Posts Tagged ‘business’

Sara and I caught he last fifteen minutes of CBC doczone’s “hyper parents and coddled kids” and were promptly horrified by what we found. If the show was to be believed, people our age are in the habit of bringing parents in to salary negotiations, and getting them to phone our supervisors after we say things during performance reviews like “the only difference between me and you is age”. Would somebody tell me when we signed off on this kind of behavior? Do we officially have no shame?

I pray to God that this an urban legend propagated by a few hilarious anecdotes. It’s something to assure retiring baby boomers of their unassailable superiority. I love my Mom and Dad, but I would not have them putting up plants in my office, and my Mom’s quite the gardener. Then again, if people like the Brazen Careerist can make six figures telling people how to keep young workers, maybe there is something else at work here. If companies today are hiring their workers based on school performance alone,  those high grades could be attributed to intense parental involvement. The more these kids see helicopter parenting pay off through their grades, the more they are going to tolerate it. Along with this comes the idea that any advantage, no matter how ridiculous, should be exploited to its full potential. So in the end, we are looking at a very focused section of the work force. These are companies that are looking for the perfect transcript, and get workers who are good at school, but not as good at, say, cutting the umbilical cord.

Here’s how most industrial corporations work.  They use a combination of loans and investors to purchase land, machines, and labor. All this capital goes in to producing one or more consumer goods. The corporation then buys time and space on mass media (TV, Radio, and Newspapers) to promote their product. If everything goes according to plan, the product will sell. Unfortunately, this model does not work anymore. It has nothing to do with new government regulation or awareness about the evils of consumer culture. We are merely becoming immune to corporation’s calls for our attention and our money.

The immunity is by no means complete, but already we’re seeing a downward trend in the use and effectiveness of advertising. Ads have become so ubiquitous, that instead of brainwashing us into buying more, they have become easier to ignore. Think about it. When was the last time an ad consciously affected your purchasing decisions? Corporations are starting to realize this, and traditional media outlets have started hemmoraging money as a result. The recent Conan-Leno controversy is nothing more than NBC panicking because their medium simply can’t sell any more widgets.

This is not to say that people will stop buying consumer products. We will be well supplied by the infinite torrent of competitors provided by inexpensive and ubiquitous machine labor. The resources to start a business are now a fraction of what they were 10 years ago. This low barrier of entry will attract companies who actually care about the customers they are serving. If corporations make their mistakes through their apathy and callousness,  then every call bumped to voicemail, every eye-roll from a customer service rep creates a niche for another small competitor to squeeze through. Those competitors don’t have to clear every decision with the head office, and they don’t have a board of shareholders answer to. When they have good ideas, they can move faster and with more purpose than large corporations.

Where does this leave companies like Coca-Cola and Nestle? As we’re seeing with India and China, eventually developing countries turn into developed ones. Cell phone and computer networks are cheaper to implement than terrestrial television and radio. This means they’ll be more used to media they can talk back to, rather than the one-way monologue of traditional media. It’ll be hard to trust the alien and artificial machinations of Pepsi when you can get the same kind of communication from your own culture and community. If those large corporations want to stay in business, they’ll have to be present for their customers in a way that is unprecedented. God help them if they put another person on hold.

If you want to read more on the subject, I suggest picking up Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing or Linchpin. They inspired many of the ideas in the last two posts.

If Vancouver isn’t the anti-corporate capital of the world, it’s certainly in the running. Greenpeace and Adbusters both got started there. The city has repeatedly denied Wal-mart the right to build there, despite the company’s attempts to create an environmentally friendly building. There is a good reason to keep an eye on corporations. Nestle and Coca-cola’s actions in the third world are two examples from a very long list of literal wars, famines, and plagues that corporations have been involved in for the past 400 years. Still, I hate how anti-corporatism has become so trendy. If I told people that the batteries in the Chevy Volt were made from ground puppy livers, I have the feeling I’d be met with approving grunts and a donation check rather than someone with a straight jacket or some other sane response.

The problem I have with agreeing with most gaffes against corporations is that it assumes Comcast, Rogers or Microsoft is burning calories to get YOU. Yes, that OEM software agreement means that Steve Ballmer will hide in your closet and eat your bones if you’re not asleep by 8:30. Please. All my run-ins with corporations, be it through working for them or being on hold for their tech support, can be explained by one thing: Apathy. Throughout the industrial revolution, corporations worked well by having rigid sets of simple, repeatable rules that can be carried out by the cheapest and least skilled workers possible. Basically, if it’s not your job, don’t think about it. Nestle’s marketing of formula to developing countries was not part of some insane eugenics conspiracy. They were just repeating actions that had worked in North America and Europe. So if it’s not profitable for corporations to consider the consequences of their actions, what can we do? Write more legislation? I don’t think so. The business model is already dead. Find out why in tomorrow’s post.

