Author: Marina Zosya

Snippets from a Corporate Party: Disappearance of Secure Professions


Poor-doctorThe Frustrated CFO goes to a corporate party and during cocktails mingles with bankers, all kinds of brokers, execs from various industries, business owners, etc.  Everyone exchanges cards, handshakes, hugs, or cheek-pecks depending on the length and the warmth of the relationships.  Some people talk shop, some solicit business and/or advice, some boast about themselves and/or their children, some discuss the Super Bowl without much enthusiasm (it's NYC after all – we only got excited when we saw our very own Eli Manning in the stands watching the event turning miserably for his brother).  Many, of course, discuss the weather – it has been an appropriately cold winter, which makes the clueless schmucks unhappy.

The Frustrated CFO does her duty of actively participating in this business-social hubbub.  She doesn't even have her cards out, because in this room everyone knows her and she knows everyone.  This is great – no pressure, no awkwardness, no need for ice-breaking: she freely rotates herself around the space joining a conversation here and there, mostly listening to others chattering away. 

The party is not very large – just 60 people.  So, it is a testimony to the prevalence of the trend that  she catches two independent dialogues, which support one of her it's-only-gonna-get-worth observations: that there is no such thing anymore as a "secure" profession.

A VP of Acquisition and Investment from a Commercial Real Estate Brokerage humorously tells a story how at a recent RE conference she met a middle-aged gentlemen with a double-sided business card.  One side introduced him as a licensed commercial property broker and another… as a cardiologist.  He told her that he'd been a practicing heart specialist for 25 years before getting into selling corner delis, Korean restaurants, and warehouses.  People didn't know how to react and, therefore, they snickered – a typical response.  Someone said, "I wouldn't trust that guy with my heart."

Well, I've been saying for some time now that HMO's together with malpractice insurers did a pretty thorough job of downgrading the medical profession from one of the highest-earning trades to a regular struggling-to-survive occupation.  This is why it's so hard to find a good primary physician nowadays: the insurance pays $8-$25 monthly allowance for PP patients and the only appointment you are allowed to bill to the provider is the annual full physical.  Every single privately practicing doctor that I know, including specialists, feels obligated to tell me how he is about to lose everything and how he cannot afford his kids' tuition anymore.  But I have to be honest: A cardiologist going into real estate?  That was surprising even to me.               

In another conversation The Frustrated CFO's corporate attorney was explaining how they had to push one of the partners out because "he wasn't bringing enough business."  His arrangement gave him rights to share in the combined profits, while the other partners didn't feel that he was pulling his weight.  So, they simply didn't renew his contract.  Now, the attorney said, the ousted ex-partner went to work for a law firm that kept all attorneys strictly on the eat-what-you-kill basis.  No more sharing in each other's efforts – if you don't bring any business on your own, you don't earn anything at all. 

Well, this has been a shift in many partnership-based professions: not just law firms, but also accounting, managerial consulting, architecture & design, web development, advertising, and some-such companies.  It's not that important anymore whether you are a good lawyer – it's all about the salesmanship, the "rolodex," the ability to snatch a new client.  I keep waiting for the time when these entities start hiring sales execs without the required professional backgrounds and pay them humongous bonuses for selling services fulfilled by someone else.  

As recently as 10 years ago parents still thought that as long as they force their children into being a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or a money manager (regardless of the kids' actual talents and dreams), they did their "duty" of making sure that these young men and women were financially comfortable and could provide for themselves and their future families.  But it's not true anymore: there are no more cushy jobs, no security in any profession, no guarantees. 

Quote of the Week: On Gifting for Love – Valentine, Parental, or Any Other Kind


Hallwriter"An unworthy and tiresome thing money, at best, but it can at least ease the heart of the lover.  When he lightens his purse he lightens his heart, though this can hardly be accounted a virtue, for such giving is perhaps the most insidious form of self-indulgence that is known to mankind."

                                Radclyffe Hall

 

Quote of the Week: Obama’s Next Move Towards Socialism


Obama_0c245_image_1024w1-300x200From CNN's Breaking News:

"EXCLUSIVE: President Barack Obama told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday that some of the country's largest corporations have signed on to a White House plan to boost the hiring of the long-term unemployed.

'What we have done is to gather together 300 companies, just to start with, including some of the top 50 companies in the country, companies like Walmart, and Apple, Ford and others, to say: Let's establish best practices,' Obama said in the exclusive interview…

Obama's move is in line with his pledge to use executive action on his agenda items that he hasn't been able to get through Congress."

The Frustrated CFO Comment:

Alrighty then!  So, this is how we are going to deal with overpopulation and economic stagnation:  Instead of cutting down government spendings, ceasing the preposterous fueling of the financial sector, ending the subsidies to failing industries, letting the stock market to finally adjust to its real value, providing incentives to domestic manufacturers for repatriating their productions from overseas, and reducing business taxes in order to reignite small-business growth, the President proposes to create a new form of Welfare, i.e. to force big-time employers to absorb long-term unemployed people - in exchange for some tax credits, no doubt. 

Hmm…  Not that I'm concerned for the overgrown business superpowers with their blown out of proportion stock values and unjustifiable multi-million-dollar executive salaries, but if they don't experience a labor-force deficit, why would they accept extra employees?  That goes against every single principle of a market economy, even in its degenerative form we have right now!  And where they are going to employ them?  Walmart is planning on opening more super-stores?  They are everywhere already.  So is Apple.  And Ford?  Do you mean Ford Motor Company, the one that posts $5-$6 billion losses every year; the one in Detroit – the city declared bankrupt by US judge Stephen Rhodes two month ago?  You must be kidding!  

