ratherlimited and specialized post-World-War-II religious example of the Keech cultused in today’s social psychology classes. They doubtless will explain the reasons for the destructive behavior in terms of the tremendous blow to selfesteem that would occur from admitting the falsity of one’s leitmotiv, bothsocial and financial, during this period.But we prefer a simpler assessment. The columnist has been so wrongfor so long on his one-sided prediction that if he were ever to close the tradeout, he would lock in a terrible loss by maintaining the unrealized loss in perpetuity. No closure is possible, either in Abelson’s mind or in his readers’minds. As long as the prediction is open, the nuclear catastrophe that stopscivilization and brings the Dow down to the triple-digit level of his beginningsmight occur and provide vindication (see Figure 4.1).Like many others, we will be saddened when, in the words of the physicistMax Planck, the financial columnist is “dragged kicking and screaming fromhis aerie perch.” However, this chapter in history should serve in the minds ofall investors as an example of the folly of failing to adjust one’sbeliefs to the constantly shifting weight of evidence and structural changes in our economy.
5 “WE ARE NUMBER ONE”U S U A L LY M E A N S“NOT MUCH LONGER”
Pride goeth before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.—Proverbs 16:18
We can be the one company that can change the world. It’smaybe the first time there’s ever been such a company. Ciscois in the position. This is the Internet revolution. . . . We canbe perhaps the most successful company in history.—John Chambers, Chief Executive Officer, Cisco Systems1
M
ost people would agree that powerful corporate leadership is important in considering which stock to buy. The star CEO whose wordsput wings to a grand vision attracts capital. But as the Greek historianHerodotus observed in the fifth century B.C., power can bring outrageous arrogance, or hubris, characterized by moral blindness and temptation to abusethe weak. This tragedy is occurring in our time as one company after another133
134 Practical Speculationcollapses under charismatic but flawed leadership, destroying the wealth of itsshareholders.Much has been written about the comeuppance of the dot-coms. But farmore wide-reaching in impact on America’s pocketbooks and the economywas the crash of three big New Economy blue chips: Enron, Cisco, and Lucent. Enron went from $90 a share on August 17, 2000, to the largest corporate bankruptcy in history on December 2, 2001. (It was soon eclipsed by thedemise of WorldCom.) Cisco fell from $80 a share in March 2000 to $8.60as of October 2002, and Lucent declined from $77.77 in December 1999 to 58cents in the same period. An investment of $100,000 at the height of thesestocks would have been reduced to less than $5,000.Yet all three had been 1990s wonder stocks, featured on countless brokerage “recommend” lists right through the catastrophic denouements. Sofirm a grip did these stocks have on the nation’s imagination that the JanuaryFebruary 2002 issue of AARP’s magazine, Modern Maturity (which claims thelargest circulation in the United States), cited unnamed “experts” who wererecommending Lucent and the already-bankrupt Enron as good safe investments in the post-September 11 downturn.2We do not insist that a comeback is out of the question for any of thesecompanies; we are great believers in the second chance. But we would all liketo spot the next Enron before it blows up. We began studying in earnest howto go about this in January 2002, after a reader sent us the following letter(Enron’s shares were by then trading in pennies):I am a retired person who invested all my savings in Enron since it was considered a blue-chip company and paid dividends. What do you suggest I should do?Do you think they could successfully restructure the company? Will the stockcome back to $20, if not to the high? I would be very grateful if you would kindlyreply to my e-mail. I am extremely depressed and very anxious to know yourthoughts on Enron’s future. Thanks.
In studying how to spot a company destined to plunge from the heightsto the depths, we studied CEOs who made outrageous boasts, and wesearched for executives known for humility. We delved into the Wall Streetsuperstition which says a jinx often afflicts companies thatbuild flashy headquarters buildings, talk their way onto magazine covers, name stadiums after themselves, or make headlines with big acquisitions. Our tests showed that there issomething helpful in all of these, and we report the results in this chapter.Our first insights came from an ancient Greek tale that involved, curiouslyenough, technological genius.
