Month: April 2006

Reality check

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Last Updated on April 29, 2006 by stlplace

One big news in the business world last week: Microsoft missed its earning estimate for this quarter and guided down its earnings for next quarter and next year. It caused the Microsoft stock (MSFT) to drop more than 10% on Friday. It was the largest drop in one trading day in 5 years. I did not own MSFT stocks. But I was expecting MSFT go up from its trading range in past 3 years (24 to 28) because its upcoming new products: Windows Vista and new Office suite. This news kind caught me in surprise. I have similar feeling for Intel and Dell because every time when Microsoft releases new OS, it will spur the upgrade of PCs.

Obviously I was wrong. The convention wisdom does not work any more in today’s business environment. The competetion is intense in the new areas of growth for Microsoft: online services, game, media, etc. Nowadays even Microsoft is talking about sacking. This reminds me the GE “20, 70, 10” rule which invented by Jack Welch. Basically GE will get rid of bottom 10% of its work force every year. A lot companies followed the suit, but some did not get the soul of this rule. In the talk given by Jack a few weeks ago at Washing U. at St. Louis, Jack explained why: at GE the managers are honest (or direct) to its employees, they will point out what the employee needs to improve constantly. If the employee did not improve performance as recomended by his/her manager, he/she already knows about the situation and will not be surprised if told to let go. He pointed out in some companies the managers are too nice, they would say “everything is good” until hard time comes, in which case they have to lay off lots of people. The sad thing is in that case, those employees are already in their 40s and 50s and it’s hard for them to get new jobs.

Fun

NBA playoffs

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Last Updated on April 29, 2006 by stlplace

This week is the National Turn off TV week, but I did not participate as usual. I spent some time watching the NBA playoffs. Although I am not a big fan of NBA and those super stars, and I always think we should only watch the last 5 minutes of the 4th quarter. Because in a close game, that’s when the result gets decided; in a not-so-close game (one team beats another easily), it’s no fun to watch anyway.

But I think I saw something new in those last 5 minutes in past 2 games: the Sacremento vs. San Antonio game, and LA Laker vs. Phoenix game. San Antonio pulled up an unbelievable win because Barry made a 3 point shot in the last second of regular time and Manu Ginoboli is unstoppable in the overtime. Sacremento’s star player Mike Bibby could not match that. For the Lakers, as usual Kobe is their star in the crunch time. And he did very well.

Business Fun

Filling the soul

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Last Updated on April 29, 2006 by stlplace

What’s the common characters among book, coffee and music? Besides you can have them all in Borders or Barnes&Nobles. They all can fill your soul. One would wonder while that’s true for book and music, how can the coffee fill our souls? Well, that’s what I heard from Howard Schultz on today’s “60 minutes”. Mr. Schultz is the founder of Star Bucks, which has 11,000 stores in 33 countries, and is opening 5 stores everyday.

Schultz says, “One of our colleagues coined a phrase a long time ago and said, ‘We’re not in the business of filling bellies. We’re in the business of filling souls.'”

Saint Louis

Borders

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Last Updated on April 23, 2006 by stlplace

I have not been to the Borders for a few months. This evening when I visited the Borders at Creve Coeur, I was glad to see, Gene Operle, a local musician, was getting ready to perform. I remembered I listened to his Country songs a year ago, also at Borders (can not remember whether it was at Sunset Hills or Creve Coeur). When I heard the “Rhythm of the rain”, “Sometimes we touch”, and “Rockie Mountain High”, all the familar songs I used to listen in college, I felt like seeing old friends again. Gene is going to perform on May 13 at Sunset Hills, I will try to be there and enjoy it again.

Here is a map of the Borders store.

There are other public (free) performance at Borders. I attended Mark Biehl’s musical performance last year and it was also good.

Business Stocks

Haigui MBA

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Last Updated on April 23, 2006 by stlplace

MBA is a hot topic for many overseas Chinese students and professionals: for the money or the dream. I have thought about doing this from time to time, but I am still at ground zero due to reasons such as: lack of the money and time; not sure about the purpose of the MBA; don’t want to follow the crowd; etc.

I read the following article from a well known overseas Chinese web site. And thought it is a good one. Maybe some day I will go for a MBA if I could find a compelling reason to do so. Here is the link of the article. Note I don’t necessarily agree everything the author says.

Fun

Best jobs by Money magazine

Post author By stlplace
Post date April 19, 2006
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Last Updated on April 22, 2006 by stlplace

I came across this top 50 best jobs list a while ago. I was very surprised to see my job, software engineer, as many of my friends’ jobs, is on the top of the list. I got the hard copy of magazine today and confirmed this. I have quite a few friends who are college professors (ranked 2nd), I am happy for them too.

There are a few factors in deciding the rank: the number of job openings, the salary growth, flexibility and creativity of the work, barrier of entry, etc. I believe the software engineer position is ranked high because of its projected salary growth (46%) in next 10 years. Not sure if this could materialize for US programmers with the outsourcing to India and China.

Business Saint Louis

Jack Welch

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Last Updated on April 19, 2006 by stlplace

Went to the Business School at Washington U. this afternoon, to listen Jack Welch’s talk about “Leadership”. I read his two books, and have some idea of the topic. Some of the take aways from his talk:

1) Work with tough minded (rather than nice) and fair people, so that you will get rigorous training early in the career.

2) Evaluating people is very important task and skill. In GE one of Jack’s main job is picking the right people and leadership development. Also in GE the VP of Human Resource is more important then CFO. Because developing people is more important than keeping the score (Jack’s word).

3) Authenticity: be true to yourself.

4) Be curious: learning all the time.

Saint Louis

How to treat a waiter

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Last Updated on April 14, 2006 by stlplace

A good article from Yahoo Finance. This may not directly be applicable to the restaurants in China, but I think we can all learn something from here.

Business Software development

Open source millionaires

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Last Updated on May 28, 2009 by stlplace

There is a little piece of news in the software industry caught my attention this week. Red Hat, one of the biggest open source solution provider decided to buy JBoss, a not so well known open source middleware (application server) softare developer, for USD 350 million. I read an article on Business week about JBoss’s CEO Marc Fleury and “how he got here” last week. Because I did not find the BW article, I put a similar article on eWeek here, this one is interview. Quote Marc’s word “I have said many times that I want to create a new generation of open-source millionaires.” I think his word is true to a great extent because his company is mainly owned by founders and employees.

Saint Louis Stocks

Zillow

Post author By stlplace
Post date April 8, 2006
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Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on April 8, 2006 by stlplace

My friend mentioned this real estate estimate web site to me. We were very excited to see the property value of our St. Louis homes went up sharply in the past month, according to the web site. While we are mature enough to know this is not 100% accurate, it’s good news nonetheless.

Here is a review article from WSJ about zillow. I think it’s a useful tool for individuals who are in the real estate market.