3 types of hires

We have a bunch of openings at work right now that we’re trying to fill and not having someone in those spots is definitely hurting us right now but we’re determined to find the right people because hiring a so-so person is the worst thing you can do. In my mind there are 3 types of hires:

1. Wrong hire. Looked good on paper, interviewed well but ultimately is the wrong person. Easy to fix, you fire them and go look again. Sure it sucks but it’s not that great a loss.

2. Great hire. No look further, you’ve found a star that you can groom for a promotion. You’re set!

3. So-so hire. This is the worst possible hire you can make because this person never does bad enough that you can fire them but they also never do great enough that you love them. They aren’t technically underperforming but they aren’t optimal so all you’re doing is throwing money away. You are burning up opportunity with this person.

#3 is the worst thing you can do to your company.

Couple will tie the knot, minus dream honeymoon

Couple will tie the knot, minus dream honeymoon.

The harsh comments in this articles about this couple are well deserved. Let’s recap, they are:

1. Getting married this year
2. Saving for business school
3. Just took out a mortgage on a condo
4. Because of the HST they will have to cancel their Mexico honeymoon.

You’re bloody idiots! It’s not the HST that’s killing your honeymoon, it’s your stupid spending habits! Spend within your means you fools! You should have stopped going to Tim Horton’s and Serious Coffee months ago.

I make more than the two of them combined and I have the good sense to avoid the coffee shop and make my coffee at home (I used to have a cup a day at the shop till I added up the money and realized I was STUPID). If any good will come of the HST, it will be to get these two to see how they are wasting money.

Onto the broader subject of the HST, the Times-Colonist is running a series on how the HST is going to ruin people’s lives. What I’ve learned is that people have trouble managing their money and that the Times-Colonist has had trouble finding people who are really hurt by this.

Yes, the impact according to the Stats Canada report they quoted sounds sizeable (it’s also more than I expected) but in context with how much you already pay, the worst case scenario is slightly larger than an accounting error and still worlds better than what things were like 10 years ago.

Looking at my income statement and my expenses for the year I figure the worst case impact for me is around $600-700 annually. Including all hidden taxes, city,provincial and federal taxes, things like CPP and EI payments, that $600-700 means a 2-4% increase in taxes over last year (not a 2-4% increase relative to my income, just to what I paid in taxes).

Considering that tax freedom day (the day when you’ve made enough to cover your taxes) has moved from June 24th to about June 9th in the last 10 years I’d say that we’ve got it good. Worst case scenario is that the government is scraping back some of those days.

Looking at the Stats Canada numbers I’m a bit skeptical of their math, if lower and middle income earners are getting increased tax rebates which I don’t qualify for I’m not sure how they came up with numbers so high. How does someone who is getting a couple hundred dollars of rebates end up getting hit as hard I would when I’m making twice as much as they are?

Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street and Give it to Main Street « blog maverick

Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street and Give it to Main Street « blog maverick.

It should be a percentage (.5%?) with a minimum of 10 cents.

Democracy

I’m not really a believer in democracy because democracy gets you America and I don’t want to be America. The founders wanted a strong, balanced form of democracy and today what you get is terrible, unaccountable government that can’t get anything done.

Given my druthers I’d elect a benevolent dictator – one man or woman who gets control for 10 years with no ability to unelect them short of revolution. Or something like that. I want good government, I don’t need honest government.

That’s why I don’t care when Gordon Campbell lies to us and implements the HST just a couple months after saying that he wouldn’t do it – the HST is good government, not honest government so I’m for it.

It’s really no different than how Steve Jobs runs Apple. He is a benevolent dictator – he does what he wants. You get one option with Steve and while it may be one option, it’ll be one hell of an option.

I want my government the same way.

Working your ass off

My intern had her exit interview with me today as tomorrow is her last day and I asked her what her plans were and I asked her how big she was dreaming and she said she wants to be making 6 figures by the time she’s 40 which is a not unreasonable dream.

I told her if that’s what she wanted that she should be prepared to work her ass off between now and the time she turns 30 (she’s 23) and that she has to be willing to do some shitty jobs in order to figure out what she’s good at. I know a few folks who make 6 figures and all of them worked really hard before they turned 30, some of them still work their asses off. There are other ways to do well for yourself financially but working hard is the most obvious way with the highest rate of success (versus starting your own business or becoming a drug dealer).

I chose 30 because I’ve found that’s more or less when people hit a wall, lights start going off in people’s head that say, “Fuck this shit, I want a life”. My light went off when I was 31 and ever since I’ve chosen work that doesn’t exceed 50 hours a week and where I’m not at someone’s beck and call 24/7. I’ve had a couple hard charging friends who turned it down at 31 as well and others who wish they could have turned it down at 30 or so.