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The Tale of IcarusDaedalus, a brilliant engineer, earned much honor from Crete’s King Minos bybuilding a splendid palace with a running-water system. Daedalus also built alabyrinth to hide the Minotaur, the monstrous issue of the king’s wife’s passionfor the white bull of Poseidon. When King Minos learned that Daedalus had assisted the queen in consummating the union, he imprisoned Daedalus. Daedalussecretly fashioned wings from wax and feathers for himself and his son, Icarus, toescape to Sicily. When the time came, Daedalus counseled his son:Icarus, I advise you to take a middle course.If you fly too low, the sea will soak the wings;If you fly too high, the sun’s heat will burn them.Fly between sea and sun!Take the course along which I shall lead you.
But Icarus could not resist the temptation to soar high into the sky. His wingsdisintegrated as the sun softened the wax, and he plunged into the sea.Hubris is the sin to which the great and gifted are most susceptible, and itprovided Greek tragedians and historians with a rich source of material. Recounting the punishments of heroes who aspired to godly heights providedcatharsis, scholars say, allowing Greek audiences to cleanse themselves of fearand pity without becoming paralyzed by those emotions. Some writers presented the hero as wholly blameless. Aeschylus, for example, believed that thegods begrudged human greatness and inflicted hubris on men at the height oftheir success.Twenty-five centuries later, hubris is still a potent force in our lives, fromthe moment we reach out as toddlers and challenge the gods with our invincibility by touching the stove’s red-hot burner. We all have our own examples ofhubris. Vic’s personal favorite is of Old Man Hemingway. He heard the talefrom the owner of a pipe company he visited in Houston during his days in themergers-and-acquisition business. Hemingway was in the habit of endingmeetings with lower-level executives by picking up a copy of the New York Timesand holding it in front of his face. One day he was found dead, with 15 bulletholes in his paper. Apparently, a lower-level employee, enraged by his boss’hubris, knew the newspaper gesture only too well and took the opportunity todo him in.Our favorite newspaper, the National Enquirer, is adept in recounting stories about hubris. Jennifer Lopez is apparently a frequent culprit. Accordingto the Enquirer, J-Lo’s handlers warn you never to look her directly in the eye,and never to call her by her name.3 This custom has historical roots in the
136 Practical Speculationroyal French court under Louis XIV. Courtiers were under orders to alwaysavert their eyes in the Sun King’s presence, and they were expected to proffertheir wives as a token of their esteem.In Wall Street’s tragedies, hubris often turns out to have been the culprit.The late historian Robert Sobel, surveying the past century of business downfalls in his 1999 book When Giants Stumble: Classic Business Blunders and Howto Avoid Them, prominently featured hubris in his list of 15 deadly sins that destroyed such leading companies as Osborne Computer, LTV, Schwinn, andPackard Motor Car.4 (Sobel’s list also included nepotism, nonstrategic expansion, cutting corners, isolation, and dependency.)The sense of being above the world is basic to hubris. The revered Britishnegotiator Sir Harold Nicolson pinpointed the attitude in his 1939 classic,Diplomacy: “The dangers of vanity in a negotiator can scarcely be exaggerated. . . . It may bring in its train vices of imprecision, excitability, impatience,emotionalism, and even untruthfulness.”5The “above it all” element of hubris may have been present when Ciscopresident John Chambers accused Silicon Valley executives in February 2000of undermining the value of their companies by awarding “hired gun” optionsthat allowed executives and employees to cash out after only three years.Chambers made his admonition just 17 days after he cleared $142.9 millionby exercising 1.15 million Cisco options at what turned out to be near-peakprices, according to Infoworld, an online news site.6Both Cisco and Enron employed ingenious mechanisms to banish debtfrom the corporate books. In 2002, the Wall Street Journal caused a sensationby reporting that Enron traders had secretly forced up consumer energyprices in California by using trading strategies with such nicknames as FatBoy, Ricochet, Load Shift, Get Shorty, and Death Star.7
The Corporate Story BoardBeyond the arrogance of power, a common theme in corporate stories ofhubris and downfall is that executives tell—explicitly or implicitly—storiesthat analysts want to hear. In an e-mail to us, Flavia Cymbalista, a Brazilianborn PhD who studies the effects of uncertainty on behavior, observed, “Analysts love a ‘savior.’ ” Sometimes, she said, analysts like a story enough to helpmake it come true, by encouraging their firms to provide cheap capital to thecompany. “Other times the story is unsustainable and sooner or later this becomes apparent.” Some successful traders gain an edge by exploiting their
