Curt Doolittle

Theme: Productivity

  • DWEEB ALERT : A COMMISSION SYSTEM THAT COULD EVEN SATISFY JIM BEEBE 🙂 My friend

    DWEEB ALERT : A COMMISSION SYSTEM THAT COULD EVEN SATISFY JIM BEEBE 🙂

    My friend Jim is notorious for concocting elaborate commission schemes in an effort to provide just the right incentives. Unfortunately, human beings have to actually calculate these formula manually. If they cant understand it, then they can’t be incentivized by it. And worse, complexity and lack of transparency create doubt about management’s honesty in the sales organization.

    So, twenty years of working with him and I finally got the chance to design something insane enough to accomodate his creativity, while maintaining transparency. It took me all day. And it turns out, it’s pretty easy to use, override, and just plain old play with. It can even call custom rules if there’s something I haven’t thought of.

    Maybe the next CEO won’t have to look into the eyes of a sales guy and say “I love to pay commissions. They represent success. And everyone here is honest. I’m pretty sure it’s right. And if it isn’t. We’ll fix it. I promise.” or to your board “I can’t even figure out how to calculate this myself. How the hell will one of the sales guys?”

    </Tech Geek Off>

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-17 14:53:00 UTC

  • FROM ELSEWHERE: BUILDING A LIBERTARIAN COMPANY (Saved here for future reference

    FROM ELSEWHERE: BUILDING A LIBERTARIAN COMPANY

    (Saved here for future reference on my timeline.)

    As someone who built a sizeable company specifically with the intent of experimenting with libertarian management principles, I can argue that not only does it lead to a high growth company because of transparency and meritocracy, but it’s also a more pleasant place to work because people are empowered – they feel sovereign.

    HOWEVER HERE ARE SOME OBSERVATIONS

    1) CLASS

    libertarianism is a meritocratic, and therefore middle and upper middle class philosophy. If you want to have day laborers, it’s going to be less successful than if you have engineers because the former are less comfortable problem solving than the latter because the former are more open to cheating then the latter (this isn’t necessary that’s just how it works out due to class sorting and peer association).

    While we libertarians feel that liberty is the desire of all, it is not. It is the desire of those of us who have an intellectual advantage. The vast majority of people want only enough liberty to choose who directs them. They do not want to master the information necessary to be fully directed.

    In that sense, liberty is classically defined as consisting of multiple levels:

    1) Freedom of life, property and relationships (liberty)

    2) Freedom to form organizations (association)

    3) Freedom to choose leadership (corporation)

    4) Freedom to ostracize (nationalism)

    5) Freedom to convert or expand (imperialism)

    We libertarians agree with the first three, conservatives and some conservative libertarians with the first four, and neo-conservatives with all five.

    So one cannot easily create a libertarian organization across class lines, unless the majority of control is in the hands of those who wish to preserve that libertarian ordere, and its constant state of variation, meritocracy and competition.

    2) EXPOSE EVERYONE TO PRICES AND PROFIT

    Libertarianism and meritocracy require all people are exposed to the pricing system and its affects. Prices and profit are truths. Opinions are not. Bureaucracy is a synonym for insulation from the pricing system. Engineering this into many companies is extremely difficult. This is because many administrative disciplines are security rather than merit oriented (accounting for example).

    3) ELIMINATE ALL DEDICATED MANAGEMENT

    Middle management provides little if any value in almost all organizations. Knowledge exists at the bottom, and the knowledge to concentrate scarce capital at the top. Design your company to have no pure management. Everyone is responsible for profit. If they are not then you do not need them, and should organize your people differently. Usually it is better to compensate someone very dedicated to produce less profit and split time between leadership/mentoring and productivity/profitability. But if they are not themselves materially productive it is just a countdown before they become valueless. This is counter to human behavior because we all seek to avoid work and subsist upon rents. Management that does not either sell something or produce something is rent seeking.

    4) REORGANIZE YOUR COMPANY FREQUENTLY – EVERY SIX MONTHS

    Try to get your top talent to know more of the business by rotating them through different positions in the company. This will prevent your organization from calcifying in an attempt to be ‘efficient’ at delivering a fixed business model rather than ‘responsive’ and therefore efficient at delivering whatever business model is necessary to satisfy the needs of the market. (Note that it is possible to be a market follower and emphasize efficiency, but libertarianism is an effort to spur innovation. Leave it to liberals to live under the illusion that any commercial model represents a steady state.) Liberty is the source of innovation through competition. But competition creates multiple opportunity for loss.

