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Perot's basic idea in starting EDS was to provide computer services to companies that did not have their own machines by leasing idle time on computers owned by others (or, later, by EDS) and writing the programs to put that time to use. One of its first big contracts, to process the Medicare- Medicaid claims being handled by Texas Blue Cross-Blue Shield, was not exactly an arm's-length deal; it was signed while Perot was still employed by the Blue plans, a clear conflict of interest. The company went on to win a great deal of state and Federal Government business, provoking some complaints from competitors and bureaucrats that it relied on political pull rather than on submitting the lowest bids. But Perot seems to have pushed EDS to its spectacular growth primarily by identifying and filling a genuine business need and by giving the company what even some of his critics call charismatic leadership. He inspired his subordinates to prodigious labor by setting clear goals that they were free to achieve any way they thought best. After Perot sold EDS to General Motors, he and chairman Roger Smith joked that Smith had given Perot permission to shoot the first GM man who visited EDS with a manual of company procedures.
But if EDS was a loose organization in some ways, it was phenomenally regimented in others. Perot bound employees by what has been compared to a system of indentured servitude: they had to sign agreements specifying that if they quit or were fired for cause within two years, they would repay EDS up to $9,000 in training expenses. Men were obliged to wear a dark suit, white shirt and tie and to cut their hair short; in 1983 the U.S. district court in Seattle ordered reinstatement of a computer programmer that it found EDS had fired "for the sole reason that he would not shave his beard." Perot's recent declaration that as President he would not put a known homosexual or adulterer into the Cabinet was no surprise to those who know him; he followed the same hiring practices at EDS. A former employee says she knew of instructions to recruiters not to hire anyone with a weak handshake because he might be a homosexual. Marital infidelity was punished by firing. Says a Houston oilman who knows Perot: "One of the scariest things about Ross is his tendency to exclude everybody who doesn't look or think like him."
Women were not excluded from Perot's EDS; in fact, 44% of its employees were female. But only about 5% of the managers and supervisors were women. One reason probably was that for many years Perot hired for key positions mostly young military men who were being mustered out (they were, after all, accustomed to regimentation). They created an atmosphere of foxhole camaraderie that women could not readily fit into. A woman employee says she was told that women had not been in the work force long enough to acquire the training and skills needed to become EDS executives. After Perot left, however, GM suddenly found many it deemed capable. Women now fill 31% of the management and supervisory jobs at EDS -- and, it is only fair to note, 25% of those positions at Perot's new company, Perot Systems.