Search Results for: palo alto

Euro-Bound

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I wanted to let everyone know well in advance that I’ll be heading off on a European trip for about ten days a week from now. From July 29 to August 9, I’ll be on the European continent in a pattern something along these lines:

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I’m mentioning this for three reasons:

  1. If there are any Slopers in Prague or Berlin, drop me an email. Maybe we can say hello in person!
  2. I’ll be extra-grateful for content from outside contributors during my ersatz vacation (I’ll be begging emailing them directly shortly before my trip).
  3. Blogger’s guilty is already setting in – – I won’t be posting as actively, particularly since trading hours are, shall we say, much later in the day where I’ll be. But, guilt-prone blogger that I am, I’ll still doing a hell of a lot more posting than most of my peers in the blogosphere.

And, of course, I’ll be sure to post a few interesting photos during my travels. For now, however, I remain firmly ensconced in Palo Alto.

Real Estate Recency Bias

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If there’s one sweet job to have — besides being a Goldman banker – – it’s Palo Alto real estate agent (at least a top-tier one). These days, just toss an ad into the Palo Alto Daily Post, and, voila, multiple above-market offers, of which you get a healthy percentage. The winningest realtor in town these days in Ken DeLeon, who is (not surprisingly) given editorial space on a regular basis in the paper in which he advertises regularly so he can share his (cough cough) objective view on where real estate is headed. His conclusions, of course, tend to suggest everlasting upside.

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Technical Tools Tale (The End)

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Here’s the third installment of my little story, the first and second of which are here and here, respectively. As before, the term “X” is used in place for a certain real name.

Our little company was now under new management. In the months to follow, our respective jobs remained more or less the same, but the interactions within the office grew both peculiar and contrived.

For example, in the arsenal of psychology tools our new owner “X” pulled from his new age bag of tricks, there was something he called “pacing”. During these pacing exercises, everyone in the company would stop whatever they were doing (to the chagrin, I imagine, of customers calling in to place orders or get technical support) and pair off, two by two, and face one another while sitting in chairs. One person would speak, and the other person would “pace” them – – that is to say, the silent person would mimic the body language of the other party. This was not to be done in a mocking way, but instead was assumed to build empathy with the other person. (more…)

Technical Tools Tale (The Middle)

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My story continues, the first segment of which can be read HERE……..

Enter Andy

One day, a young man came into the office to inquire about buying some data. This was pretty unusual, since we weren’t selling packs of gum or bottles of Coke. We were a very “niche” business whose customers were typically hundreds or thousands of miles away. Walk-in business was almost unheard of. (more…)

Technical Tools Tale (The Beginning)

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I decided to share a portion of my background that I thought some readers might find interesting; it’s lengthy, so I’ve broken it into three parts. I’ve also modified the names somewhat, with the exception of my own! So here we go………

The job market in the spring of 1991 was a weak one. The economy was in a recession, and the effects were felt particularly sharply in the Silicon Valley, where the novelty of personal computers had long since faded, and the need for high-tech marketing people – ostensibly my speciality – was modest. (more…)