Quote:
Originally Posted by cleanspeed1
Maybe we can get a crew together and visit our OEMs and ask them what the hell is wrong with them.
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I know what's wrong with them: the execs are overpaid, and they are overpaid and pampered to such a high degree and for so long that they have no idea- or at best, a dim recollection- of what life is like for their customers. So they have idiots on staff that attempt to understand the customer via surveys, consultants, and focus groups- how can I say what this is like... it's like the blind leading the blind. It's like watching Dumb and Dumber. It's like The Emperor's New Clothes. It's like... you know. So these insulated-from-reality decision makers are all sitting around in meetings getting spoon-fed these ignorant and largely ficticious numbers (like their average customer for x product earns $90,000/year- right. Maybe half that.
) and woe be the one that questions anything or comes up with a renegade (non-yes-man) idea or comment.
Anyway, these people don't even have familiarity with their products anymore, as they don't ever have to buy one or maintain it or wash it or anything. They lack personal investment in it. Think any of them change their own oil? Hell, ENGINEERS don't even do that anymore. They spend their time in airplanes (and yachts and whatnot); remember when the execs FLEW private jets to Washington to plead poverty and beg for TARP?
A lot of these guys in mgmt and marketing have never had an original idea in their lives and they wouldn't know a good idea if it smacked them upside the head. What they do is pop their heads up outta their gopher holes and see what the competition is doing and copy, copy, shamelessly copy that and try to match them move for move. Pretty much a herd mentality sort of thing.
So in those circles the almighty dollar reigns even more supreme than it does in the peon circles. Everything revolves around chasing the dollar- which, to a large degree, it has to BUT it shouldn't be at the expense of other good things like quality, reliability, maintainability, ECONOMY... the kind of things that matter to people who don't have new company cars thrown at them for free every year and have to buy their own gas. But that is a foreign concept, or a discarded one since it interferes with maximum dollar extractions from the customer.
And as long as enough customers go along with it there is not much incentive to change.
And then there is the enthusiast press...