    5) TALENT

    Marginally competitive companies possess superior talent in key roles. I devote at least a third of my time to recruiting talent.

    7) PROCESSES

    Processes calcify and compensate for stupidity and ignorance. Processes attempt to be efficient in order to minimize the need for interpersonal problem solving. However, this also means that processes are inhibitors to innovation and collaboration. Therefore all processes in your organization may be overridden if a) increase profitability without negative externalities. b) increase customer customer loyalty. (loyalty is meaningful. satisfaction is not. know the difference. satisfaction is only expressed meaningfully as loyalty.) c) increase the chance of opportunity generation without increasing the cost of opportunity generation. You must instill this culture in people so that the understand. Economics is the study, largely, of externalities, since internal exchanges are trivial, and externalities are complicated.

    8) SALES

    My experience is that companies under-invest in sales, and over-invest in fear. The people who generate sales are the most valuable people in your company. There are no exceptions. However, people who can generate sales are contextually dependent. Second, the good ones will only come to places where they are adequately rewarded. So when you are small you cannot generally hire talent that is worth what you pay them. Expect a 60-60% failure rate.

    9) EVERYONE IS A POTENTIAL CUSTOMER

    Every single person you meed is a potential customer. Just like actors and politicians lose their freedom because some paparazzi might catch them at an inopportune moment, an entrepreneur loses the freedom of self expression. (I chose expressly to break this rule because of my intellectual interests, but largely this worked to my advantage as self brand promotion. It turns out that if you will say really controversial things in public and try to defend them, then customers will assume you will give them the same unfiltered advice. It worked for me. In general though, I do not recommend it.)

    10) MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

    As a CEO, you can act as an investor, accountant, operator, salesman or craftsman. Or some combination. Because of personality differences it is unlikely that you will be even moderately successful at more than two. Know your strengths and hire the people who compensate for your weaknesses, but possess your strengths in some minor capacity. (I am a salesman, investor, and craftsman. I hire people who are operators and accountants to actually run the details of the business. Jack Welsh is different, Steve Jobs was different, Bill Gates is different, and Warren Buffett is different. And the guys who turnaround companies that are in trouble are different still. If you are entrepreneurial you are best off being sales and craftsman, because this means you master your industry and its customers. if you are a talented executive in a larger bureaucracy it is better to be operational and financial.

    11) PEER REVIEWS

    Conduct stack ranking peer reviews, with written comments at least once per year and exit the bottom ten percent of the company. (I usually was only able to exit the bottom 4% because the community building within the company was so strong that people would fight hard for underperformers if they thought that they could help them improve. This then creates passionate employees out of both the mentors and those people who were given help in succeeding.

    12) PITCHING AND DESIGNING

    Create some venue where employees suggest new uses for products, or new products, or new services, or pitches for customers. WE were always suprised at how many quiet people from the bottom of the company turned out to be our best idea poeople. It also makes it impossible for others to take credit for someone’s idea.

    13) CREATE PARTIES AND AFTER-PARTIES

    If you can find an excuse to spend a few hundred dollars taking people to a club, restaurant or entertainment venue where they can play, then do it. Every possible time. Have a big event at least once a year that requires formal dress, and is not in competition with some other holiday, just to celebrate each other. Terminate people who do not participate in social events.

    14) HIRE FAMILY AND FRIENDS IF THEY HAVE THE TALENT – NEPOTISM IS THE BEST LOYALTY YOU CAN BUY

    Loyalty is the willingness to absorb losses of opportunity for one’s self in order to create opportunity for the group to whom you are a member. Families do this by nature. Never hire ANY family member who cannot perform, or any friend, and never sacrifice your hiring process. But never discount a friend or family. They will work much harder at group cohesion than outsiders.

    EXPENSIVE?

    If any of this sounds either inefficient or expensive then you should do something other than go into business. People are tribal animals. they calculate all sorts of things with and against one another every day, every hour, every second.

    Make sure that they are calculating something that binds them together to create products and services for your company, in the service of customers, that can be delivered to them at a profit. Because profit is our only way of knowing that we have made use of the world’s resources to serve others, in a manner that they demonstrate by their dear actions rather than their cheap words.

