Machine Earning

2012-08-14T16:10:00.000-05:00

The A thru M of Building a Hyper-Growth Startup

AKA Making your Startup Explode and Taking No Prisoners

AKA Growth Hacking for Beginners

This post will unearth the secrets of my success and the success of my close friends that were able to go from idea to exit.

This will be a 2 part post. First will be A thru M, N thru Z will be taught at my Skillshare.

No further interruption, lets get down to business.

A is for Ambition. Either you got it or you don't. Simple as that. Most kids want to create something great, but stop at the first instance of a problem. You were the overachiever in school - think of this as post-grad.

B is for Brogramming. Although its a derogatory term, most programmers embrace the boys club known as the office. Fire up Emacs and the Turntable.fm Dubstep station and let your fingers do the talking. Remember that you're not listening to Carly Rae Jepsen if it's the Dubstep version of "Call Me Maybe."

C is for Confidence. People are naturally jealous. Your idea is f'ing brilliant, but not everyone understands that because they don't check TechCrunch every 30 seconds. When you pitch to VCs, they might not understand your genius because the last 15 companies they saw were pitching a shitty Pandora for Cats. You need to have the confidence that your version of Pandora for Cats can execute perfectly. Hey, even Fred Wilson passed over Airbnb.

D is for Do-It, as in "Just Do It." This Nike slogan should be tattooed on your forearm. Your idea is worth billions. You don't need to "go out and get customer feedback." Once you have your product built, people will beg to get on your Alpha. Just build it. Do it. Do it.

E is for Endowment. Angels and VCs are for poor people. Your dad is working his ass off to be the wealthy dentist in Syosset. Make sure that his money stays in the family and going into your company. Your endowment should keep you afloat for about 6 months. Make sure those 6 months have enough vanity metrics that would give Ron Conway an erection, that way you can get some of your sister's endowment to stay afloat for another 6 months.

F is for Funding. Why should you spend any of that money that you earned at Morgan Stanley. That was hard work and it belongs to be deposited at the Joshua Tree. The real artform is spending other peoples money.

G is for Growth. You are a shark. A shark can only live if it keeps swimming forward. Your company, or the schrade of a project you call a company, can only stay "in business" if it maintains growth. You don't need to grow forever, just until Apple acquires you with their $27B of cash they have. "Exit or die trying."

H is for Hackers. Ruby Rockstars. PHP Pimps. You'll need to speak a little L33T in order to get through to these guys. They are the real brains behind your project, but never let them forget that you got your MBA from Georgetown. They might understand gunicorn but you wrote a paper on Porter's Five Forces and Eric Reis came to speak to your section - making you better than them.

I is for Imitation. Facebook copied Friendster. Instagram copied PicPlz. Airbnb copied Craigslist. No good idea is original. If your idea is original then bad news - but you won't make any money. If you want to make money, you have to imitate. Not a feature or two, but blatant ripoffs. Think of yourself as an American Samwar brother.

J is for Job. It's become a 4 letter word. You worked for 2 years in Finance as an analyst and you had enough. You can't look at SeamlessWeb without feeling nausea. You are far too creative to be holed up in an office somewhere in Midtown starring at an Excel screen from 8am to 7pm. Your startup is the next big thing and you're never going to have a job again.

K is for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. So you blew through your Endowment (see above), now you need to infuse more cash into your company. KPCB has $1.43B to give to you. And it really cant be that hard. Hey, they funded Airtime and Friendster.

L is for Lemmings. These are the fools and classmates that you left behind at your old job to pursue your dream. You occasionally have catch-up drinks, but know in the back of your mind that you are better than them. Who cares if they make more money than you, you have your freedom and never forget that.

M is for Meetups. Mostly consisting of socially inept guys looking to chat over free beer about the merits of Python 2.7 and how scalable Ruby really is. You will not find women here. These Meetups are a place where you are hoping to trade boring conversation for alpha users.

Gun shy recruiter

2012-08-14T10:45:00.002-05:00

An unknown number pops up on my work phone. It's has to be a recruiter. Most recruiters just send emails or LinkedIn messages. A phone call is personal - it's not quite in your face, but it's harder to be a total scumbag on the phone vs. email. This recruiter tried very hard.

