Category: Business

10 HR Lessons From Summer-Binging on “The Good Wife” Plus Some Other Stuff


The Good WifeIn the TV business, summer traditionally has been considered an off-season.  Primarily because the broadcast networks' prime series go on a 4-month hiatus after completing their 20+ episode seasons.  Nowadays, of course, it's not all that relevant for TV viewers, because…  Well, for multiple reasons, really, but to name a few:  

First of all, if you prefer edgier premium cable series, your TV viewing patterns are driven by  2-3 month seasons scheduled at different times throughout the year: Shameless airs January through March, Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley - April -June, Masters of Sex – July-September, Homeland –  October-December, etc.  Even if you are into blending your TV cocktail out of cable and broadcast ingredients, you most likely use on-demand and DVR options to accommodate your personal schedules and to fill the airing gaps.  Plus, some broadcast networks now have "summer shows" – short-seasoned and "limited" series aired specifically to cover the off-season void: Hannibal, Wayward Pines, Under the Dome, Aquarius, etc.

The most important factor, however, is that we've stopped being restricted by conventional TV ever since Netflix came along.  First, they made the idea of going to video stores and looking for something to watch unnecessary.  We were so grateful for digital searching, online ordering, and USPS drop-ins and drop-offs.  But then even walking to the mailbox became unnecessary, because they made a tremendous volume of content available for IP streaming, including rare and obscure movies, shows, documentaries, anime, etc. from all over the world! 

They didn't stop there either - they got into creating their own original programming.  And then Amazon followed suit!  As a result, we got access to gems that make me feel as if I am living through some sort of an indie renaissance via the Internet: House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, Peaky Blinders, Grace and Frankie, Sense8 (Netflix originals), Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle (Amazon's originals).  It's fucking incredible!

Moreover, not only that streaming content is available everywhere you can go online, it's available in whole seasons.  There is no waiting for weeks at a time until the next episode; no mid-season separation anxiety; no loss of vital details from previous weeks.  Technically you can watch a 12-episode season in one day.  It is my understanding that some people actually do that. 

Netflix had at their hands the best market-testing sample imaginable – their entire subscription base.  They must've noticed early on that a large percentage of the viewing population doesn't restrict itself to one episode at a time.  They even installed a special probe at the start of the third consecutively watched episode to test whether you are actually binging or have simply fallen asleep on your couch.  Brilliant! 

Yes, binging – as in excessive indulgence, as in manifestation of addictive personality traits.  Not a new thing, really.  TV networks (USA especially) have been scheduling rebroadcasting marathons since the 80s.  By offering this opportunity to audiences with pretty much any kind of preferences, Netflix forever altered the cultural lives of millions of people. 

The phenomenon itself became a marketing tool for Netflix's competitors, who want you to know that you can replicate this experience with them as well:  This summer, Amazon actually used the phrase "binge on your favorite shows for free" in its promotional messages for Premium subscriptions.  HBO, still holding onto their highbrow status, softens it by offering you to "feast" on your past and present favorite shows on HBO GO.

Poor David Foster Wallace warned, way before streaming had become a household concept, that Television is the one and only true American addiction.  He predicted that catering to user demand for content of their choice whenever and wherever they wanted it (remember the "direct dissemination"?) may irrevocably alter us and potentially result in the crumbling of human will.

But who am I to judge?  Yes, my life is too busy for hardcore binging and I refuse to watch an episode of anything on my goddamned iPhone, but I've been taking advantage of on-demand entertainment ever since it was first introduced by American cable providers 15 years ago.  Then came iTunes 6.0 (2005).  Today – Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, HBO Go, Showtime Anytime – I've got them all, including a Fire Stick to carry them with me wherever I go. 

But that was not the topic of this post, was it? (Too bad you cannot hear me laughing at myself.)  This was meant to be a brief introduction to the shocking fact that, even with all that variety of quality entertainment on hand, at some point in July I found myself with my personal TV time-slot empty.  And let me tell you, that made it hard to ignore the binging and feasting callings of the content pushers.

I browsed the variety of offerings and ended up with The Good Wife on Amazon Prime.  It used to be one of the shows I watched during its active seasons – all the way through the middle of Season 4.  But then, 2013 announced its arrival to Netflix with their first two major originals, plus Top of the Lake, plus The Fall, the first season of Broadchurch, etc., etc.  I'm a busy woman – something had to go.  Now I picked up where I left off.  

