Not Everyone Wants to Be An MBA

My wife hasn’t worked since we were about 20 years old and had our first daughter.  At that age, and with only a high school diploma, it would have cost us more money in day care for her to go to work than she was likely to make at whatever job she could get.  She hasn’t just sat around for the last seven years, though; Aside from working to raise a couple of smart little devil-children, and taking care of me and our home, she’s also attended college at night for the last few years, and will be graduating this December.

After she graduates she’ll go on to Rockhurst (just like me!  We’re twins:) to earn her Master’s of Education and eventually to become a teacher, something she’s wanted to do, reportedly, since she was six.  At this very moment, though, she’s attempting to get a job as a paraprofessional.  Her job, as a paraprofessional, would be to assist a certified teacher in the classroom, mostly by handing out supplies and setting up equipment.  It’s really a great gig for her, because by doing this work, she’s taking care of the required classroom hours to become a certified teacher while getting paid.  This is obviously much prefered to a normal student-teacher position, who gets nothing for the same type of work.

Now my poor, sweet, wife must go out to a job interview after nearly a decade away from the job market.  I’m going to do a mock interview with her tonight using some questions posted to the University of Montana-Missoula‘s career services website.  It’s still going to be tough because I can ask the questions, but have no idea what the answers should sound like, as I’m not a teacher and know nothing of the types of things one should look for in a teacher.  I assume that patience is important, a belief in the undying potential of every child is likely a good thing; mostly I’m going to drill her on presentation: sound like you know what’s up, look like a teacher (dress), spin whatever classes you’ve taken which will help you in the job to make up for lack of experience, answer questions in a conversational manner without droning on.

I’m very proud of my wife for many things.  I’m proud that she has taken such great care of my daughters and me, and I’m proud that she chose to continue her education even while being a wife and a mother at a young age.  I’m really proud that she got right on the job search as soon as our youngest daughter was ready to start Kindergarten, without any fear of failure or apprehension about the change.  She’s always been an amazing woman, she’ll be an amazing teacher’s aid, and she’ll be downright impressive as a teacher.

Man, Oil Is Confusing!

I was reading this article at Econbrowser and realized that I know just about nothing regarding oil speculation.  As far as I can tell, the Wall Street Journal says that oil speculation is a non-market force that is causing unnaturally high oil prices to present themselves, and James Hamilton (and those who comment upon his story) say that’s incorrect because the speculators are, in fact, part of the Market and must address the fundementals (even future fundementals) in order to successfully speculate on the oil market.

I’m really going to need someone to read the post over at Econbrowser and explain to me what the hell they are talking about.  I hate to admit stupidity, but…you know.

Dangers of Harvesting From “The Long Tail”

Cross-posted from my other blog.

Matt, another MBAMap blogger, wrote a piece recently about the long tail theory, a theory that’s gaining a lot of media attention lately. Slate also did a couple of write-ups on the theory. Today (08/07/06) NPR will have the author of The Long Tail, Chris Anderson, on for an interview. Read enough of the articles, listen to enough of the interviews, or simply read the book, and you’ll get an idea of what the long tail is all about. But, basically, the idea is that within the market there exist big products (say, a Hollywood film) and that big product spins off a long tail of other products (toys, games, collectibles…) where more money can be mined from many, smaller, transactions.

The idea of the long tail has become big news recently, but in practice business has made money this way for years; many of us have heard that Xerox isn’t in the copier business, it’s in the ink business. The question I decided to look at is where earning money “on the back end” may actually hurt the golden goose (the main product from whence the tail originates). I’ll focus, here, on the automotive industry, though my points should apply to other industries as well.

Getting Beat Up For Minimum Wage

This isn’t a funny story; This story is about what happens when idiots from the frats at some fourth rate State College get a position of power somewhere, and forget how to be human beings.

Alarm One is a home security company and they have door-to-door sales people who push their wares for them. Perhaps some of you have had jobs like this; I know I have. I worked for a well-known window company for about a week doing cold calls, and worked once as a door-to-door meat salesman too. These places are all full of asshole managers who are somewhere around a fifth grade bully in their psychological development. Alarm One is typical, engaging in hazing and public humiliation in order to “motivate” their sales staff to greater things. From the lowest level of humiliation, being made to eat sardines if you failed to move a couple of monitoring packages, to women being spanked with security signs in front of the staff, Alarm One used motivation that only third year Russian draftees could be proud of.

Imagine, a grown woman being spanked with security signs in front of their male coworkers who are shouting, “smack that ass!” because they didn’t manage to excel at their low paying, crap ass, job that she probably didn’t want in the first place. The men, actually, weren’t treated a lot better. Pies in the face, being made to wear diapers in front of everyone. Where the hell did these managers come from?