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backgrounds in the arts and humanities to practice “script analysis,” shenoted. “They listen to the stories companies are telling and to the stories thatthe market is hearing and make their bets according to their judgment of howgood the story is as such and how it’s likely to unfold.”With such a willing audience, it is only natural for a CEO to boast a bit.But woes follow when executives start to believe their own fish stories.The leaders of Lucent, Enron, and Cisco were nothing if not storytellers.At Lucent, Carly Fiorina ran a $90-million brand-building campaign that, asBusinessWeek said in an August 2, 1999, cover story, “helped transform thecompany from a humdrum maker of phone equipment to an Internet playersupplying the gear for the New Economy.” The ads asked: “Who’s at the Center of the Communications Revolution?”8 In the next three years, Lucenthigh-flying stock lost 97 percent of its value, leaving its investors wishing theyhad put their money into something a bit more humdrum.In 1999, Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay boasted of his company’s ninefold growth in value to $40 billion during the 1990s. “We will do it again thiscoming decade,” he predicted to a group of awed oil and gas executives. Twoyears later, Enron was ruined, its leaders under federal investigation for massive fraud. On August 14, 2001, shortly before Enron’s downfall, Lay wrote inan e-mail to employees: “Our performance has never been stronger, our business model has never been more robust. We have the finest organization inAmerican business today.” The e-mail surfaced in congressional hearings fivemonths later.Fiorina and Lay were treading a well-worn path. Cisco Systems Chairman John Chambers’ 1999 prediction of continued 30 percent-to-50 percent annual profit growth was promptly followed by four straight quarters of50 percent-plus profit declines. Cisco is a true modern tragedy and Chambers an exemplary storyteller.
Cisco’s StorytellerAs a child, Chambers suffered from dyslexia. He went on to earn law andbusiness degrees, but never overcame a dislike for reading. Like many successful dyslexics, he compensated by relying on a prodigious memory. Heoften gave speeches without notes.His first job was as a salesman at IBM. The Washington Post’s Mark Leibovich reported in an April 6, 2001, profile that Chambers still rememberedwhat the recruiter told him: “You’re not selling technology; you’re selling a
138 Practical Speculationdream.” He became a great salesman for IBM and then for Cisco, tirelesslypromoting a vision of a New World Network with Cisco at its center. “Chambers’ sales pitches included the implicit message of invincibility,” Leibovichwrote. In August 1996, the year after becoming CEO, Chambers told USAToday, “There’s only one company in this industry that controls its destiny,and it is Cisco.”9 Chambers hobnobbed with President Clinton and otherworld leaders, spreading his network vision. In 1998, Forbes ASAP namedCisco the country’s most dynamic company. A September 13, 1999, BusinessWeek cover story dubbed Chambers “the Internet’s No. 1 salesman.”10By September 1999, stock options had made millionaires of 2,000 ofCisco’s 17,000 employees. Chambers used his sales talent to keep turnoveramong his workers low, personally distributing ice cream and sweets. Behind the talk and the ice cream, though, Cisco was not winning much business in the $225-billion market crucial to his vision of growth: sellingequipment to the big local phone companies. In 1999, Cisco accounted forless than 1 percent of telephone equipment sales. The Bells preferred to buyfrom Cisco’s far bigger rivals: Lucent, which Chambers loved to mock as an“Old World” company, and Canada’s Nortel.On August 26, 1999, desperate to catch up, Cisco agreed to buy Cerent, atwo-year-old maker of fiber-optic networking equipment, with just 285 employees, for a whopping $6.9 billion in stock. On September 15, 1999, he toldSixty Minutes anchor Diane Sawyer: “We’re going to change everything in thisindustry.”In early 2000, after the big corporate push to buy computer and networking equipment for the new century was over, doubts about future growthbegan to surface. Chambers would have none of it. His executives were stillpredicting sales growth in the 30 percent to 50 percent range in companieswhere the economy was strong, according to a February 9, 2000, article in theLos Angeles Times.11In March 2000, the huge gains in Internet stocks began to unravel. Ciscoshares traded at a high of $80.06 on March 27, 2000. In the next 18 days, thestock slumped 29 percent. Chambers remained optimistic, likening Cisco to aweapons broker in wartime. “We’re the experts in everything,” Chambers toldBusinessWeek for a May 15, 2000, cover story. “We sell arms to everyone.”12More and more companies cut back on their growth forecasts, but Chamberswould have none of it. Well into 2001, he stuck with his projections of 30 percent to 50 percent long-term revenue growth, relying on what CIO Magazine,in an August 1, 2000, article,13 called Cisco’s “godlike ability to peer intoevery nook and cranny of the business, 24/7” with its “virtual close” trackingsoftware. Unfortunately, customers, fearful of shortages, had inflated their
