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Restored Beauty

Guy Stuff

As a rule, I’m not one for restoring old cars — I’m irretrievably non-mechanical and worse, I hate getting my hands dirty — so when Longtime Friend Knob sent me an email about the old Citroën Type H Van being restored, it took me a while to get up the enthusiasm to click on the link. I mean, sure, the Type H was in production from 1947 until 1981(!), and apart from only a few cosmetic changes, looked pretty much in  1981 as it did in 1947.

When you’ve got decent style, good engineering and excellent functionality, why change, right? (And yes, I do love the Colt 1911 for precisely the same reasons.)

To be honest, the Type H never got me going, although I cannot deny its appeal: those corrugated panels make it look like the French van-equivalent of a Junkers Ju-52 transport airplane (which is unsurprising, because the Citroën engineers actually copied the Ju-52’s style), and its 1.9-liter engine was more powerful than most other Euro vans of the late 1940s. (By the way, although the Ju-52 originally started production in 1931 and finished in 1952, it remained in service with various airlines around the world until the 1980s — making the similarities between it and the Type H even more striking.)

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today.

When I finally did click on the link Knob sent me, it was not some boring nut-by-bolt restoration story; oh no, it involved transforming a modern Citroën Jumper van back into a Type H. Here’s what the Jumper looks like before the retrofit:

…which is okay, but dead boring in the usual modern wind-tunnel-design kinda way. However, here’s the retrofitted Type H:

…and I think it looks fantastic. Of the two, I’d take the retrofitted Type H any day of the week; but you knew that about me already, didn’t you?

French Friday II: Salted & Unsalted

Friday Feature

I have occasionally written quite scathingly about my recent past as a college student, but I have to make one thing quite clear: at a rough guess, I passed through the classes of approximately three dozen professors, and with maybe only a few exceptions, they were all good to excellent. One of the excellent ones was Professor Michael Leggiere PhD. of the U of North Texas Military History Department, who schooled me on Napoleonic Warfare. Dr. Mike is actually a world-renowned expert on this topic, is often called away to give talks and seminars at places like London’s University College, and in fact the last time I spoke with him in person, he was about to tour some of Napoleon’s Polish battlefields with another military historian, Hasso von Bismarck — yeah, that Bismarck family.

Part of Leggiere’s Napoleonic Warfare course was a brief but typically-superb biography of Napoleon himself, and as I’d read only superficially about the Little General before, this was an eye-opener, to say the least. To a history junkie like myself, this meant reading about Napoleon outside the course curriculum, and by happy coincidence, this extra study dovetailed very nicely with a course on French cultural history I was taking concurrently (yes, I picked my classes carefully, why do you ask?).

Napoleon, you see, wasn’t just some military adventurer or conqueror (although he was both those things, par excellence); he also laid the foundation for the modern French state: its system of (Napoleonic) law, its education system, and its administration — most of which remained more or less unchanged until the 1970s. (Just to make everyone feel inadequate: he’d laid out the blueprint for all the above reforms by age 24, while studying at a military academy and being involved as a junior officer in a couple of military campaigns.)

I’ve told you all that so I can tell you this.

One of the quirks of French cuisine is that most often the butter is unsalted, and at a French dinner table you will usually find a tiny cruet of salt with a microscopic spoon inside, so that you can salt your butter (or not) according to taste. To someone like myself, accustomed only to salted butter, this seemed like an affectation, but it wasn’t that at all: it was the result of taxation, and this is one of the things changed forever by Napoleon’s administrative reforms.

One of the best parts of our U.S. Constitution is the “interstate commerce” clause, which forbids states from levying taxes on goods and services passing from one state to another, and through another in transit. This was not the case in pre-Napoleonic France. Goods manufactured in, say, Gascony or Provence would pass through a series of customs posts en route to Paris, and at each point the various localities would levy excise taxes on the goods, driving up the final price at its eventual destination.

Which brings us to salt. French salt, you see, was produced mainly on the Atlantic coastline, and was a major “export” of Brittany to the rest of France. Butter, of course, was produced universally — in and outside Paris and ditto for every major city — but the salt for the butter came almost exclusively from Brittany, and having been taxed  multiple times by the time it reached points east like Paris or Lyons, it was expensive.  So the cuisine and eating habits in those parts developed without the use of salt — or, if salt was requested, at an added cost. It’s why, to this day, many French recipes use unsalted butter as an ingredient. (In contrast, butter for local consumption in western France was [and still is] almost always salted, because salt was dirt cheap there.)

