Top all-time · #8400
Kevin Meyer
Personal blog · evolvingexcellence.com/blogbusinesscareer
Kevin Meyer's personal blog at evolvingexcellence.com covers business and career. Since 2007, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “No Titles Except "Plant" Manager”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Kevin Meyer's posts on US versus Chinese manufacturing, outsourcing (including Lego's return to in-house production), Fed 'Made in China' spending figures, and a company with no job titles. Commenters cite them as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Ruminations on life, leadership, lean, and zen.
Most-linked posts?
- No Titles Except "Plant" Manager2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-12-30
What Hacker News says?
In many cases overseas manual labor is cheaper than automation in the US. When people outsource intermediate parts this looks like an increase in productivity because fewer people in the US used to make the same product for less money. However, if you look at the total man hours to produce a given product it may have significantly increased. http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2006/12/american_manu...
Comment linking /blog/2006/12/american_manufa.html
on “US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent ”Submitted Saishunkan Cosmetics - Customer Care Trumps a Factory as a story · 8 points
HN discussionOr, alternatively, the unions made some bad decisions and forced management to accept them. It's not the wages, it's the work rules. [1] The US car companies are "paying people to sit home and watch Oprah". Completely agree on the executive compensation. Maybe the union should be abolished and management and employees should be given enough dividend producing equity to care about the actual profitability of the comp…
Comment linking /blog/2008/12/its-work-rules-not-pay.html
on “Obama Gives Keynes His First Real-World Test”Submitted No Titles Except "Plant" Manager as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThanks for the diligence guys. I pinged the original author of the article. He says: http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2008/01/no-titles-exc... "They do have the handful of titles required as a public company... CEO, CFO, and the like. As of last January when we visited, that was it. Presumably they also have to "title" job postings so people know roughly what skills they're asking for!"
Comment linking /blog/2008/01/no-titles-excep.html
on “Extraordinary Organizations: $170M company with no titles except “plant” manager”Submitted Aircraft Outsourcing Problems - With a Twist as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhat is it called when a blog reposts 80% of the content from another site? Anyway, this is the original article: http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2008/01/no-titles-exc...
Comment linking /blog/2008/01/no-titles-excep.html
on “Extraordinary Organizations: $170M company with no titles except “plant” manager”Submitted Boeing: Whiner Extraordinaire as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttp://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2011/08/the-fed-disho... These guys call BS on the Fed's numbers, and then ask why the Fed deliberately made this complex calculation in a way to deceive what is really happening
Comment linking /blog/2011/08/the-fed-dishonest-or-dumb-you-decide.html
on “"Made in China" products accounted for only 2.7 percent of consumer spending”Submitted Subliminal Creativity, Courtesy of Apple as a story · 1 points
HN discussionBut it turns out that making cheap plastic bricks is quite hard to do right. Lego's outsourcing failed and they pulled it back in-house: http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2009/03/legos-newfoun... I think you have to decide: Is this important? If it is, find a way to do it right. If it isn't, kill it. You have to decided what to kill. This sounds easy, but is quite hard to do when looking at it from the inside.…
Comment linking /blog/2009/03/legos-newfound-love-of-insourcing.html
on “How to balance being nimble with being productive? Scaling a company.”Submitted If Only Boeing Still Had Employees as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Root Cause of Email Overload as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted More Lean Companies as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Toyota's TPS applied to a whole country: Lean Economic Development Strategy as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Lean Blogosphere (Lean can be and actually has been applied to practically every industry) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is Ford the Reason for Microsoft Bloatware? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Evolving Excellence: The Lean Pantry (Amazon sells Groceries) as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
