Snooze You Lose

I want to buy a new home theater receiver to go along with my new Plasma Television. I've finally, after a very long process, decided on the Onkyo 876 . One problem, I have not yet picked out the speakers to go along with it.  Who knew how hard it is to pick speakers.  Seriously, there are way too many choices when it comes to speakers.  Everybody has a different opinion, and everyone's advice is the same.  Speakers are an individual choice and you have to hear them for yourself.  The problem is that most of the better speakers do not have show rooms where you can go hear them.  So since I have not quite yet picked out the speakers to go along with the receiver, I have not jumped on my purchase.

Now this receiver is available on Amazon, which is where I want to buy it. However, it has not been in stock for the past month. Earlier this week, it finally came into stock. However, since I have not yet been able to pick out speakers, I have not ordered it yet. I logged in this morning only to discover it is already out of stock! Needless to say, I am a little frustrated, but I guess I should have just made up my mind about what speaker to get. Just goes to show, if you know what you want, you should just go after it.

Where Does California Spend the Money?

I don't have the time today to write a full post so this one is going to be short.  I just have a quick question, what the hell is California doing with all the money?  California is in the midst of a budget crisis.  It has gotten to the point where they are going to delay tax returns.  Think about that.  That is money that rightfully belongs to the people.  The government should have never had it in the first place.  But they are going to withhold that money from its citizens.  Crazy.

But I seriously have to wonder what happens to all that tax money.  I took a quick look at the California budget, and like almost all government documents it is hard to fully understand.  If you look at the high level graphs you find that California spends the majority of its budget on three things, education, health care and human services, and law enforcement.  California has a high incidence of tax.  The income tax is high, the sales tax is high, and there is tax on alcohol, cigarettes , and corporations.  Given all the people in the state, you figure the total revenue would be quite high.  Yet somehow, California has poor schools, high crime, and a purported lack of hospital facilities.  What the heck is going on?

Government Jobs, A Double Edged Sword

I was talking to a friend recently who was lamenting her government job.  It was not that she was particularly disgruntled with her job, it was just that she felt that she had reached the peak of what she was going to accomplish in the next dozen or so years.  You see, for her to move up anymore, she would have to wait for her boss to leave or retire.  Neither of these seem likely at the present time.

This is in contrast to my current situation.  I have had some pretty good growth over the last few years.  The one exception for me would be at Microsoft.  Ironically, I would say Microsoft, up until recently, is almost like a government job.  What do I mean by this?  One of the reasons people covet government jobs is the security.  Take my mom for example.  She never had to worry about layoffs.  She worked for the government for over 35 years.  Through booms and busts, she kept her job. She did not have fantastic career growth, but she always had a job.

Now think about this.  If you have a government job, and your job is pretty safe no matter the situation, that means all your coworkers also have pretty safe and secure jobs.   There can only be so many managers in any organization whether they be public or private.  If there is never any turnover, there are fewer opportunities to move up as the bosses stick around just like the people underneath them.  As I stated in my previous post, some of my best career growth came at times where there were layoffs.  Layoffs create voids.  Voids at work create opportunities for someone to step in and take more responsibility.  This inevitably leads to career advancement.

I felt this way at Microsoft.  I felt trapped under the weight of the management above me.  There was great opportunity for growth when the size of the company was doubling every other year, but the pace of growth had slowed down dramatically and it had reached a saturation point when it came to management.  Because people just did not lose their job anywhere near fast enough, I worked with several people that should have been kicked out long ago, and the benefits are good enough to keep many people around, I just did not feel I could move up at the pace I wanted to and I was used to.  So I left, because, while I liked a lot of things about the company, and I was certain I could have had a job for years to come, I was never going to get the growth I desired.

And as if to prove my point, my career growth has come much faster than I could have ever predicted.  I now run an entire technology organization for the main division of my company including development, QA, and project management.  This same position at Microsoft would have taken me at a minimum six or seven years and more realistically it would have taken me ten or twelve.  Some of this has come with a lot more uncertainty, I could lose my job tomorrow for all I know, but it is a trade off I'm willing to make.

