Author Topic: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?  (Read 2992 times)

Seadog

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Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« on: May 04, 2019, 04:56:48 AM »
I was curious if such companies or roles exist where you are rewarded for the virtues of delayed gratification, thrift, true value analysis, and accumulation of lots of surplus cash? Off the top of my head I can't really think of any, and the worst offender by far has to be the government.

I remember in the reserves literally looking for things to spend money on at the end of the year, things we didn't even need, but might need at some point in the future, with zero regard to whether the price we paid was a screaming deal or not, *purely* to use up money in the budget. Reason being if we didn't our budget would get slashed next year. I've heard anecdotal evidence that this happens across the spectrum of gov't depts.

Even on the larger scale, gov't run deficit after deficit, billions (or trillions) in debt, and the public almost demands it, "If you have a surplus, spend it". But then, why should the government, elected by and represented by the people have their financial affairs so much different than the people who put them there?

Big companies almost as bad. I was in Ottawa for work Canada 150 day weekend, and coworkers had to fly across the country. This was at a cost of something like $6000 per ticket, in business class, as that's all that was available. Not even a modicum of cost/benefit analysis was done, and an attitude of "this is what we need, and if this is what it costs so be it" prevails. And after all "It's not my money".

When I got my first grown up job I foolishly thought that by selling off most of my big things, packing it in my car, and driving across country resulting a a much cheaper relocation at $3k for mileage and a few hotels vs the family of 4 who hired movers, a truck, and airline tickets at a cost of $25k would somehow be rewarded down the line. No one noticed or cared. The HR drone who oversaw it probably just thought "It costs what it costs" and "it's not my money".

Similarly when I later got transferred out of the country opting to store my meager goods at my parents house vs paying for storage that they would have reimbursed. Not only was there no benefit, it actually bit me in the ass as since they had no record of me having anything in storage, so it was a fight to get those goods out to my new assignment location when I returned to Canada.

Are there companies or organizations out there where thrift and saving is the name of the game? Where people who honestly step back and look at the big picture and say "what's the best for the whole organization", and such decisions get rewarded, vs "take as much as you can of what benefits you" that gets met with a shoulder shrug.

Metalcat

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2019, 05:31:41 AM »
Um...

My DH works for the Canadian government and they are insanely cheap about travel, even for their executive level staff. DH has worked in many departments at a fairly senior level, and although there are plenty of examples of budgets that have to be spent and therefore some dumb spending, but he's seen A LOT more cases of strict limitations on spending.

I've personally actually never worked in an environment where there wasn't a keen eye directed at overhead and minimizing the bottom line.

In my current job, we have a sharp focus on the bottom line and how to manage our expenses because some regulatory changes occured that have substantially raised our costs and more are coming.

I've seen a similar focus on minimizing expenses in retail, restaurants, hotels, non profits, medical, insurance, academia, extremely high end luxury goods manufacturers, consulting, insurance, trucking, taxi, real estate development, construction, churches, fashion designers/clothing brands, artisans, and farming, just to name a few.

So yeah, I'm definitely not seeing this absence of budget-consiousness in the professional world that you are.


ETA: a lot of individual cases of waste and excess are less a product of an over arching disregard for minimizing spending and more of a reality that the resources it would take to police the individual cases of expenses would far outstrip the resulting savings.

Typically though, there is a fairly solid analysis of the trade offs of those policies and an understanding that there will be a certain amount of "spillage" as a result.

I know full well that my staff are gaining nickels and dimes through various abuses/utilization of policies I've put in place, but if my policies overall optimize performance, I'm not concerned with small scale leakage.

As for the government, don't forget that there are entire sectors of each department in charge of analyzing how money is being used. DH worked in Integrity, that shit is *thorough*.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2019, 09:04:59 AM by Malkynn »

CheapScholar

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2019, 08:42:47 AM »
Some admin roles at smaller colleges and universities for sure.

Metalcat

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2019, 09:07:08 AM »
Some admin roles at smaller colleges and universities for sure.

Ah yes, I forgot academia in my list. I think that was the place where I saw budgets pushed to the absolute limits. It helps when you can pay grad students only $1000/mo, call it generous, and work them into the ground because labour laws don't apply to them.