I have to admit, assuming you manage not to paralyze your life or degrade your mental and motoric agility, watching multi-season, multi-episode shows without gaps measured in weeks and months has its undeniable benefits.  Complex and intricate storytelling loses some of its power when it's broken up into weekly installments and then gets shelved away for 4 or more months.  Reducing these gaps not only allows for a more detail-oriented viewing, it also gives you an opportunity to assess the show's merits and values in a more coherent way. 

Aside from the most obvious and well acknowledged attributes of The Good Wife - strive for realism; acute attention to the impact of technology on our lives; honest depiction of shifting morality; head-on tackling of race, class, gender, sex, and all other divides - what I like the most about the show is its refusal to label itself as a single genre.  We can definitely identify it as a Drama, but the range of applicable modifiers is quite long – family, political, crime, legal, courtroom.

But what I realized while watching seasons 4 through 6 now, was that in it's wardrobe full of genres, The Good Wife's favorite outfit was the Workplace Drama.  One law firm, another law firm, State's Attorney's office, governor's office, clients' businesses (including a drug-distribution organization), you name it - all of them are depicted as places of employment.  And the human relationships inside these businesses play essential roles in the show's storytelling.  The office politics, alliances, squabbles, hiring, firing, promotion, compensation, peers' competition, subordination, fraternizing, partnerships, resignations, harassment, even telecommuting -  all of them have been used as plot points.

Once I started noticing, I've found so many typical and easily recognizable Human Resources issues,  it was hard to pick the following ten:

  1. Any employee, no matter how highly positioned and compensated, is always a disgruntled employee.  It's remarkable how much pent-up gall towards Lockhart & Gardner started spilling out of Alicia and Cary as soon as they left to set up their own firm.  They were never that rude to any other opponents as they were to their former bosses.  What was it that Cary said to Will and Diane? That watching them squirm gives him an immense pleasure?  It's the nature of a subservient position – no matter what, we don't like it.
  2. Why don't we like it?  Because there is no such a thing as a fair boss. Every boss believes that you belong to him, yet he doesn't really need you and will do just fine without you.  That's why bosses never bother acknowledging, even to themselves, your full contribution and think that you should be grateful for what you've got.  Aside from always high-in-demand Kalinda, all other major and minor characters have experienced that.
  3. Recruitment is the most depressing of all managerial responsibilities.  Will and Diane need to hire more attorneys.  They sit down with their headhunter to look at the resumes she already preselected for them.  Barely glancing at them, Will goes, "No, no, no…"  And let me tell you, whether you are an asshole or a saint, this is what you do.  And I know that not everyone sees a life story behind every resume, still it's an incredibly unpleasant exercise for all.
  4. An easy interview is rarely a successful one.  Will is interviewed by Geneva Pine and her colleagues in his bid for an outsourcing contract with the State Attorney's office.  It goes great – quick and short; no follow-up questions, no drilling into specifics.  Why? Because it's just a formality – Lockhart & Gardner were never even seriously considered. Whether you are pitching yourself for employment or your company's services for a contract, the interviewing principles are exactly the same.  A short, formal, and overly polite interview means that you are not getting the job.
  5. Only full-time employment comes with benefits coverage.  This one is important because many people are still confused.  Kalinda, who has been working for Will for years, is appalled that newly hired Robin has medical coverage.  Except Kalinda cannot possibly qualify for benefits because she is a 1099 contractor with other billable businesses.  This allows her not only to delay paying social security taxes, but also makes a lot of her expenses tax deductible.  In order to receive company benefits one must be a full-time payroll employee with a minimum of a 30-hour workweek.  You cannot have it both ways.
  6. All computing and communication devices provided by employers belong to the said employers.  I know that many viewers may feel dismayed when they hear various bosses on the show proposing to hack into their employees' emails.  The truth is, however, that the employers are absolutely within their rights.  All devices paid for by the employer and everything inside of them are the company's property.  Not only is it implicit, but it is explicitly outlined in every single Employee's Handbook.  Yet, so many people treat the company's equipment as their own.  Hillary's personal email debacle is one recent memorable example.  People, don't be cheap and lazy, buy yourself a personal phone, external hard drives, and whatever else you need to keep your private contacts, communications, and files separately.
  7. The impervious pregnancy shield.  Governor Florrick's Ethics Czar Marilyn Garbanza is pregnant and the father is 76-year-old!  Can you trust a person like that with any type of government responsibility, let alone the one that requires clarity of reasoning?  Yet,  nobody reassigns her (of course, she cannot be fired – that's a lawsuit right there), because her condition blocks everyone's common sense.  In fact, her looks merited more suitability discussions than the fact that she made a decision to have a child with a septuagenarian.
  8. Workplace honesty is a relevant thing.  There is an information leak from Florrick/Agos.  Three key people (two lawyers and one investigator) privy to the information are being questioned.  All three deny any involvement.  Alicia says, "These are the most honest people I know."  Mind you, at different points in time we've seen these characters mislead their clients, lie to their opposition, trap witnesses, steal information and evidence, even betray one another!  Yet, that was all done in the "normal course of business;" to get the job done, i.e. to perform your professional duties.  Nowadays, nobody considers dishonesty on behalf of one's employer amoral.  I've done it and you've done it; everyone does it.  Are we absolved and untainted because we presume there is no direct personal gain?  That's the question.
  9. How do you know when someone in the office is sleeping with the boss? Look for the telling signs.  People cannot help themselves – they get emboldened by the perceived closeness to "power."  The person in question will stand too close, laugh too loud, dress inappropriately, pick fights with peers, become insufferable for subordinates and less diligent with their duties.
  10. One should always be aware of the temporary and unstable nature of any HR structure.  People die, get arrested on obscure charges, move on for higher salaries, or decide to be homemakers.  Companies go through mergers, buy-outs, and hostile takeovers.  And nobody, literally nobody, has a good life – everyone is fucked up and thoroughly unhappy, no matter how hard they try to hide it.  So, there is always a good chance that they may check out – out of job or out of life.  Or do something completely insane, like trying to shift from Law into politics.

