sent from: Esher, Surrey, UK. destination: Roanoke, Virginia, USA
At Rhythm and Hues, the company where I started my VFX career, they had a company meeting every Friday. This meeting was run, without fail, by the President of the company, John Hughes. He would go into detail about the company financials and cash flow in a way that I've never seen before or since. He'd take the opportunity to explain the low, low profit margins, how to pay off debts, what depreciation of equipment meant. He showed you exactly how close to going under we were constantly and in a good year you got 2-5% profits. When I told my father about this he said that surely John must have had other motives than mere education and besides, no good business can run on such low profits, surely the real numbers are different. I was too young at the time to counter him but 16 years later I can say confidently that John was (and remains) a unique and wonderfully unusual company president, truly concerned with his employees, and his numbers were correct. So, when the inevitable layoffs would occur from time to time, it was all well understood.