Napoleon’s reforms did away with all that; he saw to it that the douane locale checkpoints and toll booths along the main roads were abolished (causing salt prices in eastern France to plummet and become a mainstay of French cuisine at last). And when the towns and villages protested about the loss of tax revenue, Napoleon made up the shortfall with “federal” funds out of the national treasury.

Of course, the French treasury had in the meantime been emptied out by, amongst other things, the statist welfare policies of the Revolutionary government (stop me if this is starting to sound familiar). Which is why, to raise money, Napoleon invaded wealthy northern Italy and western Germany (as it is now), pillaged their rich cities’ treasuries and garnered revenue from the wealthy aristocracy, who paid bribes to avoid having their palaces sacked and their wealth confiscated.

So yes: Napoleon was a Crool Invader, a Warmonger and Plunderer. Except that in the wake of his cruelty and so on, much of Western Europe ceased to be oppressive feudal monarchies and became instead republican democracies, because while he took their money, he left behind Revolutionary ideals and democratic government.

But I’ll talk about that another time.

In passing, if any one of you has kids or grandkids who are going to study modern European history, tell them to go to U of North Texas just to take classes from Professors Michael Leggiere and Alfred Mierzejewski, and to take every single class they teach, every semester. (Each professor teaches about four or five topics, but never simultaneously, and spreads them out over several semesters.) I missed a couple of their courses simply because I just wasn’t there long enough, and I regret it to this day. I’ll talk about the brilliant Dr. Alfred Mierzejewski in another post, when I talk about Nazi cattle cars.

Snowflake Test

Business

Reader Dave O, in the Comments to my post about job interviews, asks:

What’s your opinion of Kyle Reyes’ “Snowflake Test”?

As I don’t watch TV much, I had no idea that Mr. Reyes had set off a shitstorm by revealing that he used a personality test (his description) to weed out potentially harmful and unproductive applicants from the hiring pool. So I looked the thing up (it’s excellent), and just for fun, I’ll take the test. As I don’t know the scoring metrics Reyes uses, I have no idea whether I’d pass or fail, but here we go:

Outside of standard benefits, what benefits should a company offer employees?
— Other than healthcare, disability, life insurance and pension (to vested employees), I can’t think of any other than perhaps a paid day’s leave for a birthday. Maybe.

What should the national minimum wage be?
— There shouldn’t be a national minimum wage.

How many sick days should be given to employees?
— It depends on the employee. Any condition that may require a regularly-taken sick day should first be vetted by an independent doctor’s opinion. Other than that, maybe half a dozen per annum total, non-accumulative. (Catastrophic injury or illness is obviously a different matter.)

How often should employees get raises?
— Other than CoL adjustments, only after exceptional performance or growth on the job.

How do you feel about guns?
— (Okay, you guys can quit laughing now.) I love guns and have been shooting them for well over fifty years. I love the self-control they demand of me when I’m trying to shoot them accurately, and I love the ability they give me for self-defense and defense of my family and community.

What are your feelings about employees or clients carrying guns?
— Don’t care who carries a gun, as long as they’re careful with them and/or keep them holstered.

What are your feelings about safe spaces in challenging work environments?
— Don’t see the need for them. (Especially if everyone’s carrying a gun.) The whole concept of “safe spaces” makes me irritable, and the people who demand them are childish and not worthy of respect, but of ridicule.

In a creative environment like The Silent Partner Marketing, what do you envision work attire looking like?
— I go to work every day wearing a jacket and tie to show respect for the company and towards my clients. I’m as creative as anyone on the planet, but I don’t think “creative” staff should get a pass to dress like hippies or golfers just because that somehow “helps” their creativity.

Should “trigger warnings” be issued before we release content for clients or the company that might be considered “controversial”?
— Absolutely not. Content should rise or fall on its merits, not whether or not it may hurt someone’s feelings.

How do you feel about police?
— I have to say, I’ve always trusted the police — at least I did twenty or thirty years ago. Of late, however, I’m becoming uneasy at their increased use of “no-knock” raids, warrantless wire-tapping and suchlike. But local cops and cops on the beat? I’ll always have their back, and my local guys know it.

If you owned the company and were to find out that a client is operating unethically but was a high paying client…how would you handle it?
— Fire the client. No amount of revenue is worth it. Lawyers often have to make that compromise; marketing companies should never.

When was the last time you cried and why?
— (My Readers already know when that was and why, so forgive me if I don’t answer this one.)

You arrive at an event for work and there’s a major celebrity you’ve always wanted to meet. What happens next?
— I’m not interested in meeting any celebrity, major or otherwise.

