Job offers – the magic numbers

I was talking to my brother about the various parameters of the job offer, tax rates. etc. Just came up with a list which might be useful to folks looking for a new job. Here it goes – let me know if I am missing something:

 Offer components
 
1 Annual Salary
2 Sign On Bonus
3 Stock Options / Awards
4 Relocation Package
 Home furniture
 Car reloc
 
 Things to evaluate an offer
1 Type of role, which company, technology
2 Annual raise
3 annual bonus
4 annual stock options , awards
5 401K match
6 ESPP plan
7 State tax
8 Rents / Home purchase prices

                                                                                                                 Useful links    

1 Federal taxes http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=150856,00.html 
2 Rents comparison    
3 Home prices    
     
     
     
     
 Offer Comparison Chart    
1 CA http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/edit/state/profiles/state_tax_Cal.asp   
2 WA 0   0
3 WI http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_statetaxrate_WI.html#taxrate   
4     
     
btw, he is graduating 12/15/2007 (if your company has openings, please send me a note )

desis night out (or is it?) – day after thanksgiving

I had done this night out a couple of times before – hanging out with a bunch of friends to get the ‘best’ deal during the thanksgiving sales. These stores do a great job selling the deals that most of us are bought into it. In th end, we come out spending a lot more than we wanted, because we got the “best” deals – in reality the stores win .

In all fun, it is great to get that adrenalin rush and seems ok when a few hrs of sleep are no big deal or so easy to overcome. Not a big fan of it today.

But I wanted my wife to experience this. So this time, on nov 22nd thursday night, we drove past the circuitcity in bellevue and at 8.30 PM saw about 30 people in line. So we went to the desi store and picked up 2 tamil movies, saw the movies till 3.15 AM and decided to go to the Kohls and Target sale. we reached there around 3.30 AM and managed to be within the first 10. At 4 AM when the shop opened, people rushed in while we simply strolled – no hurry since we did not want anything specific. In the end, did pick a few things and the billing line was about a mile long inside the store.

we went to the Target line around 5.15 AM and were the only desis around. so anytime, someone thinks we are the crazy ones searching for deals – think again, we did not have any thanksgiving dinner invitees and did not rush back to the Kohls or Target shopping lines. we were free the entire day and

we did not have to treat the Thanksgiving sale specially because it was just another day of our lives – we always need a good deal

we heard that the circuitcity line had grown to 4000 before the shop opened the next day. Maybe we need an online portal that shows the waiting time in each of these stores and folks wiating in the line can send a picture or SMS from their cell phones – ‘waitsmart.com’

cheers

rediff article – “tips to become a good successful entrepreneur”

good read for the entrepreneur wannabes 

Tips to become a successful entrepreneur

http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2007/nov/07ranjit.htm

Getting started

Tip #1: Don’t worry about not being courageous enough for the uncertainty of the business world, as being an entrepreneur has nothing to do with courage. People who observe entrepreneurs leaving a secure job and taking the plunge into the unknown sometimes marvel at their courage (or foolhardiness).

Most successful entrepreneurs that I’ve met, however, don’t see themselves as particularly brave. In fact, they do a lot of homework and make contingency plans that take into account the possibility of failure.

I’ve met a number of entrepreneurs who have left McKinsey & Co., my first employer after business school, because they recognised that becoming a director at McKinsey is not guaranteed for even some of the hardest working, smartest people that you come across in the business world.

Becoming a director at any large organisation has much to do with factors that are not in your control, including personal relationships and the economic cycle that the company happens to be in when promotion decisions are made. While organisations try to be fair, they operate in a world that isn’t, and if you recognise that staying put is not necessarily safe you are more likely to get over the fear of venturing out.

Tip #2: Look for a big idea, and be rational.

There’s no point taking a big risk if you have a small idea, and from an economic perspective, it’s logical to concentrate on expected value, which means the potential value creation times the probability of actually achieving it. So if your job is 100% secure, and the chances of entrepreneurial success are only 10%, then compare your future salary against the expected future value of your venture (the ‘payoff’) times 10%.

If the expected value (payoff times 10%) is more than your salary, then logically you should give it a try. However, most people are irrationally risk averse, so if the expected value is not vastly higher than their salary, they would opt for the more certain outcome.