What do you think?  Is job security worth sacrificing career advancement?

Stupid Charter Communications

I sometimes cannot believe how bad some companies are.  I had a perfect example of this happened this weekend when my cable internet was down for the entire weekend.

I was going to actually have several posts written this weekend so that I could have a regular posting schedule this week.  The week at work is going to be hectic as I have to finish off my reviews and my company is sponsoring a big trade show.  There just will not be much time to blog this week.  You add to it the fact that my fiancee was sick all weekend, meaning I never really left the house, and you can see how frustrated I became at the fact that Charter Communications does not have its act together enough to prevent a weekend long outage.

This is actually not the first long outage I've experienced with Charter.  Over the last year we have had a couple of day long outages.  I find that completely unacceptable.  I am part of an internet company.  I am now responsible for all the technology that gets delivered on that platform.  We do not have outages.  In the last several years, you can probably count on one hand the number of outages we have had that have lasted longer than 30 minutes.  Since I've been at the company in the last year, we haven't had any that lasted longer than that.  You can be certain that someone would get fired if an outage lasted more than a day.  I could not even imagine an outage that lasted two days as we have backup plans for our backup plans.

Yet somehow, Charter Communications had a city wide outage that lasted two days.  What the hell is that?  Worse, when I called about it, they gave me vague excuses and no time line when I might expect service back.  Just great.  Lucky for me, I get an internet connection on my computer by hooking up my phone but I don't like doing lots of personal stuff on that device since my work pays for it.  But seriously, what type of clown operation are these Charter guys running?  How ridiculous is it that they have a near monopoly on high speed internet service in the area.  If there ever was a reason consumers need competition and choice, this level of service clearly demonstrates it.

Microsoft Layoffs, an Ex-Employee's Perspective

Just this Morning, Microsoft announced that it was going to layoff 5000 employees.  This is the first time in history that Microsoft has ever had a layoff and it really shows the depth of the economic problems that we are facing right now. I left Microsoft over a year ago for numerous reasons.  One of the reasons was because I thought Microsoft was sorely in need of a culture shock.  When companies get as big as Microsoft has become, inertia sets in.  It can be extremely difficult to get the organization moving.  And once moving, it can be extremely hard to make it change course.  I became frustrated on a daily basis just trying to get basic things done.  This is in direct contrast to my current job where I think people often move too fast for their own good.

I have nothing but good wishes for Microsoft going forward.  While I did not leave on the best of terms, I think that this was a situation very specific to me and not at all to do with the type of company that Microsoft is.  I still have a lot of friends there and hope that they are unaffected by any of this.

From the outside looking in, I think this is a good thing for Microsoft.  I think they needed to get smaller.  It is sad that there had to be an economic crisis for it to happen, but at least it is happening.  As someone whose job is to plan for the unexpected, as someone whose job it is to be proactive and not reactive, and as somone who developed this skill at Microsoft, I find it somewhat ironic that Microsoft is handling their headcount reduction this way.  They should have done this well before this.  They should not have waited for the economy to dictate their actions.  But again, maybe that just says something about the company that Microsoft is.

Not sure where most of the cuts will come.  My guess is that there needs to be hard looks at divisions which are not profitable and have no near term possibility of becoming profitable.  Near term being within a year or two.  This is not the environment where you want to be throwing money at things "hoping" they become profitable soon.  Shareholders get restless.  They do not like to see declining revenue AND declining earnings.  When revenues are near flat, your only recourse is to cut expenses.  The #1 expense at any technology driven company is headcount.  The first people to go need to be the people who do not bring in revenue commensurate to what they are paid.  Cash cows like Windows and Office are probably safe.  Products like my old one are not (it has already been announced that this product will be discontinued).