Can you make it by being slow and steady? Maybe but it’s less likely that you’ll make it and if one of your goals is to have made it at 40 then you gotta work your ass off in your early years when you don’t have kids and you aren’t in the mood for settling down.

On the flip side if you choose not to work your ass off and you aren’t rocking a big salary then you shouldn’t complain about how you aren’t getting paid enough which is a complaint I hear way too often.

BBC News – EU moves to ease curbs on flights

BBC News – EU moves to ease curbs on flights.

The airliners seem to be okay to fly but the fighter plane with its tighter tolerances is not – the engine suffered damage. The articles also leave out the fact that these jet engines are rated by their makers for zero ash operation.

While we may be acting with excessive caution I also think the airline CEOs are attempting to jettison safety in order to stop losing money.

(I’m stuck in Dusseldorf right now)

Travel

My trip involves 7 different flights on 4 different airlines (none of them with the airline I booked with) and this is how I’m doing so far:

1) Victoria to Calgary: 25 mins late, plane was stuck at another airport.

2) Calgary to Newark NJ: 1:30 late, plane was stuck at another airport.

3) Newark to Hamburg: 30 mins late, plane was stuck on runway.

4) Hamburg to Dusseldorf: 15 mins late, luggage fails to make it onto plane. The luggage arrives at the hotel about 7 hours later.

5) Dusseldorf to London: Flight cancelled. Rescheduled for Monday, odds are that it will be cancelled as well.

6) London to Vancouver: This happens Tuesday and it’s looking likely that it will be cancelled or I will miss it because I can’t get to London.

7) Vancouver to Victoria: Ah, fuck it.

Use me.

One of my regrets is that I never had a career mentor – someone with 10-20 years of business experience that I could go to who would help me understand how to handle things better. With some mentorship, I figure I’d be 3-4 years ahead of where I am now – possibly a director level role and with a more substantial list of accomplishments to boot. It’s my own fault, I should have looked for one.

Now the tables have turned and I’m the one with 10 years experience in a multitude of fields interviewing young university students for internships. I’m the one with millions of dollars of projects deployed and my fingerprints on a lot of other projects so when I tell HR that I’ll send the decline letters and I even tell the declined candidates to keep in touch then the proper action from these people are to thank me for my time and ask if I would be available to chat with them for 30 minutes (I like strong Americanos).

The person who thanks me for my time gets to move up my list. The one who asks for my time moves up even further. And the next time I need to hire a permanent person I will remember them. If you use my time wisely and I may even recommend you to a colleague.

I am a windbag but I’m a useful windbag when you’re resume only says things like “Waiter” or “Clerk”.

Nokia’s Kallasvuo: We Must “Move Even Faster” – BusinessWeek

Nokia’s Kallasvuo: We Must “Move Even Faster” – BusinessWeek.

Only 4 years after the iPhone was announced Nokia says they need to move faster in order to stay competitive. Really? 4 years AFTER the iPhone? Even Microsoft beat you to it.

Sell. Sell. Sell.

Ottawa unveils smallest spending increase in a decade

Ottawa unveils smallest spending increase in a decade – The Globe and Mail.

The article isn’t the good part of this – the flash widget on the right hand side which shows you a high level breakdown of where the money comes from and where the money is spent is terrific though. It shows things over the past 10 years and there’s some interesting things to see in there.

• Corporate tax revenue peaked at $40 billion in 07-08 and then dropped to a low of $22 billion. Corporate tax revenues now account for about 10% of federal revenue, 10 years ago it was about 15% – in other words corporate tax rates have been cut by about 33%.
• The growth in revenue has been 42% in the last 10 years – I couldn’t dig up economic growth figures but we definitely were closer to 2.5% annually this past decade meaning the government hasn’t actually been cutting taxes, just re-indexing to make it sound like they’re cutting taxes.
• Personal tax revenue increased by 52% during that same time. Corporate taxes were up about 6% in that same period.
• On the expenses side debt charges are down 25% in the past 10 years and this is absolutely huge – revenue up 42% and interest down 25% meant a HUGE increase in social spending. Enough to deal with the aging of our population and the resultant increase in health care costs.
• Transfers to persons (pensions, EI, child benefits) and federal programs doubled in the last 10 years. Social transfers (health care) more than doubled in the last 10 years while federal program spending.

Deficit spending in tough times is the right thing to do but the deficit matters because Canada is only able to pay for health care and federal programs because we’ve been paying off our debt over the past 15 years. The money freed up by paying down our debt has made it possible for taxes to be nominally lowered (they aren’t really lower) and allow us to not make tough decisions when it comes to managing how our social programs should be run.

At a glance it’s pretty easy to say that we have been deferring the hard reality that we can’t actually afford our programs the way they are unless we raise taxes and I would say that’s closer to the truth than we realize.

And the government gridlock caused by a minority government and an Prime Minister acting as Dictator is the wrong medicine for our country.