    CLOSING

    I have spent too much time on this post already, but perhaps it will do one person some good. And if so, then I’ve passed it on, and done the moral thing. 🙂

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-17 05:48:00 UTC

  • As someone who built a sizeable company specifically with the intent of experime

    As someone who built a sizeable company specifically with the intent of experimenting with libertarian management principles, I can argue that not only does it lead to a high growth company because of transparency and meritocracy, but it’s also a more pleasant place to work because people are empowered – they feel sovereign.

    HOWEVER HERE ARE SOME OBSERVATIONS

    1) CLASS

    libertarianism is a meritocratic, and therefore middle and upper middle class philosophy. If you want to have day laborers, it’s going to be less successful than if you have engineers because the former are less comfortable problem solving than the latter because the former are more open to cheating then the latter (this isn’t necessary that’s just how it works out due to class sorting and peer association).

    While we libertarians feel that liberty is the desire of all, it is not. It is the desire of those of us who have an intellectual advantage. The vast majority of people want only enough liberty to choose who directs them. They do not want to master the information necessary to be fully directed.

    In that sense, liberty is classically defined as consisting of multiple levels:

    1) Freedom of life, property and relationships (liberty)

    2) Freedom to form organizations (association)

    3) Freedom to choose leadership (corporation)

    4) Freedom to ostracize (nationalism)

    5) Freedom to convert or expand (imperialism)

    We libertarians agree with the first three, conservatives and some conservative libertarians with the first four, and neo-conservatives with all five.

    So one cannot easily create a libertarian organization across class lines, unless the majority of control is in the hands of those who wish to preserve that libertarian ordere, and its constant state of variation, meritocracy and competition.

    2) EXPOSE EVERYONE TO PRICES AND PROFIT

    Libertarianism and meritocracy require all people are exposed to the pricing system and its affects. Prices and profit are truths. Opinions are not. Bureaucracy is a synonym for insulation from the pricing system. Engineering this into many companies is extremely difficult. This is because many administrative disciplines are security rather than merit oriented (accounting for example).

    3) ELIMINATE ALL DEDICATED MANAGEMENT

    Middle management provides little if any value in almost all organizations. Knowledge exists at the bottom, and the knowledge to concentrate scarce capital at the top. Design your company to have no pure management. Everyone is responsible for profit. If they are not then you do not need them, and should organize your people differently. Usually it is better to compensate someone very dedicated to produce less profit and split time between leadership/mentoring and productivity/profitability. But if they are not themselves materially productive it is just a countdown before they become valueless. This is counter to human behavior because we all seek to avoid work and subsist upon rents. Management that does not either sell something or produce something is rent seeking.

    4) REORGANIZE YOUR COMPANY FREQUENTLY – EVERY SIX MONTHS

    Try to get your top talent to know more of the business by rotating them through different positions in the company. This will prevent your organization from calcifying in an attempt to be ‘efficient’ at delivering a fixed business model rather than ‘responsive’ and therefore efficient at delivering whatever business model is necessary to satisfy the needs of the market. (Note that it is possible to be a market follower and emphasize efficiency, but libertarianism is an effort to spur innovation. Leave it to liberals to live under the illusion that any commercial model represents a steady state.) Liberty is the source of innovation through competition. But competition creates multiple opportunity for loss.

    5) TALENT

    Marginally competitive companies possess superior talent in key roles. I devote at least a third of my time to recruiting talent.

    7) PROCESSES

    Processes calcify and compensate for stupidity and ignorance. Processes attempt to be efficient in order to minimize the need for interpersonal problem solving. However, this also means that processes are inhibitors to innovation and collaboration. Therefore all processes in your organization may be overridden if a) increase profitability without negative externalities. b) increase customer customer loyalty. (loyalty is meaningful. satisfaction is not. know the difference. satisfaction is only expressed meaningfully as loyalty.) c) increase the chance of opportunity generation without increasing the cost of opportunity generation. You must instill this culture in people so that the understand. Economics is the study, largely, of externalities, since internal exchanges are trivial, and externalities are complicated.

    8) SALES

    My experience is that companies under-invest in sales, and over-invest in fear. The people who generate sales are the most valuable people in your company. There are no exceptions. However, people who can generate sales are contextually dependent. Second, the good ones will only come to places where they are adequately rewarded. So when you are small you cannot generally hire talent that is worth what you pay them. Expect a 60-60% failure rate.