On the other hand, people who are destined to become entrepreneurs are more likely to be sceptical about the security of their job, so they wouldn’t assign a 100% probability to the so-called safe option.

Tip #3: Start small.

In Tip #2, I said it’s important to think big, but for most entrepreneurs it’s also important to start small. A good example is SchoolTrainer, which was started by a Delhi-based Hindi and Math tutor. He has a big idea, but has started out small (just himself).

He currently has less than 100 teachers on his panel, but expects to scale up to a thousand over the next few years. Starting small enables you to experiment, work out the bugs in your systems, and prove your idea. The discipline of a tight budget also forces small companies to do what customers ask them to do. Companies that start operations with a lot of resources often scale up too quickly, waste money and enjoy the luxury of not having to listen to customers.

Tip #4: When faced with the fear of giving up a secure job, concentrate on the equally frightening possibility of someday looking back with regret.

In other words, if you think the risk of entrepreneurship is high, consider the risk of losing a fortune by letting an opportunity slip out of your hands. Of course, explaining this to conservative family members (usually a parent or spouse) may be difficult. For some people, even a 10% chance of failure is too high to contemplate, no matter how big the potential payoff is.

A 90% chance of failure is out of the question. Conservative family members will only be convinced if you have an airtight back up plan, which leads to Tip #5.

Tip #5: Have a backup plan.

One entrepreneur I know asked his employer, a very prestigious professional services firm, for a leave of absence. This gave him time to verify that his idea had merit. He knew that if he failed (which he assumed was likely), he could always return to the relative safety of a conventional career. His friends and acquaintances thought he was gutsy, but he knew he had a safety net.

In the end, he was able to prove his idea during his leave of absence and was able confidently to convert his leave of absence into a separation. He was shrewd, not brave.

LDAM

I have been thinking about writing this article for a while – LDAM, not el damn = Long distance arranged marriage. Spoken to a few friends in private to help through this process. A new phenomenan for the last 5 yrs which has taken off thanks for startups like bharathmatrimony.com, shaadi.com,etc. In short, folks advertise in web sites, email correspondanes flow, astrologers are ringed up, IM lines open up, contract gets signed, sometimes cancelled and eventually the marriage happens. This is actually a more complicated work flow than what folks think it is. For those of you have done conference calls, you will realize this difficulty, communicating with someone with no visuals is tough. but in reality, this is inevitable, being 10000 miles, there are nothing better to do.

some best practises – take control, lose your pride, keep the communication frank and open, decide on the first person when things match, do not compromise, take every proposal seriously, dont lose it all when something does not work, be fair.

I started my advertising process in 2004 – very soon realized that my parents and I had a mismatch in selections and had to take charge. One thing I realized is to come up with a core set of values that are very keen to me, started thinking on stuff that i cannot compromise on. I did not prepare and was convinced that I will do nothing special but just be myself. My first experience without any dress rehearsal was almost out of mouna raagam, we were waiting at her place and she was yet to return from work . Obviosly this did not work out since we were very different – i had not emailed the person before, nor had I talked to her before and all it took me was a couple of hrs face 2 face to figure this out. we were able to connect on some common interests but very different in some core values – luckily for both of us, this did not work out. I met a couple of folks and then returned to the US uncommitted.

Then there was a lot of coaching exercises for my parents over phone where we were working as a team – getting the right match. Then in 2005 Sep, I had another trip. In this trip, my parents were “closely” working with a family – as always, my cousin sister had also gone to meet the family got her reads (which I valued more), i spoke to the girl’s relatives in the US, etc, etc. about 15 days before leaving to India, I requested  the girl’s email id and got it. i sent an email but no response – apparently the email account was “not working”. I tried sending a couple of more, apparently there was some computer and email problems. about 3 days before  I left, we got the news that the person is engaged with the family apologising. This is where the whole “fair” thing comes into perspective. I wonderd why people behaved this way inspite of I being open in all aspects. The truth is people are different – everybody wants to have options, backups and it is a pity that it has trickled down to matchups – damn LDAM.