“What’s your Passion?”

That has to be my least favorite job interview question. “What’s Your Passion?” It’s so loaded. If you are able to do your job, or even excel at it, why should passion be a factor? I don’t have to wonder where my next paycheck is coming from. That makes me feel passionate. What if my passion doesn’t directly relate to my job? For instance, I like to write, but I can think of a lot of reasons not to do it for money. What if the reason I have my passion is that it takes my mind off work?

Here’s another thing. It’s always passion. Singular. What if you have several? You might want to do programming 5 days of the week and go skiing for the other two. You can be passionate about the environment and small government budgets. I guess the thing I hate most about “What’s Your Passion” is that it makes it so obvious that the interviewer is only pretending to care about who you are as a person. Job interviews are commerce, plain and simple. To ignore that fact is nothing short of patronizing.

On Friday, February 12th, my wife watched as 188 grade sevens experienced their first Nerd Rage. The Percy Jackson movie was compromised beyond repair. The Greek mythology was messed with for no apparent reason. Some totally sweet battles from the book were cut out entirely. The suspected evil mastermind from the book was the actual evil mastermind in the movie, stripping away layers of complexity and character from the story like turpentine on a Monet.

How long does Disney, Sony or Dreamworks think they can keep bilking kids out of their allowance money this way? When the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potters of the world pack as much of the books as they can on celluloid and make billions in the process, how is it that film producers still believe they can make more money by appealing to a larger audience? Disney, like most of the corporate world, thinks they can get by with the factory approach to film-making. Create a product that will please the most people, because more people means more money. That approach worked in the days of Ma Bell and Johnny Carson, but we now live in a time where you can’t own all the media channels, and the equipment to make a movie can be bought with your average credit card. The market is completely open for a few true believers to take Disney’s customers away forever.

There was an interesting little round table discussion at Wednesday’s Fraser Valley Ruby Brigade meeting. What is the greatest knowledge resource for programmers? The answer was a unanimous, resounding “Google”. I did say the discussion was little.

It’s well known that the freelancer’s greatest enemy is self-doubt. Anything less than a Tony Robbins level of enthusiasm can leave you with small wages, dull work and a series of hanger-on, dead-beat clients. I find that the problem of self-doubt in programmers is quite peculiar. Because our field is constantly changing, the result produced by 10 hours a year ago can be done in 5 today. In another 6 months, the task will be able to be completed in seconds. On last year’s digital watch.

Now, some programmers will look at this wonderful ability to look up code on google instead of slogging through a problem via trial and error and think, “my god, my skills are becoming obsolete!”, when really they are just able to do their jobs better. The carpenter was not undone by power tools and the dentist (thank god) was not undone by the pneumatic drill.

The ability to make software work, to ask the next question the user may have is something too nuanced to be left to machines. Software is little more than decisions we’ve already made carried out by a series of tiny blinking lights. Even after 50 years of the electronic computer, there are still many, many decisions that still need to be made.

Criticism. No one likes getting it, and no one likes to give it unless they are hiding behind an internet handle like “superdouche69″. Still, it’s vital to maintaining standards of quality in every field of human endeavor. All of our science comes from articles that are peer-reviewed and criticized. We defer to critics to decide which movie to go see or where to have dinner. Unfortunately, we have reached a point in our civilization where it’s rude to claim authority. No one’s going to criticize anybody if we’re too afraid someone will think we’re “The Man”.

Teachers are often in the uncomfortable position of having authority in a society that abhors it. My wife learned this wonderful axiom in her teacher training that she has passed on to me. It’s called PQS: Praise, Question, Suggestion.

Say there’s a fly in your soup. You could say nothing and appreciate the new garnish. You could threaten to deprive the overworked waitress of her 5% tip. Or, you could simply say, “Excuse me, this soup looks really good, but is that a fly in there? I was hoping I could get another bowl of soup.”