She verified my email and asked for a resume. Are you actively looking ? Everybody is always looking.

There was no sales pitch, no promise of higher salaries, no mention of sectors or new technology stacks. I realize sending emails is easy and you have a generic one you send everyone. But you bothered making a phone call.

Do a little research. You already admitted you found me on LinkedIn - you can find out what I work with and how long I've been doing so. You can also see average pay on glassdoor.com and decide if you have anything competitive.

Thanks for the generic email spam.

Hi ME,

My name [redacted] and I am a recruiter at [redacted]. [redacted] specializes in the placement of IT professionals. If you are interested in hearing more about these opportunities, please reply back with an updated resume. This will allow me to send you positions that are specific to your skill set and experience. Also, please do not hesitate to give me a call with any questions or concerns

Regards,

[redacted]

Secretive Recruiter via LinkedIn

2012-06-18T10:54:00.004-05:00

Hi ME,

Apologies for the direct approach, we have not spoken before. I appreciate that you must receive multiple emails like this, but please understand that this is a genuine approach.

Cutting to the chase, I have been recommended to approach you for a very specific search I am conducting. I have been retained by a leading Algorithmic Trading Fund who are based in New York. I appreciate that you may have no interest in the Financial (Quant Trading) Space but please bear with me….

My client is currently working on a very specific and unique mandate for technologists and researchers. They have a particular interest in speaking to individuals who, like yourself, have been working outside the financial industry. The reason being is that they are looking for the top 0.1% and are aware that you work for a company that hires only the brightest and talented individuals. To give you an idea, my client has recently employed a number of individuals from the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, eBay etc and is looking for around 20-30 more Technologists and Researchers.

Whilst this may appear very non-specific, I must point out that over the telephone I am able to give a better insight into this. Unfortunately, my client must minimise the spread of information to the market due to its current success, thus maximising confidentiality. However, I am able to point out that voluntary turnover within this firm is only 3%, due to the opportunities, growth, peers and of course compensation. They are willing to offer inflated basics, guaranteed bonuses and relocation packages – as well as cash instead of stock options.

I would be very interested to discuss this in further detail with you for just five minutes; would you be amenable to this?

Regards

My favorite line: my client must minimise the spread of information to the market due to its current success. Y

Machine Burning

2010-02-03T02:51:00.001-05:00

Recycling hippies, eat this.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4586903n

Tactful recruiter

2009-11-30T17:11:00.007-05:00

I get an email from one of my college professors

Hi [NB],

One of my linkedin connections saw your profile and is interested in potentially hiring you. Can I send her your gmail co-ordinates? Her name is Rosie Recruiter and she is smart and a good person.

Best,
Professor Paul

which upon my agreement results in a

Hello [NB],

I hope that I find you well. Professor Paul passed me your contact information because you fit a profile for a few jobs that we have in the pipeline. I was wondering if I could get an updated resume from you and if you would have time to chat about your future and what you hope to do.

All the Best,
Rosie Recruiter

How tactful is that? Here is what was missing

random phonecalls to work
spam emails on Facebook or LinkedIn
awkward personal emails

Scripted Management

2008-06-10T14:27:00.003-05:00

For a long time, all of us in the business community or perhaps touched and otherwise inappropriately handled by it, have known that managerial and worker relations have never found a balance. They probably never will. I believe the problem has to do with those high rollers distancing themselves too much from their flock, making decisions without quite knowing the impact of their actions. The employees don't like being mistreated and higher-ups don't want to hear about it, which means everyone suffers. Well I propose a solution to this problem which will sever this social engagement: the employee API.

If you thought looking at Gantt charts and budgets was cool, wait till you have work flow accomplished just with the work() method, allowing you to supply an optional time parameter expressed as work( hour hours_ ) for the day to day as well as work( day day_start, day day_end ) to express continuous ranges of days when those deadlines have to be met. Having problems with workers? Let's turn to nature for the solution. Did you know that male worker bees die after a run of a few short days? I don't know if it's because they didn't work hard for the honey, but it's quite possible that they were just 'replaced' for efficiency reasons. You can do the same; ever hear of pop() and push()? Yep, it's that easy. Your HR staff has a Queue of applicants waiting to get hired, since the economy 's rather down.