i am glad about these experiences. it had no effect on my approach, it actually strengthened my approach and i continued to be the same. a couple of days, before leaving back to the US in sep 2005, my parents wanted to meet another family. I had  goatee, wearing a T-shirt, jeans and slippers and was at my friend’s place chatting. My parents had setup an adhoc meeting in 2 hrs and I was ready -well heck, I had done this a couple of times now and did not need any more prep. The next couple of hrs were spent talking about the most serious stuff – long term plans, work life balance, r2i plans, religious beliefs, staying with parents, my personal likes, the kind of person I am, etc. It was real serious stuff – was wondering if the person thought I was a nut. being so serious in the 1st meeting. but the reality of the situation is that for folks like us, we have to make the most important decision of our life in probably the least amount of time. so you got to get all your Qs cleared up in whatever way that suits you. You have to be convinced about the decision, from all angles. believe me, it does not require all that much of time either. Luckily for me, the girl said yes and we are happily married. Somethings in life are worth waiting for

In summary, take your time, do it your way, can be done in a couple of meetings of 2 hrs , be fair and be smart about the realities if something does not work out. Lean on your friends wisdom and learn from their stupidity (if any).

LDAM does work but needs a little coaching tweaks for you and your parents.

Happy LDAMing!!

basejumping

base jump – seems to be an interesting game. saw some of the videos on espn and it is so cooooooooooool. I might have missed the bus, got to get buy-off from someone else now

wondering if there are daredevils I know, who will … Will ya?

HYD airport is a f******g fishmarket

Just came back to good ol chennai – had a terrible experience (as always) while travelling from HYD airoport.

Yes I am using the ‘f’ word – HYD airport is a freaking fishmarket.

For starters, it is god damn small and there is just so much commotion. The Indigo boarding pass area is 3 feet wide and every1 having a trolley needs to figure out his way back after collecting his boarding pass without knocking the next person in line.

There is 1 board which has all the flights taking off and a bunch of voices calling out flight numbers and hazaar folks hangin around. It took me a while to figure out that my flight was checking people into the aircraft. Finding the boarding gate is another pain – 1 display board with no correlation to the Gate#.

Then comes the tag check – the  system (not in HYD in general) requires the hand baggages to be tagged and the security check is supposed get it stamped. I happily tried boarding about 15 mins before take off and was stopped and asked to go back. I came down to the security area and they did not have any tags. I found a tag which was blindly stamped which I just took to the security guy and he let me in.

I have never been in a situation where I got past the gate and still had to figure out the path to the aircraft. There was absolutely no one and there were 3 areas going to different flights. I  managed to find someone who claimed that ‘Sir, but we have been annoucing know, sir’ - bunch of clowns in a fishmartket in a wierdly management system does make the whole thingy entertaining if you are not in the receiving end.

 How I wish the airline prices were expensively enough so that places with adequate infra-structure wont be bursting at its seams? Maybe the strata of the financial pyramid will decide who goes where and sort of load balances the system. I think all services should become to every1 when the infra-structure is in a position to handle it. Just having a noble goal to provide everything to every1, with folks having to go through this is horrible.

Amen

time is the most precious commodity

This post was triggered by an incident during my trip to the US, a philosophical trigger, if you will. The itinerary for the trip was Seattle -> Amsterdam -> Hyderabad. We flew for about 4 hrs and were just over just over the Hudson bay when a lady had a medical emergency. She was 37 and was complaining of chest pain. She was accompanied by her 5 month baby, scheduled to meet her husband in Amsterdam. The flight had to make an emergency landing, so the pilot turned back and landed in Churchhill, Canada. Believe me, I was a little sleepy and looking through the window, it was like landing on a different planet. It was simply a place with rocks resembling craters filled up with ice in some places. Apparently, people visit this place to fish and the inhabitants are very sparse. The lady was taken out by a medical crew who were planning on taking her to a hospital 100 miles away. Hopefully she and the baby are safe. We had some airport protocol to follow which took 2 hrs to complete – apparently, as per security protocol, you cannot take some one’s bags when they are not in the plan (maybe there is an exception when airlines “lose” bags and send them in the next flight), an aircraft cannot land when it is “heavy” – people were mentioning the reasons why we had to travel half way over Hudson, and then apparently we need a new travel plan [ sort of like an air traffic regulator]

It set me thinking as to how life can suddenly turn around in a few hrs. Could become a question of life and death. It reminded me of Steve Jobs’ talk in Stanford when he mentioned of his cancer treatment. Indeed time is the most precious commodity. As most of us rattle through our daily lives, most times we forget this fact. It takes a minor incident to bring us back to reality that we are indeed time bound in our stay on earth. As Steve mentions, the thought of death felts all our feelings – be it greed, fear, shame, ambitions, etc. The things that are truly important to us, stands as top priority.