Less aggressive than, “Hey you, stop that!” and less patronizing than the compliment sandwich, PQS can soften the blow of criticism, even when the recipient expects it. It also saves the critic from the tautological mess of trying to find a nice way to express dissatisfaction. Criticism is an intellectually difficult form of inter-person confrontation. It’s so much easier to burrow into one’s cubicle and avoid making any one feel bad, ever. In an age where we are all “individuals”, and social mores don’t count for much, sometimes we still need those customs to get through those unavoidable little battles of life.

The best minds of my generation are being destroyed. Not by madness, but by waiting. We are all bright, educated, and industrious. We’ve paid our dues and prostrated ourselves on the altars of “Seniority” and “Hard Work”. Still, we wait.

We wait for permission to use the skills we have been trained for. We wait, languishing in jobs we learn nothing from, being managed by people more interested in preserving protocol than making a difference. We wait, sending out resumes to companies without the simple grace to acknowledge us with a polite “no”. If only someone, anyone would realize that we are not a mere fiscal liability, that we are here to solve the world’s problems. But we can’t just ask for that kind of  opportunity, they tell us. And if we are not allowed to work on it? Well, you obviously didn’t work hard enough, you didn’t wait long enough for your opportunity. Don’t like it? Well, that’s just the way the real world works.

This is not right.

Notice I did not say that this is not fair. This is not right, as in not correct. Up is down, and black is white.  The idea that this is the way the world works is an illusion, a construct of a society that wants to be blind and deaf to us. The world doesn’t work like this. Never did. It was not built by the cogs of a grand bureaucracy. It was built upon bravery, risk, and sacrifice.

We do not need permission to work hard. We do not permission to use our ideas, save the planet, or make a profit. There is simply too much work to do in the world for us to be worrying about where our next paycheck is coming from. We should be making our living today, not waiting for it.

You might look upon this post as idle ranting. At worst, I’m ruining my chances for future employment by establishing myself as a troublemaker. You might even think I need to be more realistic. If I want to be realistic about this, I can’t just keep edging back my expectations. Every business has its own metrics for success. I have two. Either I get a full-time position in my field for at least one year, or my freelancing business revenue exceeds $5,000 a month. There are two widgets at the sidebar, one tracking the revenue, and the other tracking the number of resumes I’m sending out. I don’t know how long it will take to reach either goal, but I think those two statistics are a better measure of the economy that affects you and me better than the Dow, GDP, or what have you. I will also use this blog to tell you about the strategies I’m using to get where I want to go.

I’m not saying I have all the answers, but what I do know is that we need to stop pretending that this is okay.

Miles Forrest tweeted this Mixergy interview between Seth Godin and Andrew Warner a little while ago. It talks about the “Lizard Brain”, the biological impulse towards safety and security that hampers our creativity. Godin’s secret to success is to test out lots and lots of ideas, bad ones, even. You might say he just throws crap against the wall and sees what sticks. The trick is to keep throwing the crap. Better yet, get a shovel.

The internet allows this process to happen at a vastly accelerated pace. You have your ideas out there and find out if they work in a matter of hours. The problem remains, what’s the difference between a failed idea and a successful one?

Take this blog for example. One could call it a failure just because it doesn’t bring down the traffic or revenue of John Chow or ProBlogger. However, I enjoy writing it. It’s a great space for self-talk. If anyone comments, hell, I’m over the moon. It doesn’t take much time, and I can write off the hosting.

In the end it doesn’t matter whether you pass one metric or another in your ideas. What matters is the action, even it’s small as getting someone else to say “Yeah, someone should do that.” Most important of all, it should make you happy in some way. Even if at the end of the day, all you have is some crap sticking to the wall.

Sometimes I think I was born at the wrong time. Anybody reading who was born in ‘79, back me up on this. Doesn’t it seem like you show up late to the party on every crazy economic boom of the past twenty years? When I went to university, the dot-com boom was flying high. Anybody with a pulse and a little HTML knowledge was getting hired. Once I graduated with a CIS degree, the boom was long bust and I was supporting wi-fi for truckers. When I got into GIS, the industry was starved for workers, and business was good for a while. Then the sub-prime mortgage crisis happened, and I suddenly was competing with everyone else who had been laid off for my next contract. Now that I’m looking into getting a house, when I hear what prices were even 10 years ago, I feel like I should punch a hole in a wall or something.

I want to tell myself that it’s just gambler’s fallacy, that I’m just making crazy patterns in my mind, but something tells me I’m temporally cursed to be consistently foiled by the Gordon Gekko types that start these mad dashes of investment.