    9) EVERYONE IS A POTENTIAL CUSTOMER

    Every single person you meed is a potential customer. Just like actors and politicians lose their freedom because some paparazzi might catch them at an inopportune moment, an entrepreneur loses the freedom of self expression. (I chose expressly to break this rule because of my intellectual interests, but largely this worked to my advantage as self brand promotion. It turns out that if you will say really controversial things in public and try to defend them, then customers will assume you will give them the same unfiltered advice. It worked for me. In general though, I do not recommend it.)

    10) MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

    As a CEO, you can act as an investor, accountant, operator, salesman or craftsman. Or some combination. Because of personality differences it is unlikely that you will be even moderately successful at more than two. Know your strengths and hire the people who compensate for your weaknesses, but possess your strengths in some minor capacity. (I am a salesman, investor, and craftsman. I hire people who are operators and accountants to actually run the details of the business. Jack Welsh is different, Steve Jobs was different, Bill Gates is different, and Warren Buffett is different. And the guys who turnaround companies that are in trouble are different still. If you are entrepreneurial you are best off being sales and craftsman, because this means you master your industry and its customers. if you are a talented executive in a larger bureaucracy it is better to be operational and financial.

    11) PEER REVIEWS

    Conduct stack ranking peer reviews, with written comments at least once per year and exit the bottom ten percent of the company. (I usually was only able to exit the bottom 4% because the community building within the company was so strong that people would fight hard for underperformers if they thought that they could help them improve. This then creates passionate employees out of both the mentors and those people who were given help in succeeding.

    12) PITCHING AND DESIGNING

    Create some venue where employees suggest new uses for products, or new products, or new services, or pitches for customers. WE were always suprised at how many quiet people from the bottom of the company turned out to be our best idea poeople. It also makes it impossible for others to take credit for someone’s idea.

    13) CREATE PARTIES AND AFTER-PARTIES

    If you can find an excuse to spend a few hundred dollars taking people to a club, restaurant or entertainment venue where they can play, then do it. Every possible time. Have a big event at least once a year that requires formal dress, and is not in competition with some other holiday, just to celebrate each other. Terminate people who do not participate in social events.

    14) HIRE FAMILY AND FRIENDS IF THEY HAVE THE TALENT – NEPOTISM IS THE BEST LOYALTY YOU CAN BUY

    Loyalty is the willingness to absorb losses of opportunity for one’s self in order to create opportunity for the group to whom you are a member. Families do this by nature. Never hire ANY family member who cannot perform, or any friend, and never sacrifice your hiring process. But never discount a friend or family. They will work much harder at group cohesion than outsiders.

    EXPENSIVE?

    If any of this sounds either inefficient or expensive then you should do something other than go into business. People are tribal animals. they calculate all sorts of things with and against one another every day, every hour, every second.

    Make sure that they are calculating something that binds them together to create products and services for your company, in the service of customers, that can be delivered to them at a profit. Because profit is our only way of knowing that we have made use of the world’s resources to serve others, in a manner that they demonstrate by their dear actions rather than their cheap words.

    CLOSING

    I have spent too much time on this post already, but perhaps it will do one person some good. And if so, then I’ve passed it on, and done the moral thing. 🙂

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-17 05:47:00 UTC

  • SORT OF “Despite this fast growth among “catching-up” countries, the rankings of

    http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/economics/comments/unit-4-macro-looking-to-2060-a-global-vision-of-long-term-growth?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+economics_news+%28tutor2u+Economics+Blog%29#When:09:48:54ZCONVERGENCE : SORT OF

    “Despite this fast growth among “catching-up” countries, the rankings of GDP per capita in 2011 and 2060 are projected to remain very similar”

    I hate to share a link from one of the two sites that have banned me. But the article and external links are worth it.

    While progressives look for reasons to justify their one world fantasy, those of us who know better see reduced western privilege leading to resurgent nationalism, and permanent friction as large poor countries remain permanently unequal. And as such doom the western lower classes to exactly the opposite future that they and their absurd egalitarian policies fantasizes about.

    Only innovation defeats Malthus. And with innovation comes greater intellectual demand on citizens.

    The fact that we have held Malthus at bay is a temporary product of asymmetric development and the conversion of farm to industrial labor. And that is a temporary conversion since labor is just as rapidly replaced both technically through productivity and geographically through labor competition.

    We will get either a eugenic or disgenic result from our egalitarian universalist fantasy.