For some realistic take-aways, the action items is to write up our long term plans and start working towards them. Each of us may want different things out of life, want folks to remember us in different ways. So the POA is to chalk out the long term goal and work towards it. Making the plan as a set of tasks and making each task time bound is very useful in tracking. This is obviously more complicated that I state – as the dependant variables change over time, the long term plan which is a function of this, changes. But the good part is that when it is written down, we can see that and make the required corrections.

Let me throw out my plans out there – I always wanted to contribute and make an impact in peoples lives by getting the “deserved but poor” folks educated. That is something which is core to me. Even though this task seems something that can be done in parallel with other aspects of my life, I think the best impact will happen when I do this full time. In order to do this full time, I need to get to a reasonably financial state that will allow this flexibility.

Another aspect that drives me personally is entrepreneurship, which represents a freedom in executing things that you truly believe. An attempt at unleashing your unbridled passion in a specific field, whatever it may be. days filled with insecurities and challenges that you resolve and getting things done. An attempt that may lead to financial independence or a few years spent to gain wisdom.

One of the other important things for me is getting back to desh and spending time with my parents – the least I can do for their role in my upbringing.

Tieing all these together, as I have been chalking out timelines for these tasks over the years, new variables have been added and some things tweaked. Some of them are negotiable while others are purely externally controlled (GC types). But I have been constantly trying to lower priorities where ever required to make the timeline happen. There is still uncertainity with what I will do and how – but aint it the fun? If we cant, no one can.

If you are curious about the timelines, you will know it when you need to . Anyways, how does it help you knowing my plans – you are your own judge.

But if you have similar goals where we can align, send me a private note. If I dont know you (yet), post a comment with your contacts.

Cheers

jet lag and no NFL – this is injustice

I am currently in HYD for 2 weeks. Usually, during my personal trips, jet lag takes much lower priority and the adrenalin of being at home, helps get over it 

But this time.. Waking up at 2 AM and hanging around is a pain. I browse through the TV channels in my hotel room and see some baseball game live!! This irritates me further – why the hell do they have to telecast baseball when NFL is currently in full swing.  Asaya kamchu irritate panranga!! And that too baseball, which probably has even fewer followers in India who will treat it as some bad imitation of cricket.

Maybe its time for T20 to get to the US and kick baseball out of transmission.

Now let me catch up with some old cricket matches until I fall asleep. Hopefully, my team does well and wins today.

how much money is enough?

well for starters, this is not a philosophical discussion. I was thinking from the lines of folks who are working in the US because of the fact that the USD is 40x of the INR and are thinking of going back when they are “financially strong”.

So it starts off with what are the expenses on a monthly basis in India. Can a family survive with Rs 40K per month? There are some many factors (rent costs vary a lot, #family members vary, lifestyles vary). But here are some numbers:

Rent / Mortgage 12500
Groceries 4000
Electricity 2500
Telephone Bill 1500
Mobile Bills 2500
Movies, Eat Outs 4000
Weddings, bday gifts 2500
Vacation 5000
Medical Expenses 7000
Petrol 5000
health Insurance,
medical costs 5000
Internet 1000
Maid 2000
Water 1000
Paper, Milk 1000
Car EMI 3000

47000

Now the question, how much savings do you need and how should you invest to get a monthly return that satisfies the above? technically that leads to financial independence.

stay posted and let me know if I am missing something huge (kids, school expenses,…..)

its been a while

its has been a  while since I posted… have some travel scheduled for the next couple of weeks. So I want to get some posts out – hope to get some thoughts out this week.