I truly didn't have the well-being of too many people in mind. Too many is too many. But after a good day's work, you do deserve some respect for writing and running your worker script. The fact that you don't have to know anyone's name in our method doesn't stop the work force from being forced to work up a party for you. Everyone is assigned a number from 0 to num_employees -1 and the range-based get_appreciation( employee 0, employee num_employees -1 ) will get everyone to celebrate on your behalf.

You may be wondering how all this works? Why would "you are allowed to use the bathroom today" incentive plans inspire those minds you ask? Well love is a complicated problem, but if you've seen the movie Perfume, you'll understand how it's done.

Chart Theory : Hours Past Midnight 2

2007-06-21T04:35:00.001-05:00

due to popular demand, I've included a vertical scale.

ComputerWorld : Will making computer science more fun attract college students?

2007-06-15T13:35:00.000-05:00

ComputerWorld writes about efforts to study if [Will] Making computer science more fun attract college students?

To combat falling enrollment rates and shortage of CS talent in the industry, the researchers at Washington State University, Vancouver hope to increase enrollment by offering courses where the student make computer games. Under an NSF grant they came up with a Java game engine (labeled JIG, short for Java Instructional Gaming Project)

To quote the article, "... students create two-dimensional arcade-style games from the ground up, including graphics, networking and even some artificial intelligence features -- all in the name of learning about key computer science concepts ..." The article goes on to further postulate about why incoming students are not interested in Computer Science : "... many incoming students read news headlines about the effect of offshoring as IT jobs move to India, China or elsewhere, and they see an IT career as a bad move."

While the effort is admirable, it roughly equates to Teaching Computer Science with Flash.

It is a marketing problem, and there's really no need to 'dilute the brand' here. The IT industry problem isn't a shortage of people who wish to design 2D computer games. Refer to T. Friedman's book 'The World is Flat' for a further discussion of exactly why what proposed here is a bad idea. I hate to name drop, and I did not like the book very much, but I think that was one of his few valid and not outdated points. We don't have a shortage of C++/Java programmer, we need Masters and PhD students to fuel the Institutional Research machine with good ideas and new projects.

What is presented here is more of a standard pitch for a Digital Media program. CS is a long, hard, and treacherous path. The turn over rate is pretty high, and JIG Project isn't exactly targeted at the core audience. I don't think the promise of a class where you can build side-scrollers will really fool anybody into majoring in computer science. How would being able to write Java games prevent you from outsourcing. If so, this program sets it self up for a high turn over rate. Being promised computer games and getting 'stuck' in discrete math and algorithms will have applicants reconsidering and joining the Business Technology Management flock.

I'm not a marketing expert by any means (I took 1 summer class), but it seems that they need to find better things to market. Maybe graduate placement statistics ? Research opportunities ?

I think this is more of a PR issue that needs to be dealt with. 'Outsourcing to India' is freely thrown around to scare people. The ComputerWorld article mentions it as a deterrent for students enrolling into CS programs. My opinion is that most people (outside the industry), especially incoming college freshmen, are pretty ignorant about it. Most people I know graduting college with a CS degree had multiple job offers and were able to pick an employer on their own terms, or at least had the option to.

What's ironic is that it does not serve as a deterrent to students aiming to enter the Finance industry by majoring in economics, finance, accounting, etc. For some reason, there is no publicity about financial institutions off-shoring business functions. However, based on (my) conversation with friends in the industry, they claim that their jobs will be extinct in 2-3 years due to 1) machines that can do their jobs faster and better 2) para-bankers in India who can do their jobs faster and better. Why are there no articles on BusinessWeek citing fears of this in incoming freshmen at Pace, Baruch, NYU, Bing, and SUNYs ? Where are all the studies that report freshmen's fears of working in middle office?

Employee Stock Purchase Plan, a good idea ?

2007-06-14T18:34:00.000-05:00

Most publicly traded companies offer some form of Stock purchase plan. You can get the shares of your own company at a discount price. There are usually some rules about 1) amount you are able to purchase and 2) not being able to dump the stock right away.

Companies tout this as a way of employees building equity in the company. The 'grunts' become not only workers, but 'shareholders' as well, and some how strive to perform better to avoid losing money. I will not speculate on the correctness of these assumptions, but:

To me investing into the stock of where you work seems like a bad idea:

If the company does well, you'll get a piece of it anyway through bonuses, perks, etc
If the company does poorly, you don't get a bonus and you lose money to the company. You also realize you gave back a portion of your paycheck back to your employer for no reason.