I worked in a place, once, where the managers idea of motivating employees was to scream like a banshee and kick boxes, throw things, and basically try to threaten people as much as possible. I saw this only once, personally, and I was hit with a box that the manager had kicked. I quit that job that moment, after shoving the box back into the boss’s face, rather forcefully.

Given my experience, I did not understand for a long time why people would take such crap from an employer, regardless of pay or rank. I can take a tongue lashing, but anything else is beyond the pale as far as I’m concerned. As I got older, though, I did realize that many people are simply terrified. They’re scared of the boss, and of the bills, they’re afraid of going home without a job. These people feel hopeless, and in the midst of their mental abyss, they find themselves being spanked with the company emblem, or eating sardines in over sized diapers.

There is a lesson, here, for all sorts of managers. We would not spank our employees, or force them to degrade themselves publicly or privately (if you think you could do anything like that, leave). But, perhaps we would do something else that would belittle our subordinates. Perhaps we’d dismiss their suggestions without true consideration (or, at least, the appearance of consideration). Maybe we’d lose control and yell at an employee in front of their co-workers. There’s a thousand ways that one can degrade another, and just as many ways to lead without being dehumanizing.

Some Changes

Upon being accepted to business school, I decided to make a few changes to my personal life.

First, I decided that I needed to start waking up earlier.  At my job I work a varied schedule, sometimes coming to work at 7:15am and other times not until 10:00am.  In the past, I’ve always got up about one hour before work (so, sometimes 6-ish, and other times 9-ish, depending on the week), but now I’ve started waking up at 5:30 every morning.  I hope that this will help me both in my MBA studies by allowing me to do homework in the early morning hours before the kids and wife are up, when it’s quiet.  I also hope that it will help me when I get into my chosen field; I’ve known lot’s of accountants that burned the midnight oil to get their job done, and I’ve known one controller who came in to work every morning at 6:00am and was never at work later than 6:00 or 7:00pm (and often 4:30 or 5:00), while others were working 8:00am to 9:00pm.  I’d much rather get home in the early evening than in the middle of the night.

I’ve also decided to get in shape and drop some weight.  Like most people, I was in good shape in high school, but sort of stopped worrying about working out and eating right when my life began to revolve around paying bills and feeding kids.  But, there are studies that show  a correlation between BMI and income, and I’d prefer to be on the good side of those numbers.  One of my favorite books, “Influence: Science and Practice” also maintains that one way that we can have influence over others is by being perceived as attractive by our marks.  While that may conjure up images of women “using their feminine wiles”, the research shows that being physically attractive is just as handy for a business man as for a movie starlet.  So, I’m running twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays), and going to the gym that the University gives me free, and 24 hour, access to.

What I’m trying to do is give myself every chance for success.  From going to the best school that was an option for me, to studying as much and as hard as I can, to dressing right and looking good, nothing should be left to chance if I have a choice in the matter.  And if all of this sounds sort of girly and metrosexual, let’s remember that 90% of military boot camp is spent learning to dress, wake up early and to get into good physical conditioning.  Relatively little time is spent there learning to shoot a gun.  I’m not claiming that I’m an Army Ranger or anything like that, but when I come against an ex-Ranger in an interview, I don’t want to look like and undisciplined slob by comparison.

Not For Nothing

We can’t be all MBA all the time around here; we are complex, renaissance, types. To that end, I’m sure we could all stand to brush up on our physics skills, right? The University of Michigan has a Saturday Morning Physics gathering (for lack of a better term) in which physicists gather to talk about their field in a way laymen can understand. These talks are archived and can be viewed here. Check it out…as soon as you’re done watching cartoons.

I don’t want you all to think that I’m just making fun of this guy:

but, he looks just like my grade school PE teacher (picture taken from this site, until they complain about the hot link).

When you don’t feel like reading the Wall Street Journal, or the Economist, or whatever the heck you read when you’re not chillin’ at MBA Journal, maybe you’d like The Morning News.

Dr. Sturgeon at UMKC taught me Institutional Economic Theory and the History of Economic Thought.  His website at the University has plenty of readings posted to it, from Veblen, to Ricardo and more.  If you feel the need to brush up on your economics, check it out.

Oh, and in case you actually intend to read all this crap on a Saturday (I’m at work, I’ve nothing better to do) — please consider a couple of other suggestions as well: you could choose instead to walk in the park, walk on the beach, hang out with your buds, practice team building and strategy, or go watch some interpretive dance.