I am dealing with my own company having layoffs.  While I was personally unaffected, I think that that layoffs can be a very positive thing (I promise to write more about this in the next few days).  I've been part of several layoffs in my career.  It is almost always a good thing in the long term for both those who are let go and those who stay behind.  I have had some of my best career growth because of layoffs.    I am the type of person who always tries to see the bright side of things, even when they are at their most dire, and this is no exception.  I think Microsoft will become stronger for this if they can execute it correctly.  But that's the big question, can they?  I have my doubts.

They have already made one mistake.  They announced that there will be 5000 layoffs, but on about 1500 of those will be today.  Umm, that's just dumb.  Layoffs should happen once and only once.  Doing a slow bleed is very hard for all those involved as people are always looking over their shoulder rather than looking forward.  Looking forward is extremely important when there is more work to do and less people to do it.  You add that to the news that Apple had a fantastic quarter, and you have to wonder if Microsoft even has a coherent strategy to handle all of this.

Lucky Day - 20% gain

Going to take a slight detour from my normal blogging routine to talk about a trade I made today.  It was a pretty good trade for me, but most of it was pretty lucky.

I've been, for a while, wanting to get long the market and get less short.  But work has been pretty busy lately (we had a layoff, more on that another day) and so I have had very little time to even think about what I want to do in the market.  I went to bed early last night, mostly because I was so tired from the long week, and was able to get up early.  I had some time to kill before work, so I started to see how I could finally get some trading done.

Now, the market was down about 10% from where I wanted to start to get a more long.  My strategy was to continue to get longer while the market moved down.  I want to trade the range.  That is, I believe the market will trade between a range that is about 20% wide.  When we get close to the bottom of that range, I get rid of my shorts and get more long.  As we get close to the top, I get out of my longs and increase my shorts.  It is extremely hard to do and takes a lot of discipline because it can seem like the market will never stop moving in a given direction.

Well, despite the fact that I think the financials are going to be hurting for awhile, I decided to get long, ultra long in fact.  Not a huge bet, but at least wanted to start another position.  So I bought 800 shares of UYG which cost me a little bit under $2500.  So not a huge positon by any means.  But like I said, I was going to buy a little more if it went down even further.   The ETF proceeded to end the day up 23% from the previous close.  I got about 18% of that gain.

Now I'm tempted to just get out.  In this market, best to just take your gains and run.  Granted, it is only about a $400 gain.  But in this environment, that really is not anything to sneeze at.  I might hang on for a little bit longer but will probably get out soon.  While I do think the market is probably up for the next few sessions, I believe it is best to just take profits when you get them and look elsewhere for opportunities.

An Historic Event - Where Were You?

Today, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.  It was an historic event.  The type of event where you just know where you were when it happened.  It is like 9/11, I know exactly where I was when I first heard (I woke up to the news of the first plane on the radio, and thought nothing of it.  I turned on the TV later, only to wonder why there was a plane headed for the Twin Towers).

So for me, on this historic event, my answer will be in the dungeons of a parking garage.

It was not the plan to be there.  It just happened.  In fact, my carpool mate and I had planned on getting to work a little early just so that we could watch the event an the TVs at work.  We normally get in about 9:10, and so we were aiming to be about 20 minutes earlier than that.  Much to our dismay, Los Angeles' Traffic decided to intervene.  Now you have to understand that my carpool buddy is a huge Barack Fan.  It is often all she ever talks about it.  During the election, it almost drove me a little crazy.  So as we got near the building, it was pretty clear that we were not going to be able to park and make it into the building before he was sworn in.

So I did the gentlemanly thing.  I offered to drop her off in front of the building and park her car for her.   So she hopped out and rode up the stairs to go watch the innaugaration.  I got to go park the car. Just as I made my way around the block (there are lots of one way streets in Los Angeles) and got into the parking structure, they began to swear Obama in.  Just as it got to about 15 seconds into the ceremony, my radio reception cut out, and I missed the whole thing.

So that's how I will remember this historic event, I missed most of it.  How about you?  What were you doing?