Smackdown

Kedrosky puts the smackdown on a former management consultant

. . . we are told repeatedly that he founded a major consulting firm, but not which one -- only to find out that his firm was a failed bubble creation at which he had only worked for four years:

By a strange twist of fate, I owe the longevity of my consulting career [ed. Elsewhere he says seven years] to this circumstance. When I first announced my intention to withdraw from the firm in order to pursue my vocation as an unpublishable philosopher at large, my partners let me know that they would gladly regard my investment in the firm as a selfless contribution to their financial well-being. By the time I managed to extricate myself from their loving embrace, nearly three years later [ed., 7 - 3 = 4], the partnership had for other reasons descended into the kind of Hobbesian war of all against all from which only the lawyers emerge smiling. The firm was temporarily rescued by a dot-com company, but with a year both the savior and the saved collapsed in a richly deserved bankruptcy.

To summarize in English: Stewart started an unnamed firm, and tried to exit mid-bubble four years later; his partners didn't want to buy his equity, so he sued them. By the time he got his shares bought three years later the firm had imploded. I may have some of the precise details wrong, but that's seemingly the essence. Not to be unnecessarily harsh, but who the hell cares what someone like this has to say about management theory, especially if the article is disjointed, dull, obvious, smug, poorly written, and full of falsely-elevated faux philosophy chatter.

If only the literate beating could be administered to consultants as a group. Ah one can dream.