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Tom Austin wrote:
> 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.
It just annoys me when some manager says "we should do X". And I
carefully explain "X is a bad idea because of A, B, C, D, E and F". And
the manager says "...yeah, well, I don't think those are problems". I
mean, WTF can you say to that??
> That said, I am not defending poor management.
> Don't work under someone like that.
Heh. If only I had a choice... ;-)
> Now, how do you think a manager feels when you grumble about their
> decisions.
Poor decisions are one thing. When you carefully explain why a dicision
is bad, and you get a reply that says no it isn't - no explaination,
just "I think you're wrong" - it's rather irritating.
Or when I say "I need to do X", and they say "nah, I don't think that's
necessary". Er, well actually, yes it is. But hey, they're not the ones
who are going to get screamed at when the auditors can. I am.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
> Poor decisions are one thing. When you carefully explain why a dicision
> is bad, and you get a reply that says no it isn't - no explaination,
> just "I think you're wrong" - it's rather irritating.
You can always ask for an explanation. "Please teach me where in my
chain of reasoning I made a mistake? Is B really not a problem? It
sounds like C will lose us customers; how do we avoid that?" Things like
that. He might just not want to take time to explain it, so ask him for
the time. (Or, as has been said, he might just have his head up his butt.)
> Or when I say "I need to do X", and they say "nah, I don't think that's
> necessary". Er, well actually, yes it is. But hey, they're not the ones
> who are going to get screamed at when the auditors can. I am.
Again, "isn't that part of the legal requirements outlined in section
XYZ of the how-to-make-auditors-like-you manual?"
I mean, I'm sure you ask these questions, but in my experience,
persistence helps. Half the time the manager is being a dork, it's
because he isn't actually thinking about the problem, and making a
decision based on an off-the-cuff analysis.
--
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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On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:29:00 +0200, scott wrote:
>> 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?
It's two points of data in an overall view of what the company does.
Only those two points of data isn't enough, you have to look at the
policies the company has implemented as well.
>> 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.
Like I said, it's an indicator. There is more analysis that's done, of
course, when you talk about Wall Street analysts. But an improvement in
year-over-year (or quarter-over-quarter) is an indicator that something
good happened in the quarter or year. Then look at the trend over 5
years - 5 points or 20 points, take your pick - and that *is* a trend.
Another indicator is the difference between looking at GAAP vs. non-GAAP
numbers. non-GAAP is generally a better indicator (as I understand it)
because it reflects ordinary business and not extraordinary expenses for
reorganizations or other (hopefully) one-time expenses. So while a
company may show a loss from one quarter to the next, if you look at the
non-GAAP financials, you might see a trend of increased sales. That's a
good thing, regardless of the GAAP numbers which might include costs for
litigation, acquisitions, and the like.
> 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.
Monthly is too frequently, I think you'd find most analysts would agree
with that. Quarterly or annually are the numbers that I typically see
used.
> 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.
It largely depends on what you're trying to get out of the numbers. But
again, a monthly period is too short because of those variations. I
wouldn't decide a company was doing good because they had more sales on
July 3 than July 2. But I might decide a company was a good investment
if I saw their revenues increased in FY08 over FY07. Especially if the
FY07 revenues (or more appropriately, the non-GAAP profits) were over the
FY06 profits.
Jim
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On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:15:35 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> After a while, I stopped getting emails.
Don't wait, contact them back periodically (not daily, but every couple
of weeks to month) and just "check in" and see if anything new has turned
up. Persistence pays off - if you don't keep in touch with them, they'll
assume you're not looking.
Jim
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On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:39:11 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> It just annoys me when some manager says "we should do X". And I
> carefully explain "X is a bad idea because of A, B, C, D, E and F". And
> the manager says "...yeah, well, I don't think those are problems". I
> mean, WTF can you say to that??
"Why don't you see those issues as problems?"
Then point-by-point, explain why A is a problem, B is a problem, and so
on. Discuss these points with them, don't just give up because they said
"I don't think that's a problem".
For example, if you point out A is a regulatory problem and they say it's
not, ask them how they would explain that to a government auditor,
because that's part of your job, so you need to be able to explain it -
and if you can't, you'll send the auditor to him instead. Not as a
threat, but because management identified it as a non-issue and you don't
understand why, so you'll have to refer the auditor to someone who *does*
understand why.
Jim
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On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:24:01 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>> Or when I say "I need to do X", and they say "nah, I don't think that's
>> necessary". Er, well actually, yes it is. But hey, they're not the ones
>> who are going to get screamed at when the auditors can. I am.
>
> Again, "isn't that part of the legal requirements outlined in section
> XYZ of the how-to-make-auditors-like-you manual?"