    What we will not get is a harmonious egalitarian world order.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-11 07:15:00 UTC

  • NATIONS FAIL: INSTITUTIONS I want to counter Subramanian’s criticism of Acemoglo

    http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1334WHY NATIONS FAIL: INSTITUTIONS

    I want to counter Subramanian’s criticism of Acemoglou and Robinson. In his review, he states that ” …the inability of Acemoglu and Robinson to explain the development trajectories of [India and China] is a fault not of their rich and excellent book but of the sui generis, uncooperative reality of Chinese and Indian history. “

    Their book fails to account for the difference between creating new technical advancements and ‘consuming’ them. India and china are consumers of knowledge capital created elsewhere. Their growth will run out when they have consumed those marginal differences. If they manage to ‘repair’ their cultures and governments (institutions) by using the profits from this consumed knowledge, then they might have a chance at innovating in the future. It is not hard to take risks on known methods of production of known products. But it is much harder to use fragmentary knowledge and relationships dispersed throughout an economy, and to take risks on those subjects than it is on those that are more established.

    I don’t really think Subraminian has much of a criticism here. I disagree with Acemoglu and Robinson’s argument that representative democracy is superior to alternatives. I agree that institutions can establish the norms needed for a high trust society. I also agree that it is difficult to establish those institutions if there is not support for the norms that they would impose in the population.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-05 18:46:00 UTC

  • EMPLOYMENT TO POPULATION RATIO

    EMPLOYMENT TO POPULATION RATIO

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-01 13:06:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/reason-why-unemployment-rate-dropped-labor-participation-rate-fresh-31-year-lows

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-13 02:06:00 UTC

  • Why Should A Person Believe In Austrian Economics?

    It is not a question of ‘belief’. There are five or six different strategic economic biases in favor of a different set of levers for encouraging an economy. These different levers vary from the fastest and most redistributive and distorting to the slowest, least redistributive and distorting.   They are loosely Modern Monetary (fastest), Monetarism, Fiscal Policy, Industrial policy, and Human Capital policy (slowest – austrianism).

    The other criticisms of the ideas of these schools as consisting of ‘true’ or ‘false’ propositions are absurd. All schools are merely utilitarian, and reward one or more sectors of an economy and one or more social classes, asymmetrically. All have side effects that are positive or negative.   Austrianism trades slower growth for greater personal freedom, greater innovation, smaller boom and bust cycles, with greater development of a natural aristocracy, and natural intertemporal increases in the rate of expansion of the economy between the classes.

    The competition between the schools is merely a preference for one set of EXTERNALITIES over another set of externalities.  With austrianism preferring to cause the lowest redistribution of capital, and the greatest reward, and greatest incentive for entrepreneurship, and the least incentive for political actors, and the greatest diversity of wealth (inequality), in exchange for greater relative wealth for all.  It also has the best system of feedback for the expansion of positive norms – which conservatives feel (correctly) are more important for the expansion of an economy than any other property.

    Claims that austiranism is apodeicitcally certain are specious.  Any system so certain must be substantially complete, and praxeology as it is currently constructed is incomplete enough that it cannot render judgements of certainty except in the most reductio (absurd) cases. (I am trying to fix this problem but it will take me another year or so.)   Instead, praxeological analysis simply exposes the the incentives of individuals and illustrates their rational actions,  IN effect allowing us to judge whether our ascertations about human behavior are true or false.   This leads to exceptional insights about human nature in an economy.  However, a) this does not invalidate the other schools only opens the door for discussions of trade offs.  b) we have been wrong on a number of topics that appear to be rational to individual actors but in practice are false (stickiness of prices, and irrationality of actions.)  

    The central tenet of austiranism, is the business cycle theory, which states that any  intervention in an economy will pervert incentives and information and causes worse busts and booms.  This argument appears to be correct. It is just questionably useful in a democracy where voters will demand action from government.

    A wise man would say, that each of these sets of levers and externalities has value to moving an economy.  But that it appears to be impossible in our democratically structured politcal system, to use each lever for the purposes to which it is suited, and for the benefit of all.  Politics in democracy is a means of obtaining power to conduct rents.   And since each of the different schools and their levers allows a different kind of rent to be sought for a different class of citizens, we merely fight over the control of these levers for our sects.

    You will not likely hear this explanation elsewhere. You may not understand this explanation.  Because I cannot take the time, sitting in my hotel room, to write a twenty page essay on the topic.  However, it is most likely the only correct analysis of the different economic schools currently available.

    Cheers.
    Curt
    (Thank you for asking me to answer this question. Although I think only the most sophisticated of students will understand it.)

    https://www.quora.com/Why-should-a-person-believe-in-Austrian-economics

  • Why Should A Person Believe In Austrian Economics?

    It is not a question of ‘belief’. There are five or six different strategic economic biases in favor of a different set of levers for encouraging an economy. These different levers vary from the fastest and most redistributive and distorting to the slowest, least redistributive and distorting.   They are loosely Modern Monetary (fastest), Monetarism, Fiscal Policy, Industrial policy, and Human Capital policy (slowest – austrianism).

    The other criticisms of the ideas of these schools as consisting of ‘true’ or ‘false’ propositions are absurd. All schools are merely utilitarian, and reward one or more sectors of an economy and one or more social classes, asymmetrically. All have side effects that are positive or negative.   Austrianism trades slower growth for greater personal freedom, greater innovation, smaller boom and bust cycles, with greater development of a natural aristocracy, and natural intertemporal increases in the rate of expansion of the economy between the classes.

    The competition between the schools is merely a preference for one set of EXTERNALITIES over another set of externalities.  With austrianism preferring to cause the lowest redistribution of capital, and the greatest reward, and greatest incentive for entrepreneurship, and the least incentive for political actors, and the greatest diversity of wealth (inequality), in exchange for greater relative wealth for all.  It also has the best system of feedback for the expansion of positive norms – which conservatives feel (correctly) are more important for the expansion of an economy than any other property.

    Claims that austiranism is apodeicitcally certain are specious.  Any system so certain must be substantially complete, and praxeology as it is currently constructed is incomplete enough that it cannot render judgements of certainty except in the most reductio (absurd) cases. (I am trying to fix this problem but it will take me another year or so.)   Instead, praxeological analysis simply exposes the the incentives of individuals and illustrates their rational actions,  IN effect allowing us to judge whether our ascertations about human behavior are true or false.   This leads to exceptional insights about human nature in an economy.  However, a) this does not invalidate the other schools only opens the door for discussions of trade offs.  b) we have been wrong on a number of topics that appear to be rational to individual actors but in practice are false (stickiness of prices, and irrationality of actions.)  

    The central tenet of austiranism, is the business cycle theory, which states that any  intervention in an economy will pervert incentives and information and causes worse busts and booms.  This argument appears to be correct. It is just questionably useful in a democracy where voters will demand action from government.

    A wise man would say, that each of these sets of levers and externalities has value to moving an economy.  But that it appears to be impossible in our democratically structured politcal system, to use each lever for the purposes to which it is suited, and for the benefit of all.  Politics in democracy is a means of obtaining power to conduct rents.   And since each of the different schools and their levers allows a different kind of rent to be sought for a different class of citizens, we merely fight over the control of these levers for our sects.

    You will not likely hear this explanation elsewhere. You may not understand this explanation.  Because I cannot take the time, sitting in my hotel room, to write a twenty page essay on the topic.  However, it is most likely the only correct analysis of the different economic schools currently available.

    Cheers.
    Curt
    (Thank you for asking me to answer this question. Although I think only the most sophisticated of students will understand it.)

    https://www.quora.com/Why-should-a-person-believe-in-Austrian-economics

  • KIEV (KYIV) UKRAINE Well, everyone who gave me advice was right, and the interne

    KIEV (KYIV) UKRAINE

    Well, everyone who gave me advice was right, and the internet data was accurate. It is the wild west at a discount. Employees cost $400 (admin) – $2000 (dev lead) per month. An upper end apartment costs 2k per month. Dinner for four at the best restaurant in town is about $80 including alcohol. A 45 minute cab ride cost $25. Coffee and pastry at a good shop costs $8. The people seem intelligent, honest and capable, but risk averse – albiet less risk averse than your average working and lower class Brit. Overeducated but hopeful young people litter the streets. Everything is done by relationships. Micro entrepreneurship is everywhere, and trying to circumvent the corruption of the state. Yes, the government is openly corrupt, but it’s possible to circumvent it. Yes, the women really are beautiful, and they’re everywhere, but the careful eye will notice two things: they do not eat processed foods, and they believe women are women, men are men, and the femininity is beautiful. Of course, I am meeting my Fullbright friend’s circle, which is quite sophisticated, but it’s still a sampling none the less.

    This week: trial ads for staff, office space.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-07 10:18:00 UTC