But the most valuable life lesson one should take away from The Good Wife is that you should never ever burn all the bridges and cut all the ties, because you never know with whom you may need to partner next.  

Just What Exactly Did the Doctor Order for the Healthy Living?


Just What the Doctor OrderedThree weeks ago, my 81-year-old father had to go to a hospital for angioplasty.  Truth be told, I'm not a big fan of my parents, but the tearful monster of the inevitable guilt demanded my dutiful attendance there.  

Aside from keeping company with someone who is forced to be in a scary medical place, where everyone's job is to cause you pain and discomfort for the sake of possible betterment, my presence there was actually useful in multiple ways. As sharp as my Dad still is and as good as the hospital staff turned out to be, the situation does call for a third-party facilitator: faster paperwork and check-in, better understanding of medical terminology, firmer grasp on the authority structure, timelier requests for assistance, etc. – little things that help.  I hope they did.

(I have to make a CFO's aside here.  In the past 30 years I've observed and directly dealt with many profit, non-profit, and government organizations, in professional capacity and as a functioning individual; in different countries around the world, in various social and economic systems.  Based on my cumulative personal experience, I am strongly inclined to conclude that Mount Sinai Heart – the internationally celebrated cardiology division of Mount Sinai Hospital – is one of the most organized, efficient, smoothly functioning business establishments I've ever seen, with the most sensible technology utilization to boot.  Considering that most of our existence nowadays takes place in the vile swamp of unmanaged laziness and pervasive unprofessionalism, being there was like a breath of fresh air.  I honestly didn't think that it was possible to have such an experience in our times.)

Everything went quite well and we were getting discharged in the early afternoon of the day after the procedure.  All documents that my Dad needed to take with him, for his personal records and to pass onto his referring doctors, were organized for him in a folio: surgeon's summary, nuclear images, blood work, EKG's, follow-up instructions (i.e. important documents) in the right-side pocket; hospital's legal documents, releases, disclaimers, general recommendations for cardiac patients (i.e. generic bullshit) in the left-side pocket.

