a finance guy

“There are weeds over there too!” (Greener grass and all)

Dan Sweet — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 01:50:36 +0000

I spent some time a while back in a training for “managers of others”. One component of the training involved salary planning as well as some commentary on motivating and retaining employees. P&G spends a lot of money to recruit and hire its managers and would like to retain them for 30 years plus, as long as the performance is there. Various scenarios were discussed that involved different combinations of work, location, role, rewards, management style that might deliver a positive experience for the employee. Eventually though, we got to the “what do you do when someone says they are leaving” question.

The HR leader leading the training said that his basic approach is consistent and simple. ”There are weeds over there too!” That is the bulk of the approach. Help people process the fact that the things pissing them off here likely exist over there too.

As I think about my career it is easy to look at other industries or geographies and think life might be better there. My favorite tool that I find useful to provide a reality check when I begin to think along those lines is Glassdoor.com. If you haven’t used Glassdoor before, head on over and setup a free account. Read employee verbatims of what they like and hate about their companies. Read their “advice to senior management”. See what they get paid, what their bonuses, profit sharing, etc is. It is amazing how quickly the glow can come off of some glamorous sounding jobs when you read a half dozen reviews from people working in your function at the company that all complain about the same thing. Whether it is nepotism, office politics, work-life balance, no raises, no career planning, terrible systems, an organizational prejudice against a certain function, an outsourcing trend, etc – WAY better to know that dynamic exists up front.

P&G has 127,000+ employees. No matter how good of a screening job you do, there will still be some jerks in a group that big. However, as Glassdoor demonstrates, we are now living in the age of transparency. If organizations as a whole exhibit significant dysfunctions in their culture, people WILL find out. I hear people (mostly from older generations) bemoan the new openness and public nature of the Internet. I’m a big believer in the old adage that “sunshine is the best disinfectant”. I think if you are a good person or a good company that generally does the right thing, you have nothing to fear from transparency and openness. Go check out Glassdoor. Post a review of your company. Go read some reviews from employees at companies you are envious of. ”Test drive” that greener grass from the safety of your couch. Leave a comment below and let me know what you find that surprises you.

General Manager College – Bigger, Faster, Not My Fault.

Dan Sweet — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 19:48:32 +0000

An anecdote I heard over lunch one day went something like this:

General Manager College Curriculum
Day 1 – Make it Bigger!
Day 2 – Make it Faster!
Day 3 - Everything that goes wrong was your predecessor’s fault.

Now in all fairness, I think General Manager’s College may only be a two-day event. However, I do think this is likely a pretty good summary of the content as senior leaders seem to invariably ask how ideas can be made bigger and how change can happen faster.

The challenge this creates is, how can you put forth what looks like a great effort, yet still has some upside you can keep in your back pocket for the inevitable follow-up questions re: bigger and faster? In a perfect world I think you “write-up” 90% of your idea and keep the final 10% to share when discussing the idea/proposal in person. Get the manager to think they came up with the last 10% and everyone wins. They got to contribute and improve the idea, you get to go execute on your plan. Call me cynical if you want, I prefer effective.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

Dan Sweet — Tue, 10 May 2011 03:20:06 +0000

If you haven’t heard of The Cult of Done, then you need to check this out. Working at a huge corporation, there are no shortage of people who will add you to the invite list for their standing weekly meeting if you so much as look at them sideways. The Cult of Done Manifesto is a reminder to get your work done and move on to the next thing. I love the encouragement to stop thinking and planning and just DO.

Actually doing something takes balls. It’s much easier to design requirements or write scope statements or document desired outcomes and key resources that will be needed. Technology today often makes it possible to produce a finished product in the same time it used to take to sketch a draft of what a product might be. I get that process is mission critical in some contexts. I also get that a lot of people default to process because they are lazy. I like the “Manifesto” angle and find it personally helpful to cultivate a certain level of disrespect for and animosity towards people and institutions that default to process over doing.

The poster version of the Cult of Done Manifesto is pasted below.
1. Print it out.
2. Hang it up.
3. Go DO something.

Quora vs. Namesake (Quora wins by TKO)

Dan Sweet — Thu, 05 May 2011 02:43:09 +0000

I’ve written glowingly about Quora before. I’ve since cut back on my Quora usage significantly. I think this is probably common and natural. I’d also “applied” for membership to Namesake.com months back, and just got invited to register today.

Quora won.

Originally the two sites had similarly strong buzz. Looking at the landscape today it looks like Namesake’s invite-only closed beta approach lost them the fight. No critical mass of users = no compelling content base = TKO. Still stumbling around, but it is obvious to everyone else you are done.

Quora is completely crushing Namesake based on my 15 min of browsing. Namesake seems like a ghost town compared to Quora. Activity levels and total membership both look low in comparison. With those initial impressions of the site, I’m not motivated to contribute. I work in finance, so lets take the Corporate Finance topic as an example. 7 people are following it and one conversation exists. The one conversation is basically this: “Demand Media’s IPO went well, don’t you think the market is overpriced?” First of all, it is the market. That is what it is worth. If you disagree, then go short it. This doesn’t sound like the place I am going to go for corporate finance advice. Additionally, if only 7 people are following the Corporate Finance topic, do I really want to start spouting my thoughts on corporate finance? I might get “endorsed” or become an “expert”, but that doesn’t jive with the real world. I know way more than 7 people at P&G that have much more sick finance skills than me. Pretending I’m a baller on the internet doesn’t seem like a value-added activity. At Quora, people throw out opinions that get vetted/validated by the crowd. You don’t need to claim any expertise to participate. Upvotes fly fast and furious to incent participation and the ranking of answers based on votes vs a chronological ordering seems to be a much more elegant and engaging solution.

