Thursday, September 28, 2006
Work, Exciting and New (Come Aboard, We're Expecting You!)
Hidey ho! This has just been a week from hell for me. On the bright side, I started a new job that I absolutely love. On the down side, though, I had a terrible cold that happened to coincide with my first day of work. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that I was starting a new job, I wouldn't have even GONE to work. And you know how all you do for the first few days of work is train? And you know how boring that is? Well, put a cold and the accompanying medicine-head on top of that. Makes for a great week.
Anyway, not everyone knows that I've started a new job, so let me explain a little. Four years ago, I was happily working as an actuary. I took all my exams and was on the fast track. Then I switched jobs, got laid off and didn't work in actuarial again. Oops. That led me to a couple different careers, grad school, and a general malaise. Four months ago, I started a job at LAF (Large Accounting Firm). You know, I could probably mention the company by name now, but why bother. I'm certainly not going to write anything nice about them. And that certainly won't help me in the future. (I say this like there are actually people out there reading this blog.)
At LAF, I was doing exciting things like valuing businesses. What's that? I know you don't care, so humor me. When a company acquires another company, they ask us to determine what the company's worth. That's the most basic way of explaining it. I could go into a lot more detail, but since we've already established that you don't care, why should I bother? It's just like trying to teach a pig to sing. It'll only frustrate you and annoy the pig. (And yes, I realize that I just compared you to a pig. Believe me, after what you ate this weekend, it's deserved. By the way, you might want to consider closing your curtains or getting a restraining order against me.)
I've mentioned it before, but LAF was a very political place. Thus it wasn't a fun place to work at. More importantly, the work itself bored me to tears. You see, the problem is that I'm a huge dork. I won't even attempt to deny it. I LOVE doing math and solving problems. Remember back in high school when the math teacher would make you do a word problem and everyone groaned? I cheered. Silently of course, because I didn't want to get pelted with TI-81s. The work at LAF wasn't so much about solving puzzles. It was more like being given the answer and then having to figure out how to get to it, like working a maze backwards.
Here's a typical scenario. Keep in mind that this isn't exactly legal, so a lot of this is done with a wink and a nod. A company says they need their company valued for tax purposes. So they'll say something like, "Last year, our value was $2 billion. This year, we saw sales go up 10%. Sales are the main driver of company value." So what they're saying is that they want their company's value to go up by $0.2 billion. And so our job was to figure out how to get to a value like that. Shockingly, we were almost always dead-on. Like I said, though, this approach is highly illegal. And that's why you'd never hear a conversation like what I just said. But that doesn't mean that the exact same information isn't conveyed. It's all done more subtlely now.
The point I'm trying to make, though, is that we always know what the final value should be. So it's just a matter of changing some of the assumptions to get to that value. And since there's no hard-and-fast rules about what we do, you're free to make things up. And people do. Isn't the world of high finance exciting?
Anyway, I wasn't feeling challenged at LAF. Add to that the weird political situation and I decided it was best to look elsewhere for employment. In steps the U.S. government. In the past few years, there have been a rash of steel and airline bankruptcies. These bankrupt companies pushed their unfunded pension plans onto the government. The government said, "Whoa, dude! This is UNcool!" So the government did the only logical thing they could think of. They passed a law that would encourage even MORE companies to get rid of their pension plans. Of course, that wasn't their intent. They wanted to speed up pension funding and other fun things. The result, though, is that pension plans are suddenly a LOT more expensive for companies to manage. So why bother?
The effect of this law is actually a little counter-intuitive. It's resulting in MORE work for pension actuaries. Why? Well, getting rid of a pension plan is no easy thing. You need actuaries to tell you how to do it. So all of a sudden, the workload for actuaries increased. And so, more companies were looking to hire. Which means that an actuary who's been out of the game for 4 years is suddenly moderately attractive. (Which was a relief, because it's the first time I've been callled attractive since I used to habitually drink on the South Side, where everyone's personal motto seems to be "More tattoos than teeth.")
I decide to take a job at an actuarial firm, which I'll call GeeksInc and Monday was my first day. I love it here. It reminds me of when I was in Italy with The Wife (when she was still just The Girlfriend) and we are on a bus. I looked around and noticed that (at 5'7") I was the tallest person on the bus. I looked at The Girlfriend and said, "I'm the tallest on on the bus. These are my PEOPLE!" Well, that's how I feel here now. I'm surrounded by a bunch of geeks who enjoy doing math problems. While that sounds like hell to most people (I believe Dante's 5th circle was full of actuaries), it's heaven to me.
Anyway, not only am I excited to be working as an actuary again, but I'm pretty excited to be at GeeksInc. It's a company I've wanted to work at for a number of years. Even though it's downtown (literally right across the street from LAF), it's a great company. My manager seems nice. The people are outgoing. My Big Boss already told me that they have 4 or 5 career paths that they think I might be great for in the next 5-10 years. So, they're already planning how best to use me. They're more than willing to get me back up to speed on the actuarial stuff. And perhaps most importantly, they've already got me on a couple fun projects. Honestly, I couldn't be more excited if I were a midget at a mini-skirt convention.