I checked thoroughly everything on the right and glanced through the other side without intending to actually read anything there.  But a sheet of paper right on the top of the left-side pile caught my attention.  Not I only did I read it, but I also pulled it out of the folder and kept it, because it contained

Seven Tips for Healthy Living

  • Move More
  • Cut Fat
  • Reduce Stress
  • Wear Your Seat Belt
  • Floss Your Teeth
  • Keep a Positive Mental Outlook
  • Drink Plenty of Water

First, the list amused me with its glorious banality and brevity.  I mean, all that sophisticated and extraordinarily expensive research and diagnostic equipment in the hands of doctors with international renown and exorbitant fees – and it all comes down to just these seven items?!  Where do I even start or end?  We are being fried by the unfiltered UV rays all year round.  We breathe the air that exponentially increases annual asthma statistics.  Everyone has some sort of an allergy and the skin conditions have intensified to the point of Desonide shortage on the market.  We don't know what we eat anymore.  Yes, there is information on the packaged food, but there is none on the tomatoes or any other loose vegetables.  Even if they carry the "certified organic" stickers, do you really trust USDA?  By the way, what about smoking, drinking, overmedication? Is all of that less important than flossing?  That's hilarious! 

On the second glance, the list bewildered me by its ambiguity and the fact that even as is, with all those missing pieces, it's absolutely unattainable. 

Okay, maybe I'm over-thinking it.  I showed it to someone incredibly level-headed and unruffled.  She was curious and unfazed: "Is this in order of importance?" she asked.  "Well, dear, I cannot really fucking tell!"  Let's say it is.  Some people I know would be appalled by the bottom placement of the water consumption.  Others (also personally known to me) would rejoice in seeing that their running two miles a day at a sprinter speed for the past 50 years appears to be at the top of the list. 

But I personally would definitely like to ask for more clarification.  And not only about the ranking of the tips.  Move more how?  Any type of movement?  Running, walking, flapping your hands in exasperation?  Fat – cut it down or cut it out?  All kinds of fats?  What about the ones that help the absorption of vitamins and nutrients?  And are people okay holding their phones in their hands while driving as long as they are wearing seat belts?  Even flossing!  After every meal like I do; once a day at night; before or after brushing? 

Never mind the individual interpretations, however!  At least items 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 can be actively controlled by a person striving for a healthy living.  But the numbers 3 and 6 are totally different animals altogether!  Any doctor who gives a "reduce stress" advice is an equivalent of an accountant whose business recommendations amount to "buy low and sell high."  Dah!  Any other bright ideas?  There are so many factors that contribute to our stress levels, it would be stressful even to attempt listing all of them.   You can meditate for an hour, decompress,  and whatever, but you cannot stop your mind from reacting to your reality: as soon as the first thought about your life, and never-ending obligations, and overwhelming responsibilities, and guilt, and uncertainties creeps onto that clarified canvas, the stress is back on!

And don't even get me started on the Positive Mental Outlook!  Look around yourself – you literally have to be mental to be positive right now.  Didn't you notice how the people with supposedly the most positive of outlooks, i.e. pregnant women with small children in tow, actually look completely deranged?

So, let's not worry about the silly list from the famous hospital. I choose to believe it to be a joke from some humorous nerd in the hospital's administrative offices.  The good news is that we most likely don't need to work too hard on trying to stay healthy anyway.  The probability of the damage we caused this planet hitting us back real hard with one or another pandemic extermination is way too high.  And I'm pretty sure that doctors know that as well.          

Mad Max vs. Fat Amy, or Sad Accounting of Regressive Tastes


Sad Accounting

Generally speaking, all benchmarking techniques can be defined as ranking of a process or a product against another process or a product with similar specific metrics of known values.  Financial benchmarking in particular focuses on the comparison of the financial results with a purpose of assessing overall competitiveness and productivity.  The beauty of this research tool is in its potential to uncover some underlying reasons behind the comparative results.

While it's difficult (yet not impossible) to apply generic correlative methodologies to such subjective, ambiguously immeasurable, and predominantly qualitative characteristics as artistic values of cinematic products, fiscal aspects of the movie-making are not only comparable (as previously outlined in Arts & Entertainment by the Numbers III), at this point they are the chief driving force behind the big-screen output.  It's that competitiveness, y'all!  "C.r.e.a.m get the money.  Dolla Dolla bill y'all."    