What’s your favorite kind of adult beverage?
— I have many favorites, so it depends on the mood, occasion, company and geography. In Wiltshire UK, Wadworth 6X bitter ale; in Paris, vin rouge; lunch on a a hot day, g&t or screwdriver; late night chatting with friends, single malt or Cape brandy; with Greek food, retsina — and those are just some of the options.

What’s the best way to communicate with clients?
— Face to face.

What’s your favorite thing to do in your free time?
— In no special order: read, write, shoot, or go out to dinner with family or friends.

What are your thoughts on the current college environment as it pertains to a future workforce?
— If we have to rely on the modern college for our workforce, we’re doomed.

What’s your typical breakfast?
— Before work, a cup of coffee, a croissant and maybe a piece of fruit or some yogurt. Over weekends, a cooked breakfast.

What’s your favorite drink when you go to a coffeehouse?
— I don’t normally visit coffeehouses except in Vienna, in which case it’s a Brauner. I normally drink ordinary coffee like Dunkin Donuts or Krispy Kreme Regular, black with sugar.

How do you handle bullies?
— I destroy them.

How do you handle it when your ideas are shot down?
— If the idea is fatally flawed or unworkable, then fine and I’m an idiot. If it’s a good, workable idea but rejected because of NIH or politics, I shrug and walk away, then work to see how I can get it adopted anyway.

What do you do if a coworker comes to the table with an idea and it sucks?
— I tell him that it sucks, and why, then try to improve it with him.

What does the First Amendment mean to you?
— It’s everything. Without freedom of speech, not much else works. And I don’t care if it’s “offensive” — it’s offensive speech that needs both protection and the light of day.

What does faith mean to you?
— Not much, personally, if we’re talking about religion. I always respect it in others, however, as long as they leave me alone.

Who is your role model and why?
— My late grandfather. He taught me about honor, and decency, and duty, and devotion to family. He was a WWI veteran and fought in the trenches on the Western Front, at age 17.

You’re in Starbucks with two friends. Someone runs in and says someone is coming in with a gun in 15 seconds to shoot patrons. They offer you a gun. Do you take it? What do you do next?
— I don’t need someone else’s gun because I always carry my own. Next, I’d tell everyone to get on the floor (so I get a clear field of fire), then find some cover from which to shoot behind, and finally slip the safety catch off the 1911. It’s an unlikely situation per se because I never go to Starbucks, but I understand the general issue you’re addressing.

What does America mean to you?
— Everything. I’m an immigrant, and the proudest day of my life was when I became a U.S. citizen. This is it, this is the best, and we are the last great hope of the civilized world.

You see someone stepping on an American flag. What do you do?
— Shove them away roughly and pick up the flag. After that, it’s up to them what happens next. (And yes I know that contradicts what I said earlier about the First Amendment, but in the words of the late Justice Antonin Scalia: messing with our flag is “fighting words”.)

What does “privilege” mean to you?
— Something earned, such as Gold Status in an airline’s frequent flier program.

What’s more important? Book smarts or street smarts? Why?
— Street smarts. Book smarts are the foundation; street smarts are the application thereof in real life, suitably modified. We live in real life.

I wonder if I’d get a job offer…

Screwing Americans

Two-Minute Hate

Back when I still cared about this kind of thing, I was browsing through the job boards just to see what was going on out there in my specific field of work — you know, just to keep abreast of things — when I saw a want ad for my job.

Upon further investigation, it wasn’t for my actual job — the advertiser was a different company from mine — but it could have been:

Database management and report design / writing, competent user of XYZ software, able to make effective management presentations up to Board level, five years experience minimum, seven years industry experience.

That, in essence, was what I’d been doing for about the past ten years. All well and good. Then came the kicker:

Salary: $45,000

Considering that I was on a salary in excess of $95,000 at the time, and I knew at least half a dozen other guys earning about what I did (small industry, we all knew each other), this ad made no sense. Either they were going to get a glorified data entry clerk who couldn’t really do anything close to what the job needed, or the job had been filled already — inside job, nepotism, whatever — and the company was just going through the motions to satisfy some government hiring regulation.

The point was that I knew how much experience and know-how was necessary to do that job properly — I had it, and so did my contemporaries — so I was curious to see how the thing would shake out.

Some time later (maybe even a year, I don’t remember) I called a friend who was a corporate head-hunter, and asked him to find out what had transpired. He did, and found out two things: the company hadn’t found anyone to do the job for that compensation (as I suspected they wouldn’t), so after nine months they’d gone overseas and hired not one but two people from India or Sri Lanka to fill the position.