Unless you are hedging you employee stock purchase with the purchase of a competitor/different sector/etc, it doesn't seem like a safe investment.

Countdown to unemployment

2007-05-23T08:41:00.001-05:00

Employment is transient, fortunately. This being my last day, I decided to record some privacy preserving statistics:

Email:
Number of email messages left in my mailbox on my last day: 28
Number of unique authors among those messages: ~10
Number of human authors among the former: ~5
Number of people I know among the human authors: 3
Number of messages that affect me and my work directly: 0

My Documents Folder:
Number of documents in My Documents: 40
Number of documents that I am deleting because they do not pertain to work: 28
Documents pertaining to research: 20

Software:
Additional compilers/interpreters/frameworks not provided by the company: 4
Specifically: Perl, Python, recent version of JDK, .NET
Development environments: 2(Eclipse, SciTE)
Browsers: 1 (Firefox!)
Miscellaneous unauthorize software: putty, python gmail lib, doxygen, graphviz

Office supplies:
Sticky notes(not postits!): 7 blocks, small
Pencils: 2
Pens: 3
Company issued notebooks and scratchpads: 2
Personal notebooks: 1
Thumb tacs: 15
Papers attached to cubicle wall: 7
Boxes of Harrod's tea attached to cubicle wall: 1
Starbucks frappaccino labels glued to computer: 1

Pantry:
Forks, spoons, and plastic knives: MANY
Sugar packets: 4(at 9AM, 0 by 9PM)
Bags of Ahmad tea: 1....last one
Cups: 1
Napkins: more then cutlery

So what do these unimpressive statsitcs show? Nothing. I'm just happy to be done.

PS:
This might be neurotic but I'm very pleased that I managed to finish my tea exactly on the day that I finish working.

Split-Screen Tech Doubles Computer Use

2007-05-12T17:47:00.000-05:00

Split-Screen Tech Doubles Computer Use discusses how researchers in Microsoft 'are developing software that splits a computer screen in two halves, each side with its own operating system, desktop, applications, cursor and keyboard.'

1. hardware is cheap. it's simpler to buy more than force people to share screens.
2. I think these researchers didn't understand the point of the extreme programming workflow.
3. They claim to have a minimal cost, no hardware required, but cubicles are not set up for 2 people. This sounds like its enabling something horrible.

This being said, it think its a wonderful idea for multi player gaming.
What better way to put the 24inch monitor to use? You can even ghost for yourself.

As an added bonus, the article comes with the following picture and its caption:

'Computers to Work Harder
Software programmers at work at INFOSYS, one of the best known Indian software companies, in Bangalore, India. Workers at Indian companies must often share computers. But a new technology that divides a computer's screen could stretch the technology's use.'

How terrible is that ?
Why would you publicize being the IT equivalent of a sweatshop?

caption should read: look at the size of those .....

Chart Theory : Hours past midnight

2007-05-03T10:20:00.000-05:00

Career Opportunities

2007-05-02T14:39:00.000-05:00

The following email has graced my mailbox.

New Jersey is just such a wonderful marketing tool. Also kudos on the wording.
I guess I can appreciate the honesty. Most companies will jerk you around before admitting they're sticking you in into Q&A in Hoboken.

Dear Naive Baysian,

Following is a description for career opportunities at [Mid Cap]

OPEN HOUSE AT [Mid Cap]

Open House for Wall Street IT Career Opportunities in New Jersey

[Mid Cap] is currently seeking individuals for the following positions:

Java Developers, C# Developers, Business Analysts, Integration and Development Support, QA, Oracle DB Architects, Data Modelers, Information Architects

(Previous financial services experience preferred but not required.)

Chart Theory : Hours to an Exam

2007-05-01T23:19:00.000-05:00

Chart Theory : Hours To An Exam

Day::Made

2007-04-18T14:13:00.000-05:00

This made my day.

