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Invisible wrote:
> No matter how many times we carefully explain to him that these numbers
> are meaningless, he *insists* on trying to extract meaning from them...
I remember seeing a joke video where the financial accounting system was
called Maiasse or something. "I just pull numbers out of Maiasse!"
> How did somebody so stupid get to be at the top? Is it just because he
> was there when the "company" was 3 students in their dad's guarage?
Yes.
> In other words, pick a date out of thin air, and hope they can somehow
> pull it off.
"How about February 17th?"
"If you already had a date, why are you asking me?"
"Well, um..."
"How did you pick February 17th?"
"It's the customer's birthday."
I kid you not.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Invisible wrote:
> correct. We had money coming in, so we changed it to having money going
> out. WTF?)
Tax write-offs, in the USA at least. You sell it to someone, lease it
back for more than it costs to run but less than it costs to run if you
count how much taxes you save.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Darren New wrote:
> "How about February 17th?"
> "If you already had a date, why are you asking me?"
> "Well, um..."
> "How did you pick February 17th?"
> "It's the customer's birthday."
>
> I kid you not.
Wow! Admitting that the date is arbitrary seems somehow even worse than
just using an arbitrary date...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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And lo on Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:25:39 +0100, Darren New <dne### [at] san rrcom>
did spake, saying:
> Invisible wrote:
>> No matter how many times we carefully explain to him that these numbers
>> are meaningless, he *insists* on trying to extract meaning from them...
>
> I remember seeing a joke video where the financial accounting system was
> called Maiasse or something. "I just pull numbers out of Maiasse!"
Heh speed read I read that system as Malaise, which would be funny in a
different way.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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Invisible wrote:
> [Yes, that's a contradiction.]
>
> For that matter, the top-management plan is to increase profits by 20%.
> I have yet to hear anything about *how* this is supposed to happen.
> They've muttered something about "oh, uh, yeah, we're going to hire more
> sales staff". But so far, I've yet to see anybody hired.
>
> What I *have* seen is that virtually every week we have a new lab worker
> starting here. So we're hiring huge numbers of lab staff, but from what
> I hear, our lab is a bit quiet at the moment. And there's not much
> future work showing up on the horizon either.
>
>
> It's a mad, mad world...
>
I have learned that either you trust management to make the right
decisions or you leave.
That doesn't mean that you are happy with the decisions or understand
them throughly. If the manager took the time to get you to understand
everything in a decision and agree with the decision - you might as well
be the manager.
It is kinda like you taking care of the computer network. People will
always second guess you and think you should do something different, but
they don't have the same perspective that you have.
I'm not excusing management behavior - there are plenty of jerks out
there - I know a few.
Just some fish food.
Tom
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> It is kinda like you taking care of the computer network. People will
> always second guess you and think you should do something different, but
> they don't have the same perspective that you have.
Most annoying when those "people" have superior rank to me and can
overrule my decisions... :-/
> Just some fish food.
Yeah.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
>> It is kinda like you taking care of the computer network. People will
>> always second guess you and think you should do something different,
>> but they don't have the same perspective that you have.
>
> Most annoying when those "people" have superior rank to me and can
> overrule my decisions... :-/
If they don't trust you to do your job, then maybe you need a new job.
Weren't you sending resumes out a while ago? What happened with those?
...Chambers
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Chambers wrote:
> If they don't trust you to do your job, then maybe you need a new job.
Maybe?
I think this one has already been proved multiple times over beyond any
semblence of doubt. ;-)
> Weren't you sending resumes out a while ago? What happened with those?
Once or twice a week, some random agency would send me an email, I call
them, they tell me about some job I'm not really interested in, they
promise to let me know what happens with it, they never contact me ever
again. After a while, I stopped getting emails. (Although I keep getting
repeated auto-generated messages telling me to go work for HMGCC.)
I did go to one interview. The agency told me they wanted a programmer,
but what the company actually wanted was a customer support advisor.
Needless to say, that's not something I ever want to do. Company was
astounded that I managed to write half a dozen trivial SQL statements,
and the interviewer appeared to be trying to invent a job on the spot so
he could hire me. Not sure I liked the look of the company, frankly, but
they seemed quite keen to employ me - although in the end no job was
actually offered.
I have since spoken to that particular agency on numerous occasions.
They keep promising to send me to more interviews, but nothing has ever
happened.
At this point, I have completely run out of ideas. I've paid for the
services of a professional careers advice consultant - we'll see if
anything useful comes of that.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> I think both figures are useful - year over year (or quarter over
> quarter) is something that "the street" looks at and affects stock
> price.
Exploiting "noise" in the profit signal to try and make money is fine,
but...
> It's the beginning of building a trend -
...how can you use just one or two points of data to decide that a *trend*
is starting?
> and if the analysts use
> it as one indicator of a company's direction (from a profit standpoint),
> it makes sense to be aware of it and know where you're going.
I don't think any real analysts look at solely the headline numbers to
decide what to do. They will look at the detailed result history to
determine if the trend is changing, they can't do that with just one or two
numbers.
For example, suppose your monthly profit fell from 104 last month to 90 this
month. Some people then go off on one based *solely* on these figures, they
send out emails to staff saying that profits have dropped by 13% and it's
been the biggest drop for over a year blah blah blah", they try to "correct"
whatever they think has gone wrong this month etc.
Then next month the profit is 107, they feel all good about themselves and
maybe get a pat on the back from their boss if he is equally stupid.
But, take a look at the monthly profit figures running up to the 104,90,107
incident:
38,64,45,67,50,50,76,66,66,77,70,76,81,73,91,82,80,73,76,93
The clever person will notice that on average profits seem to rising at 5
per month, and try to find the reasons for why this is and how to go about
increasing it. The stupid person wastes effort on trying to explain and
correct the change every month.
It's not just profits, but plenty of other things (like production volumes)
that suffer from people trying to analyse the noise.
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Invisible wrote:
>> It is kinda like you taking care of the computer network. People will
>> always second guess you and think you should do something different,
>> but they don't have the same perspective that you have.
>
> Most annoying when those "people" have superior rank to me and can
> overrule my decisions... :-/
>
But again, you don't know what all they need to consider when making
decisions.
What you might think as small and inconsequential can have repercussions
that a good manager needs to take care of. Sometimes the manager cannot
discuss them due to confidentiality issues or the like.
That said, I am not defending poor management.
I've worked with plenty of jerks.
All they cared about was how big their head was.
If I didn't implement exactly what *they* thought I should, it was wrong
and I killed the cat.
Don't work under someone like that.
Just remember this...
Think about how annoying it is to have co-workers second guess your
decisions (I'm not talking about management here).
I bet you appreciate feedback when you miss something. You actually
want that type of feedback - it helped you do a better job.
But those who disagree and grumble with your decisions are just annoying
and it hurts your relationship with them - both professionally and
personally - which hurts the company.
Now, how do you think a manager feels when you grumble about their
decisions.
Sometimes management makes a poor decision as a mistake - you do as
well. But it does not make you incompetent.
Later... Tom
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