Ranking Performance

I don't know why people get so upset about being ranked. There are some people where I used to work that seem to have a real problem with being ranked. At the time of reviews, all the managers get together and essentially rank you against the other employees in your peer group. This is how the decide on who gets what for a bonus, raise, promotion, etc.

I personally feel I should be told my rank. If there are 20 people who I'm being compared against, I want to know if I'm 1, 7, or 20. In any company, this has to happen. People must be differentiated. If you don't differentiate people, than you have people who slack off getting the same rewards as people who do all the work. All that leads to are people at the top wondering why they are working so hard and doing all the work yet getting the same benefits as everyone else. This leads to them either leaving the company or working less hard, which in turn is bad for everyone. Even the people at the bottom as the company is likely to go under when everyone stops giving a damn.

Now, we are not actually told a number where we are ranked. You can kind of figure out where you are by figuring out how your review went and what type of rewards you got. But seriously, I think I should be given a number. Why is hiding the number and not telling anyone, yet still coming up with that ranking and using it to figure out something as important as raises and promotions, a good thing. Who does it help? Is it going to hurt someones feelings? Does it make it better to see that you clearly got the low end of rewards but not know you are at the bottom of the ranking? Do these people kid themselves into believing they aren't at the bottom?

When I was in High School I knew my rank. I was #8 in my graduating class (out of about 600). For someone as competitive as I am, you would think it really bothered me. And you would be right, it did. I wanted to be #1, but I wasn't. I sought to improve, but in the end I wasn't angry that I was #8, it was what it was. I didn't hate #1-7, they were some of my best friends. If I can handle it as a teenager, why can't people handle it as adults?

Now I'm not saying that you make public who is ranked where. But you yourself should know where you rank at work if they are coming up with that number anyway.

Riding the Elevator One Floor

Please, if you have two able legs, nothing to carry, and the stairs is right next to the elevator, please do not ride the elevator up one floor. It greatly annoys those who have multiple flights to go up.

Thank you


I originally wrote this post more than a year ago, as I was aggravated with all the people in my building that insisted on taking the elevator one floor. I wanted to scream at them to ask them if they realized how much they were inconveniencing everyone else, but I never did.

The funny thing about this, is that I would often think about ways that the elevator should really be optimized to shuttle traffic in my building. During the beginning of the day, it would wait on the bottom floor for people since most likely people would want to go up, the opposite would be true at the end of the day. All sorts of optimizations would pop up in my head.

And it actually came up in an interview I had the other day. The guy asked me how I would design an elevator algorithm, and I thought back to all those times I wanted to scream at those people that they were messing up my optimum strategy. Who knew it would pay off? I got a job offer from them.

Quit my Job

I quit my job this week. Don't have anything else lined up. Just didn't want to work at my current job anymore.

It may sound a little crazy, but I don't think so. I think it's crazy to continue to do a job that you just hate. I could deal with it if it were only a little aggravating, but it was way beyond that. The stress just wasn't worth it.

What am I going to do next? I really don't know. I have one more week of work and then I'm just going to take some time off and really think about what I want to do next. The next job has to stick. I really want the next job to be the job that I stay with for a long time, and presents tremendous opportunties to me.

I'm a little nervous, but excited to. Never done anything like this ...

Are Teachers Underpaid?

A recent study suggest that teachers are paid better than the average american, even better than accountants and many engineers. The study is based on the fact that teachers make an average of $44,000 (I don't know how accurate that is but it is coming from a teacher's union) but work only 9 months in the year. Doing the Math you would see that that would be the equivilant of almost $60,000 a year which is a pretty good salary.

Now teachers will argue that they put in a lot of hours outside of their normal school hours. They have to grade papers and they often participate in after school programs. However, I am going to take a controversial stand (what's new) and agree with the study (I hope my teacher friends like Christina and Michelle forgive me). How can I say this?

Well first let me take the first point, working extra hours. Some teachers argue they work 3000 hours a year. Spread over 40 weeks that means 12 hours a day 6 days a week resting only on Sundays. My point is yeah? When I was a consultant I worked WAY more than that. 72 hour weeks were good weeks. Working 100 hour weeks were not unheard of. My Investment Banking friends AVERAGED 100 hour weeks sometimes "sleeping" (if you can call 2 hours sleep) at the office several days in a row. Even now, I probably work on average 60 hours a week. Its just part of the job. Additionally, teachers receive compensation outside of their actual pay. I know in California there is a box on tax forms that give teachers a tax break on mortgages and other consumer type loans. This could add thousands to a teachers income.

But none of this is my point. My point is that I believe people get paid what they are worth. We live in a free society. People are free to move jobs if they want to. Now do I think I should be paid more? Like every other American of course I do but if it is really the case I should go get a different job (and I probably will if I continue to get underpaid). If I'm worth more I could easily prove it to my company by getting an offer somewhere else. Teachers have the same freedom.

The real problem is Economics. It's simple suppy and demand. There is a strong demand for teachers but an even larger supply of capable teachers. The key word is capable. The reason I say that is because one of the underlying problems is that we have very low standards for teachers. We tend to think that anybody with a a pulse is capable of teaching. We as a society don't really care if they are capable of teaching as long as they stand in front of the students and watch them a few hours a day. The DEMAND is for anybody who is basically willing to babysit the students. Since a lot of people are qualified for this there is the large supply.

Now this creates a problem for teachers who actually teach. Since we as a society don't put a premium on actual teaching skills great teachers are dragged down by their less capable brethren. We as a society therefore refuse to pay more taxes to increase teacher salary because we don't feel that it is a difficult job and that anyone off the street can do it. Do I agree with this? NO. But it is the sad state of affairs. So given our expectations and criteria for teachers I do not beileve teachers are underpaid. I believe the actual problem is that our expectations and criteria for teachers is much too low.