Now I know what some people are going to say: the position was paying far more than the job was worth, so that’s why the company ended up getting cheaper labor. But that wasn’t the case at all: for someone to have acquired the experience necessary, they would have had to have spent a minimum of two years in a junior- to midlevel management position in the industry, and then at least three years experience with complex database management, and another year or two on the report design aspect of it. (This was a very complex skill set to have to acquire, and it wasn’t taught in business schools either, so there was no shortcut.) Considering that the new hires were in their mid-twenties, there was no possible way that they could have filled the experience/expertise requirements of the job.

My head-hunter friend told me that what the company had essentially done was lie on the H-1B visa applications, or at least show that they hadn’t been able to fill the position domestically, in order to get the visas cleared. In essence, the company had hired two trainees for the job, thinking that they’d be able to get at least one of them to perform the function, eventually.

Fast forward about four years. I’d since left my job and hung up my shingle as a consultant in my field, with a reputation as a guy who could fix things and get programs to work as required. So one day my head-hunter buddy calls me up and asks me if I’d be interested in taking on a yearlong project with a company who’d run into serious trouble with their management information systems. They’d gone to the usual suspects (Andersen, PWC, McKinsey, Bain etc.) and were told that the fix would take over two years and well over two million dollars to fix. The company had neither the time nor the money to do that, but they were being crippled by the broken system. Rock, meet hard place.

Well, you can guess who the company was: the cheapskates who’d gone H-1B rather than hire someone like myself to run their program. The H-1Bs themselves had long since disappeared (either fired, or quit after no doubt seeing what was coming), leaving behind a poor guy promoted from within, and who through no fault of his own was completely out of his depth.

Of course, I went over to see the company to scope the project to see if what the Big Dogs told them was true; and it was, except for the cost and the time. You see, most consultancies don’t know shit about specific industries, and their people (freshly-minted MBAs from Harvard, Cornell and Wharton) know absolutely nothing about anything — so they need training just to get them up to speed (paid by Client, duh), and only then can they begin to address the client’s problem — and it always takes longer than the period quoted. Always.

If you knew what to do, and I did, the fix was radical but simple (I told the company): it would take about nine months to a year, a new software package (which, ahem, I’d helped the software house to design) and would require firing the people responsible for the screwup.

So I got the gig, fixed the system, trained the guy and got the whole thing working in eight months, then arranged an “oversight” consultancy — part-time hours, full-time pay for another year — to monitor the operation and ensure that the system would keep working.

I have no idea what the screwup cost the company in total (lost productivity plus my repair job), but just going on my bill, they would have saved well over half a million dollars if they’d just hired someone like me at $100k at the beginning.

My advice to you all is that if you see a company doing stupid shit like thinking they can get ten dollars’ worth of output from a one-cent investment: short the stock.

Gammy’s Special Moment

Men & Women

Via Insty (who should know better), we learn that yes, Grandma’s still having sex.

Okay, all my usual admonitions about TMI (Too-Much-fucking-Information) [sic] apply here, but as someone who isn’t (yet) a grandfather but who is well into the demographic, I can’t for the life of me see why this is news, or of any possible interest to anyone. Everyone (except, it seems, for Millennial reporters) knows perfectly well that people can and do have sex well into their dotage, but the only difference, now that the ghastly Baby Boomers are old farts, is that they feel a need to tell everyone they’re doing it, compared to their own grandparents (most of whom must be mercifully deceased by now) who in all likelihood had geriatric sex too, but didn’t broadcast it from the rooftops.

Modesty, people.

All that said, however, I think that this is one of the sweetest pictures ever taken:

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Turning The Tables

Advice

We’re all familiar with those tiresome magazine or newspaper articles which tell you “How To Ace That Sweet Job Interview” or suchlike nonsense. I’ve sat on both sides of the desk many times, and I am still amazed not just at the stupidity of interviewees, but also at the still-greater idiocy of the interviewers — and I mean the “screening” interviewers such as Human Resources (or as we used to call it, Personnel, a more honest term in that it involved persons as opposed to resources). Mostly, interviews with the people who are going to be your future boss are hundreds of times more productive because the manager has a better idea of what he needs from a subordinate, than does some drone with an English degree who can barely understand the corporate mission statement, let alone the specific needs of an engineering or marketing department.

So, with all the usual caveats — following my advice is something you need to do with the greatest suspicion and/or trepidation — allow me to present Kim’s Ultimate Answers To Interviewers’ Dumb Questions.

“What skills will you bring to the company?”
– You mean, other than what’s on my resumé?

“Can you explain some of the gaps in your resumé?”
– I don’t consider them to be gaps. During one of those “gaps”, as you call them, I learned to speak a foreign language. During another “gap”, I learned basic HTML. I used those opportunities to improve my marketplace value.

“Are you a punctual person?”
– For me, five minutes early is on time. But the converse of that is that unless it’s a client, I don’t tolerate unpunctuality in other people.

“Tell me how you handled a difficult situation.”
– You need to define what you consider “difficult” first. What some people might consider difficult, I might consider unremarkable or inconsequential. (Then examples: I once turned a competitor’s best customer into one of our best customers. I turned our cost-center department into a profit center.) Avoid any mention of how you dealt with office politics — these discussions are poison because HR, having no actual marketable skills themselves, will be well versed in those Dark Arts.

“What would you consider your biggest strength as an employee?”
– Managing expectations. Generally, I try to under-promise and over-deliver, and always under budget or ahead of the deadline.

“What would you consider your biggest weakness?”
– You mean work-related weaknesses? Can’t think of any, off-hand, other than perhaps a dislike of unproductive meetings. I get very impatient when my work time is wasted.

(Follow-up snarky question:) “So how would you classify this meeting?”
– This is a productive meeting. From my responses, you’re trying to decide whether you want to employ me; and from the corporate culture you’re showing me, I’m trying to decide whether I’d want to work here.

“Are you prepared to work weekends and holidays?”
– Of course I am. By the way, what’s the usual compensation for doing that: longer vacations, flexible hours, or overtime pay? I don’t mind any of those as exchanges for giving up my personal time. I’m not a clock-watcher by any means, but I do value my spare time. (Unless you’re applying for a management position, this is a perfectly acceptable response, by the way.)

“Do you get along with people?”
– Most people.

(Follow-up question:) “What kind of people don’t you get along with?”
– People who confuse input with output. Also, people who don’t understand the Iron Triangle (cost, time and scope). [If you have to explain the difference between input and output to the interviewer, you may wish to reconsider your job application.]

“What do you know about our company?”
– Other than what’s on your corporate website? Not much. I do know quite a bit about your competitors, though, because I did some homework on them so I could start work as productively as possible.

(Follow-up question #1:) “What do you know about our competitors?”
– I really wouldn’t feel comfortable divulging that except to my future boss, as his subordinate.
(Follow-up question #2:) “Have you been in contact with any of our competitors?”
– Not yet. I wanted to see how things went with your company first.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” (Mostly, this question has disappeared from most interviews, because today’s would-be employees have little idea where they’ll be in five days, let alone years. Still:)
– It really depends on how my job changes, or what happens to the company over that period of time. With the rate of change today, what with companies starting up and failing, or being taken over by competitors, I think that five years is too long a period in which to make strategic career decisions at this point.

“Will you take a drug test?”
– The minute you can prove to me that the CEO and all the other senior executives have taken the same drug test. Then, sure.
[HR will say that they can’t show you that for privacy issues, but repeat that you don’t want to see the results, just proof that the test was taken. When they say, “It’s corporate policy; everyone has to take the test,” insist on proof. If they say, “you have to take my word that everyone has taken the test”, then your response should be that they should have no problem about taking your word that you don’t do drugs. By the way, if senior executives don’t have to take the test, then it’s not corporate policy. If the drug test policy only applies to lower echelons, ask how they’ve avoided being sued so far.]

“Do you have any bad work habits?” (I swear, I was once asked this question, a variation of “What are your weaknesses?” which has now been excoriated so often that it’s no longer asked.)
– I don’t know what constitutes a “bad habit” in your opinion. Could you give me a few examples? (Then answer those, and only those, with responses like: “I’d never do that” or “I’ve never done that” or “People do that?”)

“Do you have any questions for me?”
– Only about the salary (hourly rate), which seems a little modest for the skills and experience you’re asking of an employee at this level. But I’d prefer to discuss that topic with my future boss here, rather than at so early a stage in the process. (Unsaid: I don’t want to hear all that bullshit about salary grades from you, but from the guy who has actual budget authority.)

I should probably point out that if you actually use the above examples in an interview, your chances of getting the job will drop faster than a Kardashian’s panties. But at least you’ll have had some fun along the way. I should also point out that I have used some of these, or at least variations thereof, on my own behalf. Quite often, amazingly, I made it past HR to the boss’s interview because it appeared that the HR drone saw quite clearly that they were out of their depth, and like all good bureaucrats, kicked the problem over to someone else.

Use with caution.