How to climb the corporate ladder

Your results my vary… (source: Dilbert)

Playing with Monopoly

With the recent challenges to Google’s purchase of Doubleclick, Microsoft’s endless courtship of Yahoo, and the filing of more papers in the upcoming Intel/AMD case, the question of "why should the government break up monopolies?" becomes much more relevant.

This is a question that very few people ask, even though it is oftentimes taken for granted that the government should indeed engage in anti-trust activity.

The logic behind modern anti-trust efforts goes back to the era of the railroad, steel, and oil trusts of the Gilded Age, when massive and abusive firms engaged in collusion and anti-competitive behavior to fix prices and prevent new entrants from entering into the marketplace. As any economist will be quick to point out, one of the secrets to the success behind a market economy is competition – whether it be workers competing with workers to be more productive or firms competing with firms to deliver better and cheaper products to their customers. When you remove competition, there is no longer any pressing reason to guarantee quality or cost.

So – we should regulate all monopolies, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The logic that competition is always good is greatly oversimplified, as it glosses over 2 key things:

1. It’s very difficult to determine what is a monopoly and what isn’t.
2. Technology-driven industries oftentimes require large players to deliver value to the customer.

What’s a Monopoly?

While we would all love monopolies to have clear and distinguishable characteristics – maybe an evil looking man dressed in all black laughing sinisterly as his diabolic plans destroy a pre-school? – the fact of the matter is that it is very difficult for an economist/businessperson to really tell what counts as a monopoly and what doesn’t, for four key reasons:

1. Many of the complaints and lawsuits brought against “monopolies” are brought on by competitors. Who is trying to sue Intel? AMD. Who complained loudly about Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer into Windows? Netscape.
2. “Market share” has no meaning. In a sense, there are a lot of monopolies out there. Orson Scott Card has a 100% market share in books pertaining to the Ender’s Game series. McDonald’s has a 100% market share in Big Macs. This may seem like I’m just playing with semantics, but this is actually a fairly serious problem in the business world. I would even venture that a majority of growth strategy consulting projects are due to manager’s being unable to correctly define the relevant market and relevant market share.
3. What’s "monopoly-like" may just be good business. Some have argued that Microsoft and Intel are monopolies in that they are bullies to their customers, aggressively pushing PC manufacturers to only purchase from them. But, what I fail to see, is how this is any different from a company that offers aggressive volume discounts? Or that hires the best-trained negotiators? Or that knows how to produce the best products and demands a high price for them? Sure, Google is probably "forcing" its customers to pay more to advertise on Google, but if Google’s services and reach are the best, what’s wrong with that?
4. "Victims" of monopolies may just be lousy at managing their business. AMD may argue that Intel’s monopoly power is hurting their bottom line, but at the end of the day, Intel isn’t directly to blame for AMD’s product roadmap mishaps, or its disastrous acquisition of ATI. Google isn’t directly to blame for Microsoft’s inability to compete online.

Big can be good?

This may come as a shock, but there are certain cases where large monolithic entities are actually good for the consumer. Most of these lie around technological innovation. Here are a few examples:

• Semiconductors – The digital revolution would not have been possible without the fast, power-efficient, and tiny chips which act as their brains. What is not oftentimes understood, however, is the immense cost and time required to build new chips. It takes massive companies with huge budgets to build tomorrow’s chips. It’s for this reason that most chip companies don’t run their own manufacturing centers and are steadily slowing down their R&D/product roadmaps as it becomes increasingly costly to design and build out chips.
• Pharmaceuticals – Just as with semiconductors, it is very costly, time-consuming, and risky to do drug development. Few of today’s biotech startups can actually even bring a drug to market — oftentimes hoping to stay alive just long enough to partner with or be bought by a larger company with the money and experience to jump through the necessary hoops to take a drug from benchside to bedside.
• Software platforms – Everybody has a bone to pick with Microsoft’s shoddy Windows product line. But what few people recognize is how much the software industry benefited from the role that Microsoft played early on in the computer revolution. By quickly becoming the dominant operating system, Microsoft’s products made it easier for software companies to reach wide audiences. Instead of designing 20 versions of every application/game to run on 20 OS’s, Microsoft made it easy to only have to design one. This, of course, isn’t saying that we need a OS monopoly right now to build a software industry, but it is fair to say that Microsoft’s early "monopoly" was a boon to the technology industry.

The problem with today’s anti-trust rules and regulations is that they are legal rules and regulations, not economic ones. In that way, while they may protect against many of the abuses of the Gilded Age (by preventing firms from getting 64.585% market share and preventing them from monopolistic action 1 through 27), they also unfortunately act as deterrents to innovation and good business practice.

Instead, regulators need to try to take a broader, more holistic view of anti-trust. Instead of market share litmus tests and paying attention to sob stories from the Netscapes of the world, regulators need to really focus on first, determining if the offender in question is acting harmfully anticompetitive at all, and second if there is credible economic value in the institutions they seek to regulate.