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orders. By year-end 2000, demand had fallen off a cliff. The alternativetelecommunications companies and dot-coms—Cisco’s primary customers—began disappearing. Cisco switches sold for 15 cents on the dollar.Undaunted, Chambers continued to sell the story. Speaking in New Delhito the Confederation of Indian Industry on January 17, 2001, Chambers toldhis audience that “voice transmission and then data transmission over the Internet would become free of cost. . . . that education would change forever withthe advent of education over the World Wide Web . . . and that E-business overthe next five years would grow by over five times. . . . Mr. Chambers stated thatCisco learned from every company in the world and became No. 1 or No. 2 infour years in each market it entered.”14On February 6, 2001, Cisco fell short of Wall Street earnings estimates.Its “godlike ability” to forecast had failed. In March, Cisco announced plans tocut 16 percent of its workforce, or 8,000 jobs, and Chambers acknowledgedthat Cisco’s growth rate went from 70 percent in November to negative in January and February. “No one has ever decelerated at that speed,” he told theWashington Post. It goes with the territory “of being the most profitable,fastest-growing company in history.”Four quarters of declining earnings followed, breaking a steak of 40 quarters of growth. The stock market had valued Cisco at $532 billion at its peak,making it briefly the most valuable company in America. By October 2002, itsmarket value had declined to $62 billion.
The Executive BoastOur friend Ed Gross, whose adept card-counting on the blackjack tables led tohis banishment from Las Vegas casinos (and a new career as an options traderand market maker), says gamblers, even skillful ones, who entered the casinobragging how easily they expected to win invariably ended up losers.The tendency for stocks to go down in like manner after executive boasting is part of a general character flaw that might be called, “Did You Summit?” Outside magazine’s February 2002 issue has an illuminating articleon mountaineering search-and-rescue missions observing that whenever aclimber descends from the heights, the onlookers who rush over do notask, “Did you enjoy?” or “Did you learn?” but “Did you summit?” Theinsistence on reaching the peak, regardless of weather conditions and theabilities of the climbers, is what leads to disaster. Many famous mountaineering deaths, including Mallory’s fatal attempt of Everest in 1924, canbe traced to it.15
140 Practical SpeculationOnce on the summit, CEOs naturally want to stay there. But competition at the top is always the most intense. Rivals are bent on coming up withalternate ways to make or market every product, and the consumer is fickle.When CEOs believe that they are the best at something, it breeds an atmosphere of invincibility that opens the door for disaster. The CEOs who showlack of humility by boasting could be demonstrating unwillingness to faceup to the harsh and ever-changing realities of the marketplace. Perhaps theyfind boasting easier than putting in the energy necessary for the humdrumpursuit of profits. In the worst case, boasting could be a cover-up for a serious problem.The scientist Albert Einstein put it nicely in a 1936 speech on educationin Albany, New York, that was reported in Great Ideas in Physics: “Desire forapproval and recognition is a healthy motive; but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, and more intelligent than a fellow being or fellowscholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, whichmay become injurious for the individual and for the community.”16The desire to be on top is not limited to CEOs. Money managers, too, suffer from the tendency. In response to one of the columns we did on hubris forMSN MoneyCentral, a reader wrote: “Niederhoffer is the best example of pridesignaling the fall. Right after he was the No. 1 hedge fund manager, in 1996,he wrote a book, gave the keynote speech at many conferences, and promptlyfell into oblivion.”We cannot deny the truth of what our correspondent wrote, but we canguarantee that in the future Vic will never again strive to be first in the hedgefund world. He has learned that “sure and steady” wins the race. The power ofcompounding is such that a slight but consistent edge over the 10 percent return from a buy-and-hold strategy is sufficient to achieve anyone’s financialgoals. To strive for a much greater return requires taking more risk. That extrarisk can be ruinous, especially when the adversary’s bankroll is much biggerthan yours.
Hubris and ChutzpaWe want to draw a clear line between visionary ideas and delusions ofgrandeur. Self-confidence is prerequisite to success. Hubris, however, is an exaggerated self-confidence that is difficult to sustain in light of the facts. Alas,none of us is perfect. The trap is sprung when people afflicted by hubris try tomaintain a constant sense of being on top. They can replicate the emotional
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feeling of confidence “either by altering their standards, rules and goals, or byreevaluating what constitutes success,” Michael Lewis wrote in “Self-ConsciousEmotions,” in the Gale Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence.17Vic’s father, Arthur Niederhoffer, unfailingly humble about his own numerous achievements as cop, lawyer, and scholar, masterfully drew the distinction between confidence and hubris in an article for the Connecticut LawReview of Winter 1970–1971. Artie’s subject was the arrogance of power displayed by the judge in the trial of the Chicago 7. The American Bar Association’s canon of judicial ethics calls for judges to be “temperate, attentive,patient, impartial.” When defendant Bobby Seale’s lawyer had to go to thehospital, Judge Julius J. Hoffman denied Seale’s request for an adjournment.He also ordered two attorneys jailed without bond for contempt of court, repeatedly interrupted the defense lawyers, and denied virtually all their motions. Artie wrote:How is it possible for a Federal judge to have become so rabid toward the defense that “he upheld prosecutors’ objections even when he had not properlyheard or understood them,” and turned the proceedings into a judicial disaster?We think the best explanation for these excesses is the classic one of Hubris.Implicit in the classic Greek philosophy of justice was the concept of a divinely decreed social order in which every human being had his particular placeand role. Hubris was the fatal flaw of character that impelled a man to violate themost cherished mores. Inexorably Nemesis punished the violator who, as Aristotle puts it, “moved from happiness to misery.” It was the most compelling themeof Greek tragedy, but there is no hint of this shattering experience in Webster’sThird International, that defines hubris rather prosaically as “overweening pride,self confidence, or arrogance.”In Jewish folklore we find a similar concept—chutzpa, which also connotesinsolence, audacity, or arrogance.If both hubris and chutzpa are forms of arrogance, what is the distinction between them? Hubris is a reflection of a civilization at the peak of its power, on theverge of assuming mastery of the known world. Its heroes hurled challenges tothe gods on Mount Olympus. We think immediately of Prometheus, Sisyphus,Agamemnon and Oedipus. By comparison, chutzpa is a relatively modern termrooted in the ghetto existence of a weak, dispersed and alienated Jewish minority.Hubris grows from a sense of power; chutzpa is a compensation for the lackof power.Hubris may be disguised for a long time. It is often interpreted as evidence ofhigh standards and integrity that marks a man for honor until the fatal flawcauses him to overreach. Hubris carries with it an almost religious aura, butchutzpa rarely exceeds the limits of the profane.18
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It Ain’t Boasting If You Can Do ItHow can we separate the Enrons, the Ciscos, and the Lucents—not to mention the Long-Term Capital Managements, Scott Papers, and Winstars—fromwinners like Genentech, once ridiculed for saying it would use biotechnologyto develop a profitable drug? Genentech did just what it said it would; it became the first company to receive FDA approval for a biotech drug. It waslater acquired by Roche in a series of stock purchases at up to seven times theoriginal 1986 offering price. Even after the long tech collapse, the Nasdaq 100as of the end of July 2002 included 23 stocks that had more than tripled overthe previous five years. Qlogic, Echostar, Idec Pharmaceuticals, Medimmune,and Amazon.com were up more than sixfold.Is there a way to distinguish companies with grand ambitions that will goon to reach the stars from those destined to suffer the end deemed necessaryby the Greek tragedians?As scientists, we need to quantify the effects of hubris. We began with asearch of boastful phrases on the google.com search engine. “We’re thebest,” “best company,” and “We’re No. 1” yielded over 100,000 entries. Wefound 11 companies that used these magic phrases. We threw in a couple ofbeautiful examples from Martha Stewart and Priceline.comfor good measure, although they didn’t contain the exactwording. We then calculated performance of the stocksagainst the S&P 500, from the date of the remark throughyear-end 2001.The sample size is too small for any degree of statistical confidence, butthe results are shockingly bad. The average relative performance was an astonishing 24 percentage points below the S&P 500. Five companies—Enron,Gateway, Human Genome Sciences, Priceline.com. and Sprint-PCS—fellmore than 50 percent. The date, the quote that triggered it, and the subsequent performance are shown in Table 5.1.While we may have missed some boastful remarks, we made an effort toinclude the performance of all companies that satisfied the criteria, regardlessof subsequent performance.After publishing our Boastful 13 study on CNBC Money, we received thefollowing extraordinary letter from a person whose insights deserve a complete quote:I retired from Lucent Technologies as an engineer after 30 years with the company. My career went back to Western Electric Company. Lucent excelled at leadingedge manufacturing. Not very glamorous, but consistently profitable; that waswhat it inherited from Western Electric, one of the best manufacturers. During
Table 5.1
Stock
QuoteDate
The Boastful 13
Quote
PercentChange to1/14/02
DifferencefromS&P 500(% points)
ContinentalAirlines (CAL)
1/18/00
“We’re the best positionedairline for the future.”
−27
−5
Dell Computer(DELL)
9/28/00
“We’re No. 1 in the UK,Sweden, Ireland, and Francein the business market.”
−16
6
Delta Air Lines(DAL)
6/14/01
“We are the best in thebusiness.” (VP describingwhy Internet-in-the-skyventure will work)
−31
−25
Enron (ENE)
12/31/99
“From the world’s leadingenergy company . . . to theworld’s leading company!”(banner hanging incorporate headquarters inlate 1999)
−98
−76
Fidelity Nat ’l (FNF) 6/14/00
“We’re No. 1 in all leadingfinancial indicators versusthe competition.”
45
68
Gateway (GTW)
3/26/99
“Gateway ’s goal is tobecome No. 1 on the Web,not because we are thebiggest, but because weare the best.”
−80
−69
Human GenomeSciences (HGSI)
5/7/01
“We are No. 1 by at leastan order of magnitude,possibly two.”
−52
−42
KPMG Consulting(KCIN)
6/7/01
“We are the best in theindustry.”
−6
5
LaSalle Hotel Prop 7/2/01(LHO)
“We were the bestperforming REIT in 1999.”
−33
−25
Martha Stewart(MSO)
“I can almost bend steelwith my mind. I can bendanything if I try hardenough.”
−15
−14
8/21/01
(continued)
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144 Practical SpeculationTable 5.1 Continued
Stock
QuoteDate
Quote
PercentChange to1/14/02
DifferencefromS&P 500(% points)
Priceline.com(PCLN)
8/17/99
“Priceline will reinvent theenvironmental DNA ofglobal business,” andproduce “a totally differentform of energy.”
−92
−77
Rational Software(RATL)
4/20/00
“We are the best-keptsecret on Wall Street.”
−38
−17
Sprint-PCS (PCS)
7/21/00
“We’re the best wirelessphone service available.”
−71
−48
−39
−24
Average
the intervening AT&T years, exciting marketing and personnel types gradually replaced the stodgy old engineering management. Eventually, the entire management down to first-level supervisor was saturated with people who didn’t know,understand or like manufacturing, nor did they like those who did.An example: During my last days at Lucent, our vice president sent his assistant down for a number of days to our plant in order to explain—to all 1,200 people—our new, world-class manufacturing strategy that was to finally take usunquestionably past Nortel and make us “No. 1.” Reportedly, this young lady’sprior experience was that of a kindergarten teacher—a very good one. She sat usin groups of seven, each group composed of persons who didn’t know each othervery well and who had different diversity and work backgrounds—in order to promote open communication. She then handed out a coloring sheet with fourcrayons to each of us. We then were instructed during the next four hours to fill inpicture parts corresponding to the part of the strategy that she was explaining atthe time with, of course, the appropriate company-approved color. Very little hadto do with manufacturing; most of it had to do with image and how we were goingto enter, and by the way dominate, new markets by buying new hi-tech companies. (We ended up that year by buying and trying—unsuccessfully for themost part—to integrate 31 new companies, many of which were duplicating ourown developing products. Meanwhile, we gradually dismantled our own capabilities that we could have, and should have, easily upgraded.)
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Now, most of these people had 20 or so years of experience. Many had college degrees, and/or intense technical training. I’m no dummy, myself. I graduated with a BSME during Viet Nam when they only let one out of five finish in