John F. Kennedy, in 1961, proposed to put an American on the moon in a decade. That idea stuck. It motivated thousands of people across dozens of organizations, public and private. It was an unexpected idea: it got people’s attention because it was so surprising–the moon is a long way up. It appealed to our emotions: we were in the Cold War and the Russians had launched the Sputnik space satellite four years earlier. It was concrete: everybody could picture what success would look like in the same way. How many goals in your organization are pictured in exactly the same way by everyone involved?
My father worked for IBM during that period. He did some of the programming on the original Gemini space missions. And he didn’t think of himself as working for IBM–he thought of himself as helping to put an American on the moon. An accountant who lived down the street from us, who worked for a defense contractor, also thought of himself as helping to put an American on the moon. When you inspire the accountants you know you’re onto something.
What Am I Thankful For?
I’m thankful that I have a job! A lot of people don’t!
I lost my last job a few months ago, along with 9,499 other people in the Orange County real estate/finance industry over the past year. We all got to compete against each other to find another one.
The Orange County Register ran a story yesterday on how some of these folks are doing . . .
Delia DeYulia, a grandmother, was recently forced to take her first retail job.
For the holiday shopping season, DeYulia, 53, is working part-time at Kohl’s, placing clothes on racks and cleaning dressing rooms. She resorted to taking the temporary work after not finding other employment. After 15 years with Fremont Investment and Loan, she lost her mortgage job in Anaheim Hills in March.
“I’m used to sitting in an office,” said DeYulia, who audited loans at Fremont, a firm from which she expected to retire. “Now, I’m on my feet all day. I’m carrying a lot of stuff and my body has to get used to it. It’s hard work for a minimum-wage job.”
The extra money will help pay the mortgage and car payment. Her husband can’t work because he’s disabled.
“I had always felt comfortable financially,” said the grandmother of two. “Now, I’m worried about the future.”
[Robert] Harrington, 31, of Tustin, was let go in September from Bankers Mortgage in Santa Ana. As its loan originator, he made about $75,000 last year. More than half of that was from commissions.
That’s why he thinks his best bet is to find a commission-based job at a luxury retailer or a store that sells big-ticket items.
So he has zeroed in on several shops at South Coast Plaza. He recently applied to Movado, Bloomingdale’s, Sony Style, Porsche Design and Allen Edmonds.
“I hope one of them calls me back this week,” he said.
He needs to help supplement the income from his wife, who is a waitress. They have a three-year-old son.
Corinna Vickers, 35, was let go a year ago from Secured Funding in Costa Mesa. Then two months ago, her husband Shad Vickers, 35, lost his job at Lending Tree in Irvine.
Combined, they had been making $200,000 a year.
Now they’re both unemployed and have been hunting for work to pay their bills and help them save for retirement and college tuitions for their four daughters. They have not had any luck and now the Vickers are both willing to take on holiday retail work.
Rhonda Struman of Laguna Niguel is not waiting around to get hired full time. Last month, she began working as a part-time salesperson at Nordstrom at The Shops at Mission Viejo. It pays $8 an hour. Before she was laid off in August from her underwriting position at Paul Financial in Irvine, she was making more than four times that hourly rate, or about $70,000 a year.
Her husband also got laid off from the mortgage industry. He was pulling in about $130,000 a year. Now, he’s working for $11 an hour at a Costco in San Juan Capistrano.
Because of their huge pay cuts, they’re having a hard time paying their $3,400 monthly mortgage. They sold off their boat to get rid of the monthly payments. They will soon sell their furniture.
“I cry all the time and I’m stressed all the time,” Rhonda Struman said.
By February, she and her husband will leave Orange County for Colorado to look for mortgage jobs or work that pays better than their current employers. They’ll rent out their Laguna Niguel house to help pay the mortgage and then rent in Colorado.
“We have no choice,” said Struman, who’s in her 40s. “There’s too much competition in Orange County. “There are too many people out of jobs” who are looking for new work.
Whew, tell me about it! I was this close to taking a job parking cars for $12 an hour . . .
Related Links
Nor does the immediate future look bright for the local real estate market. Here are some of this week’s headlines from the OC Register real estate blog:
Subprime Sinkhole
The rising tide of the mortgage industry lifted some pretty spurious boats here in Orange County, so it’s fun now to watch the subprime sinkhole laying them low.
Example: John Lynch, the “surfing banker,” executive VP of Secured Funding Corp., specialists in home equity loans and second mortgages to people with bad credit.
I had this guy pegged as a moron years ago, around the same time OC Metro ran a fawning blowjob of a profile on him:
For the foreseeable future, he will continue as a master of both the surfboard and the boardroom — plus anything else that he decides to do.
Well, that was then and this is now:
The party is over in Orange County. These days, Secured Funding’s once-buzzing office building in Costa Mesa, near John Wayne Airport, is gutted.
The imprint of “Secured Funding” is all that remains of the corporate logo that once graced the outside of the two-story building. Above it is a “For Lease” sign advertising the 82,333-square-foot (7,649-square-meter) building.