Analyst: that guys weird
Analyst: the one walking past u
Analyst: right now
Analyst: right now
Analyst: that guy
Analyst: he's weird
Machine|Earner: just cuz he's walking back and forth
Machine|Earner: or you actually know him?
Analyst: hes on the CTG team
Analyst: what does that mean?
Analyst: nobody actually knows
Machine|Earner: HA
Analyst: they improve 'efficiency'
Analyst: for testing
Analyst: do they actually test?
Analyst: which would be helpful?
Analyst: no
Analyst: do they do analysis of the reports after testing? not at all
Analyst: they look at everything, compile lists and tell us how to test better
Analyst: completely useless
Machine|Earner: this is totally a Dilbert/Office Space comment
Analyst: I should send him a memo
Machine|Earner: to file his TPS reports
Analyst: to include a cover letter on his pointless emails

Worth sharing.

Advice that made me feel warm and/or fuzzy

2007-04-08T09:20:00.000-05:00

Reading the news this morning, I came across this
The message conveyed by this article is aligned with ME in a very perceivable fashion.

The only point of disagreement is the specificity of the advice given. Although in the context of programming today, everything stated in this article is valid, who knows where technology will head in the near future. I would advise programmers, more generally, to understand vast amounts of theory involved in whatever it is they're doing.

Aside from that, I just wanted to take advantage of an opportunity to post something that made me feel really nice. It is good to see that there are people out there, successful people, who arrive at the same conclusions as I do.

Jott.com : great in theory, useless in reality

2007-04-08T02:31:00.000-05:00

Maybe the idea behind Jott.com cool, and they're trying really really hard to make this a super-useful product, but there is a very low cieling on the possibilities here.

Personally, I don't think there is any NLP involved in this application. They simply have 100 Indian workers at $5/day translating a bunch of 30 second voice clips. Maybe they've in-sourced this to housewives in Wisconsin.

Pragmatically, here is why this is a useless idea:

Why would I want to record a message to have it emailed to myself and other people when I can just send a text message from my cellphone
Besides most 'professionals' who Jott.com claims make use of this service have crackberries to do this for them, without the need to call somewhere.
It takes a long time for this thing to translate
It's not accurate unless you speak with perfect diction
If the translation is wrong, you wouldn't remember

I recorded something and it came up inaudible - now what ?

My cellphone has a voice recorder also

The idea behind Jott is you jott down notes by calling their 877 number, leaving voicemail and it magically appears translated into English in your mailbox and on their website.

Lets review the Web2.0-ness of this site

clever idea with neat implementation
mellow colored, round shaped interface
catchy name thats a pun on something functional
random mashup feature

import contact from your email accounts

community/groups for content
slogan

Think it. Jott it. Do it.

optimisitc goals and promisies

greatest productivity tool on the internet

flash animations to help you figure stuff out
flash demo
server side NLP with an AJAX-powered frontend

Google Talks dirty to ME

2007-04-06T13:27:00.000-05:00

ME went to go check out the Google Speaker series talk : "Watts, Faults, and Other Fascinating Dirty Words Computer Architects Can No Longer Afford to Ignore" by Luiz Barroso. see here

Essentially they're flipping out about server farm energy consumption. A recent article said that data centers use something like ~15% of the total energy (kW) in the US. A more in depth survey by Berkley revealed that its more like 1.2% for 2005 and growing (according to REDHERRING)

Luiz Barroso at Google figured out that they're one of the biggest users/owners of server farms and decided to do something about it. So far, they've conducted a series of measurements on server power consumption efficiency and concluded they're not doing too well. However, Google is by no means concerned with the total amount of consumption. They are concerned about cost.

Prof. Barroso showed alarming economic projections. Namely the cost of computing being dominated by the cost energy as apposed to hardware. Naturally, the arguments he made with respect to this claim were fairly simplistic. This is ok since this was only part of the motivation for his research.

The two main points made by the speaker were as follows:

Current Hardware behaves in ways that are extremely energy inefficient. An idle computer consumes about 40% of its peak power. Combined with the fact that most computers spend the majority of their time under less then full load, this makes for very wasteful systems
On the other hand, given the knowledge of such usage patterns it should be possible to optimize energy usage by "overbooking" data centers. Naturally, Luiz Barroso advocated doing this cautiously.

