Growing

I thought I would take a minute and let you all know how Puget Systems is doing as a business and how our 2014 shaped up.

How was 2014? In a word? Stunning.

A Race To the Bottom

I’ve been a customer of DirecTV for just over 14 years.

Yesterday, I called DirecTV and cancelled my account. To their credit, they didn’t hassle me very much, and only read off a script a few times to remind me that DirecTV is better than anyone else.

Let’s perform a little back of the napkin math: $100/month for 14 years comes out to just under $17,000. I’ve also recommended DirecTV to a number of friends and family bringing that total much higher.

In Search Of Things That Do Not Scale

In the late 90s I had the opportunity to take a factory tour of the Porsche plant in Stuttgart Germany. I watched as engineers assembled engines by hand. The only automation I noticed was how parts were delivered to each work station by robotic carts. Our tour guide pointed out that each Porsche was built-to-order and that a number of models had long waiting lists.

But it was an area near the end of the tour, just off the main assembly line that stood out to me that day. In this area were maybe a dozen or so women stitching together what looked to be large swaths of leather or canvas. Looking around the plant of such a high performance car company, this particular area felt antiquated. Another man in our tour group asked the tour guide why those women were not using commercial stitching machines.

Tiny Glowing Screens

I sat on a chair made for a Kindergartner in the back of a dark auditorium waiting for my daughter to perform at her school Christmas program.

You can almost feel the nervous energy coming from the children and especially the parents like me who are not sure if their child remembered to bring their sheet music, instrument and every part of their costume including the reindeer antlers.