Intellectual Ore

There’s a company presenting in a conference room next to me right now touting “100% Customer Success”.  Among their five “representative implementations” are BNP Paribas and Countrywide Financial.  Honestly, couldn’t they have picked more than 5 companies free of major scandals and/or bankruptcy?  I guess it beats lying outright about the identity of your clients - but I’m still rolling on the floor laughing.

UPDATE (7/29): Countrywide has won the Consumerist “Worst Company in America” award.

After work today, Del and I paid a visit to Joel and friends over at Fog Creek Software.  I didn’t bring a camera, but I really like their office.  It’s a bit dingy from the outside, but the inside is new, modern, and downright sexy; it’s hard not to like a place with a community lunch table, fish tank, Aerons, and walls lined with shelf after shelf of high-quality technical books.  Fog Creek is a place that would make me enjoy coming to work.  In stark contrast to the high-stress “grind it out” environment of finance, I felt like a piece of the west coast “chill” culture had been transplanted to NYC.  I really enjoyed going, and with the new office, things should be even better next year; Mark (Joel’s co-founder) was pretty excited about the blueprints.

I was heading to work on the 2/3 last Thursday when I saw a gentleman perusing Taleb’s Black Swawn.  Being that this is one of my favorite books, I was inclined to ask the gentleman’s opinion of it; as it happens, he was an actuary en route to a discussion about the book.  An actuary reading Taleb is something like a Christian reading the Quaran, so I knew right away that I was speaking to an extremely open-minded person.  He explained that in the course of his work at Standard and Poor’s, he’d seen the insurance industry shoot itself in the foot by systematically underpricing risk.  When disaster strikes, he explained, insurance companies lose a lot of money, but shortly after, premiums go up as disasters seem “more likely” in retrospect.  Faced with a glut of new premium money, the companies seek to expand the business they’ve written, and end up competing each other to a price point below the actuarially-derived zero-profit point, into loss.

When I explained that I was an engineering student, he contrasted his profession with mine, explaining that both, despite the proliferation of highfalutin models, require a pragmatic spirit capable of seeing beyond the limits of models.  It’s rare to meet someone so open-minded, especially over the age of 40; I was thoroughly impressed with this man’s intellectual accomplishment.

Much hype surrounds today’s launch of the 3G iPhone by AT&T, but what does it cost?  The minimum one can pay, as a new AT&T customer: $199 for the phone, plus a two-year contract for $69.99/month.  Over two years, a 3G iPhone customer will pay $1878.96 rock-bottom, but once taxes, “line charges”, “universal service fees”, AT&T’s $36 “activation fee”, “municipal recovery charges”, text plans ($5/month for the privilege of putting some 28,000 bytes of data onto AT&T’s network), and other upgrades are considered, it’s going to run at least $3000 over two years.  Is this phone really worth $1500/year?

code grinder: n.

1. A suit-wearing minion of the sort hired in legion strength by banks and insurance companies to implement payroll packages in RPG and other such unspeakable horrors. In its native habitat, the code grinder often removes the suit jacket to reveal an underplumage consisting of button-down shirt (starch optional) and a tie. In times of dire stress, the sleeves (if long) may be rolled up and the tie loosened about half an inch. It seldom helps. The code grinder’s milieu is about as far from hackerdom as one can get and still touch a computer; the term connotes pity. See Real World, suit.

Ben Bernanke opined this morning on the Fed’s ability (more properly, inability) to regulate non-bank financial firms.  A central point of the speech was the need for Congress to give the Fed greater “explicit oversight authority” to regulate clearance, financing, and the credit risk inherent in OTC derivatives contracts.  Additionally, the speech addressed the need for having a process to dispose of a failed institution’s assets in an “orderly” fashion.  The speech took a very even tack between the costs and benefits of increased regulation; it really made for a great start to my morning.

Given how important robust payment and settlement systems are to financial stability, a strong case can be made for granting the Federal Reserve explicit oversight authority for systemically important payment and settlement systems.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week.  In a nutshell, the book explains why most people don’t place enough value on their time.  Instead of our mundane, drab office-space jobs (selling our time), Ferriss explains that we should work to create income-generating systems (sell products, buy rental property, etc.) enjoy life more, and stop “living for the weekend”.

A lot of what Ferriss writes is spot-on.  For one, we Americans need to think harder about lifestyle design, that is, the entire package: work, vacation, time with significant others/kids, where to live, minimizing commute time, etc.  A lot of my friends are moving to take jobs, and the overriding concern seems to be the job itself, and not the lifestyle that comes with it. 

Also, Ferriss is right that the American workplace has a serious problem with information overload.  The “always-on” nature of email and the telephone is largely responsible for the total absence of concentrated, productive time.  I am appalled how frequently I see people “multitasking” BlackBerry use with various activities: driving a car, religious activities, participating in a business meeting, or, my personal favorite, using the restroom at work (I’ve witnessed all of these firsthand). 

So I mostly agree with the book.  However, I have one major gripe: the book talks a lot about getting our lives in order financially, but doesn’t comment much on what to do after we’ve cut our work week to ”four hours”.  And I think this is a big problem.

Right now, I’m craving engagement.  I have a job where I’m making plenty of money, but my day-to-day work is rote drudgery.  This probably seems strange, but in the face of having my material needs fulfilled, I’m bored out of my mind; I’m over-recreated.  Vacations, walks outside, and reading books have all become intolerable.  I can’t wait to get back to Champaign-Urbana and work with my research group; only five more weeks.