Other reactions: The wine, beer, and cheese were a nice touch. Also, though a window on the side we saw people moving about the building on Razor Scooters. Qualifying the Google office as the coolest corporate building I've been to so far. The office space has the warehouse/trendy and they're a block away from Meatpacking. The speaker himself was very articulate, entertaining, and knowledgeable. I thought he survived the Q&A portion rather well.
Here are what I think are worthwhile points from the Q&A session afterwards:

This seems like a 'bandaid' solution. We need a more architectural/hardware solution to this problem.
Have they conducted experiments with server virtualization to increase loads on machines as a way to increase data center profitability? Something like VMWare or Xen. I wanted to ask this and look smart, but somebody beat me to it. This was one of the few questions that evoked a qualified response from the speaker. Prof. Barroso explained that Virtualization is nothing more then a technique for improving distributed resource utilization. This problem is fairly well studied. However, more needs to be done to fully take advantage of the energy allocated to large computing centers. The statistics presented in the talk showed that the problem was not in allocating resources when demand for them is high. The problem was in making sure that resources behaved better with respect to energy under a variety of load conditions.
Power plants have had to deal with this problem for a while. Perhaps its worthwhile to look at work produced by power engineers. Having worked in the industry, all I can say is 'duh'
Some pompous scholarly looking fella after reciting the Intro to Physics formula sheet concluded that the 2nd law of thermodynamics prevents total efficiency and this is all a matter of entropy. M|E thought this point cast a depressing light on the conversation.

Here is the multimedia portion of the post:

Luiz in action

Q&A with the other room. magic of Google Conference

The ubiquitous GS bag

a shot of the crowd. there was a lot of people

Snakes on a Search Engine

2007-04-03T19:39:00.000-05:00

We can't be insightful and funny all the time. Today we'll just try for funny.

According to this article, there was a loose python in Google NY office this weekend (coincidentally April Fool's Day).
The headline for the article should read something like:

Implementing search in python but failing to implement search for python -M|E
There are m@therf@cking snakes in my m@therf@cking search engine
Google drops web crawling, switching to web swallowing paradigm

How did this ever happen ? I can't imagine a pro-reptile corporate policy.
The practical implications of keeping a large snake at work are

no rodent problem
job security
something other than a clipboard to bring to meetings
a good way to threaten the subordinates

Given the chance, I think I'd go with a tiger.

So what do you do ?

2007-03-25T18:17:00.001-05:00

There's a reason nobody (at least in IT) gives a straight answer to that question. Answers vary in accordance with the stages of acceptance or generally to which degree they are annoyed with and embarrassed or bored by their job. The typical thing to do is try to hold onto as much dignity as possible and provide an answer that is at most an acronym : PM, DBA, QA, BA, VP. Some people answer with a snide 'I spin in my chair all day' or 'Collect office supplies' while most stick to a melancholy 'Nothing'.
Anything further than that should not be expanded upon. It's quite pathetic to try justify your own job and try to make it seem interesting/fast paced/important at the same time. It sort of like talking about your salary. The more you do it, the cheaper you seem.

Here is an example of what I mean. This is taken from a social networking site.

Employer:	Bulge Bracket Bank
Position:	Global Infrastructure: Network Services Intern
Time Period:	Summer 200x
Location:	New York, NY
Description:	IT Program • Allocated financial resources to several high level projects • Maintained budgets of on-going projects and for new projects ranging from $10,000—$3 Million • Inspected the design and implementation of Automatic Call Distributor Systems • Updated and tested a Business Resiliency Plan which is currently being used • Evaluated several network security and maintenance appliances for testing and for any potential use within the firm • Worked closely with network engineers for racking and configuring Cisco switches in data centers and communication closets

Q.E.D.

IT & Corporate Mobility

2007-03-15T18:49:00.000-05:00

This is probably one of the few posts here with a concrete, viable, and sound point. Though this may feel like a rant, I assure you there is wisdom within these lines.

I've recently had the following conversation with a friend from regarding working for a large investment bank. My friend is a CS major from CMU.

