I’ve been in on too many startups when they folded, but there wasn’t any money for basic salaries at that point (including the boss), much less trying to hold on to people using bonuses. We never did a bankruptcy, and our vendors and outside contractors mostly went away happy.

I did get some nice computer equipment at amazingly low prices now and then. Like this one.

Probably not at all interested in following the story are you?

And the “sharecropping”, they weren’t the only ones that didn’t foresee the economic collapse.

You can bet if labor accepted a wage dependent upon profitability and the made nothing the workers would get squat.

The recession took it’s toll on Kodak – Just like GM. I don’t think you can blame their situation solely on management.

GM took tax payers money in a ‘bailout’. They repaid the debt with borrowed funds. Kodak is asking for some of their own cash reserves to compensate management.

My reply was regarding You and ER getting all ‘huffy’ whenever read “management” and “bonuses” in the same sentence.

You choose not to read past the headlines. Rather than look at an individual case, you simply don’t bother to get past your prejudice that all corporations are scum.

You know, this issue is exactly like the Gorge Zimmerman case. We need to let the bankruptcy court make the decision about the bonuses. Hope it makes the news.

Now, when stocks go down, how do you justify large bonuses? What’s your basis for that? Or is it just that they are management and deserve, have earned, worked hard, it’s no fun firing people, it’s humiliating to be a manager in a failing company, having to endure ridicule and therefore need the money to make up for all of that?

I’m curious to know.

Way back in the early ’80s I was field engineering manager for this little company that made digital control systems. Spent 2/3 of my time on the road, and I came back from one trip to learn that the company was declaring bankruptcy and most of us would be let go in a few weeks. It was a downer, but then I got hit with the upper: We nevertheless had about six months of work to finish, contractual commitments to customers based on inventory we’d already bought, and they offered me 50% more money to agree to stay until the bitter end.

They had a good reason. Anybody in my position watching out for his self interest would immediately start looking for another job, and not wait for the scheduled layoff. For all the employees to leave immediately would create chaos and make the bankruptcy even more destructive–to creditors and customers–than it would otherwise have been. If the company could avoid stiffing some customers by completing some projects, the bankruptcy court would make damn sure we stuck around long enough to do so.

I’d advise you to take that kind of deal if it’s ever offered. The fun didn’t end with more money. The CFO was tasked with selling off equipment and inventory, and he just loved it when I would lug an oscilloscope or a stack of circuit boards into his office and offer him cash US dollars for “this junk”. I ended up decorating my living room with electronic equipment racks and a computer console complete with integral CRT and sculpted fiberglas tabletop, and outfitted a room as an electronics lab, for pennies on the dollar, all perfectly aboveboard.

I saw captalism’s famed creative destruction in action!

Second, not all those left out of this giveaway will be “janitors”. Many will be skilled employees who helped build that company making real contributions over long careers, not just corporate drones.

Third, paying executives with stock is just a tax dodge so they can be given preferential compensation due to the capital gains being taxed at a lower rate. It’s a scam from the git-go. Replacing a plunging stock with cash taken from others, like suppliers and creditors, is just a way of channeling the profits to their pals while insulating themselves from the losses. in other words, corporate welfare, privatize the gains, socialize the losses.

Fourth, Kodak made and sold lots of high tech products besides Brownies and Kodachrome, including computer peripherals and consumables. If the company can no longer compete in that marketplace, maybe its the guys in the front office who should be getting hosed, not the guys in the the labs or the shop floor.

This unquestioning making of excuses for corporations is what is really tiresome. Besides, I don’t feel myself prejudiced at all. Read my other post, about what I used to like about the company.

Look at it objectively and it looting of the company by those who ran it aground.

Reminds me of the “class warfare” Conservatives claimed was the reason liberals complained about tax breaks for the wealthy during wartime.

Very clever with words, those guys.