Sophia Perl of Wisdom

Some tips on weathering the economic storm

A friend of mine, who works in software research in the industry, is going to be a panelist on the topic of “Weathering the Economic Storm”.  She asked me if there were any topics that she should talk about.  I gave her my two cents below.

• You can’t control your fate, companies at any time will chose to do things that will keep them in business, focus on building up your skills and keep up with your networking
• People don’t help people they don’t know, get out and network and develop meaningful relationships, don’t ask for things so soon
• Some think that a recession is a good time to start a business, that’s a possibility, people are not spending much but if your business survives, it really will survive in a good economy
• Some go back to school and hope that the economy jumps back when they graduate
• Keep the communication loop open with you and your manager, know his/her expectations, pay close attention to feedback, you may not have that much time to rectify issues
• Surround yourself with people who know your skills or start educating people around you about what you can do, I’ve had friends who had no idea what I do, this doesn’t help when you need their help to find a job
• If you get laid off, search within and outside of company for a job, consider a variety of positions and even lower pay to get your foot in the door, know your strengths and achievements, get feedback from others if you are unclear about them
• Be prepared for an interview at any given time, even if you think that you’re meeting up with a friend for drinks
• Get on LinkedIn, it may help, it obviously doesn’t hurt

Nice timeline of “Big Ideas” from Business Week

I happen to subscribe to Business Week although I haven’t paid much attention to the magazine lately. I’ve been tossing it straight into recycling because I’ve been focused on other things. Well this week, I decided to take a look. The magazine had this nice timeline of “A History of Big Ideas”.

From Business Week March 23 & 30, 2009:

· 1910 – The assembly line from Henry Ford
· 1920 – Market segmentation from General Motors CEO Sloan
· 1931 – Brand management from Procter & Gamble
· 1943 – Skunk works from Lockheed
· 1950s – Lean manufacturing from Toyota
· 1967 – Scenario planning from Shell
· 1973 – 360-degree reviews from DuPont
· 1987 – Six-sigma from Motorola
· 1989 – Outsourcing from IBM
· 1990 – Reengineering from consultant Michael Hammer who cited Ford
· 2000s – Open innovation from Procter & Gamble

What to say when your co-worker gets laid off

I was perusing through my 3rd issue of Marie Claire (thanks Mom) and came across “The Careerist” section.  There was an article that talked about what to do and what not to do when a co-worker gets laid off.   I’ll add in my two cents too.

From Marie Claire, April 2009 issue:

• DO: Send an email that reads, “I’ve really enjoyed working with you, and I wish you the best.”
• DO NOT: Send an email that reads, “Mind if I make a copy of your client list?”
• DO: Offer to help pack up her office
• DO NOT: Offer to take that customized ergonomic chair off her hands
• DO: Pass along career contacts
• DO NOT: Pass along a condolence card signed by everyone in your department
• DO: Call her to see how she’s doing
• DO NOT: Call her to bitch about your boss, her former manager

My additions

• DO: Post a facebook status soliciting your friends for a job for your anonymous co-worker
• DO NOT: Post a facebook comment on your co-worker’s profile page saying, “Sorry you got laid off”
• DO: Recommend professional networking events to meet potential employers
• DO NOT: Recommend happy hour events so that she can get sloshed and spill the beans about the office

What I learned at P-Camp 2009

Last Saturday, I attended P-Camp 2009, a product management unconference, at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, California.  I missed last year’s, so I wanted to see what it was all about this year.  The event is free and paid for by sponsors.  So this was nice to try something out for free too.

In the morning, I attended two sessions.  The first one was “Market Sensing” by Jim Holland and Michael Hopkin from Ryma Tech.  Their company does product management consulting.  The session started off with everyone contributing one way of doing market sensing.  You can think of market sensing as activities involved in doing market analysis for your product.  After we were done, the speakers asked us to rate top 3 that we found useful.  I found the session to be OK.  I wish it would have gone into more depth, but then again we only had an hour to discuss.

Top market sensing methods

1. customer visits
2. read market reports
3. market pain points
4. watch for competitor actions

Recommendations for market sensing

1. start company with personas - small 4-5 paragraphs, who are we focusing on and why?
2. what don’t i know, what am i missing, what market are we focusing on, what matters the most
3. collaborative environment, it’s a group effort, it’s a team effort, look inward before you look outward
4. create a method/plan, one size does not fit all

The next session that I attended was “How to Recession Proof Your Product Management Career” by Greg Cohen, Principal Consultant, from 280 Group, another product management consulting firm.  This session was OK too.  A lot of the material seemed to be common sense.  I noticed that LinkedIn came up a few times too.

Become indispensable volunteer for extra work

• critical projects/products
• take things off boss’ plate
• make it painful

Become difficult to let go - be super productivity and have a great attitude

Build a massive network

• 50/100 lunches, go out to lunch with someone once to twice a week, someone who is your peer or someone slightly above you

Monitor the market

• watch job listings
• know your worth
• be ready if necessary

Update & expand your resume

• always have an updated resume
• critique
• brochure to get you in the door
• stand out
  • volunteer
  • certifications
  • training

It takes about 90-120 days to find a job in today’s market

Use metrics - quantifiable results - to describe yourself

• customer sat surveys
• anything that you can show a delta with work that you’ve done
• if can’t affect sales side, how about lowering cost side
• examples: adoption, growth, managing it through development on time, the vision

After the morning sessions, I decided to leave.  There are rumors that the format of P-Camp may change next year, so I have not ruled out attending again.  You can’t beat the price of free and I always enjoy a good opportunity to network.

Does working at Google give you celebrity status?

Lately, I’ve had a better appreciation for the Silicon Valley area.  There are always events going on around the topic of startups, Web 2.0, random geeky stuff, etc.  If you enjoy working in high-tech and have a technical background, this is like a tech Disneyland.  Well at least to me it is.  Hahahaha.

So I have  friends who work for various tech companies in the Silicon Valley area.  Back in the day, I did blog about the importance of connecting with the SV community.  If you have time, check it out (http://sophiaperl.com/?p=48).  Alright, I have this one friend who worked at Google, actually I knew him even when he was working at Google too.  I’m a social butterfly, so I would drag him to all the Web 2.0 networking events in Palo Alto and San Francisco.  He was a good sport about it, but it gave him a reason to get out and meet more people.

At times, I would sit back and just watch people swarm around him.  I often thought about why do people want to talk to my friend?  Am I not that interesting?  Eventually, I figured out that the word “Google” was on his name tag and the first thing people asked him were, “Oh, you work at Google?”  Amazing!  People were treating my friend like a semi-celebrity.  OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get the point.  After one event, I asked him does this happen to you often?  He said that he has noticed that it has happened more often than not.  I was surprised.  My friend was popular because he worked at Google.  I was not popular because I worked for a Big Blue conglomerate which does not have the cool factor of Google.  Hmm, that sucks.

Just recently, I observed this Google celebrity effect again.  Someone commented on my friend’s work experience at Google as being impressive although not much information was given on what he did there.  In any case, kudos to my friend for getting a celebrity status for working at Google.  I guess people in the SV area treat working at Google similar to graduating from Harvard or working for a top notch investment firm in NYC.   Interesting…

oDesk to find that overseas contractor

In my quest to find web developers, I decided to go down the pay-for-work route although I did find some friends who were willing to help out.   Someone sent me a note about oDesk.com, so I wanted to check it out.

I posted a job online and started searching through developers from all around the world literally.  I started with developers sorted by low to high hourly rate.  It was a bit strange that there were developers with $0 hourly rates.  I skipped those and went to the $2 / hr folks because I’m a big spender hahahaha.  I checked out their online portfolio and resume and made invitation decisions based on that.  I sent an invitation to apply for my job posting to about 30 developers.  When the developers applied, their hourly rate jumped to ranges of $8 to $15 per hour.  Whoa!  At first, I felt that these developers were misrepresenting themselves and figured later that they can specify whatever hourly rate that they felt to be competitive for a particular job.  Hmm…  I decided to reach out to one person who was quite cheap per hour, but he never responded.

Eventually, I decided to take a break from hiring someone and to just do it myself.  I spent a lot of time describing what I wanted for a website and I realized that if I have to figure out what I want in the first place, then might as well do it myself at least for prototyping.  So now, I’m doing some simple PHP coding in my spare time and have some friends to help me out.

When I’m ready to do a full blown website, I will re-vigorate my quest to find paid contractors perhaps try oDesk.com again.  I’ll keep you updated.