What brands are vigilant about is the cost and the quality. These are things that consumer can directly see (and affect the company’s bottom line). If you want to see how important this issue is to a brand that you buy from, go to their corporate website and see if you can find something regarding this. Most times, you will not find any mention of what standards their hold their suppliers to. In some cases, there will be a brief mention of some standards but nothing about what they are doing to ensure that these standards are being followed. During my time in Asia, I’ve seen all sorts of things and I can tell you compliance is a big problem. I’m not saying that most factories take advantage of workers or have unsafe work conditions but there is a huge variation in what is happening.  And a lot of times, Western brands are (partially) turning a blind eye. The only way to really make sure things are done properly is to have a full time presence at the factory. The good news is that there are some companies that are doing this. With a local presence, it’s a lot harder for a factory owner to hide any dirty practices. 

So I’m very happy to see that Apple is openly talking about what they demand of their suppliers and also equally important, what they are doing to ensure compliance.  There is no doubt Apple is not perfect.  But at least we have visibility at to what they are doing. We should really expect this of all the major companies doing business in the developing world. If you have a moment, go to the website of your favorite brand(s) and see if they have something on the site regarding this.

And now back to our regularly scheduled (tech) broadcast….

A few key take aways…

• Its not the espresso machine or free food that attracts smart people.  It’s that chance to work with other smart people.  Sometimes startups spend a lot of time talking about the little perks that they have. Sure they are nice but they really aren’t what attracts or keep good staff.
• Pay people what they are worth.  While this makes sense a lot of places I worked had competitive salaries when they hired but then just used a simple single digit increment for the yearly increase, no matter how much the staff member had grown their skills.  This forces staff to leave the company to make big moves up the salary curve.
• They have a very simple test to decide if a staff member should be kept on or not: “which people, if they told me they were leaving in two months, for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep”.  Everyone else should get a generous severance package.
• As a company grows, there is a tendency to add more procedures and rules.  Unfortunately, this destroys the environment that your star employees joined for.

There are more nuggets in the presentation.  I suggest you give it a read yourself.