I’m in second corporate finance gig since I graduated. So far, I’m not impressed with the intellects. It’s not like I’m some kind of genius, but that’s the point.
I for one believe that I’m more versed in wider body of knowledge than my bosses. I’m particularly not impressed with their reasoning ability.
We sometimes engage in political, economic and financial banter. I routinely make more cogent, relevant, logical and less emotionally motivated points. I also routinely use basic deduction to back people into corners where they have to accept my premise. Of course they get butt hurt, and eventually flip flop on their position.
These are vets too e.g. controller, asst. controller and CFO. They are accounting experts i.e. know GAAP, FASB, and CPA exam material, with the exception of the items listed, they just don’t strike me as being particularly smart or well rounded.
Also, why can’t some old farts just accept that their younger counterparts might know more than them about traditional disciplines i.e. money management, philosophy, politics etc. and not just hardware, software, the internet.
This has been a source of frustration, because I don’t feel I’m learning as much as I could be. Also, it would be nice to work for people you admire.
I wouldn’t hire you.
Cool…
Do you mind sharing your age, Gouman?
I have no problem admitting my boss is much smarter and experienced than I am. I know someday I will surpass, but for now I am happy to have someone like that to learn from. Bummer for you, yay for me.
> I routinely make more cogent, relevant, logical and less emotionally motivated points
I know your type.
hahahhaha
i have had only 2 bosses who were smarter than me. my current boss doesnt even know what i do for a living. no exaggeration. we just meet once a week for 5 minutes and he asks me what i am doing and i could make up stuff if i wanted to.
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it - Oscar Wilde
Not a chance….my boss testifies in front of senate banking committee…actually had a law named after him. I will never be as smart as him…but Im okay with that.
So you’re smarter than your boss - how does that change things -
Maybe you do know more about those things, but can you make better decisions than your boss , CFO, etc.? Seemingly so, but probably not.
Finally, if your boss or bosses boss is not someone you could see yourself being in 5 years, maybe you should change positions.
If it were me, I’d post that tirade on the outside of my cube. Let em know who the BSD around here is.
Gouman Wrote:
——————————————————->
> Also, why can’t some old farts just accept that
> their younger counterparts might know more than
> them about traditional disciplines i.e. money
> management, philosophy, politics etc. and not just
> hardware, software, the internet.
>
Because it’s just never true.
Edit: And it’s not even true about software. Maybe hardware. Probably the Internet.
I’m Da Church of the faithful, I’m Liao Fengyi, clergywoman mother should have to introduce you to me, I have seen you twice, in which time you are more impressed with everyone I guess in the back of the church at noon to eat noodle face!
>>I for one believe that I’m more versed in wider body of knowledge than my bosses.
Quite possibly true, particularly if you just finished an MBA or whatnot. But, being really proficient and focused at a small number of things, and having a monopoly of knowledge on those things gets you a lot farther than being an inch deep and a mile wide in most jobs.
In my last job, I worked for an ex-military guy with only a HS degree who probably didn’t have a clue about stochastic processes or Gini coefficients or CFA vs. MBA but was far more valuable to the company than me and whatever Harvard/ex-McKinsey people worked there.
juventurd Wrote:
——————————————————-
> In my last job, I worked for an ex-military guy
> with only a HS degree who probably didn’t have a
> clue about stochastic processes or Gini
> coefficients but was far more valuable to the
> company than me and whatever Harvard/ex-McKinsey
> people worked there.
But what good is knowledge of Gini coefficients and stochastioc processes if you work at 7-11?
I’m Da Church of the faithful, I’m Liao Fengyi, clergywoman mother should have to introduce you to me, I have seen you twice, in which time you are more impressed with everyone I guess in the back of the church at noon to eat noodle face!
I think I was smarter and more competent than my former boss. In fact, I think he was actually insecure about that and tried to limit my upward mobility, challenge my ideas where he really had no basis, and constantly find problems with my work that were either irrelevant or trivial in his feeble attempts to “put me in my place.” Of course, he did manage to make my experience fairly miserable for a span of few months, but that’s also why I resigned the day I got my bonus and moved along to greener pastures.
It’s too bad that employees generally don’t have much recourse against their managers, which is why it’s so important to be cognizant of a crummy situation and be willing to move on as soon as possible if circumstances dictate.
Career Coach -- www.linkedin.com/in/numicareerconsulting
How to Break Into Equity Research -- www.mergersandinquisitions.com/equity-research-recruiting
You work for Blackwater Juventurd?
Re: Are you smarter than your boss? new
Posted by: JoeyDVivre (IP Logged) [hide posts from this user]
Date: September 23, 2008 03:17PM
juventurd Wrote:
——————————————————-
> In my last job, I worked for an ex-military guy
> with only a HS degree who probably didn’t have a
> clue about stochastic processes or Gini
> coefficients but was far more valuable to the
> company than me and whatever Harvard/ex-McKinsey
> people worked there.