And then again, you can always take the auditor to them after explaining
to the auditor "Tom here in my management chain doesn't see this as an
issue - perhaps he can explain why better than I can.". Then take the
auditor to see Tom.
Next time, Tom is more likely to give an explanation. Of course, he may
also get mad because Andy brought the auditor to him in the first place,
at which point it's appropriate to say "you didn't answer my questions
about this well enough that I could explain it to the auditor, so how
could I answer the auditor's questions? I can't just make something up."
Maybe Andy should get a job with the auditors instead. <eg>
Jim
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> And then again, you can always take the auditor to them after explaining
> to the auditor "Tom here in my management chain doesn't see this as an
> issue - perhaps he can explain why better than I can.". Then take the
> auditor to see Tom.
Not easy when Tom lives on a different continent in a different time
zone. :-P
Auditors are always singularly unimpressed by "well X told me to do it
this way". They expect *me* to realise that this isn't good enough and
*force* the other person to understand this.
> Maybe Andy should get a job with the auditors instead. <eg>
Muhuhuhu!
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> Poor decisions are one thing. When you carefully explain why a
>> dicision is bad, and you get a reply that says no it isn't - no
>> explaination, just "I think you're wrong" - it's rather irritating.
>
> You can always ask for an explanation.
Well we're not doing that at any other sites, so I don't think it's
necessary.
[Never mind that "other sites" have more than 1 member of IT staff...]
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:10:42 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>> And then again, you can always take the auditor to them after
>> explaining to the auditor "Tom here in my management chain doesn't see
>> this as an issue - perhaps he can explain why better than I can.".
>> Then take the auditor to see Tom.
>
> Not easy when Tom lives on a different continent in a different time
> zone. :-P
That's what the phone is for. Or if it's the middle of the night (though
you have managed to call "Tom" in the middle of the night before), give
his number to the auditor along with the time zone offset.
> Auditors are always singularly unimpressed by "well X told me to do it
> this way". They expect *me* to realise that this isn't good enough and
> *force* the other person to understand this.
Auditors understand that often times the person they're talking to
doesn't have the authority to do things the way they want, and if the
orders are coming from above to do things in a way that's not compliant
with the regs, then that needs to be disclosed during the audit.
Otherwise it *is* your ass on the line. It's not about shifting blame,
it's about holding the decision makers responsible for their actions.
That's why audits happen.
>> Maybe Andy should get a job with the auditors instead. <eg>
>
> Muhuhuhu!
You laugh, but that might not be a bad option. You know the regs, you
know what should be done and how it should be done, and you know that it
isn't being done that way. You want your current management to listen to
you? Become *their* auditor.
BTW, you don't have to change jobs to do that. If making sure things are
done in compliance, then you put together a pre-audit audit that goes
over the checklist the auditors will, and do a "dry run". Ask the
questions of your management that the auditors are going to ask you.
Hold them accountable. Then take the results from your own internal
audit and compare to the results of the external audit, put them both in
a report, and send it up the chain and highlight the areas where the
audit result was what you predicted, and outline what needs to change in
order for things to become compliant.
I used to have to do license auditing when I was the customer - we had
auditors from Ernst & Young come in once a year to audit our license
usage for a couple products that I was responsible for. There were times
I was asked to "fudge" the numbers a bit because of a recent layoff (for
example); I did everything up front with the auditors, told them that we
had a layoff but our policy was to retain the user accounts in a disabled
state for 60 days, just in case the employee was rehired (as a means of
preserving their access to resources), but that the vast majority
wouldn't come back. We just couldn't predict which ones would be
rehired. Rather than hide those accounts from the audit, I asked for an
exception. And got it from the vendor.
The auditors commented every year that they appreciated our approach -
they were typically in and out in less than a day. Other customers they
had to spend 3 or 4 days trying to get the audit done, and it was like
pulling teeth. I always figured if I could facilitate the audit and make
it go smoothly, I could get the auditors out of our hair quickly, and I
was right. We never paid for users we weren't using, and everyone was
happy.
I know your audits aren't license audits, so things are a bit different,
but if you work to make it non-confrontational with the auditors, they'll
appreciate it and make your life easier, generally speaking.
Of course there are pricks in every field, and auditing is no different
in that respect.
Jim
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On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:12:01 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> Well we're not doing that at any other sites, so I don't think it's
> necessary.
"Well, regulation 10.3.723 subsection b, paragraph 6 says it is required
when there's only one IT staffer at the site. Since I'm that person
here, we need to meet that requirement, unless there's an IT staff member
I'm not aware of here - and I don't think that's the case, because I'd
know. Either way, the auditors are going to be looking for compliance
with this regulation, so how do you suggest I answer their questions
about why we're not compliant?"
Jim
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