Many of the large tech companies around here already went through rounds of publicized and internally announced layoffs and a good majority has had pay freezes or paycuts starting as early as late last year.  These are all public companies that you probably have heard of.  Basically noone I know in a large company has had a raise this year with the exception of people at Lockheed Martin.  Lockheed is doing fine since is a defense contractor and we are in the midst of war.  The government cut some of their contracts and added others.    The largest organization in California is the state of California itself, and we all know how terrible the state coffers are right now.  Pretty much all public employees I know are  getting paycuts in the form of furloughs and some are being laid off.  Banking is another industry that got hit extremely hard for obvious reasons.  For example, we have a Downey Savings, WaMu, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America all on the same block.  Two of those banks are technically dead.

On the flip side the friends I know that work for smaller corporations still managed to get raises and bonuses this year.  This is not to say that smaller companies are doing better than larger corporations as a whole, but I think that in general smaller companies have less fat to trim than large corporations.  Most startups tend to pay less than large companies, and have a leaner team to operate everything.    For the most part raises are rare this year, and they are also much smaller than previous years.   Many small companies depend on the spending of large corporations so there is really a trickle down effect.   Personally I have no idea if my company is giving out raises, but I am not expecting anything.  I would seriously be happy with a 1% raise just to cover the increase in state taxes.  The hubby got a small 3.75% raise and I am pretty happy about that even though it is smaller than any previous raise.

Anyway, the greater economy is really out of our control, and I am pretty grateful that we still have jobs.  However, I think everyone should try to give themselves a bonus or raise through saving or earning more money.  I have done several things to essentially give ourselves a raise this year such as refinancing our mortgage, renegotiating our rent, and continuing to blog.  Reducing our mortgage and rent is basically saving us 3300 after tax money every year, and that is significant.  My blogging income is also much higher than last year as my articles age and I have a bigger collection of articles.  These changes make me a little less uneasy about the general doom and gloom atmosphere we are in, and I am hopeful that the American economy will recover eventually.

Share This

---
Related Articles at The Baglady:

Reasons to celebrate

Thoughts on Bloggers Quitting the 9 – 5

Trying to Look on the Bright Side

What does Obama’s overseas corporate tax hike mean for Silicon Valley and Americans?

Broken Computer and Links to Wise Bread Articles

What this couple did was to start an online store that sells wedding linens with optional personalized embroidery, and they are now having revenues in the six figures.   The blog covers many topics including driving traffic to their store, their motivation for starting the store, and how they learned from their mistakes.  They also have a collection of funny customer stories.

I sat here and read this site for hours, and it kind of made me want to resurrect my retail “businesses” again.  In the past I have sold used books and jewelry to varying degrees of success.  I could definitely identify with some of the things Steve wrote.  Basically, you cannot just sit on your butt and hope for money to roll in with a business with actual inventory.  Also, customers can be quite demanding and and unreasonable sometimes.

I could easily start selling used books again, but it takes quite a bit of time, and the income is not passive because I have to list each individual book and ship them when they sell.  The profit margins were quite decent, but I gave it up because it just took too much time.  Right now, I am seriously pursuing writing as a side business

I would definitely quit my job if I could replace my income.  I am taking it slow and I am nowhere as successful as some bloggers who have expanded their blogs very quickly in a short amount of time, but I consider myself a plodder and I am happy with the progress I have achieved.

A little over a year ago I wrote this post detailing how much I am earning by blogging, and the grand total for January 2008 was $161.  I am happy to report that for February 2009 I have a grand total of $1016 for the month from all of my blogs and this is about 6.3 times my earning last year.  This is nowhere near my job income, but I am hoping that I could get there eventually.  I have added new streams of income including eHow and affiliate links and every little bit adds up.

I highly doubt that next February I would be earning 6.3 times of $1016 a month from writing alone, but maybe one day I will also be a wife that quit her job.

Share This

---
Related Articles at The Baglady:

Should You Buy a Business or Build Your Own?

Advertise

The 5% Goals — How I Reach Larger Goals by Completing Smaller Goals

Is it possible to quit using money all together?

The Baglady Will be Hosting The Carnival of Money Stories on 4/15/08

Talk and share goals – The hubby and I are pretty different in terms of our money management, but I think I am converting him into a saver.  We have talked quite a bit about retirement and having kids, and we generally agree with each other about what we want in the future.  Communication is definitely important in a marriage.