Lynch was so, so chatty with the press in 2004. What does he have to say now?
Neither [Lorne] Lahodny nor his partner in Secured, John Lynch, responded to messages left by phone and in person at their offices.
The Dog Ate My Homework
It’s an old joke but does it ever really happen?
My son’s science homework for last night was to build some Lewis dots using Froot Loops. This morning, the dog ran out and managed to take a couple of bites of a Lewis dot before we were able to fend him off . . .
The Wicked Messenger
He stayed behind the assembly hall,
It was there he made his bed,
Oftentimes he could be seen returning.
Until one day he just appeared
With a note in his hand which read,
“The soles of my feet, I swear they’re burning.”Oh, the leaves began to fallin’
And the seas began to part,
And the people that confronted him were many.
And he was told but these few words,
Which opened up his heart,
“If ye cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any.”
Community Leaders
I’ve got here an email from the Irvine Public Schools Foundation (IPSF), soliciting online donations at the IPSF website.
Also on the website is a page listing the names of the IPSF board members, along with their corporate affiliation. Seven of the board members have no corporate affiliation and instead are given the tagline of “Community Leader.”
Question: What in the world is a Community Leader?!
How does one acquire such a designation, other than not having a real job?
Couldn’t we just identify them as Volunteers or Parents or Parent Volunteers, instead of making them out to be some sort of tribal chieftains?
Based on the one Community Leader that I actually know personally, I’d say a more appropriate label would be Community Nuisance or Gadfly.
Have We Lost Perspective?
I get very, very frustrated when I . . . hear certain Americans talk about how difficult the problems we face are, how overwhelming they are, what a dangerous era we live in. I think we’ve lost perspective. We’ve always had difficult problems, we’ve always had great challenges, and we’ve always lived in danger.
Do we think our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents didn’t live in danger and didn’t have difficult problems? Do we think the Second World War was less difficult that our struggle with Islamic terrorism? Do we think that the Great Depression was a less difficult economic struggle for people to face than the struggles we’re facing now? Have we entirely lost perspective of the great challenges America has faced in the past and has been able to overcome and overcome brilliantly? I think sometimes we have lost that perspective.
It Seems Obvious in Retrospect . . .
. . . but something I just learned is that area codes were originally assigned according to the population density of the city or region, with the lowest numbers going to the most populous areas. Keeping in mind that phones in those days had rotary dials, and higher numbers therefore took longer to dial, the thinking was that areas with the most people should be the easiest to call.
That’s why New York City got area code 212, Chicago got 312, Los Angeles got 213, etc. (Zero actually counts as a high number — a 10, essentially — because it takes the longest to dial.)
Conversely, the area code for the entire state of Alaska was (and still is) 907.
A Missed Opportunity
USC coach Pete Carroll and UCLA assistant Eric Scott were both at Thursday’s Crenshaw game.
Interesting . . . I would have thought Eric Scott would be out robbing the houses of people attending the Crenshaw game . . .
FIGHT ON!
Pastagina
Theres a new restaurant opening up in our local shopping center: Pastagina. What is that — pasta for women?
Even the logo is highly suggestive . . .
You’re My Dad
Will you come to see me Jack
When I’m old and very shaky?
Yes I will for you’re my dad
And you’ve lost your last old lady
Though you traveled very far
To the highlands and the badlands
And ripped off the family car
Still, old dad, I won’t forsake you.Will you come to see me Jack?
Though I’m really not alone.
Still I’d like to see my boy
For we’re lonesome for our own.
Yes I will for you’re my dad
Though you dumped me and my brothers
And you sizzled down the road
Loving other fellows’ mothers.Will you come to see me Jack?
Though I look like time boiled over.
Growing old is not a lark.
Yes I will for you’re my dad
Though we never saw a nickel
As we struggled up life’s ladder
I will call you and together
We will cuddle up and see
What the weather’s like in Key West
On the old-age home TV.
Don’t Argue About Things That Don’t Exist
Some ideas. . . .
Don’t argue about things that don’t exist, like whether Save buttons should do this or that. Instead, code or prototype it and then team members use it themselves. You’ll be able to tell if it could be better when you use it instead of talk about it. . . .
One of the biggest blockers to team greatness is that members of team will have really good team diagnoses but they don’t say them out loud. So nothing can be done with the idea. You gotta say your great ideas out loud. . . .
Stay out of the content. The real issues are not about UI and architecture. Those are just the excuses to act out team neuroses. . . . If you resolve the interpersonal issues you won’t feel like you have UI or architecture issues.
Processes and planning will not make this better. They will make it worse. Don’t have a meeting to discuss how you will do the UI, for instance. That’s one of the worst things you can do. Don’t talk about stuff that doesn’t exist. Make stuff and then perfect it.
Hola, Estúpidos
Mr. Penn, Mr. Spacey, Ms. Campbell — Thank you so much for coming to visit me. Muchas gracias!