Me: Hey. I hear you're going to be working for [Bulge Bracket]
Friend: hopefully securities.I wanna move into S&T (particularly sales though)
Me:I thought I read 'technology' in your description?
Friend: yeah IT in securities. hopefully I can communicate more and won't have to code all day long. What did you do in [Bulge Bracket] ?
Me:a little bit of this a little bit of that. It depends on your group. Are you aiming for this to result in a job ?
Friend:yeah. if I get placed into technology in fixed income, I'll most likely have to sit in cubical coding all day right? what about equities? I'd like to interact w/ traders and get into sales ;)

This 'foot-in-the-door' approach is a very typical theme of conversation and ambitions among IT Analysts employed by financial institutions. The conversation above is very stereotypical example of the general rhetoric employed by the Overly Ambitious Douchebags of IT to fool themselves into thinking this is possible. It's incredibly amusing to watch these people try to convince themselves by convincing everyone else that this is a feasible goal. I've watched numerous coworkers and friends struggle with the Sisyphean task, basking in the futility of thier attempts of seizing opportunity, creating contacts, and talking about football.

Lets consider a hypothetical situation in the case of my friend. Suppose the placement process works out in her favor and she ends up in a position where is able to interact with traders, or bankers, or whatever type of financial analysts she's supporting. There are two conceivable roles in which this could happen: trading desk support as a VBA/Excel 'coder' (although this more of a middle office role) or as a Business Analyst (BA) that (in spirit) liaisons between the actual software developers and some front/middle office management that requests features. Even if my friend is very good at her job, its easy to see that there is NO added value for the company to move her from a supporting to producing role.

The point I'm making is this. It is nearly impossible to achieve horizontal movement from Technology into any form of IB/Asset Management within any financial institution. It is foolish you can assume you can do so because 1) there are a lot of people with similar aspirations 2) there is intense competition for those spots from qualified applicants 3) it does not benefit the company. If my friend chooses this goal, she will waste the next 2 - 4 years of her life, working on things of no interest to her just to attain something hasn't all to much of a clue about. The caveat here is that this only holds if you don't have family or friends (much) higher up.

There are, however, solutions to this dilemma. 1) Go for a much smaller and less prestigious financial institution. They are more disparate entry level analysts and will be willing to give you the benefit of doubt that your cognitive abilities are applicable to learning their trade. 2) Forget computer science, do well on the GMAT, and go to an Ivy B-School for Finance. That will wipe your slate clean and make you a candidate for an Associate level position. Substituting HBS for a Masters in Business Technology Management from a local university doesn't count.

I should also note that the way the market stands today, my friend's CS degree from CMU is a golden ticket in her hand to a better paid, respectable, and interesting job in the High-Tech sector. Or she can choose to move to the West Coast and work in any start up or move back to NY and work for any New Media company. In her case, the possibilities are endless.

Preying on the weak

2007-03-14T15:47:00.000-05:00

This isn't exactly a security blog, unlike these guys, but I think this is a new low. Praying on the weak. I don't think people who use Monster.com are that naive, but I guess the phishers are counting on desperation. Also, why can't these guys ever learn English?

ME is going to jump on the 'naming-common-things' bandwagon and coin a term for this: desperation + phishing = dishing

More facets of Brooklyn corporate life

2007-03-14T00:16:00.000-05:00

I continued my stroll through MetroTech today. Here are some more unique aspects of working a corporate job in Downtown Brooklyn. I think we're going to do a positive piece soon. For now, enjoy laughing at everyone in exile. Hey, could have been worse. This could have been Jersey.

Working for John Gotti's kids

Catch the new series on VH1 : Coding Up Gotti

Selling Drugs

Your manager makes some extra income by `slingin cane` during
lunch hour to afford his country club membership. In actuality, he's
needs the money to buy mana points for World of Warcraft

Bonuses are given out as Rims

Those are 22s, this must be a SVP or something.
I hear MDs get spinners.

Things corporate peons do in Brooklyn that are not acceptable in Manhattan

2007-03-12T16:40:00.000-05:00

hold hands

wear a drawstring bookbag

This isn't Junior High School, buddy. You can:

1) use a laptop bag like the rest of us

2) get a bag from work
3) pretend you went to college and use their attaché

rob delis and liquor stores during lunch break

pee on buildings

make less money than this guy

shop at The Gap

Don't worry. I didn't miss anything. There are plenty of fat asses across the East River

Overview of people in my classes

2007-03-07T21:21:00.000-05:00

This is just a general overview. Next time I am in class I will have exact classifications. I'm going to miss college.