And how these companies are going to pay these people?  I can't imagine the execs will let their ballooned compensations to be slashed by 80%.  So, what then?  Everybody, except for a handful of the privileged, will take the same percentage cut to accommodate the unnecessary additions?  Let's make most people equally poor, so that everyone can be "employed" and  bring home something?  Wait a minute!   Didn't somebody already tried this experiment?  Oh, yes, communists in the socialist camp did!  Worked like a charm: destroyed their economies and created hordes of lazy, unmotivated, and unskilled workers!  Welcome to your future, people, courtesy of your elected leader!      

Boss Joke of the Month: Raises and Bonuses


Grinch stole my raise and bonusAh, January!  Traditionally, a month of raises and bonuses!  Or, at least it used to be.  You probably have read many an article and a blog post about the diminishing slew of companies still giving out performance bonuses and/or raises. 

I am not surprised – I am the one always going on and on about the illusional nature of the "economic recovery" tune so "earnestly" whistled by politicians and business media.  Companies, big and small, are struggling left and right.  In the absence of profits, merit is kicked off its, already pathetic, backseat all the way into the trunk: When a company experiences business losses you may need to work twice as hard as you did during more prosperous times, but it will not get you matching rewards.  In fact, big enterprises frequently present their employees with a more contemporary version of a performance reward: take a pay cut or a demotion for the sake of keeping your job.

But not the young company X! 

Company X had difficult 2011 and 2012, experiencing all sorts of growing pains and deformities, but 2013 was, if not a spectacular, but a pretty-pretty good year: the business outperformed its forecaststs both at the Gross and the Net Profit levels.  And so, in accordance with formal evaluations conducted at the end of the year, the Board of Directors decided that effort-based bonuses will be paid and raises will take effect as of January 2014.

Now, like many small and mid-size companies, X uses ADP as their payroll service provider.  So, in order to implement raises, an Administrator has to go into ADP's online system and change employees' pay rates.  X's CFO is very anal about being above suspicions: she has set up the payroll administrative functions in a way that allows her to change everybody's compensation items, except her own.  She left that prerogative to the owner/CEO.

Unfortunately that means getting the boss to do something outside of her comfort zone: Of course, she doesn't remember her login ID and password for the Payroll Administration portal.  Plus, any reminder of the compensation negotiations puts her in a vile mood.  Plus, a rate per pay periods, a special bonus batch…  It's all too much.  Never mind that she only needs to do that for ONE PERSON, her CFO! 

CFO is very aware, though.  She makes it as simple as possible, cutting the instructions for CEO into small pieces and chewing them into a pulp that can be fed through an IV.  She puts it in writing too, via email: 

"My base salary was $A per year.  You gave me a raise of Y%, which amounts to $B.  My new base salary, therefore, is $C per year ($A + $B).  Accordingly, please change my semi-monthly payroll rate from current $a ($A/24) to $c ($C/24).  Thank you."

In two hours our CFO receives CEO's response:

"Dear N,

Please double check your current pay and the number after raise.  Also, I will have to do it on Monday, because I need to leave now to pick up my son."

Really?!  CFO looks at the email and in her mind she imagines writing back something like: "Bitch, are you telling me that I don't know how much you underpay me?  Or that with an MS in Finance, MBA in Accounting, and a PhD in Economics I cannot do simple arithmetic?  And why the fuck I, of all people,  am supposed to wait for my fucking raise?  I just set you up with one, even though my daughter is waiting for me!  What the fuck?!"

But CFO is not writing anything: she knows only too well that CEO didn't mean malice – she is just that stupid, dense, and lazy.  It's insults CFO's intelligence to work for someone like that.  But what are you going do?  At least in this place they give out raises and bonuses. 

Job Search: Napoleon Bonaparte Is Hiring


This is a story my friend shared with me.  It just happened.

A headhunter, with whom she worked in the past has contacted her.  He has a client looking for someone with her qualifications.   She is always interested to hear about new opportunities, especially those with potential to expand her CFO expertise.

Surprisingly, the urgency in the headhunter’s voice was incredible.  He sounded like a 911 caller witnessing an explosion.  He rushed through the sentences, jumped from one point to another like a mad frog, even forgot to tell her what was the client’s business .  Somewhere in the middle of it,  my friend has realized that she was somewhat overqualified for the job.  Moreover,  the title and the compensation weren’t defined.  That should have alarmed her.  Yet in her vanity, and she knows it, she decided that all the hurriedness was fueled by the headhunter’s worries of her not being interested.

Actually, there were a few aspects of the job that sparked her interest.  My friend relayed this to the headhunter.   He was very excited and went about contacting the client on the next step. 

Oh, my God!  Within a couple of hours, he called her eleven times: “Setting up a phone interview; no, they are foregoing the phone interview and want to meet you in person straight away; you will meet four different people; no, just two; no, it will be two separate interviews back to back – first with the HR Manager and then with the Owner.  Please, pleeeeese, can we do it tomorrow?” 

And so, the next day my firiend went to the company’s offices and met with the HR Manager.  Talking to him, she was wondering if he would be able to make it through the meeting without falling into a panic attack.  Eventually,  he led her through the hallway to meet with the Owner/CEO.   His agitation escalated in alarming stages.  It was like playing a Liszt’s Etude, which calls for “fast” on the first page, then for “faster” on the second, “as fast as possible” on the third, and still “faster” on the next.

At the very moment she got to shake the hand of the tiny man behind the huge desk, it finally dawned on her.  It had nothing to do with my friend and her qualifications.  This miniature boss of an interesting, but relatively tiny company ($30M) exuded a sense of grandeur of Napoleonic proportions.  He had everyone scurrying like scared mice.  Even those who were not employed by him; including the headhunter, who works for one of the top 3 international recruitment houses.

The first thing he told her was, “I need a second in command who can keep the troops under control.  There were two before you, who were dismissed.”  Funny guy!