"Bloomberg by Bloomberg," by Mike Bloomberg: on Corporations

Given $10M upon being fired from Salomon Brothers in 1981

For a decade and a half, I'd been an integral part of the country's most successful securities trading firm, even of Wall Street itself. Not just in my head. If my press was to be believed, in everyone's. Suddenly, though, needed no longer. I was a general partner. An owner rather than an employee. Nevertheless: Fired!

The Salomon Brothers Executive Committee had decide to merge the 71-year-old partnership with a publicly-held commodities trading firm, Phibro Corporation. For 63 of us, it was our last meeting as Salomon partners.

Of course, there was the $10 million I was getting. America's a wonderful country.

Built up a $1.3B company from scratch over 20 years

We added magazines, radio, and television--all tethered to the 24-hour machine--that made us unique as a multimedia company catering to the people with the most at stake. We were never satisfied and that drove us to work harder and build more. By May 1997 we were able to install our 75,000th Bloomberg computer terminal, bringing our annual sales to $1.3 billion.

Open physical plant at Bloomberg Press encourages creativity

The leverage we gain from employing creative people and letting them do their own thing is incredible. Our open physical plant encourages innovation, and our flat management structure guarantees a well-functioning meritocracy. Fortunately, for us, others do it differently. Typical company politics elsewhere stifle the most free-thinking employees and discourage risk taking. The accounting oversight in most corporations prevents trying in a year the diverse creativity we institute in a month. Thank goodness. We've got enough competition as it is. Of course, not everything we try works.

Making change in difficult, in companies or technology

In short the history of computing, this process has played out repeatedly. Users get tired of the formal information-processing department. Those faceless bureaucrats want justification for spending money on hardware. They insist on setting priorities other than "all of the above."

From the old big mainframes, to limited-function, distributed PCs, to centrally managed networked resources, no one's ever satisfied except the hardware manufacturers. For users, it's politics, not engineering. For the vendors, its sales. For me at Salomon Brothers, it was a nightmare.

Ludicrous to pay CEO bonuses when stock value rises

My salary is equal to the lowest-paid full-time employee we have (currently, $19,000 per year). Everything else I get is from my share of the firm's earnings (and income tax regulations encourage me to reinvest most of that in research and development).