It looks to me like Namesake lost this one. Worst of all, it looks like they did it to themselves with their choice of beta style. Alternatively, the alignment of their PR efforts and product readiness was just way off. That’s the only way I can explain this outcome.

Simple Portfolio for 2011

Dan Sweet — Wed, 04 May 2011 03:42:01 +0000

Placed the orders this morning. (<3 Interactive Brokers and $1 commissions.)

AAPL 14% (Huge margins, huge revenue growth, tons of cash.)
GOOG 22% ("Less than free” looks likely to crush most competitors.)
GTU 23% (US policymakers will continue printing money = gold higher.)
FCX 20% (The developing world will continue developing.)
IBB 22% (All those smart scientists will eventually do something cool.)

I’m often accused of being ADD in my fantasy baseball league, so we’ll see how long I can leave this alone. Ideally I wouldn’t touch this for at least a year or two.

Test: posting via iPhone

Dan Sweet — Tue, 03 May 2011 03:31:33 +0000

I’m posting this via iphone. I’ve always wanted to post more consistently and am hoping this might help. I always have my phone on me and this app seems decent so I’m giving it a go. I’m a little scared I will have some unfortunate Damn You Autocorrect moment thanks to the iPhone but no risk no reward right? Insert test of multitasking skills: just turned on the SiriusXM app and got the address for DYAC.

http://damnyouautocorrect.com/4077/10-most-popular-autocorrects-from-december-2010/.

Check that link out for a good laugh and be grateful you don’t have an iPhone so it can’t brutalize you like it did those poor saps. Ok, end of test – looks like this basically works. We’ll see if this enables me to post more frequently.

How not to invest.

Dan Sweet — Mon, 02 May 2011 04:26:49 +0000

I am not good at trading. I try to be honest with myself, admit that, and avoid trading. However, in our Jim Cramer/Fast Money era it seems like you are leaving money on the table if you don’t have at least a couple positions on at all times.

Here is a summary of my trades of the last 4 years or so.

Trade #1 (Winner) – Buy Gold via CEF with gold at $600 back in 2008ish? Sell at $1000+ and rebuy at $900. Just sold again at $1500+ last week. 2.5x

Trade #2 (Winner) – Close all positions with market at roughly 11,000 in fall 2008 when I see on C-SPAN that Congress isn’t going to pass first TARP bill. I look like a hero as market falls to 6,000ish. Avoid getting cut in half.

No Trade #2.5 (Loser) – I never rebuy. Buffett say its time to buy, I see 4,000 around the corner and take a pass. Market now at 12,000+ and all of a sudden Trade #2 doesn’t look so great. Miss an easy double.

Trade #3 (Loser) – Try to make money shorting commercial real estate over a long period of time using a short term structured ETF. Very bad idea, lose lots of money. I suck at trading. I’m reminded yet again to not even play if you aren’t going to put the work in. Lose 75% of position.

Trade #4 (Winner) – Buy SLV at $13.89. Sell last week at $45ish. 3x

Net – I’m basically completely flat over those 4 years. Basically on par with the market.

I’m completely in cash now but want to get back in and “set it and forget it.”

Current shopping list looks like this:
Buy AAPL
Buy GOOG
Buy CEF (Canadian gold trust)

This passes the Warren Buffett test where hypothetically the market closes tomorrow for 10 years. I’d feel just fine owning these three. Keep it simple.

Quora is Yahoo Answers for smart people.

Dan Sweet — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:42:01 +0000

Particularly, smart people who are involved in high tech, working at or investing in startups, live in the Bay Area/NYC/Boston, are academics, run VC funds, are former founders, or early Google or Facebook employees, or work at Twitter or Foursquare. At least that is what it is for me. The people, questions, or topics you follow (by clicking the “Follow” button), the answers you up or downvote, and the threads you read and comment on determine what it is for you. I’ve invited friends to join Quora and been surprised to find that for them Quora is all about, China, Latin America, greentech, or the Los Angeles Lakers.

Check out my Quora profile to see what it has been for me recently.

I’m an information junkie and always want to understand the “why”. This is why I ended up with an economics degree, it promised explanations to questions like why airplane tickets are priced the way they are. Quora is fun because you often get great answers from people with real domain experience. With the best answers upvoted and answers from more prominent contributors appearing higher than answers from nobody’s you spend very little time reading non value-added comments.

If you enjoy learning things you really don’t NEED to know, Quora is the place for you.

2011 Goals, review of 2010 goals

Dan Sweet — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:24:51 +0000

…or, how being a parent kicked my butt. I did a review of 2009 goals post before I made my 2010 goals post last year. I missed on many of them but still hit on a good number of them in 2009 and came away with the realization I needed to dramatically reduce the number of goals. I simplified for 2010 but still missed almost all of them. 2 for 9. I went a little big too big in 2010 as a new parent with an expectant spouse, lesson learned. On to 2011, with two kids this time! Fewer goals and a little more modest.

2011 Goals

PERSONAL:
Drop 30+ pounds by end of July (brother’s wedding)
Build a basic functioning web app (thinking Python / MySQL)
Keep learning (complete a MIT OCW course)

WORK:
Get “1″ Rated
Meet quarterly with mentor(s)

Ridiculous Revenue Growth

Dan Sweet — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 12:38:14 +0000

A friend at Apple brought this video to my attention. Mary Meeker covers 10 questions for Internet company CEOs. Watch the whole thing. We are in very interesting times. I found the 2.5 minutes starting at 14:25 the most fascinating. Apple grew $12B in revenue to $20B between fall 2009 and fall 2010. Wow! Thats about all I can say.

a finance guy

“There are weeds over there too!” (Greener grass and all)

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