Self Doubt and the MBA

At times, and especially when undertaking something like advanced studies so that one can present themselves to the market as an expert of some weight, it must be natural to be intimidated and given to some level of self doubt as to the capacity that one possesses to pull off the seeming coup of academic and professional success. At such times, it may be helpful to know the extent to which such feelings are shared by your peers.

To find this blog one can follow a link from one of the kind bloggers who’ve seen fit to direct people to read what I’ve got to say, or they can throw caution to the wind and search Google for whatever is on their mind. It is, of course, those search phrases (and people do tend to search phrases and not keywords, by the way) which gives an insight into the mental state of the people who read this site. Some are obviously comfortable with their decision to become an MBA, and simply want to make a great choice of school, so 8 people found this site by entering some variation on “academic rigor MBA school”. The second most popular search term is “should I get my MBA”; Google really is the realization of “The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy”, isn’t it?

One poor soul searched for the phrase, “I have my MBA, now what”.  I hope they found some direction here. My post Mentioning DeVry and the Keller School of Management brings in a number of people every day wondering how well ranked the Keller School is, “is my DeVry MBA worth it” and such questions. O! I wish you would have asked that question to the magic eight ball before attending! Someone else searched for “Rockhurst MBA or UMKC MBA”, trust me, go with Rockhurst reader.

Someone got here by asking whether a “Liberal arts degree” is “better than an MBA”. I guess the answer to that is whether or not you want to make money. I’ve got a liberal arts degree, and let me assure you, reader, that nobody is knocking down my door to pay me even into the high $30s to edit their underground newspaper. But, do what you love.

Every single day my mention of buying a suit brings me at least seven new readers. Perhaps it’s just me, but I find this to be the search criteria which reveals the most self-doubt of them all (well, aside perhaps from “I’ve got my MBA, now what?”). Searches that have brought folks to my post about English Cut and Brooks Brothers have included, “dress for MBA with no money”, “dress like a businessman”, “how should I dress for work after college” and various plays on that theme. How can one feel terribly secure about their chances for survival in the business world if they aren’t even sure how to dress without getting laughed at? And that’s not a judgment, it’s a question. I found English Cut through a search similar to what brings people to my site now. I wandered in to Brooks Brothers for the first time a year ago after reading an article in Vice Magazine that said that no man over 30 should wear anything that isn’t made by Brooks Brothers. A Brooks Brother’s sales manager named Jodie (really nice guy if you happen to need clothing help in Kansas City, Kansas) was the first person to determine what size of suit jacket I wore. It is extremely intimidating to realize that you don’t know how to dress yourself for work, and more so if you’re 26, just found out that you can’t wear jeans any more in three short years, and you intend to be a businessman when you grow up.

I have no great advice to hand down here. And, if any of these search terms were yours, please don’t be offended that I posted them here. I just think it will be helpful for people who are less than absolutely confident in every aspect of their decision to become an MBA to see that if anything, they are likely in the majority of MBA students, and those considering becoming MBA students. That’s why these MBA blogging communities are so great, they will answer some of the more trivial, but potentially most aggravating and alienating, questions that we can come up with about our thing. Now, I can’t help you with “I’ve got my MBA, now what”, or “what is the academic rigor of Phoe[nix?] University”, but maybe another reader here will help you out in the comments section.

Thanks Ya’all

This blog has been really well received, and I’d just like to thank so many of you for reading.  Yesterday MBAjournal hit the WordPress “Fastest Growing Blogs”, 138 of you visited on 08/02 and that’s only the sixth day of this blogs life.  I’m so proud.

Of course, the MBA blogging community is to thank.  I’ve been presently surprised by the support given to this blog by other bloggers, including Simply Reprehensible and OpenCoder.  Clear Admit has also sent a lot of traffic to this site (and has been almost since the blog began) but I’m not entirely sure how or why.  I check the site all of the time (Clear Admit, that is) and have never seen a reference to MBAjournal, so if someone can tell me how you got here from there, that’d be great!

Unfortunately, I don’t have a whole lot to talk about right now on the school/admissions/enrollment front.  Over at my other blog  I’ll be posting a new article that stems from discussions about the long tail theory written up by Matt, and also in Slate.  Basically, I’m going to talk about the potential negative aspects of chasing long tail profits; for instance:  General Motors dealers found years ago that the real money wasn’t in selling cars, service and finance is their bread-and-butter.  Dealers, more so these days, make their money by selling cars at near cost, and getting great penetration on F&I products such as extended service agreements, paint warranties, end-of-lease warranties, maintenance contracts, GAP Insurance and so on.  One car dealer group that I’m aware of averages $4,800 in added F&I products to each car sold.  Then there’s service, likely the most profitable department at a car dealership.  The Service Writers make their living by selling things to customers that customers didn’t know they needed (the whole idea of the 28 point inspection).  These profit centers are the long tail of the automotive world, and the dealerships have been harvesting huge gains for the tail for years.  The question that I’m addressing, though, is at what cost are these financial gains being made?  Is there a correlation between the increased sales of extended service contracts and such items, and the perception of quality by the automotive company’s customers?

