Business

An old A&L link reports on French start-ups.

It’s not exactly haute culture, but these days this is a vital topic here in France, where the unemployment rate has been stuck between 9 and 10 percent for a quarter of a century and where not a single enterprise founded here in the past 40 years has managed to break into the ranks of the 25 biggest French companies. By comparison, 19 of today’s 25 largest U.S. companies didn’t exist four decades ago.

Small business people tend to want different legislation (and less of it) than do big companies who are more likely to effectively lobby. Small business people tend to be independent; I think I started one because it had not been my experience that I would enjoy being part of an institution or to work at a 9-5 government job. I never really thought I’d get rich but I did think I’d get independent. That probably isn’t that unusual. Some of my staff were not so happy with the lack of firm and separated job descriptions but many liked learning a variety of skills and making decisions on their own.

Of course many small business owners are more competent and more ambitious. That 19/25 reinforces my earlier post about the churning among quintiles of net worth–obviously, such size is rare but movement upward through small business is common. Little outside the most intensely personal is as exhilerating and requires as much creativity as small business start-ups. That energy comes from the challenge of responsibility; France recognizes the need but will need to work against their inclinations to foster these. The role of such businesses in introducing new workers to the marketplace, in fostering independence and creativity should always lie somewhere in the back of legislators’ minds.

The company I worked for seven years ago sold off their mainframes and outsourced the data processing they needed. Suddenly I found myself looking for work.

This wasn’t too bad in and of itself. Changes in technology mean that jobs sometimes become scarce in the marketplace, or even disappear altogether. I wasn’t too worried because not only did I have over ten years of experience, but I had a good reference from everyone with whom I had ever worked. (Not only the supervisors, but also the people who were doing the same job.)

It should have been a cakewalk, but I was in for a shock. What really frustrated me was the interview process. You see, none of the score-or-so companies that granted me an interview would allow me to meet with anyone who had anything to do with the job for which I was applying. Instead I found myself talking to people from the Human Resources division.

Read more

Remote-control door locks. Why is it necessary to blow the horn every time you lock/unlock the vehicle? So you can find your car at the mall? For every one time you need this feature there are going to be multiple times when you park at home, probably not far from your neighbors, perhaps right under someone’s bedroom window in a multi-unit dwelling. The effect is similar to that of the carpooling jerk you remember from college, who showed up in front of your building early every weekday and honked the horn while you were still trying to sleep — except that the remote-control honking happens at all hours of the day and night. Remote door locks should be configured so that the horn is off by default. Better yet, leave the horn off by default and add a quieter mini-horn that is used only for locating the car in parking lots. You don’t need a full-blast traffic horn in the relative quiet of a parking lot.

Always-on headlights. I don’t want the lights to be on all the time when the car is running, even at night. Make that especially at night. There are times when you want to sit in the car and you need to keep the engine running (because it’s hot/cold out). Why should you have to announce your presence to everyone in the area? The light also kills your night vision, which makes stargazing and otherwise keeping an eye on your environment difficult.

Interior lights that don’t shut off immediately when you close the door. Because it goes without saying that lone women getting into their cars in the middle of dark parking lots should be illuminated.

If these features are available, they should be easily configurable via a simple electronic control panel on vehicle dashboards, and the defaults should favor quiet and discretion. Different drivers will have different preferences. For a population as big and diverse as automobile buyers, it’s ridiculous that some manufacturers impose one-size-fits-all settings for features that can easily be made configurable.

I haven’t had experience with hiring in more than a basic sense. (Spousal hires for employees working part-time at minimum wage just didn’t come up.)

Many of you have hired – or been on hiring committees. Your experiences are likely to be varied: as a hiring member of A) Your own business; B) A professional partnership; C) A large corporation; D) A public bureaucracy, or E) Academia. Probably sometimes you had complete control & sometimes you were on hiring committees governed by strict rules.

Prompted by Conglomerate Blog’s discussion of whether a law school grad should sanitize his resume of any hints he is both a Republican and a Mormon, I wondered what others thought. Conglomerate Blog suggests honesty, but admits that will lose interviews. Complete objectivity is impossible; in some environments, noting that difficulty, it was given up as goal. Certainly the factional or tribal, nepotism or ideology, make the disinterested ideal difficult. Nonetheless, some institutions encourage a dispassionate approach by rules & company culture. How much does this vary by the kind of organization? the level of job security?

So, what are your opinions? What worked, what didn’t, what was legal, what wasn’t? Most of all, what would you like to do & what did you hate doing?

Read more

Concerning hybrid cars–I’ve frequently seen the assertion that the energy costs of manufacturing the battery are so great that they use up as much energy as that saved by operating the vehicle. I’ve been unable, however, to find any actual data on the topic. Can anyone help?

What I’m looking for is the energy consumption of making a hybrid battery, including the total value chain (including mining of the raw materials) and also how much of this is recoverable if the battery is recycled.

This seems like essential information for anyone who wants to develop an informed opinion about the future of hybrid power.