Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

Santa Clara County claimed the country’s highest concentration of temp workers.44 Any laborers a company couldn’t easily replace were aligned with ownership via stock options: The professional employees swapped their guaranteed pay for a more direct stake in growth. Through bifurcation, they turned labor into a mere cost. Without a solution like that, Xerox couldn’t compete with low-cost Japanese manufacturers.