Stardate 20010807.0952 (On Screen): Quick! Someone get me a wooden stake! The "new economy" won't die! This site pushes a book which was clearly written before the dot-com collapse, and it's almost farcical to read now. I was just looking through their "12 points" and got to
"Hiring the Children" and wondered what the heck it meant. Well, it means to hire and exploit young workers because they'll work longer hours and cost less. Great. But they give two examples of companies who have used this strategy successfully, and the second one was
Rocket Science Games who were described as having "been able to gather a talented, young (mostly under 40 years of age) workforce that has produced some of the most popular games on the market." I can't really judge their claims for the success of these twelve points with other companies, but I did recognize this one, because it's been out of business for years. And as to "most popular games" they never really made much of a dent. In fact, they only produced
three games and none of them were big.
By 1997 they were already in massive trouble. Their home page URL has lapsed and is available for registration. I'm not completely certain, but I think some of their other good examples are also out of business:
Firefly,
Starwave, and
Peapod is probably not long for this world.
A lot of these recommendations don't ring true. But then, we have the "expert paradox" again: if someone really knew how to run a successful business, why would he write a book about it? Wouldn't he be out doing it, instead? (discussion in progress)