But what good is knowledge of Gini coefficients and stochastioc processes if you work at 7-11?
They are essential. A good 7-11 clerk utilizes stochastic processes to analyze the drunk walk of people going through the door and where they randomly might walk next.
IMHO…
you might be smarter (if making better comments in office banter=smarter), but even very smart and intelligent people dont necessarily climb the ranks. in fact, one can say that your not smarter than your boss since he is smart enough to earn more money than you can while working with less “wit”.
Also, how do you know they are flip flopping because you backed them into a corner with your unparalleled logic? maybe they just dont want to talk to you anymore
its not what you know. its who you know first.
i wish it wasnt, but this is just the way it is.
I just tried to go to Blackwaters’ website on my work PC and the big yellow screen came up due to “Weapons and Violence.” That’s one for the personnel file–thanks USFbulls. The job was in sales management for a P&C insurer.
Juventurd… Blackwater employees are mercenaries.
BTW… how’d it end up going with lawyer-chick?
There's no brow like low-brow.
Am I smarter than my bosses – yes (some of them). Are my employees smarter than me – yes (some of them)
I knew Blackwater’s business. I was trying to get on their site to see the per annum for the private sector killing gig. Used to be around $500k I think. Lawyer going well thanks for asking before this thread gets deleted.
You get paid what 30-60k in the military but Blackwater can pay 200k+ for doing the same job….
Ha, welcome to the corporate world Gouman!!! Get used to it.
I believe I shared this before with you gents, but my former boss once asked me “what is a balance sheet”. She was an ice cream scooper before becoming PM at the bank, no I’m not making this crap up man. BTW this was in the WaMu subprime department, anyone still wondering why we are in the current mess?
Now I work with a bunch of certified Mensa geniuses, one guy worked with Stephen Hawking on quantum mechanics in his old days, so I don’t bother trying to act smart. Anyhow it is like tennis, your game is better when you play with someone better than you.
For my boss however it must be annoying, he already knows what number the complex model will return from doing the math in his head, before I even start designing the bloody thing in Excel. When I come up with a different # than the one in his head he just says check the model there is an error, and of course there always is…
purealpha Wrote:
> For my boss however it must be annoying, he
> already knows what number the complex model will
> return from doing the math in his head, before I
> even start designing the bloody thing in Excel.
> When I come up with a different # than the one in
> his head he just says check the model there is an
> error, and of course there always is…
I bet your boss asks you to run the models on some special cases that he knows the answer to or can easily estimate it. It seems as if he has background in physics.
purealpha, speaking of tennis, do you play? where are you located and what level are you? were you the one that mentioned that you’d played collegiate tennis?
Career Coach -- www.linkedin.com/in/numicareerconsulting
How to Break Into Equity Research -- www.mergersandinquisitions.com/equity-research-recruiting
Located in the quiet town of Seattle, naw I’m just an average tennis player.
Boss man has IQ of 160+, huge technical background, plus a law degree…those guys can just see patterns and stuff normal people can’t see. Dood would be a badboy chess player, he can calculate 50 moves ahead in his enlarged brain case where I can only see 5.
Ideally, you should be smarter than your boss about the specific tasks you’ve been asked to do. That’s comparative advantage at work in the officeplace. Your boss needs to be good at assigning you stuff that you do better than anyone else on the team and bringing the resources together to let you do it. This does not necessarily mean that they are more intelligent than you in general.
Ideally, your boss’ job is to help enable you to add maximum value given your skills, knowledge, and experience level. In turn, your job is to make your boss look good.
Ideally, your boss is smart enough to teach you something useful for moving up (which may be as much about politics and management as about technical stuff) and you are smart enough to figure out what that is and learn it.
Reality is full of things that mess this up, but a lot of people expect that being a boss means you should be smarter than your employees, which is not necessarily the case.
You want a quote? Haven’t I written enough already???
To the all the bosses on here, a cautionary tale on treating your employees well:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4810644.ece
I work for a PM.
I felt like I was much smarter than him in many ways, definitely in technical analysis and complicated valuation methods. Obviously all the computer stuff he’s clueless.
Why would you really be that upset about having skills that your boss(s) don’t have.. just means they did the right thing by hiring you and filling a need they had. Shows they’re smart enough to know when they need help, whether it be due to time constraint or lack of education.
You shouldn’t expect to learn how to perform complicated analysis techniques from your bosses, thats what cfa’s and MFins and MEcons are for. Our bosses have experience and its up to us to learn from their mistakes and successes so we don’t have to make 100% of the same mistakes they did.
what a silly question
of course, i’ve always been smarter than my bosses, and will always be, until i have no boss
don’t all of you feel this way?
[scratches his head]
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