Run a home like a business -  I keep a running spreadsheet of our incomes and expenses for each month and give the hubby a report at the end of every month just to let him know how we are doing.  This has worked fairly well for the past year.

Be supportive of careers – We are very supportive of each other’s careers right now.  We both have pretty good jobs as engineers.  If either of us had a great job opportunity elsewhere I think we would both be okay with a move. 

Enjoy, but within reason - We spend our fun money mostly on food and vacations.  The hubby also loves games and gadgets.  As I wrote over a year ago, we started a budget where 2% of our income goes to entertainment.  That has worked out quite well and we still have a surplus in the entertainment fund.  As I wrote in my Wise Bread article from yesterday, there needs to be a balance between pleasure spending and saving, and I think we are doing fairly well. 

Use a mediator – Fortunately, the hubby and I haven’t really had fights about money, but we’d probably use our parents as mediators if we did have some unlikely scuffle.

Maintain some independence -  Both the hubby and I have credit cards, bank accounts, and investment accounts under our own names.  We also have a joint checking and investment account.  This is important because I think we should maintain our own credit histories. Also, we can’t have joint retirement accounts anyway.   So even though we are married I think we are both pretty financially independent.

Invest in your marriage - The hubby and I spend A LOT of time together when we are not working.  Sometimes it feels like too much, but that may change when we have kids.  We are definitely not workaholics and we like playing games and watching TV together quite a bit. 

Since many couples split up because of financial issues,  I feel that money management is an extremely important part of a healthy marriage. However, love and respect needs to come first before a couple can compromise on their money.  For example, I know that the hubby made a lot of concessions on the things he wanted to buy in the past year because he loves me and respects my saving ways. He also started to use coupons, FatWallet and subscribed to SlickDeals on his own (I am really proud of him).   On the other hand, I have also made compromises with the hubby and enjoyed spending more money and time with him.   He acknowledged that I am not as cheap as before.   Marriage is about becoming one single unit, and our attitudes toward money simply manifested how we balance each other.   I am having more fun with the hubby and  he’s glad that I am dealing  with the finances he  dislikes so it is a win-win situation.  So finally, I’d like to say that money management skills are able to be acquired, and if a couple really wants to fix their finances together then they can definitely do it, but if a couple do not care for each other enough to manage their money in a positive way together, then that may not be so easy to fix.  So my conclusion is that money management is much much easier than marriage management, and there is no reason not to tackle it first.

Share This

---
Related Articles at The Baglady:

The Stress of Saving Versus the Stress of Debt

Is Wealth Detrimental to Marriages?

The Nuances of Good and Bad Debt

What Type of Economic Union is Your Marriage or Romantic Relationship?

Is Married Life More Expensive than Single Life?

For some reason, these pesky recruiters find a way to find my work phone number. Honestly I don’t even know what this number is because I never use this phone. I think some people within this company is unleashing this information and it is rather annoying. My manager also hates calls from recruiters so he told me that if anyone calls for him I should tell them to contact HR. Apparently these recruiters just call random numbers and hope to be directed to some hiring manager. Today’s recruiter was named Anne and she called my phone and asked for my manager. The conversation went something like this (I’m replacing my manager’s name with BLAHBLAH):

“Hello, is this BLAHBLAH?” Without giving away my manager’s full name, I could tell you that this woman was pronouncing it like an illiterate fool. My manager’s name ends with an I, and she says it like it ends with an A. This persisted during the entire phone call.

“No, he is not in the office today. Who am I speaking to?”

“Oh, this is Anne. May I have BLAHBLAH’s extension?”

“Hmm, are you from my company?” I was getting a little suspicious here.

“Oh, no, I’m just looking for BLAHBLAH.”

“Are you a recruiter?”

“Why, are you looking for a job?”

“No, I’m not, but are you a recruiter?”

She chuckled a bit and said, “yes, I am.”

“Okay, my manager said to just tell all recruiters to contact HR. I can give you the number for HR.”

“Oh, I know HR’s number, they wouldn’t talk to me because I place so many great candidates and make them look bad. Could I have BLAHBLAH’s number?” Wow, isn’t she cocky?

“Well, that isn’t my problem. I’m a bit busy so…”

“Are you an engineer on BLAHBLAH’s team?”