Let's not forget that financial results are accounting reflections of the micro-economic patterns of supply and demand.  Movies, being consumer products, specifically depend on the behavior of the consumer market; even more categorically - on the tastes of the viewing audience.

With that in mind, I would like to sketch out a simplified financial benchmarking exercise based on the most recent installments of two movie franchises (identical products competing in the same markets) that came out on the same day, 05/15/15 (another identical metric) - Mad Max: Fury Road (a terrifyingly believable upgrade of the post-apocalyptic high-octane series with Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, and Nicholas Hoult) and Pitch Perfect 2 (a hard-to-believe Cinderella-type contemporary chick-flick-with-singing about an a capella group on the road to stardom with Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, and Elizabeth Banks; the latter also produced and directed).

Mad Max opened on more screens: 3702 vs. 3473, yet Pitch Perfect 2 made $69.2 million (230% of its rumored $30 mil budget) during the opening weekend – $23.8 mil more than Mad Max whose $45.4 mil barely returned 30% of its $150 mil budget.  Here, in our blessed USA, the fiscal gap between the two movies keeps only expanding: As of yesterday, Mad Max's domestic gross ($143 mil) was already trailing Pitch Perfect 2's by $34 mil. 

Numbers don't  lie: A handful of them is all we need to clearly show that American general public prefers to see a movie full of inexplicable plot turns and dialogue pearls akin to

"Fat Amy: Listen, I don't want you guys to fight.  You're Beca and Chloe, together you're Bhloe and everyone loves a good Bhloe."

instead of taking a hard and honest look at the future that already awaits us around the proverbial corner, notwithstanding the high cinematic standards, tight script, awesome directions in all divisions of the process, and NO CGI (!!!)

Of course, making back multiples of the budget and fattening the pockets of producers and distributers pretty much guaranteed Pitch Perfect 3, which is already set to be released in 2017.  On the other hand, if people behind Mad Max: Fury Road had to rely only on the US distribution, the $7 mil deficit would pretty much kill all the chances for the filming of the next installment - Mad Max: The Wasteland.  Thankfully, there are international distribution channels.

And overseas results are quite opposite to what we observe here at home.  The universal appeal of Mad Max's sci-fi realism yielded the film $202.5 mil of foreign revenues, making the total box office as of yesterday $346.10 mil. 

On the other hand, I can't even imagine how translators deal with that Bhloe crap in the subtitles.  So, it is not surprising that Pitch Perfect 2 made only $94.5 mil outside of US, with 51% of that coming from English-speaking countries of UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.  In many countries the movie stayed in the theaters only for the opening weekend.    As the result, its worldwide box office now totals $272 mil, or $74.1 mil less than its competitor in this example. 

That's gross, of course.  Nowadays, it's hard to overcome a $120 mil budgetary differential.  Thus, the singing chicks are still $46K more profitable than the depiction of our damaged Planet and her marred inhabitants.

One can argue that today $150 mil worth of resources is too high of a price for any movie, good or bad.  And I agree, but spending any resources at all over and over again on crap that furthers the process of human degeneration is simply criminal.

Joke of the Day: Are You Fracking Kidding Me?


FrackingOne of the walls in the lobby of the building where my office is located is entirely covered by multiple monitors.  Together they work as one giant HD screen.  This is what techies call a video wall.  To the best of my knowledge its primary feed is CNBC.

Most days when I leave the office I see in passing Jim Cramer still going Mad about Money. But today I had to leave a little earlier and the only money manager ever to tell the general public not to use their retirement and college funds for stock-market speculations wasn't on yet.  

I have no idea what was on, but from the corner of my eye I saw flashing on the screen

EARTHQUAKES ARE LINKED TO FRACKING?

Eh, dah!  Are you fucking kidding me?  Is that even a question?  Who the fuck told these people that they could rape the Earth every each way and not to hear her scream?

I am glad, though, that it was there, hanging on the wall for a minute – at least someone in the prime media is talking about this abhorrent crime.    

The Wealth of the Nation: Observation #2 – Apple Watch


People ask me, “How the fuck does Apple dare to price this watch at $18,000?!”  Granted, most of these people are representatives of the American “contemporary middle class.” 