I think it will be a pretty interesting take on the long tail theory, and I hope each of you will visit my blog at MBAMap in the next couple of days to read it.

Career Path

I was worried, for a long time, about the process of getting in to business school.  The GMAT scared me, the admissions process scared me, paying for the MBA scared me.  With all that out of the way I decided to fill the worry centers of my mind with my post MBA career.

As I’ve said, the emphasis of my MBA will be in accounting, and I also intend to get my CPA certification within a year, or so, of graduating (I’ll have some more accounting classes that I need to take to be at the level of hours that the State requires).  So, obviously, I want to be an accountant.  I chose accounting because it is the “language of business”, accounting touches every aspect of every business and the accountant has many options as to what their specialty will be, and has plenty of opportunity to change specialties throughout his/her career.  My current bout of panic is based on my utter lack of any background in accounting.

I’m an insurance adjuster, and have been since I was 20.  Before that, I built elevators, put up party tents, was a bank teller and even sold meat door-to-door.  So, I’ve definitely had concerns about what sort of job I’ll have open to me in accounting when I graduate.  Most of my fears are about money; will I be asked to start out as a payables clerk making $9.00 per hour?  My mom, who’s a Controller, assures me that an MBA would start out as a staff accountant, making around $50k in this area.  That’s fine, and I’m glad she told me, but I can’t help but doubt that someone is going to be eager to pay me $50k without any experience.

So, I made a plan.  After the first year of my MBA, as I finish a few accounting classes, I’m going to talk to the Controller at my current employer to see about a transfer to his department.  I don’t see this as a long term move, mostly because it’s a very small accounting department and the current Controller is a relatively young guy who’s not likely to be leaving soon, which severely limits growth opportunity.  However, I will be able to get very valuable work experience, and after a five years I intend to start looking for another job.

My second job in accounting, which will come after I’ve earned my CPA, will be as an assistant controller (or accounting manager, depending on the structure of the department), leaving the path open to Controller by the time I’m in my late 30s.  After serving as a Controller for 5 years, I’d look for a position as Treasurer for another three to five years, and then make a push for a CFO position somewhere.  Acting as CFO by, say, 48 I would have the last 14 years of my career to live at the top of the food chain before riding off into the sunset of retirement, or, perhaps I’d make it all the way to CEO which just wouldn’t be too bad, but is not actually one of my goals.

Goals are what they are, but a person has to have them.  I believe, especially after seeing the career path of my mother who, as I said, is a Controller, and my father-in-law who is a VP, that my career path is attainable in the time frame that I’ve set out.  Also, it makes me feel a lot better to write down a way in which everything will work out perfectly.   Working on a five year plan is great, especially for the first five years.  My goals over the next half decade are: get a job as a staff accountant within 15 months from today, graduate with my MBA in 24 months, get CPA within 36 months, build experience over the period of 48 months from today, and have a job as Assistant Controller or Accounting Manager within 60 months.  That’s really easy stuff given a five year horizon, right?

The Sum of My Fears

This post doesn’t really outline the sum of my fears, I just thought it was a good title. It will give voice to a concern that I’ve had that, until today, I hadn’t completely been able to address.

I’ve been concerned whether or not I’m the right “type” to be an MBA. The company I work for has a huge Finance and Marketing department full of $200,000 per year types who are very glad-handy and fake as hell. I don’t mean “fake” as in I don’t like them so I feel the need to attack the content of their character, I mean I know most of them well and they have demonstrated a great aptitude for affecting a personality that is false. Are these guys who I’m supposed to be?

An article in todays Slate, “ABC’s One Ocean View reviewed” sums up my fears. I’ve never seen the show, but reading the review it’s clear that the “characters” are upwardly mobile young people who are shallow, metrosexual and unintelligent. I don’t want to be that guy, but those seem to be the types who are making the real money in the financial sector (at least from my outside-looking-in vantage point).

I hope I’ll be saved by the fact that my MBA will focus on accounting. I see the field of accounting as more sober, more conservative and much less steeped in the imagery of the salesman than other financial fields. I’ve got no great desire to talk extremely loudly while working up angles to make the “big deal”.