“Yes”

“How did you get the job?”

“I applied”

“Oh so you didn’t go through a recruiter?”

“No.”

“How did you find out about the job?”

“I looked, and a lot of my schoolmates work here.”

“Oh cool, what school did you go to?”

“Berkeley.”

“Oh haha Berkeley, we used to call them weenies.” Well I guess this idiot went to Stanford. A dozen or so of the core people at my company’s engineering team went to Berkeley, so I don’t think it is a very good move to insult my school when you are trying to recruit for my company.

“Um, look, I don’t have time for this…”

“You are in Palo Alto right? That’s right next to Stanford!”

“No, we are in San Mateo. We moved last year.”

“Oh, I don’t know much about San Mateo, but Palo Alto has my favorite sushi restaurant!” Umm..I don’t care about your favorite sushi restaurant. Just when I was about to say that, she said, “So what do you guys do? Java or C#?”

“Why don’t you go to our website and find out? The location of the company is also on the website. Look, I have to go okay.” I hung up here as I heard her voice stream out of the phone.

So, what did Anne do wrong?

1) Didn’t know anything about my company - When you are a recruiter you are supposed to know what your client wants. Obviously this woman didn’t even do enough research to call the right number and didn’t even know the location of the company.

2) Insulted a potential client – Okay, I’m not a hiring manager, but if you are trying to get information out of someone you shouldn’t insult them by calling them a weenie. That’s just excessively stupid.

3) Was not professional enough - As I said, I don’t care where your favorite sushi restaurant is, and most other people probably don’t care either. The way she acted was just very unprofessional.

Now, Anne takes the cake for the most annoying recruiter I have ever spoken to, but the following are more characteristics of bad recruiters that annoy me.

1) The bait and switch – A lot of the times recruiters send out emails to potential candidates saying that they’re recruiting for a position that pays a certain number, and then when you do interview or get an offer the number is much lower. That is a classic bait and switch and that has happened to people I know. I think that is borderline criminal.

2) Obviously did not read my resume - I think a lot of recruiters search resumes for keywords, and never read the resume afterwards. So they end up spamming a bunch of people who do not qualify for the job they are recruiting for. It takes a bit of time and effort to screen resumes, but the results might be much better.

3) Doesn’t take no for an answer – There are a couple recruiters I keep in contact with because they were professional enough to take no for an answer when I wasn’t looking. If the candidate or client company do not need the services, I think it’s best for a recruiter learn to back off politely instead of annoying the crap out of people.

4) Don’t know jack about technology - Bad technical recruiters generally have no clue what their clients need or want in an engineer because they have very little knowledge about technology and thus do not understand the resumes and requisition orders. The best technical recruiters I have met were former engineers that know what to look for.

Anyway, I am ending this rant here. I’ve known people who had good experiences with cold calling recruiters, but most of them seem quite useless. Have you had a good experience with a random recruiter that wasn’t part of a company’s internal HR? I’d love to hear about it.

Share This

---
Related Articles at The Baglady:

My Favorite Olympics Moments and Blog Carnivals

A Profitable Business Doesn’t Have to Be Based on A Brilliant Technical Idea

Three Years Down, Seven Years to Go

Comical and Craptacular Interviews — Lessons Learned in Silicon Valley Recruiting

This Is Why I Act Like a Man

Today I went back work and I realized why I can’t concentrate very well there.  People are just talking constantly over each other and I hear them from my cube. Then I’m constantly distracted by people walking in the hallway because I happen to face the hallway.  Additionally, there are too many snacks and drinks in the breakroom so I find myself going there every hour or so.  You would think that an office environment lets you concentrate on work, but it is rather distracting.  Being in my home office is much more comfortable than coming to the office.  It is much quieter and much more relaxing.

Knowing this, I might ask my manager to let me work at home once a week.  Several of my coworkers actually work at home full time so it is not a huge request.  If I work at home once a week I could save a gallon of gas every week and also cook instead of going out.  I could also shave off some snack calories. We will see how this works out.

How about you?  Do you find working at home more productive?  Or do you need the human interaction at the office?

Share This

---
Related Articles at The Baglady:

Goal for this week: complete our taxes

Green Shoots and Change We Can Believe In

The Baglady Will be Hosting The Carnival of Money Stories on 4/15/08

Updates on my finances

2008 Goals Mid-Year Review