Why is the 2nd from the top button on dress shirts always an inch too low?

Can't we move those puppies up another half to full inch so that people don't have to see if I'm wearing an undershirt or not?

Post I never hit Publish on - November 2007 Real Estate

Housing prices down only 4.5%, but unsold backlog reaches 10 months

In earlier posts (Sunk-cost fallacy in real estate), we documented the reluctance of homeowners to sell at a loss. Now the Wall St Journal reports that housing prices have fallen only 4.5% from their March 2006 peak and, due to the reluctance of sellers to reduce price, there is a ten month backlog of unsold houses.Keeping your house on the market can cost as much as 1% of the house value each month. Their advice:Ask your real-estate agent how many properties are on the market in your town today and how many sold in each of the past six months, advises Chris Mayer, director of Columbia Business School's Milstein Center for Real Estate. "If there are 2,000 houses on the market and 200 houses sold last month, that means it's taking 10 months to sell a house," Prof. Mayer says. "That's pretty simple math, but nobody ever does it. If you price your house like everybody else, it might

take 10 months to sell it."

How to tell if your client is insane - last day with these nutsos!

Not going to say where I am working right now, but I'll be glad to be done with this client.

Let's create a checklist of bad client attributes and behaviors, and see how this one stacks up:

1. Consistently contradicts their own requests
2. Changes priorities
3. Gives conflicting requests from multiple people
4. Bonus: conflicting requests from the same person
5. Treats the "help" as second-class citizen
6. Has a mountain of rules and regulations
7. Does not follow any of the rules or regulations
8. Loves the "bring me a rock" exercise - this is where they ask you to produce some deliverable, with ill defined requirements. You produce it, they say bring them something similar, but different, and still can't define what they want. This repeats ad naseum
9. They aren't worried about doing the right thing, only what their bosses and others (like the market) will think
10. Meetings, lots of meetings. Meetings to discuss meetings.
    
11. Bonus: Won't just have three people chat about something, has to call it a meeting. Double bonus if they insist in sending a meeting invitation
    

I think I hit #s: 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

So farewell client. I've learned, something, I guess. If anything, I learned:

• You can only make an inrrational client a tiny bit more rational
• You have to put in a lot more effort to frame decisions for them. I basically had to box them into a corner to do the right thing
• Don't play the game, you won't win. Don't try and outfox them, don't do any "double secret probation" type stuff where you have non-disclosed meetings with stakeholders to try and get something done behind people's backs.
• However, you can get things done despite others. Frame what you are doing in a way that they see it as benefiting them.
• Make the process your friend, use it to shield you from tasks they ask you to do that will make you look bad, or could break a truly important rule (or heaven forbid, law)
• Momentum is key - Once you get a little bit of progress, once you get them working slightly more rationally, you can build on it. To quote the insane Herm Edwards of the NFL "WE CAN BUILD ON THIS!" (shouted after a loss).
  

What's the right way to leave a job?

In the current state of the economy, people are more likely to leave their employer due to layoffs than because they found a better opportunity. But both situations present similar issues and actions though.

First, you have to realize you have two roles within every company: you are both an employee, and a worker. What's the difference? And employee entails all the overhead stuff, the paperwork, compliance issues, EEOC training, getting paid, 401(k), and if you live in a magical fantasy world you even have a pension. For this role there is either someone in HR who nags, I mean helps, you with this (it could also be your supervisor). The worker role is your real work, your day-to-day responsibilities of getting stuff done. You deal with your supervisor, co-workers, and maybe even people you manage.

Job number one when you leave a company is to take care of the all your HR stuff. Make sure you have the names and numbers for your benefits people. Know all your account numbers and log ins for your 401(k), know who you contact if you want to roll any of this over.

Make sure your papers and emails are in order. You are reasonably allowed copies of your work papers, but be cognizant of your Intellectual Property restrictions. Don't take anything that is proprietary. But you are allowed to have access to various HR records, and you should always have had a copy of your performance appraisals. These will be key later on, especially if you have to tweak your resume, remember any awards you won, etc. If you receive pay statements via email, forward those puppies on to your personal email. You may wish to create a totally new email address for this, but I created a specific label within Gmail for this.


Now as a worker, it's a totally different set of responsibilities. If you manage any people, they have to be your number one priority. You'll need to have a transition plan for migrating your duties to whomever is taking over. In an ideal world, you will know who this is, have a positive working relationship and do this personally. Often times, you will not know who is taking over and there will be no chance to even talk to them about the team.

I went to great lengths to try and not bias the two people who took over for me. I was really handling two roles, and my boss wisely decided to split them apart and have two people take them on. I was upfront and always said, "Here is fact, here is my opinion". We called it a "Bus File", others call it a "Titanic file" or other permutations, but this was a document that summarized my roles and responsibilities, the basics of what I did, when certain deliverables were due, and gave some history on the most major pieces of work. I used this whenever I took a vacation of more than 3 days for whoever watched over my team as well.

Close out as many tasks as you can, be cognizant of whoever is taking over for you when new duties are assigned and try to push out the due dates so the new person can meet the deadlines. Make sure you let your replacement know what balls are still in the air.


And above all, never burn a bridge. You might want to take some cheap shots at people as you are leaving, really letting them know what you think of them. Don't. Just grin and bear it. However, one caveat is that you should be brutally honest should you have an exit interview. Mine was a joke, near useless. But I still was honest and told them what I liked about the company, why I was leaving, and what they should fix. The lady doing this pressed me on why I was leaving, which in part was salary. I wouldn't tell her the dollar amount I left for, but gave her a percentage range of increase and she laughed and told me I made the right decision.


I took a cue from my wife and handwrote thank you letters to people who really helped me out. I thanked those who gave me a chance to interview for promotions, especially one's I didn't get. The opportunities were great, and they didn't have to include me. I thanked all my supervisors for their wise council and mentorship. And I thanked one guy in particular for his frank and honest opinions on my work. He was a pain in the butt a lot of the time, a jerk to people who couldn't handle him well, but he was the most honest boss I've ever had. When I gave him work that didn't meet his expectations, he told me. But he also helped me fix it, which was key. I learned a lot from him.


The golden rule in this instance is twofold: treat people the way you'd like to be treated, and keep the future in mind.

Google's My Maps - Why not the Google Maps start page?

I have three maps set up in Google's My Maps. Why isn't this my default start page when I type in http://maps.google.com?

Dear Bret Michaels, quit while you're ahead (or not horribly behind)

Seriously, quit:



Airbrushed, botox'd, makeup (not the kind you wore as a legit rocker).

VA Xmas Tree

At the National Christmas Tree in DC.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Smithsonian Natural History

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Why no applications for company profiles in LinkedIn?

I have a Google Presentation app in my LinkedIn profile, but I can't install any apps to my company's profile?

• Why wouldn't we want to have a presentation or document up to explain what we have done for our prior/current customers?
• Or put in Company Buzz so people can see what others are saying about us?
• Or share files between our company's employees via LinkedIn?
• Or create a workspace?

Seems like someone hasn't connected the dots on this one.