Management Bits and Tips

Previously announced book (publication date is 1st of September, 2010) now got preliminary front and back covers.

Front cover:

Back cover:

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Some people cling to their jobs unwilling to move on because of the possible redundancy payout accumulated over years. They just afraid of loosing it when moving to a new job (bit). Consider job hunting companies that offer a sign off bonus. As a fraction of your possible redundancy package it can ease your departure. Alternatively divide your minimal redundancy package into the number of months, for example, the length of a probation period, and add this to a new compensation when negotiating with your potential employer (tip).

No comments here. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

To look at your salary expectations from a new angle I recommend at least to read the description of the following book that I “wrote” and published:

Salary Figures: A Codebook of Expectations

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Past performance, success and achievement record doesn’t mean that the same would hold in the future (bit). Look for environment and hidden factors that explain the lucky side of success and evaluate it for new environment (tip).

This bit and tip was influenced by the following book I vehemently recommend:

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Although the book focuses on trading and material success the ideas can be applied to hiring decisions and team building. Especially, contrary to the popular opinion that the past poor performance stays poor in the future, I’ve seen examples when poor past performance changed to more than average if not exceptional after environmental changes. These changes doesn’t mean changing the company to work for or pursuing entrepreneurial career but could be changes inside the same company. When hiring or promoting I would also recommend to look for the number of people in the team. It is one case when there was a small team with 2 members and one star performer and a completely different case when a team had 10 members with one star (clearly Team Lead position). However, if a candidate was a star in 5 companies but teams were 2-3 people in size we clearly have the star performer against 10 - 15 people.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

As you might have noticed I have already described 4 essential management bits forming the part of a management bit vector. For example,  

0110… bit vector describes a manager who

• writes with mistakes (0×1)
• never misspells names (0×2)
• writes reports on time (0×4)
• doesn’t read management books (0×8)
• … (0×10)
• … (0×20)
• …

So you can digitize any manager using management bits as observables. This sounds like a reductionist approach to life sciences but at least it is manageable. You can also digitize any employee or job candidate to form their employee bit vector or candidate bit vector and see how their bit vectors are close to your acceptable bit mask or even your own bit vector and this can be the basis for promotional assessment or hiring decision.

Also you can see that 32 essential management bits result in 4 billion different managers. To cope with such combinatorial explosion we might need to introduce management subsets or management bit masks later on.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -