The Frustrated CFO

Quote of The Week: Cassandra's Curse

Quoted directly (as written) from the actual email sent today to the frustrated CFO by her CEO:

"Marina,

You are so right about the economy.  More than a half of the candidates I talked with today are looking for a job because they were laid off as the result of their companies' downsizing or being swallowed during hostile mergers.  One of the candidates worked for the same company for 20 years, and she is now looking for an entry-level job just to get stable employment with benefits.  Amazing!  Most people don't even know what's going on with the economy, because they listen to lies.

LF"    

The Struggle Is Real for Employers As Millennials Enter the Workforce with Their Own Value System

Like many hiring execs, I still have an employer account with Monster.com, even though the time when they dominated the job-hunting market has passed.  Nowadays, they are not even at the top of the industry leaders list.  Still, we got used to them in the 17 years they've been around.  And they do try their best to provide the paying clients with value-added bells and whistles beyond the standard ad posting:  resume matching, database searching, description writing, HR Resource Center, and whatnot.  

One of these add-ons is the email service that blasts recruitment articles to all registered users.  I usually ignore these emails, but the last one had an article with an enticing title The Real Reason Millennials are Leaving Your Company.  

The first thing that caught my eye was the singular "Reason."  I thought, "The author was able to identify a single, most fundamental cause of what appears to be a case of chronic pins and needles in the millennial butts?  That's remarkable!"

I got even more curious reading the logline.  It talked about an abundance of options, "a plethora of jobs" that allow millennials to be "super selective" in their career choices.  Moreover, it promised expert advice to employers on how to keep the "valuable millennials" in the work seats.  I was like: This must be one of those sci-fi imagine-if humorous thingies, because these statements, if not drenched in undiluted sarcasm, can only refer to some remote planet in an unknown universe.  Here on Earth, right now, most of the millennials you and I know are either unemployed, or work jobs that have nothing to do with their chosen professions (let alone vocations), or stretch their schooling to avoid facing the bleakness of the job market.  I mean, there are premium cable shows and broadcast sitcoms about it.   

And, "valuable millennials?"  Yes, they exist, in small numbers and tiny clusters, and you ought to be very lucky to have them around.  But generally speaking: the state of our arts and entertainment is a testimony of young people's value and their values.  And when it comes to hiring, you need to go through 800 entry-level resumes to find 3 candidates who can write a coherent sentence, even though (I'm talking to you, senator Sanders!), all of the applicants have college degrees.     

Opening the article immediately dispelled all enthusiasm.  Firstly, no pinnacle reasoning was crystallized.  The piece was divided into subsections addressing different causes for millennials' job mobility.  Since the author is not a Canadian afflicted by the national inability to pluralize words, I can only attribute the use of the single form in the title to writing and editing sloppiness.  And, of course, there was not a single whiff of alien or any other humor.

In fact, the self-branded Talent Maximizer® Roberta Matuson, who wrote the article, takes herself and her "advisory" role very seriously.  In complete solemnity she lists the following as the reasons why the millennials don't want to hold on to their jobs (with my commentaries):

• Millennials want to work for companies that help to improve society.  Ms. Matuson suggests that those employers who want to retain Millennial workers should "take a closer look at the organizational purpose," assess how the company's mission impacts society, and redefine its purpose.

To paraphrase Woody Allen, "What's wrong with this?  Everything!" 

First of all, what does the lame formula "improved society" mean?  What's a "better society" for one person, is hell for another.  The massive support of Bernie Sanders by young voters clearly shows that they want to live in a welfare state.  I, on the other hand, have been preaching no government interference and market economy my whole life.  I would understand if the focus was more specific - let's say on environmental issues.  If employees of different ages boycotted the fracking industry, for example, our society would seriously benefit in the long run.  But I doubt we are talking about future impact here.  I'm pretty sure that if the fracking industry started providing free daily lunches to local people, the millennials would think of them as employers with a positive mission!  Never mind the explosions and the fiery faucets.

And what happened to the old-fashioned purpose of being profitable, staying in business, and continuously providing jobs?  It's not good enough?  Do all millennials want to work for non-profits spending grants, or public companies depleting investors' pension and college funds?

• Millennials need constant external motivation: nurture, praise, repeat.  A shout-out here, a lunch with a boss there, or an invite to an off-site event, Ms. Matuson suggests, will help to demonstrate that the employers care.  Otherwise, the millennials will leave, because "the recession is over."  

Well, this is not the first time I am confronted with the suggestion that what I call "hugging motivation" is more important to younger people than fairness, objectivity, professional growth, adequate compensation, etc.  Don't get me wrong, the acknowledgement of one's achievement is incredibly important, but only if it's deserved.   Constantly patting on the back some unimpressive, low-value jackass out of fear that they will leave - that would be a betrayal of my work ethics and a violation of my fiduciary duty as a CFO.  Merit-based rewards, people!  That's what made America great in the first place and that's what will bring the greatness back! 

And here she goes again with the sci-fi twist: the recession is over!  Where?  In Alpha Centauri?  Oh, wait - on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and in government reports.   In real life, we are in the permanently recessive stage of economic decline with no prospects for upward turn.  This slow sliding may feel to the uninitiated as a flat plateau, but just you wait - we are bound to experience some dramatic crashes as well.

• (Brace yourself for this one, cause contrary to the previous statement:) Compensation is important to millennials, especially if they have student loans.  "If you don't pay the millennial whatever he or she thinks they are worth," they will leave.

So, no matter how much you praise them, and hug them, and take them to lunch, the old-school paycheck still matters! Except there is nothing old-school about it either.  Back in the day, wages were determined by clear and tangible factors: the sophistication of the job, the level of expertise, the scarcity of QUALIFIED professionals on the market.  But apparently it doesn't work like that with the generation of people who were born after The Breakfast Club and Back to the Future came out.  The key to their adequate compensation is their own self-worth.  We must pay them whatever they think we must pay them.  And don't forget, the employers need to account for the student loans!  Essentially the implication is that we have to pay them what they NEED and not what they earn.  "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" maybe sounds right to Sanders's supporters, but it is not the principle that lies in the American foundation.  You know whose principle that is?  Marxists-communists!

• Millennials require work-life balance.  

Just the millennials?  Is that what the article's author actually believes?  That millennials should be treated preferentially when it comes to working hours, paid time-off, etc.?  That there should be two different HR policies in every company, one for millennials and another for the rest of us chickens?  That's age-based discrimination, isn't it?   

I've always believed in the importance of work-life balance and regularly wrestle with the owners to ensure that every employee has access to the same set of benefits and perks.  And what my experience shows is that the millennials take the full advantage of these packages like no one else; sometimes to the point of abuse.  90% run out of the office the minute the clock strikes the official end time, no matter what's happening with the work.  Many don't even spare a few seconds to shut down their computers (yet all of them fancy themselves "environmentalists").  Just last year, I had a millennial employee who was out for 15 working days in the 5 months I tolerated her bullshit.  I've never had to deal with that kind of attitude before the millennials entered the workforce.         

The truth is that you don't need to be an HR expert to formulate your ideas about the reasons behind the millennials' prevalent job discontent.  Any experienced manager with a keen eye and some human insight can draw up a comprehensive list.  And here is mine (in no particular order):

1.  Many millennials, especially liberal arts majors, have a hard time defining their purpose and developing a sense of belonging at a job.  This is primarily because they go to college to learn... nothing.  I'm not even talking about slacking and partying.  There are so many narrow-niche bullshit "liberal arts" degrees out there, most bachelor graduates acquire no practical knowledge.  And it makes thinking of a career path very difficult.
2. Much scarier, they are not equipped with any basic learning skills.  They can neither study on their own, nor operate with minimal supervision.  Not able to absorb new knowledge, they feel like failures and will eventually leave for an "easier" job.
3. Turns out that the damned phone is a millennial Achilles heel.  The millennials are so used to texting, tweeting, and posting, 85% of them are afraid of talking on the phone.  When confronted with a job that entails constant voice-to-voice interactions, which are a plenty,  they opt to quit.
4. Aside from athletes and health freaks, young people nowadays live incredibly passive lives.  Some people say that the abundance of streaming content is to blame, but we all know that way before YouTube (2005) and  Netflix's streaming (2008), young people were already glued to their computers and game consoles.  Thus, they suffer terribly on the jobs that require them to be out of the office most of the time - selling, pitching, servicing, etc.  According to some HR professionals, this is one of the millennials' biggest complains.    
5. The bulk of this generation grew up with no discipline or structure, both at home and at school.  While being a non-conformist is an invaluable quality when it comes to independent thinking and artistic expression, in a survival-driven business environment the lack of self-control, inability to follow rules of conduct, and disregard for subordination can make one's life pretty unbearable. 
6. They want to be hugged and cuddled all the time.  Many of them crumble under pressure and cannot deal with reprimands.
7. I know it sounds like a cliche at this point, but it is true - they do want trophies just for showing up, because that's what they are used to.  As a result, they develop a clinical deficiency of self-motivation for achieving merit-based recognition.  They shy away from competitive environments where hard work and achievement translates into tangible rewards of raises, bonuses, and promotions.
8. Celebrity-saturated social media made the majority of millennials into unsettled zombies who are preoccupied with fantasies of becoming instantaneously rich and famous.  I guarantee that the star-struck ones will continue moving from one job to another, feeling extremely discontent.   
9. The majority of the millennials are not prepared to be self-reliant.  The livelihood of many a chronic quitter usually doesn't depend on their own paychecks; they expect to be continuously supported by their parents.  
10. And some young people, just like in every generation before them, are restless because they want to be adventurers; they are afraid that Life will pass them by.  The boring job can wait; while they pursue their dreams.  And, of course, sadly, most of them are confused, and don't know what they want, and don't have any ideas, or talents, or clues.  But let me tell you: that is the only good reason to quit your job (assuming you can afford it).  All the others are just weaknesses and incompetence.           

 

Photo Quote of the Week: The Millennial Conundrum

© 2016 Original by YAC. All rights reserved.

10 HR Lessons From Summer-Binging on "The Good Wife" Plus Some Other Stuff

In the TV business, summer traditionally has been considered an off-season.  Primarily because the broadcast networks' prime series go on a 4-month hiatus after completing their 20+ episode seasons.  Nowadays, of course, it's not all that relevant for TV viewers, because...  Well, for multiple reasons, really, but to name a few:  

First of all, if you prefer edgier premium cable series, your TV viewing patterns are driven by  2-3 month seasons scheduled at different times throughout the year: Shameless airs January through March, Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley - April -June, Masters of Sex - July-September, Homeland -  October-December, etc.  Even if you are into blending your TV cocktail out of cable and broadcast ingredients, you most likely use on-demand and DVR options to accommodate your personal schedules and to fill the airing gaps.  Plus, some broadcast networks now have "summer shows" - short-seasoned and "limited" series aired specifically to cover the off-season void: Hannibal, Wayward Pines, Under the Dome, Aquarius, etc.

The most important factor, however, is that we've stopped being restricted by conventional TV ever since Netflix came along.  First, they made the idea of going to video stores and looking for something to watch unnecessary.  We were so grateful for digital searching, online ordering, and USPS drop-ins and drop-offs.  But then even walking to the mailbox became unnecessary, because they made a tremendous volume of content available for IP streaming, including rare and obscure movies, shows, documentaries, anime, etc. from all over the world! 

They didn't stop there either - they got into creating their own original programming.  And then Amazon followed suit!  As a result, we got access to gems that make me feel as if I am living through some sort of an indie renaissance via the Internet: House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, Peaky Blinders, Grace and Frankie, Sense8 (Netflix originals), Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle (Amazon's originals).  It's fucking incredible!

Moreover, not only that streaming content is available everywhere you can go online, it's available in whole seasons.  There is no waiting for weeks at a time until the next episode; no mid-season separation anxiety; no loss of vital details from previous weeks.  Technically you can watch a 12-episode season in one day.  It is my understanding that some people actually do that. 

Netflix had at their hands the best market-testing sample imaginable - their entire subscription base.  They must've noticed early on that a large percentage of the viewing population doesn't restrict itself to one episode at a time.  They even installed a special probe at the start of the third consecutively watched episode to test whether you are actually binging or have simply fallen asleep on your couch.  Brilliant! 

Yes, binging - as in excessive indulgence, as in manifestation of addictive personality traits.  Not a new thing, really.  TV networks (USA especially) have been scheduling rebroadcasting marathons since the 80s.  By offering this opportunity to audiences with pretty much any kind of preferences, Netflix forever altered the cultural lives of millions of people. 

The phenomenon itself became a marketing tool for Netflix's competitors, who want you to know that you can replicate this experience with them as well:  This summer, Amazon actually used the phrase "binge on your favorite shows for free" in its promotional messages for Premium subscriptions.  HBO, still holding onto their highbrow status, softens it by offering you to "feast" on your past and present favorite shows on HBO GO.

Poor David Foster Wallace warned, way before streaming had become a household concept, that Television is the one and only true American addiction.  He predicted that catering to user demand for content of their choice whenever and wherever they wanted it (remember the "direct dissemination"?) may irrevocably alter us and potentially result in the crumbling of human will.

But who am I to judge?  Yes, my life is too busy for hardcore binging and I refuse to watch an episode of anything on my goddamned iPhone, but I've been taking advantage of on-demand entertainment ever since it was first introduced by American cable providers 15 years ago.  Then came iTunes 6.0 (2005).  Today - Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, HBO Go, Showtime Anytime - I've got them all, including a Fire Stick to carry them with me wherever I go. 

But that was not the topic of this post, was it? (Too bad you cannot hear me laughing at myself.)  This was meant to be a brief introduction to the shocking fact that, even with all that variety of quality entertainment on hand, at some point in July I found myself with my personal TV time-slot empty.  And let me tell you, that made it hard to ignore the binging and feasting callings of the content pushers.

I browsed the variety of offerings and ended up with The Good Wife on Amazon Prime.  It used to be one of the shows I watched during its active seasons - all the way through the middle of Season 4.  But then, 2013 announced its arrival to Netflix with their first two major originals, plus Top of the Lake, plus The Fall, the first season of Broadchurch, etc., etc.  I'm a busy woman - something had to go.  Now I picked up where I left off.  

I have to admit, assuming you manage not to paralyze your life or degrade your mental and motoric agility, watching multi-season, multi-episode shows without gaps measured in weeks and months has its undeniable benefits.  Complex and intricate storytelling loses some of its power when it's broken up into weekly installments and then gets shelved away for 4 or more months.  Reducing these gaps not only allows for a more detail-oriented viewing, it also gives you an opportunity to assess the show's merits and values in a more coherent way. 

Aside from the most obvious and well acknowledged attributes of The Good Wife - strive for realism; acute attention to the impact of technology on our lives; honest depiction of shifting morality; head-on tackling of race, class, gender, sex, and all other divides - what I like the most about the show is its refusal to label itself as a single genre.  We can definitely identify it as a Drama, but the range of applicable modifiers is quite long - family, political, crime, legal, courtroom.

But what I realized while watching seasons 4 through 6 now, was that in it's wardrobe full of genres, The Good Wife's favorite outfit was the Workplace Drama.  One law firm, another law firm, State's Attorney's office, governor's office, clients' businesses (including a drug-distribution organization), you name it - all of them are depicted as places of employment.  And the human relationships inside these businesses play essential roles in the show's storytelling.  The office politics, alliances, squabbles, hiring, firing, promotion, compensation, peers' competition, subordination, fraternizing, partnerships, resignations, harassment, even telecommuting -  all of them have been used as plot points.

Once I started noticing, I've found so many typical and easily recognizable Human Resources issues,  it was hard to pick the following ten:

1. Any employee, no matter how highly positioned and compensated, is always a disgruntled employee.  It's remarkable how much pent-up gall towards Lockhart & Gardner started spilling out of Alicia and Cary as soon as they left to set up their own firm.  They were never that rude to any other opponents as they were to their former bosses.  What was it that Cary said to Will and Diane? That watching them squirm gives him an immense pleasure?  It's the nature of a subservient position - no matter what, we don't like it.
2. Why don't we like it?  Because there is no such a thing as a fair boss. Every boss believes that you belong to him, yet he doesn't really need you and will do just fine without you.  That's why bosses never bother acknowledging, even to themselves, your full contribution and think that you should be grateful for what you've got.  Aside from always high-in-demand Kalinda, all other major and minor characters have experienced that.
   
3. Recruitment is the most depressing of all managerial responsibilities.  Will and Diane need to hire more attorneys.  They sit down with their headhunter to look at the resumes she already preselected for them.  Barely glancing at them, Will goes, "No, no, no..."  And let me tell you, whether you are an asshole or a saint, this is what you do.  And I know that not everyone sees a life story behind every resume, still it's an incredibly unpleasant exercise for all.
4. An easy interview is rarely a successful one.  Will is interviewed by Geneva Pine and her colleagues in his bid for an outsourcing contract with the State Attorney's office.  It goes great - quick and short; no follow-up questions, no drilling into specifics.  Why? Because it's just a formality - Lockhart & Gardner were never even seriously considered. Whether you are pitching yourself for employment or your company's services for a contract, the interviewing principles are exactly the same.  A short, formal, and overly polite interview means that you are not getting the job.
5. Only full-time employment comes with benefits coverage.  This one is important because many people are still confused.  Kalinda, who has been working for Will for years, is appalled that newly hired Robin has medical coverage.  Except Kalinda cannot possibly qualify for benefits because she is a 1099 contractor with other billable businesses.  This allows her not only to delay paying social security taxes, but also makes a lot of her expenses tax deductible.  In order to receive company benefits one must be a full-time payroll employee with a minimum of a 30-hour workweek.  You cannot have it both ways.
6. All computing and communication devices provided by employers belong to the said employers.  I know that many viewers may feel dismayed when they hear various bosses on the show proposing to hack into their employees' emails.  The truth is, however, that the employers are absolutely within their rights.  All devices paid for by the employer and everything inside of them are the company's property.  Not only is it implicit, but it is explicitly outlined in every single Employee's Handbook.  Yet, so many people treat the company's equipment as their own.  Hillary's personal email debacle is one recent memorable example.  People, don't be cheap and lazy, buy yourself a personal phone, external hard drives, and whatever else you need to keep your private contacts, communications, and files separately.
7. The impervious pregnancy shield.  Governor Florrick's Ethics Czar Marilyn Garbanza is pregnant and the father is 76-year-old!  Can you trust a person like that with any type of government responsibility, let alone the one that requires clarity of reasoning?  Yet,  nobody reassigns her (of course, she cannot be fired - that's a lawsuit right there), because her condition blocks everyone's common sense.  In fact, her looks merited more suitability discussions than the fact that she made a decision to have a child with a septuagenarian.
8. Workplace honesty is a relevant thing.  There is an information leak from Florrick/Agos.  Three key people (two lawyers and one investigator) privy to the information are being questioned.  All three deny any involvement.  Alicia says, "These are the most honest people I know."  Mind you, at different points in time we've seen these characters mislead their clients, lie to their opposition, trap witnesses, steal information and evidence, even betray one another!  Yet, that was all done in the "normal course of business;" to get the job done, i.e. to perform your professional duties.  Nowadays, nobody considers dishonesty on behalf of one's employer amoral.  I've done it and you've done it; everyone does it.  Are we absolved and untainted because we presume there is no direct personal gain?  That's the question.
9. How do you know when someone in the office is sleeping with the boss? Look for the telling signs.  People cannot help themselves - they get emboldened by the perceived closeness to "power."  The person in question will stand too close, laugh too loud, dress inappropriately, pick fights with peers, become insufferable for subordinates and less diligent with their duties.
   
10. One should always be aware of the temporary and unstable nature of any HR structure.  People die, get arrested on obscure charges, move on for higher salaries, or decide to be homemakers.  Companies go through mergers, buy-outs, and hostile takeovers.  And nobody, literally nobody, has a good life - everyone is fucked up and thoroughly unhappy, no matter how hard they try to hide it.  So, there is always a good chance that they may check out - out of job or out of life.  Or do something completely insane, like trying to shift from Law into politics.

But the most valuable life lesson one should take away from The Good Wife is that you should never ever burn all the bridges and cut all the ties, because you never know with whom you may need to partner next.  

Price of a Digitally-Published Word

Some topics simply cannot let you be.  They are just way too potent.  For example, some time ago, in Part I of my Arts & Entertainment by the Numbers series, I already addressed the matter of earnings one can expect to generate if he or she decides to become a "writer."  If you recall, it was established that, with a few exceptions primarily driven by seductive (literally) subjects, or notoriety (oh, I am sorry - fame) of the authors, or some magical (again, literally) mass appeal, there is not much money in writing. 

Of course, I didn't talk about ALL "writing."  That post was focused on books, both fictional and not - the self-contained multi-page opuses that come into public distribution through more or less conventional channels, which in our contemporary world include not only the old-fashioned publishing houses, but also self-publishing (including web-publishing) and on-demand-printing.  The latter have been pretty much commandeered by our ubiquitous mega-villains, Amazon and Google.  

Surprisingly, the vast majority of books are still printed and bound; and pretty much all of them are digitized as AZW, EPUB, IBA, PDF, etc. publications.  From my personal experience I can tell you that royalties on e-books, being profitability based, are actually much higher than on the printed copies.  As you can imagine, distribution of files costs a fraction of physical printing, shipping, etc.

Of course, books are not the only products of the "writing" professionals.  I fitted playwrights into Theater and screenwriters into Movies.  And I didn't want to discuss the earnings of conventional journalists, not only because I am really appalled by the contemporary standards of that trade, but also because there is nothing particularly special about their compensation.  It's basically a pay scale - no different than the one for any back-office workers.      

According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average reporter or a correspondent makes about $21 per hour, or $43,780 a year.  Of course, those working in publications with household names, especially in DC or NYC, or at cable and broadcasting venues, earn above average.  But even then we are talking $53K-$60K annual salaries.  Nothing glamorous.

If famous faces of Barbara Walters, or Katie Couric, or Matt Lauer pop into your head, stop it - those people might've started as journalists early in their career, but that's not what they are now - through some peculiar twists in their fates they've become multimillion-dollar TV personalities with roomfuls of staff who do the actual work and get paid what I said above.  Moreover, as far as I am concerned, the professional comedians Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, and John Oliver turned out to be much better newsmen than all those other smiley faces.             

But forget all that!  The remarkable thing about our electronically permeated era (as far as the writing is concerned, of course), is that the majority of the "written" words nowadays floats in the realm of computer codes; resides on some servers in the unknown to the authors locations.  The vast majority of that majority is motivated into existence by a singular intangible incentive - the writer's desire to verbally express his/her opinions and ideas; it's produced for no material reward at all.

This includes over 10,000,000 (that's 10 million!) individual and collective blogs, which produce over 4,000,000 (and that's 4 million!)  posts every day (hence, my utter surprise that my own humble entries are consistently found and read by people from different countries); online fiction publications; fan-fiction entries into various pop-culture Wikias, unpaid entries (in hopes of exposure) into a multitude of e-zines, etc., etc.  It's all created for no pay and mostly available for free (if you don't count the unbearable assault of advertising on more popular sites as your cover charge - I do).   

And even those who appear to be writing not on spec but on assignment or write on spec but get syndicated, possibly generating fees and royalties for their digital words at such giant contentmongers as, for example, The Huffington Post - nobody seems to know for sure how much money they make.  Well, people close to the subject probably have some scattered bits and pieces of information, but it's so sparse and inconsistent, it's impossible to draw any solid conclusions.  In fact, the aforementioned Bureau of Labor Statistics simply gives up on the matter, basically admitting that the new media is so, ahem, new that there are no set rates and no correspondent statistics.    

But I am not an official government agency - I am just a curious person armed with my common sense and capable of making logical conclusions.  Moreover, I have the freedom to extrapolate, speculate, and infer.  And infer I shall.    

The first fundamental truth about online presence is that the majority of people religiously believe in its powers of publicity.  Hence, the said number of blogs, shameless exhibitionism of facebook pages and personal sites, endless YouTube videos, etc., etc. - general population thinks that if anybody can "be found" today, it will be online.  A few miraculous stories of the Internet exposure actually leading to "fame" only reinforces this belief.  (And the sea of content is growing exponentially, if you catch my drift - but that's another topic).  In context of our subject this makes me think that those who get published in popular online outlets agree to do so for next to nothing, i.e. for much  less than even conventional writers get.

The second fundamental characteristic of the Internet itself as a business is that the majority of revenues generated by non-eCommerce websites, if any, come from online advertising, at least for now (I think this situation is going to change, but that's, again, another topic).  Advertisers, just like the general public, have their own system of the Internet faith - the click-per-view conversion.  In the web environment, the old admen rule of placement for the maximum consumer impact gets a statistical dress-up: a certain number of views results in a click on the ad's link; a certain number of clicks, in its turn, converts into a consumer acquisition, i.e. a sale.  Everyone is invested into the same idea: the more views, the more clicks, the more sales; hence, the popular pay-per-click pricing formula.  As a result, the online content is monetarily valued on its potential viewership. 

This made me think that the most logical way for an owner of a content-driven website to compensate a contributing writer would be based on some rate-per-view (just like YouTube with its videos).  The question is how much?  What's the digitally published word worth?  Apparently, even Labor Statistics officials don't know - most likely because reporting those earnings is still a gray area.    

Ah, but that's what the Internet is actually for - the information superhighway.  If something piques your interest and you know how to formulate your search, you will find what you need:  like the large UK blogging hub on everything pop WhatCulture.com (they are absolutely right - they have nothing to do with Culture, concentrating primarily on blockbusters and gossip in film, big hits and gossip in TV, mega stars and gossip in music, plus gaming, sports, WWE). 

The site's content model is based on accepting (not guaranteed) and publishing other people's submissions.  On their Write For Us and Get Paid page they openly solicit material from the potential contributors (Lists! Lists! Lists! That's their preferred format - "9 Reasons to Be Excited About Arrested Development Season 5" or "10 Actors Who Really Don't Belong in the Upcoming Movies" and shit like that).  Therefore, the "get-paid" rate is openly disclosed right there: £0.40 ($0.62) per 1,000 views. 

Aha!  With that in hand, let us entertain ourselves with some arithmetical exercising:  Yesterday, the most-read entry in the film section of WhatCulture.com was "10 Things You Need to Know About Captain America: Civil War" - it had 1.3 million views, thus generating its author $806.  Not bad, assuming he put it together pretty quickly.  Theoretically speaking, if you can pop one of this every day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, you can actually earn $210K annual wage! 

But the probability of it, of course, is quite slim - not only because no one on their own can research and write 260 entries a year, but mainly because it's hard to achieve such viewership: for example, the most read TV article had only 223 thousand views ($138.26) and the top one in a deeply hidden Art division (the only one in the whole site I personally found interesting - 10 Up and Coming Portrait Photographers) attracted exactly 2000 readers ($1.32 worth).  The audience's interest is fickle. 

This site is big and popular - the effort of a full-scope statistical analysis goes beyond my level of interest (I am sure the management has all the numbers readily available to them), but my quick-glance conclusion is that the average views per post is about 50,000 or $31 value.  So, ladies and gentlemen, even if you can do three of those a week, the more realistic earnings would be a modest amount of $4,836 per year.  

I say, don't quit your day job for this just yet - that is, of course, if you have one.

Quote of the Week: No Retirement in Your Future

  "Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous.  When I was sixty-five I still had pimples."

           George Burns

           1896 - 1996

 The Frustrated CFO's Comment:  At this point, the best my generation can do is to look for humor in our situation.

Legal Expert's Rundown on Employers' Rights to Discriminate

I frequently write (and talk) about the distortion of bill of rights in the workplace and other similar perks of employees' existence.  Hell, I even have a separate category for posts devoted to nepotism. I always stress out that small-business employers can pretty much define their own rules, as long as they put them in writing and notify new hires of how things are done in their domain.  Not only that labor authorities don't look into employment conditions of companies with less than 50 employees, but, even if one or another wrong-doing is brought to their attention, they will take the corporate side as long as there is a correspondent written policy in place.  And think a hundred times before suing your former employer - you may end up staring at a defamation law suit filed against you. 

Now, I have an opportunity to direct my readers to an expert's list of legally permissible ways employers can discriminated both existing employees and job applicants in a business of any size - big or small.  I have previously quoted a veteran employment law specialist and award-winning writer Donna Ballman on the issues of workers' rights.  And, as you can see, her popular blog Screw You Guys, I Am Going Home is a single proud member of my Blog Roll.  I highly recommend for everyone to follow the link below and read her latest contribution to AOL Jobs - the characteristically concise summary of legitimized discriminatory practices.  I guarantee that at least some of them will surprise you.

8 Ways Employers Can Discriminate Against Workers - Legally by Donna Ballman         

The Clueless Boss of a Frustrated Downshifter

The economy and the resulting miserable state of the job market forced many financial executives to downshift, i.e. take jobs way below their levels of expertise, authority, and adequate compensation.  It's been almost a year since I wrote about the heartbreaking reality of first finding such a position and then accepting it for the sake of having food on the table and keeping the roof over your family's head.  Yet, the painful topic is still relevant.

But let's look a little further.  We have an opportunity to examine an interesting situation brought to my attention by an actual downshifter - a former CFO of a, now defunct, $500-million-dollar firm.  After a year of a futile job-hunting he accepted, at 50% of his former compensation, a Controller's position in a young and small ($30 million) company, ran by two owners - a female CEO and her partner with a COO title.  

How many times did I write about accidental bosses?  And here we go again: this business has started because the two partners got lucky. They were in the right place at the right time with extensive connections and sufficient funding at hand.  Neither of them actually needed it to survive, but the opportunity were too exciting to pass up. 

Guess what?  The CEO never led a company before.  She never even worked in a commercial enterprise.  Her partner has an MBA from an Ivy League school, but he only worked overseas.  Neither have the chops to make good executives, yet both have undeniable talents and a lot of enthusiasm.  She is a sales ace and the toughest negotiator you can find.  He is incredibly detailed-oriented.

Not only that they managed to get the company off the ground eight years ago, they kept it growing with minimal labor resources, including  a single bookkeeper.  Hiring a senior financial person was definitely not among their priorities. Until...  Some people are just born lucky.  An even bigger  opportunity presented itself.  To implement it they needed more capital.  The dogged COO wore down one of the major banks into providing them with a substantial trade finance line.  Among bank's mandates was hiring a proper Controller. 

Enter our former CFO.

Because both execs are not very clear on the leadership functions, the division of responsibilities is blurred.  The COO was in charge of the Controller's hiring.  The CEO never even saw the candidate's resume or salary history.  When COO decided that this is their guy, the CEO was called in for a minute to shake the future Controller's hand.  

Yet, once our downshifter started working there, he realized that the woman's word was the final authority on pretty much all other issues.  Now, because she lacks corporate experience, she is not capable of assessing the Controller's performance.  In her mind, any other accountant would provide the same input as this guy, who managed in the first three months to correct more procedural, systematic, recording, and administrative errors than he did in 25 years before this job. Moreover, he contributes into the company's strategic decisions.  All that for a price of a low-brow peripheral Controller.  The CEO has no clue that what she's got was a gift; that she got very lucky again and obtained an Hermes bag for the price of a Coach.

This is a big problem.  If your boss doesn't understand your value, she cannot appreciate your contribution. The fact that someone with lower qualifications and less experience would not be able to attend to the sophisticated tasks you accomplish remains unnoticed.  As a result, you are helping to better the company without a chance for a fair reward. 

What to do in this situation?  You are not the type to brag every time you do something extraordinary.  The first thought comes to mind is to re-introduce yourself.  The guy who hired you didn't share your resume with his partner, so give her one together with your salary history.  You can say, "I understand you've never had a chance to look at it before and I think it's not fair for either of us."   I know some people will say it's tasteless, but the options here are limited.

Secondly, you must propose a proper evaluation system for all staff members.  Because these people have no idea how to go about it, they will turn to you.  This is your chance!  Provide them with the format that allows employees to list their own accomplishments.  Then, make sure that reviews are actually conducted.

Finally, if you don't get satisfactory acknowledgement anyway, start looking for another job.  Maybe you will be luckier this time around.  It's like I always say, employment at will works both ways: they can separate from you at any time, but so can you.

HR Capitalist Believes That Operational Guidelines Are Optional

Last week (Wednesday, January 26th, to be exact), my fellow Typepad blogger HR Capitalist (www.hrcapitalist.com) posted a short musing on the subject of what he calls "Rules Orientation." Not a very clear term, it basically attempts to encompass the process of introducing new hires to the way the business is done in the company, i.e. operational guidelines. And the thesis is that it's not always necessary and the choice depends on the propensity of the candidate: if he wants the structure, give it to him; but if he doesn't like to be restrained by the rules, let him figure out his own way. The latter apparently is especially "good" for the companies that operate without rules in the first place - the mayhem kind of businesses.

(Side note: I cannot suppress my high cultural standards and must make a note about the inappropriateness of the "Fight Club" reference. I just cannot stand the pretentiousness of people who don't even understand what they are watching, but try to appear deep. Let me tell you, it took a lot of discipline, military organization, and RULES to properly run Project Mayhem. Remember? "The first rule of Fight Club is..." and so on - rules 1 to 8. Even The Narrator's psyche was protected from Tyler Durden within as long as the rules were followed. Once they were violated, the spell was broken.)

These kind of ideas and recommendations are somewhat surprising, coming from a career HR guru. How narrow is the employment niche of, what he calls, "low rules" candidates? In my opinion, minuscule - maybe some small haphazard consulting company with no supporting staff and a life expectancy of a couple of years, or a startup based on an IPhone App that will be hot for a few months and then lost in the sea of 300,000+ solutions.

In any other type of business, or even in the same kind but with a little bit of structural complexity, project deadlines, customer base, etc., operational guidelines guarantee faster immersion into daily duties. The only employees that should not be bound by protocol are the creative staff (designers, architects, artists, etc.); and even those need to abide by the rules of conduct, employment agreements, client-time billing, etc.

The biggest question is, who the hell can afford nowadays the unstructured learning curves of people not powered by certain procedural standardization? Especially if they are very good - you don't really want them to waste time on "figuring out" their personal ways of going about the job.

Moreover, I guarantee you that no small or midsize business, with its flat organizational structure and intense concentration of responsibilities, can let a no-rules screwball (or rather cannonball) into its already vulnerable system. Just imagine for a second someone like Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) running around your workplace, releasing leopards, breaking all conventions, and eventually reducing the result of long-time effort to a pile of disconnected fossils.

But I shouldn't be really surprised that this post was written. This is a typical problem with many narrowly-focused specialists, including HR gurus. They lack the ability for systematic thinking, are not capable of viewing business as an integral organism, where everything contributes to the ultimate success, and, thus, rarely make good executive material.

I am all for matching employees abilities to their appropriately assigned tasks and specifically talk about it in the last section of "CFO Techniques", but I cannot imagine trying to fit into any organization those people who cannot follow any rules.

A CFO's Democratism Gets Tested

In most smaller companies, CFOs and controllers include general HR functions into their scopes of responsibilities - that's a given. The flat organizational structures, though, with their spatial and psychological proximity of top executives to the staff, play peculiar tricks on those in charge of the company's human relations.

Very frequently a CFO takes a role of a buffer between the owner/CEO and the rest of the company's employees. She feels obligated to soften the impact of the direct dealing with frequently harsh and hard attitudes of the boss.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: more frequently than not entrepreneurs don't have an experience of ever being in a position of an employee and, therefore, they have very little understanding of the staff's mentality. On the other hand, a CFO maybe a right-hand person now, but she is still just a salaried employee, most likely grown into her current status by climbing through the ranks. If she is a decent human with a conscience, she is sensitive to the needs of valuable employees and cares about their well-being (if they are useless, let someone else care about them).

It's likely that an excellent CFO would enjoy a comparatively preferential treatment by a CEO: more disciplinary leniency, nicer attitude, better perks, general amiability, etc. When it comes to other employees, their efforts and achievements may be remarkable, but they are not as evident to the boss, and that reduces their value in his eyes. I've had one CEO openly tell me that if I want a certain benefit (let's say flexible spending account) for myself, he would be fine with obtaining it, but he did not care about the rest of the "worker-bees."

So, the CFO takes it upon herself to protect other employees from undue tyranny and act as their speaker when it comes to betterment of the employment conditions, whatever they are: raises, bonuses, vacations, benefits, etc. Sort of like a representative of the XYZ Company's employees union. And when she discusses this situation with her friends and family, she expresses her disdain for the undemocratic ways of her boss, taking pride in her efforts to right the wrongs.

Now imagine such a CFO taking a position with a new company - small, young, still pretty much in development stage. The owners are very liberal and treat everyone like equals. Moreover, the CFO is the last person being hired. Those few other employees have been there from the start. Nobody needs protection. Furthermore, there is one person who has been there the longest, starting as a CEO's assistant. Not that she gets any special perks or something like that, but she definitely feels very secure.

This should make the democratic CFO very happy. After all, wasn't she fighting for equality of other employees all the time before? Yes, it's nice; wonderful, really; exactly what she hoped to find... Except that... Being "the chosen one" was kind of a guilty pleasure too, an enjoyable self-esteem booster. And the gratitude of others for all that blow-cushioning effort was very rewarding as well. As important as the democratic principles were to this CFO, the old tyranny is somewhat missed.

That's how we, humans, are. For various reasons and purposes, mostly subconsciously and without any malice, we create these little lies that alter our self-image and other people's perception of us in one way or another.

It reminds me of my UK friend of many years, Gerald Hamer's, revelation concerning his constant bitching and moaning about endless international traveling he had to endure throughout many years of his impressive career as financial broker and adviser. "In truth," he said, "deep inside I love the goddamn airports; the sub-par plane food; the inevitable delays; god-forsaken Yakutsk, the coldest city on Earth, with its diamond mines one week, and unbearable humidity of Bahrain another. I wouldn't want it any other way."

So, all you, democratic CFOs out there, work as hard as you can and fight for your employees' well-being with all you've got, but be honest with yourself: you enjoy being special, the Most Valuable Player in the field.