Today I learned: the President of McDonalds USA started as a crewmember and has no college

[Recursion]

http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/our_company/leadership/jeff_stratton.html

I'm not going to praise McDonalds or turn this into a Horatio Alger paean; I just was surprised to learn that.

[rurallib]

1. sure doesn't happen much anymore

You'd think that he would remember how little he got paid as a crew member and change that?

[Recursion]

2. Corporate McDonalds are supposed to be decent (for fast food) places to work

They generally pay above minimum wage, and make an effort to recruit from within.

Franchises, OTOH, are mostly awful.

I think this gets to my distrust of how we sing the praises of small business: it's really the large businesses that have the capacity to do real HR, pay people, keep people through a downturn, etc.

[southernyankeebelle]

3. Well people I see many educated idiots everyday in the halls of congress. Having a degree

doesn't necessarily mean your smarter. I know many people who are smart who don't have a degree. Many have common sense. That's something many in the halls of congress don't have. Just saying.

[Recursion]

4. I'll be the first to say a college degree is an overpriced piece of paper

I was just surprised that somebody that high up in a corporate hierarchy literally did work his way up.

[southernyankeebelle]

5. Yes, indeed. Somehow we need to get back to that time. Working your way up the ladder

says alot about a person. It seems today college's are not sending young people out in the world with the best education they can get. I don't think it's the students fault. Something in our education system has gone wrong. We need to get back to the basics.

[bhikkhu]

6. Well, that works out great for 1 in 500,000 people

...the ratio of McDonald's CEO's to McDonald's burger-flippers.

Good for the CEO and for the company - I'd always want a CEO to come from the ranks rather than from a cookie-cutter MBA program, but its not a reason for any young person to forgo college and plan on the company ladder.

[Orrex]

7. On the down side, he has to dress as Ronald McDonald every day.