Expand Your Mind: Redemption
by Miki Saxon
Here are four stories that come after the exposés that happen when things go wrong. I find it interesting to learn the aftermath, even if it’s a work-in-progress, especially when it is positive.
Just as Nike and others were in the spotlight in previous years, top electronic companies like Apple and Hewlet-Packard have increasingly come under the gun for the conditions in their overseas contract-manufacturing facilities, such as Foxconn, where just one factory has 164,000 employees and they have dozens. Now Apple is moving to change that—but not as a leader.
But the shifts under way in China may prove as transformative to global manufacturing as the iPhone was to consumer technology, say officials at over a dozen electronics companies, worker advocates and even longtime factory critics. (…) Changing the company’s culture is slow going. But the needed reforms, executives at Apple and Foxconn hope and believe, are falling into place.
What would you do if you woke up one morning at the age of 51 to find that what you had worked your whole career to achieve was gone and you were on the street with no job? That’s what happened to employees Lehman Brothers and many other banking houses in the Fall of 2008. Most were devastated, but Canadian Michael Tory took stock
“How did I feel? I woke up that Monday morning and I had my health, my family, my reputation and energy, I had lost nothing, really. It was a profound revelation to me. I had lost nothing important and, that day, I decided to start my own company.”
and proceeded to start a pure advisory firm focused on its clients (unlike Wall Street).
None of the partners would get stinking rich, but, equally, they would not have to act as shills, eternally pushing services or products because they paid jackpot returns, not necessarily because they were in the best interests of the client.
Anyone at all involved with the tech world, and many who aren’t, heard when Yahoo CEO and ex-president of PayPal Scott Thompson was fired for listing a computer science degree on his resume that he didn’t have. Now Thompson is heading up a tiny startup called ShopRunner and just joined the board of PaySimple, another startup. According to Wedge Partners analyst Martin Pyykkonen Thompson need to prove himself.
“You have to kind of re-earn your stripes and your credibility and do something meaningful,” Pyykkonen said. “If he can pull it off with a small company, maybe that leads to the next tier up.”
but Thompson has a totally different take on what he’s doing.
“The only person I really need to prove anything to is myself. The jury’s still out, but I’m having a great time.”
Brian Lam interned at Wired and spent five years as editor of Gizmodo, Gawker Media’s gadget blog, where he nearly destroyed himself. Now, still on the Net, he’s redeemed his life.
And then, he burned out at age 34. He loved the ocean, but his frantic digital existence meant his surfboard was gathering cobwebs. “I came to hate the Web, hated chasing the next post or rewriting other people’s posts just for the traffic,” he told me. “People shouldn’t live like robots.” (…) And now he actually has time to ride them. In that sense, Mr. Lam is living out that initial dream of the Web: working from home, working with friends, making something that saves others time and money.
Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho
