What is in a name? My company for instance is called Fieldweld. I chose this years ago as my very first for pay job as an independent contractor was welding a bush hog in a field. I intended at that time to do mostly welding in the field so Fieldweld suited me just fine. You inquire as to the name of most companies and there is a story behind it that makes sense when you find it out.
SO what about Sachem Head one of the hostile investor firms attacking Autodesk? http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/21/travel/havens-weekender-sachem-s-head-conn.html and http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sachem
The search is easy just type in “Sachem Head historical meaning” and off you go. From the first page the two references above were garnered. The NY Times one has as its first paragraph lead in sentence “SACHEM’S HEAD takes its name from a violent part of its history. A 1637 skirmish between the Mohegan Indians, allied with the English, and the Pequots on what is now Bloody Cove Beach led to the beheading of a Pequot sachem, or chief.” It then goes on and talks about an exclusive residential area that has no jobs and where people must travel to earn a living. Kind of like a great place for a hostile investor firm head to live in or aspire to I guess.
The second one from freedictionary is
sachem
Also found in: Thesaurus, Wikipedia.
sa·chem (sā′chəm)
n.
1.
a. A chief of a Native American tribe or confederation, especially an Algonquian chief.
b. A member of the ruling council of the Iroquois confederacy.
2. A high official of the Tammany Society, a political organization in New York City.
So take your pick. Chop off the head of the Indian Chief or be a member of the most corrupt NYC administration group ever in a city that has thrived on corruption since the early 1800’s as a way of life. Which sterling attribute does the chief honcho of Sachem Head aspire to?
What this says to me is someone who intends to eliminate existing leadership and or it’s policies whether right or wrong because we have this short term goal of stealing wealth from the company and the stock market buyers of Autodesk. It also says to me that there is a mercenary me first mindset irregardless of the affects upon the victim mentality which intends to make lots of money not by earning it but by fraud and theft. This is what I call it when the long term investors and customers who bought into a stable and productive forward looking outfit are now going to be cast aside by a hostile 5.7 percent holder of Autodesk shares. Thank Bill Clinton for this as the rules that allow this all started under him and have continued under Bush and now Obama who has allowed it to become an even bigger monster with his corrupt Dept of Justice.
Chop off the head and steal the loot and leave before the corpse starts to get peuwee! So what is in a name anyway? Wouldn’t you like to know just why this Sachem Head name was picked? After September 30 the kid gloves come off and the true face of this nice group will be revealed. Pay attention to this because I don’t think this bodes well for the victims.
Machined Audio Horn Lens 
That’s a curious name. It implies someone has quite a knowledge of *underworld* history unless it just refers to the geographic location of the instigator. Reading over the Tammany Society quickly, other stuff comes to mind like mafia, teamsters, etc. I don’t know what it is that Americans saw in these secret society type get-ups at the turn of the century but history seems riddled with them. For some reason I am reminded of the Flintstones lodge but I guess its more serious than that. I was half expecting to read of Skull & Bones or Freemasons in the mix somewhere. Maybe I just didn’t read long enough.
What has me a little puzzled is what these hostile minorities think they have to gripe about. How badly is Autodesk performing? I would have thought there are many companies/corporations not doing that well in what is a universal downturn because of wider circumstances. I would have said they were doing as well as can be expected. Still if you are say a retirement fund and you have a substantial position in Autodesk maybe you cant tolerate a downturn that reflects reality. What if you are heavily leveraged with derivatives somewhere and the bond market is forcing you into shares to remain solvent or keep up respectable returns and a lesser AD return has you distressed? Maybe you try a boardroom coup d’etat seeking urgent relief. Maybe you simply don’t care about the product, customers, company or staff and only about your own position here and now… perhaps you are a complete idiot and believe there is a recovery in the US and that AD are just a badly led company failing to get ahead like they should… Certainly seems like another ugly example of blind predation everyone could do without.
I guess if you look at DS for comparison then you think AD are underperforming however DS have done buybacks and issues to inflate their position for a while now, well at least since they stumbled so badly over Catia lite, so it is kind of an artificial success and of course now they started compelling upgrades to recover the loss and hide their own downturn. I would have said and did at one time I thought AD were navigating difficult times better than most and have a bevy of well rounded and presented products. It seems unreasonable to expect or demand more. I guess some people only see the money or the lack of it. It could be they have no understanding of what AD business really is all about and just want to cram a few most seats into economy class.
What could you do to drive the AD share price up though? – Borrow cheap money for buybacks? Well we know how that ends ultimately… don’t want to go there if we have a brain. – Rent seek customers? Also not smart…might lead to a total customer revolt in a deflationary/hyperinflation collapse ie zero income. – Cut unprofitable activity like R&D and lesser performing products? A good way to hollow out the company of talent, kill goodwill and drive customers to other providers still interested in innovation and meeting customers actual needs. – Maybe they sense they can be leverage some mischief because they already have taken contrary futures positions. Who knows. I don’t know about anyone else but I am anticipating a stock market crash (readjustment) somewhere along the line of say 80% so any creative intervention at this point to push things up say 20% is going to be short-lived and frankly futile. I sense if they succeed in forcing their position on AD that will be the beginning of a decline the likes of which no one would want to see. This is actually one of those civilisation make or break moments I referred to recently. Here’s hoping the short rode to ruin isn’t taken.
Tammany Hall is the worst example of organized corruption in US history and in second place is current day Chicago which brought us more evil Democrats like Obama. For some reason Democrats devolve into this morass far easier than any others. I don’t think the name choice is coincidental I believe it was picked as a a subtle form of humor and intent. Namely to try to take money not by earning it but by extortion. It is extortion when you come in and threaten trouble until you get your pound of flesh and leave with no regard for the future results.
Autodesk. A few years back I was in admiration of the sweeping multi year plans of conquest for mid range MCAD with the assembly of a cohesive manufacturing ecosystem. Priced more reasonably than any other comparable CAD CAM package I figured Inventor Pro HSM was the best thing going. Still do since I have a permanent seat but I find it very hard to write glowing things about HSM now that new customers are shackled to subscriptions which I thoroughly detest. According to Ralph Grabowski’s comment at his Worldcad site Bass was an admirer of the Adobe captive audience paradigm. I am not so sure of this and prefer at this time to hold out hopes this was not what he intended but Ralph knows much more about what goes on in general so I have to consider that Bass was in on this from the beginning. In any case the interjection of these Sachem Head types will hurt this bad for customers situation even more. I don’t follow stocks for companies I buy software from. I only care about what I get as a customer and how worthwhile it is for me. Ralph says income was down last quarter for Autodesk and I hope it goes down again and again until they piranhas leave and Autodesk goes back to what does the CUSTOMER want.
These hostile minorities don’t have gripes. They have an agenda and it is one of short term market stock value manipulation for their profits. They do not care about the future and there is no right or wrong way for them it is just how do you squeeze the victim for blood and leave before death or severe anemia causes great illness. I hope shares of Autodesk drop like a rock through declining sales and fear of the future with Autodesk from prospective new customers. I don’t want Autodesk to suffer because I dislike them but because as a customer and a consumer advocate of sorts I am on the customers side. I am a customer after all. I want them to be shed of piranhas and the subscription slave owner mentality and go back to what drew me here. The only way I can see this happening is for them to suffer financially. I want them to go back to what drew me here which was a superior set of software programs at good prices and a CHOICE on how I wanted to buy into it.
AD customers best organise a noisy protest then for September 30 outside the AD offices so the would-be parasites get the message that they are unwelcome. Seriously, customers have to stand up for their consumer rights and for US industry/manufacturing. If Bass is a good fellow in comparison then CAD users should back him up and see off this local outbreak of the money grubbing evil that is destroying the economy and the peoples livelihood. I know a lot of damage has already been done but the longer this goes on the lower the outcome will be. If your fellows can’t be bothered to participate because they are brain dead try to galvanise some action by telling them that they owe it to their grand children not to leave them a corralled squalor by default.
Hi Neil,
The only thing Autodesk will understand is income. I am probably about done talking about this for a while since people have been given ample warnings and Autodesk has been pretty forthright on their intent. The new problem is piranhas and Autodesk is in just as much jeopordy as their customers in this regard. I agree with Ralph Grabowski about income and if it falls enough for long enough only that will matter to Marketing types and piranhas.
People and their attitudes are something I understand less and less. Kids in their twenties are pretty alien to me in what they find important and how they make plans. Businesses that function on critical software applications who are clueless about the corporate side of their suppliers are another mystery to me. Most are oblivious to what is going on. They are not stupid they just don’t care I guess.
As for me there are some great things coming up in 2017 including really great probing routines for those of us with Haas mills and Renishaw probes. I am to the point where I have said enough and hate saying it but I made my life raft and I am insulated from it for some time. I don’t much care what people who don’t plan ahead do now as they will figure it out when the pain becomes great enough and they were warned. I am looking forward to the new goodies with my permanent seat of Inventor Pro HSM behind the fire wall. At the end of the day HSM still makes my life good in the machining area and my permanent seat of SE makes things good in design.
I had to think about all this stuff today that I have gone through with SE and now Autodesk. I have decided that sitting here angry over all this takes away from the good things I still can do and talk about and quite frankly I am tired of talking about corporate stupidity and customers who do not care what is done to them. No wonder most private bloggers have dropped by the wayside though as this stuff can get to you. You can lead a horse to water but can you make it drink? How much time do you spend trying before you get your own drink and leave the thirsty ones behind? No doubt something will get me fired up again in the future but for now I am going back to talking about software goodies.