This basically means that economic and social changes of the past few decades completely cut them out of the luxury goods market, its prices and its intricate marketing strategies.  While their well-employed fathers could still afford to splurge a portion of year-end bonuses on nice presents for their mothers at Saks or Tiffany, these people have no need to be bothered with prices of products that carry such labels as Hermes, Chanel, Bottega Veneta, or Rolex.  It’s far beyond their purchasing powers and (altogether now!) it’s only gonna get worse. 

Even if they get bonuses, they need to spend them right away on far more immediate needs – like replacement of a broken kitchen appliance, a leaky roof, or urgent car repairs.  They already borrowed against their 401k to cover the ever-escalating costs of their children’s after-school activities; and the astronomic college tuition… hmmm, they will deal with that when the time comes.    

The only reason they even know about the Apple Edition Watches ($10,000-$18,000) is because they are featured next to Apple Watch ($550-$1,000) and Apple Watch Sport ($350-$600) on Apple.com and are on display in the brick-and-mortar stores.  The pictured watch was showing itself off right on the front page of Apple’s site until literally a few days ago.  So, even if you needed some $19.99 cable, you would’ve seen it.

In an unprecedented move, Apple decided to capture both mass and luxury markets – at the same time and through the same outlets.  And guess what?  All watches, regardless of their prices, were snatched away within the first three minutes of the original release,  thus proving the marketing strategy a total success (well, at least its initial stage).

The supply and demand stimuli worked precisely as if it were a case in an Economics textbook: the cheaper pieces attracted many buyers with their relative value, while the alluring high prices of the gold Apple watches made them even more desirable to those who can afford to shell out this kind of money for a miniaturized iPad.

So, why shouldn’t then a brand charge such prices for its high-end products if the market is willing to bear them?   This constantly happens in the third-world countries, which consist of a vast majority of desperately poor people and a roomful of incredibly wealthy ones, with no middle class in-between.  Already expensive as is, luxury items are priced two, sometimes three times higher in those countries than in Western Europe or the US.  A pair of Prada shoes that can be bought on 5th Avenue in NYC for $750 will carry a $2,200 price tag in Moscow.  And again, why not?  The general population wouldn’t be able to afford them at any price, while the rich and powerful feel no difference between $750 and $2,200.

Of course, you need an extra-special kind of gall to sell exactly the same electronic gadget at a 3000% price differential just because you placed it in a bit of 18K gold (and it’s absolutely irrelevant how fancy the process of creating that 75% gold alloy is – it’s still the same metal).  I mean, a gold Rolex costs only 3-4 times more than the same model in stainless steel; not 30 times more!  Moreover, Apple as a brand has no track records in metallurgy, watch-making, or jewelry designing to support the exorbitant prices! 

A big portion of the premium prices charged for the established luxury goods have nothing to do with the label frenzy – it is supported by decades, sometimes centuries, of extraordinary workmanship, continuous ingenuity of designs, and the unreachable standards of quality.  I mean, Abraham-Louis Breguet started making watches in 1775; Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were his clients!  Every Hermes bag is still made by hand in France according to the quality requirements established in 1837.  The ownership of these items lasts for a very long time – they are passed from one generation to the next.  What will the owner of an Edition Watch pass onto his children?  A bit of scrap gold that surrounds a piece of an outdated electronic junk?

Nevertheless, I applaud Apple for being absolutely honest about it and not hiding the reality behind some bullshit political-correctness curtain.  It is what it is: We live in a society marred by a chasm of monetary division that constantly expands at a speed of light, with a handful of those who can afford whatever without even checking the price, including the damn Apple Edition Watch, and everybody else. 

And it doesn’t matter that the overpopulated side can be further divided into those who will go for a $1000 watch vs. the ones who will settle for the $300 one vs. those who cannot afford anything at the Apple store at all.  Even though our wages vary and, more importantly, we make different choices (a professional woman who decides not to have a suburban house and multiple kids still can afford a luxury bag or a watch once in awhile), our means are quite comparable.  If we are in our right minds, we will not throw away $18K for an Apple watch.  The other side, however, can go crazy to their heart’s content.

But the situation does beg the question: Are these the signs that we are fast becoming a third-world country?