Why so serious?

Why so… good?

1. The first movie, Batman Begins, is hands down the best superhero film I’ve ever seen.
2. Heath Ledger’s Joker is terrifying – just as he was supposed to be depicted.
3. In addition to most of the awesome cast from Batman Begins returning, they’ve added the very talented Maggie Gyllenhaal to the cast

Alas, I won’t be able to watch this until next week when I’m in San Diego with friends.

Why I’d make an awesome VC

If I ever find myself on the Venture Capital side of things, I intend to go into the first meeting wearing one of these babies – to lighten the mood, as well as show them who they’re dealing with.

And, if at any point I’ve decided that the guy who’s pitching to me can’t tell that his product absolutely sucks, I’ll switch to this baby:

Image (and shirt) credits: http://www.vcwear.com/

If the shoe fits…

http://www.safetyschool.org/

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth…

My good friend Shang explains consulting:

Sometimes I sit around trying to figure out how to explain consulting to my friends. Sure, it’s about providing strategic advice to various clients in all industries. When it comes down to it, consulting is a client-oriented service, and one that works with tight deadlines and intellectually demanding work. It’s not intellectual in that I’m inventing a new computer or a new vaccine or writing a new scientific postulate, but it’s intellectual in that one day, I could be ramping up to become expert in calculating the costs to a shoe store, and the next day, I’m talking heart disease with cardiologists, all with an aim at understanding the business that it can support.

This is why consulting is such an unpredictable lifestyle. Luckily for me I’m not on traveling cases, but some weeks – like the last 2, I’d never have to buy groceries because I order in dinner all the time, and I also never see my roommates because I cab home around bedtime. Some weeks I get to go home (almost) like a regular workperson at 6:30 ~ 7:00 PM. On average, especially during fall / winter when caseload was heavier, I worked until around 10 or 11 PM every day. Sometimes I want to play all weekend because I haven’t been able to do so all week, but then I run the potential of exhausting myself as well, and I sometimes take hermit weekends to sleep in and clean my apartment.

Coming away from 10 months of doing so I think I’m doing a much better job at managing my time. I’m able to estimate how long I can finish a piece of analysis and I also know when to push back on a consultant / manager when a piece of work is just going to take too much time and add little value to the slide pack.

I still wish I had more time to get in touch with friends. I’m really bad about phone calls, I’m even worse at running 9 – 5 PM errands such as dry cleaning and postal mail, but I’m using Gchat more on light work days. I still send out an absurd number of emails each week. And yeah, I still pursue photography – not as a career, but as something that keeps me sane

In addition to having an unpredictable lifestyle, the work itself is very unpredictable. One day, I’ll be using an Excel model to forecast the future of the PC industry, the next day I’ll be at Safeway trying to figure out women’s shampoo, and the day after that I’ll be cold-calling analysts to try to tease out what sorts of competitive moves my client needs to worry about.

I’ll say one thing about it, “Management consulting is never boring.”

Love in the Office

One thing I love about the Financial Times is Lucy Kellaway’s advice column – think British sensibilities meets dorky, awkward business people asking questions about office life.

I recently read one of her columns which I found especially amusing and interesting. In it, a manager bemoans how he is in love with a woman who works for him, but the object of his affections doesn’t return his feelings, and now he’s worried about the credibility of his leadership in his team.

Now Lucy breaks out some fairly harsh but well-deserved advice (how British!) about how the only way his credibility could be questioned is if the woman “kiss-and-told” (in a classy, British way, of course) or, more likely, if he has been, and I quote:

“still mooching around after her … That will be solved only if she moves, or you do… The only way to repair it is to stop all leching and keep the stiffest of upper lips."

Even better advice, Lucy? Don’t get into this situation to begin with.

I feel very strongly that a good rule-of-thumb is that co-workers SHOULD NEVER date. The two main reasons being:

1. If you date your co-worker, it’s hard to leave behind the stresses of the office during your down-time.
2. If the relationship doesn’t work out, you have to see your ex constantly.

So, find your co-worker attractive? Either quit, or figure out if you can balance these two issues. And chances are, you’re probably overestimating how well you can do just that.

Image Credit

Discovery Channel Love

xkcd is one of my favorite webcomics, and is frequently featured in my Google Reader share list. It’s an extremely nerdy comic, and as such, is oftentimes incomprehensible to the layperson who does not necessarily get the computer science or physics or math jokes.

So, when I didn’t understand one of xkcd’s latest comics (below), I simply chalked it up to my not having understood some bizarre cultural or geek reference.

Lo and behold, I spot this little gem of a Discovery Channel ad on YouTube:

And then it all made sense!

Honestly, though, it’s a very cute and (I think) effective ad!