What I want to be when I grow up

Robert Schad was one of that generation of Europeans who came across in the years after the war. He started a little machine shop in Toronto in 1953. Mr. Schad worked his ass off for over fifty years. His little machine shop became Husky Injection Molding, the global leader in building the machines that mass produce all the plastic crap you buy. For many years the biggest market for injection molding machinery has been China. They buy our machines and then sell us back the crap.

Schad was a forward looking guy. He wasn't the sort of entrepreneur to maximize profits on the back of the workers. His company became almost as famous for their generous employee benefits as for their machinery. Subsidized meals in the company cafeteria. Subsidized on-site daycare. Doctors, chiropractors, and massage therapists, all right there at the worksite, and either free or heavily subsidized by the company.

Getting on in years, and not having anyone in the family interested in carrying on the business, Schad sold his company late in 2007 to a hedge fund. The price was just under a billion dollars, and Schad's share of the loot   was about 400 million. A princely sum, to be sure, but perhaps a justifiable reward for a lifetime of hard work, creating thousands of jobs, supporting many worthy causes, and so on. I suppose lots of people work hard all their lives and don't fare out nearly so well, but I'm prepared to give the system the benefit of the doubt.

I say, good for Mr. Schad.

But apparently Mr. Schad had been more a machinist and not that sharp of a businessman. The pointy pencil guys at the hedge fund were miraculously able to double the company's net operating revenue in a mere three years. Then they sold the company for over two billion dollars. Reuters reported that they had "reduced waste and shed non-core and non-performing assets". That's biz-speak for stripping out anything that isn't going to contribute to the bottom line in the next quarter. I'm wondering how many of Mr. Schad's beloved employee benefits were non-core or non performing?

If you are a young person considering a career path, this is an instructive example. You can see that there are opportunities to start a business, to grow a business, to contribute to your community. A good work ethic, an engineering degree, maybe an apprenticeship in something useful would be the tools you need to get on your way. With a bit of luck, fifty years later you can cash out with princely riches.

Or, you could do an MBA, start a hedge fund, never build anything, never create a single job, never give anything back to your community, and make twice as much money in three years as Robert Schad made in his lifetime.