Anyway, not everyone knows that I've started a new job, so let me explain a little. Four years ago, I was happily working as an actuary. I took all my exams and was on the fast track. Then I switched jobs, got laid off and didn't work in actuarial again. Oops. That led me to a couple different careers, grad school, and a general malaise. Four months ago, I started a job at LAF (Large Accounting Firm). You know, I could probably mention the company by name now, but why bother. I'm certainly not going to write anything nice about them. And that certainly won't help me in the future. (I say this like there are actually people out there reading this blog.)
At LAF, I was doing exciting things like valuing businesses. What's that? I know you don't care, so humor me. When a company acquires another company, they ask us to determine what the company's worth. That's the most basic way of explaining it. I could go into a lot more detail, but since we've already established that you don't care, why should I bother? It's just like trying to teach a pig to sing. It'll only frustrate you and annoy the pig. (And yes, I realize that I just compared you to a pig. Believe me, after what you ate this weekend, it's deserved. By the way, you might want to consider closing your curtains or getting a restraining order against me.)
I've mentioned it before, but LAF was a very political place. Thus it wasn't a fun place to work at. More importantly, the work itself bored me to tears. You see, the problem is that I'm a huge dork. I won't even attempt to deny it. I LOVE doing math and solving problems. Remember back in high school when the math teacher would make you do a word problem and everyone groaned? I cheered. Silently of course, because I didn't want to get pelted with TI-81s. The work at LAF wasn't so much about solving puzzles. It was more like being given the answer and then having to figure out how to get to it, like working a maze backwards.
Here's a typical scenario. Keep in mind that this isn't exactly legal, so a lot of this is done with a wink and a nod. A company says they need their company valued for tax purposes. So they'll say something like, "Last year, our value was $2 billion. This year, we saw sales go up 10%. Sales are the main driver of company value." So what they're saying is that they want their company's value to go up by $0.2 billion. And so our job was to figure out how to get to a value like that. Shockingly, we were almost always dead-on. Like I said, though, this approach is highly illegal. And that's why you'd never hear a conversation like what I just said. But that doesn't mean that the exact same information isn't conveyed. It's all done more subtlely now.
The point I'm trying to make, though, is that we always know what the final value should be. So it's just a matter of changing some of the assumptions to get to that value. And since there's no hard-and-fast rules about what we do, you're free to make things up. And people do. Isn't the world of high finance exciting?
Anyway, I wasn't feeling challenged at LAF. Add to that the weird political situation and I decided it was best to look elsewhere for employment. In steps the U.S. government. In the past few years, there have been a rash of steel and airline bankruptcies. These bankrupt companies pushed their unfunded pension plans onto the government. The government said, "Whoa, dude! This is UNcool!" So the government did the only logical thing they could think of. They passed a law that would encourage even MORE companies to get rid of their pension plans. Of course, that wasn't their intent. They wanted to speed up pension funding and other fun things. The result, though, is that pension plans are suddenly a LOT more expensive for companies to manage. So why bother?
The effect of this law is actually a little counter-intuitive. It's resulting in MORE work for pension actuaries. Why? Well, getting rid of a pension plan is no easy thing. You need actuaries to tell you how to do it. So all of a sudden, the workload for actuaries increased. And so, more companies were looking to hire. Which means that an actuary who's been out of the game for 4 years is suddenly moderately attractive. (Which was a relief, because it's the first time I've been callled attractive since I used to habitually drink on the South Side, where everyone's personal motto seems to be "More tattoos than teeth.")
I decide to take a job at an actuarial firm, which I'll call GeeksInc and Monday was my first day. I love it here. It reminds me of when I was in Italy with The Wife (when she was still just The Girlfriend) and we are on a bus. I looked around and noticed that (at 5'7") I was the tallest person on the bus. I looked at The Girlfriend and said, "I'm the tallest on on the bus. These are my PEOPLE!" Well, that's how I feel here now. I'm surrounded by a bunch of geeks who enjoy doing math problems. While that sounds like hell to most people (I believe Dante's 5th circle was full of actuaries), it's heaven to me.
Anyway, not only am I excited to be working as an actuary again, but I'm pretty excited to be at GeeksInc. It's a company I've wanted to work at for a number of years. Even though it's downtown (literally right across the street from LAF), it's a great company. My manager seems nice. The people are outgoing. My Big Boss already told me that they have 4 or 5 career paths that they think I might be great for in the next 5-10 years. So, they're already planning how best to use me. They're more than willing to get me back up to speed on the actuarial stuff. And perhaps most importantly, they've already got me on a couple fun projects. Honestly, I couldn't be more excited if I were a midget at a mini-skirt convention.
