Management Tenure

How long has management been...managing? That's what this one's about.

Unlike academia, business managers don't have you-can't-be-fired-for-any-reason tenure. The presumption for most of the investment community is that long tenure is good, and short tenure is bad.

Why? Because, presumably, when an Ahab-like manager has been around "forever," they will have seen all the good times and all the bad times in the industry. They will have deep pattern recognition and know how to navigate through crises. That's the presumption, anyway, and it was sort of a hysterical tussle with brilliant young people who wanted to manage and be left alone when the Woodstock Era of the internet happened in 1994. There simply was no seasoned or long-tenured management. So investors and boards had to hire smart young people and pray that they were...good.

And, for the most part, the young smart ones smoked the old experienced ones who knew how to manage well...in 1984. (Think about the demise of Microsoft in this era as a good example of a world where long management tenure doesn't exactly translate into "good.")

Hi, Bill. Hi, Steve. Just keepin' it real.