly cutting costs in the name of "growth" is not in the interests of the owners.
Sure it is. They've maximized their personal revenue and now it's time to get out. The sooner the better.
Where is Xerox going to get the money to do R&D to not be obviated? Replace Xerox with any other business.
All the businesses obviated by spreadsheets, mobile networks, smartphones, GPS? Maintaining success is continuing to make bets and moving forward, and bets require money. More money means bigger bets.
Another example, you have two businesses, one with a 5% profit margin (because they feel like 5% is enough), one with a 10% profit margin. The one with 10% profit margin is going to be able to continue renovating the business, upgrading the facility, buying more land, hiring better employees with higher payrates.
What will happen to the 5% profit margin business? Do you think customers will keep rewarding them (assuming the 10% profit margin business is worth the additional marginal cost)? You can insert restaurant, hotel, retail store, etc in here.
Note that having a higher profit margin is not the only way to survive, having a lower profit margin to better compete on price and gain market share is another way too. Balancing the two and delivering the right product at the right price for your customers is the key skill, but it’s a moving target.
That 10% growth rate may or may not be factoring in some externalities that the 5% growth has to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
My point was businesses compete with each other, and money is one of the tools used to compete.
And growth rate and profit margins are not the same.
If you only ever reward investments with high rates of return it leads to atrophy in boring yet essential sectors of the market. Supermarkets, like you mentioned, have a very low profit margin (usually 1-3%). Can you imagine what would happen if no one was willing to invest in a supermarket?
>Note that having a higher profit margin is not the only way to survive, having a lower profit margin to better compete on price and gain market share is another way too. Balancing the two and delivering the right product at the right price for your customers is the key skill, but it’s a moving target.
Some investors will seek a 10% return in exchange for higher risk.
Others will be happy with a 3% return that is much lower risk.
Portfolios will include some of both types of investments depending on goals and risk tolerance.
Further, the best way to grow %x for a long time is to provide quality. Shittification is a short-term strategy.
There are numerous reasons for companies to exist. Off the top of my head I can think of a few. To provide goods to populations. To provide services for populations. To give the owner something to do. To perpetuate themselves. To provide something to do for employees. To do something an individual can’t.
None of these require investors. There are countless businesses that can be started that don’t even require a significant outlay of capital.
On top of that there are differing philosophies that might suggest investors should be last in line for benefits from a business. I could make a strong argument that society allows businesses to exist and as such society should benefit first and foremost. Businesses typically fail to exist without employees, so I could argue employees should come before investors.
Please don’t perpetuate the naive notion that investors are somehow more important than anything else. I am a dyed in the wool capitalist and while I tend to highly value profitability, even I don’t believe shareholder value is some sacred edict.
He did his MS in Materials Science at Stanford.
Also, plenty of STEM background people join McK later in their careers (especially in the electronics space) because there is plenty of demand for Strategy and Management Consulting in the industrial world, as LDPs aren't as popular anymore
Today it is 2,500 people versus 45,000 people, and I would guess it is still probably true that a greater proportion of DE Shaw is technical than McKinsey.
An Petroleum Engineer, Materials Engineer, Industrial Engineer, Chemical Engineer, Biopharmaceuticals Researcher, etc will always have the option to work at an MBB, as those industries heavily use McK to help with their own businesses.
On top of that, McK hiring even at the undergrad level skews STEM. If you attend a feeder school like MIT, Stanford, or Berkeley, it's EECS/Applied Math/Physics majors that land Associate interviews, because management is much more technical now. McKinsey literally has recruiters devoted only to candidates from Berkeley and UMich Engineering for strategy roles.
It isn't the 1980s anymore when some random schmoe with an Econ or Business degree can land an MBB role anymore.
I quit and don’t regret it at all, everybody I talk to there basically just says they have zero inspiration and shuttle between pointless meetings and are only there for a big paycheck. In my view, that’s a pretty miserable existence - one needs passion to thrive.
Kodak was also doing great, until suddenly they weren’t. My own personal experience of the last year is my search engine use has about halved in favor of GPT, with most of my friends reporting the same.
If Google is ever forced to admit in an earnings call that search volume is down the stock will crater on the spot.
And Nadella went to MIT (India), with an MSCS from U. Wisc.
I'm sensing a pattern here...
for those who are confused.
He attended UWisc Milwaukee (which makes his climb up the ladder even more impressive).
He also did the Part time MBA at UChicago Booth while at Microsoft
(Context: I was 15%'ed back in April.)
Up until now . .
Gartner has discontinued printer, copier and MFP market coverage.
Their website lists printers, copiers, and supplies, as well as 'Print Solutions' and 'Document Solutions'.
A decent number of the actual machines sold under the Xerox name are designed and/or manufactured by 3rd parties (some are subsidiaries or former subsidiaries like the old Fuji/Xerox group) but a handful of the high end machines are still fully designed and manufactured in the USA. Lots of the toner is manufactured in the USA, too.
Last I'd heard (2018?) they were researching the 3d printing business, but since their main site doesn't say anything to that note I have to believe it's not going too well.
https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Xerox+Corporation&sort=...
The rest of the website is like urbexing a dead mall. The job postings tell a story of hollowing-out. You can't say it is strange though. So many organizations follow the same trajectory of under-allocating to product development and find themselves coasting on the R&D already done, then shrinking, slowly at first, then quickly.
Yep, there's a heavy MBA focus on financials as opposed to doing what's best for customers. Funnily enough you're shipped off in your first weeks to an indoctrination course on quality, but later catch on that MBA speak is holy writ.
Every few years there's transformative change and more folks get dumped.