Shortly after your visits, 80,000 Venezuelans will gather at the Central University to protest my attempts to expand my dictatorial rule. Eight of these people will be injured when masked gunmen open fire on them.
I of course will be shocked by this display of brutality — as shocked as I’ve been since Claude Rains discovered gambling at Rick’s Cafe.
The incident will no doubt raise questions in people’s minds as to whether you actually support the armed suppression of free speech, or whether you are just naive simpletons.
Regrettably, there will be a writers’ strike on at the time and you will therefore have nothing to say . . .
Tu amigo,
Hugo Chavez
Too Close to the Piano
I play the piano for fun. I’m self-taught . . . I can play notes but I don’t know the first thing about proper technique, which is why I’m not very good.
I don’t know why I never thought of it before, but last night as I was struggling to play a new piece, I decided to move the piano bench farther back than I usually do.
Wow! Big improvement! For 40 years, I’ve been sitting too close to the piano.
It’s the kind of thing that a qualified instructor could point out at the first lesson, but when you have to figure it out yourself, it takes a little longer . . .
Got a Job
After three months on the dole, I got a job offer from the IT director of a local non-profit healthcare association here in Orange County. I start next week. As Gerald Ford used to say, “Our long national nightmare is over.”
It’s a small IT group — 8 people, including the director. I’ve got to admit I’m a little burned out on big corporate IT shops.
I got out of hands-on programming and into leadership roles because I thought I could do a better job than the people I saw doing it. I wanted to develop teams that got things done using their skills and their collective intelligence, but in practice, you typically get locked into some corporate process standard.
A process may be good for delivering consistent results, but they may not be consistently good results. Like at McDonald’s, every Big Mac is just like every other Big Mac because they have a process for making Big Macs. But is a Big Mac a high-quality dining experience? Not really . . .
A friend and former colleague, who was also recently let go by a local mortgage company, emails to say
I’m doing well… still spending a lot of time in Bakersfield, spending time with my parents. I’ve been looking for jobs, but haven’t applied for anything. I guess I actually need to apply.
She’s single, she can afford to be sanguine.
I was in contact with at least 100 companies in one way or another – sent a resume, called, phone interviews, in-person interviews – and got two job offers. So the upside with her approach is that I could have avoided 98 rejections.
Did I mention the job is with a healthcare organization? I was laid off from my last job, with a mortgage bank, when the mortgage industry tanked. Prior to that, I was laid off from a dot-com consulting company when that industry imploded.
I’ve got a knack for getting into industries at their absolute zenith, then riding them down the drain.
But healthcare — it’s recession-proof! Isn’t it? You can’t say, “I’m going to put off getting critically ill until I have a better read on the economy.”
Halloween 2007
My son put on a cap, a pair of sunglasses, hung a clock around his neck, and went trick-or-treating with his friends as Flavor Flav.
I can’t imagine anyone in Irvine is going to be able to figure that one out.
Postscript
“One woman asked me, ‘Are you supposed to be Flavor Flav?'” he says.
“What was her ethnicity?” I ask him.
“White.”
OK, I stand corrected.
Lost
As I arrived for an interview today, the hiring manager asked me, “Did you have any trouble finding the place?”
As it happens, I did not have any trouble finding the place and said so. I had printed out a map from one of the numerous online map sites and the building was right where it was supposed to be.
But even if I had had trouble finding it, my answer would have been the same.
“Some people have trouble finding it,” he told me.
Interesting. As an IT person, I consider myself a problem-solver — actually, I could make a case that any person in any job is hired as a problem solver — so I wouldn’t start out an interview by admitting that I got lost on my way over.
“Don’t hire anyone who can’t find the building,” I said.
Crime and Punishment
As you can see on this perimeter map of the Santiago Fire, the active fire line is now far enough east that my wife and I can clean the ashes and soot off our patio this morning without worrying about having a new load of ashes and soot dumped on it the next day. (We live in the small notch northeast of the now-decommissioned El Toro MCAS.)
I say to her, “They should find the guys who set the fire and make them clean up this mess.”
“Kill them!” she suggests.
“Couldn’t we make them clean up the mess and then kill them?”
Greed
The dog is sitting attentively watching my son eat a chili dog.
“You’re not going to get any of that,” I explain to the dog. “He’s greedy. He makes Jack Welch look like Good King Wenceslas.”
“And you,” the boy says, “make Donnie ‘We Found Him’ look like one of the Three Wise Men.”
The boy going deep in the archives to pull out a Wild Thornberrys reference, in which Donnie — seen here hanging from a tree limb — was a feral boy raised by orangutans.
How to Destroy Creativity
- Always pretend to know more than anybody else
- Police your employees by every procedural means
- Have your professionally-trained staff members do technicians’ work for long periods of time
- Erect the highest possible barrier between commercial decision-makers and your technical staff
- Don’t speak to employees on a personal level, except when announcing raises
- Be the exclusive spokesman for everything for which you are responsible
- Say yes to new ideas, but do nothing about them
- Call many meetings
- Put every new idea through channels
- Worry about the budget
- Cultivate the not-invented-here syndrome