Maenad

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #4 on: May 04, 2019, 09:31:43 AM »
I've seen both behaviors you guys have mentioned in corporate America, and both can be anti-mustachian. The similarity seems to be the short term thinking - usually only to the next fiscal quarter. I think there are companies out there that value long-term planning, spending when it benefits the overall goals, cutting waste where it doesn't, etc., but most or all are privately held. Investors want to see growth immediately, so most publicly-held companies prioritize the quarter's earnings more than a 5-year or 10-year development plan. Most people just don't sacrifice the present for the future all that well, so you'll see it reflected all over - we bring our stupidities with us wherever we go, whether it's home, work, the ballot box, our health...

And I've definitely seen the "spend all the money or they'll give you less next year" in corporations!

arob54600

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #5 on: May 04, 2019, 09:43:44 AM »
I work for a credit union, let me tell you, they are tight with cash!
I appreciate it, fiscal responsibility breeds stability. :)

That being said, I was pleasantly surprised to be asked to go to a conference this fall.  Woot woot, I am going to Miami to get my learn on!

Zikoris

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #6 on: May 04, 2019, 11:26:05 AM »
I work in a bankruptcy office, and being a huge money nerd definitely gave me an edge in being hired. We talked about a lot of financial stuff in the interview.

SwordGuy

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #7 on: May 04, 2019, 11:58:05 AM »
The job you are looking for is "capitalistic business owner".

BicycleB

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #8 on: May 04, 2019, 12:24:25 PM »

ETA: a lot of individual cases of waste and excess are less a product of an over arching disregard for minimizing spending and more of a reality that the resources it would take to police the individual cases of expenses would far outstrip the resulting savings.

Typically though, there is a fairly solid analysis of the trade offs of those policies and an understanding that there will be a certain amount of "spillage" as a result.

I know full well that my staff are gaining nickels and dimes through various abuses/utilization of policies I've put in place, but if my policies overall optimize performance, I'm not concerned with small scale leakage.

As for the government, don't forget that there are entire sectors of each department in charge of analyzing how money is being used. DH worked in Integrity, that shit is *thorough*.

Former govt auditor in USA; strongly agree with the above.

The world is big enough to contain plenty of counter-examples, but the typical case is tighter than you notice. You may have seen the counter-examples personally, but in general they get talked about more than the examples of careful spending. Most people don't know the detailed effort that goes into loss prevention and containment.

Well run companies and countries tend to have loss rates from waste and theft that are in the .5% to 5% range. I know individuals from "Third World" economies that don't work like that. Vast portions (30% to 95%) of the money allocated to any purpose, whether a private company's bus fare or a government tax, leaks out in their systems. Canada and even the USA are still part of the "First World" in this respect.
« Last Edit: May 04, 2019, 12:54:04 PM by BicycleB »

js82

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #9 on: May 04, 2019, 01:59:13 PM »
I've seen both behaviors you guys have mentioned in corporate America, and both can be anti-mustachian. The similarity seems to be the short term thinking - usually only to the next fiscal quarter. I think there are companies out there that value long-term planning, spending when it benefits the overall goals, cutting waste where it doesn't, etc., but most or all are privately held. Investors want to see growth immediately, so most publicly-held companies prioritize the quarter's earnings more than a 5-year or 10-year development plan. Most people just don't sacrifice the present for the future all that well, so you'll see it reflected all over - we bring our stupidities with us wherever we go, whether it's home, work, the ballot box, our health...

In engineering, long-term thinking is rewarded in *good* organizations.  Making processes less-expensive/more efficient to deliver cost savings over the long haul is a big part of what many engineers(myself included) do - and financial impact in the form of cost savings from optimizing/streamlining some process is one of the most powerful things to have on your resume when applying for a new job or negotiating a promotion.

Of course, we still have to figure out how to do all this while working within the framework of the stupid financial games we're forced to play in order to make the quarterly results look pretty. ;)


CheapScholar

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #10 on: May 04, 2019, 08:25:20 PM »
Some admin roles at smaller colleges and universities for sure.

Ah yes, I forgot academia in my list. I think that was the place where I saw budgets pushed to the absolute limits. It helps when you can pay grad students only $1000/mo, call it generous, and work them into the ground because labour laws don't apply to them.

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Neo

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #11 on: May 04, 2019, 09:22:44 PM »
Most of my career I worked in a Sourcing/Supply Chain/Procurement function. Heavy focus on saving money, negotiating better pricing on new purchases, etc.

Bloop Bloop

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #12 on: May 04, 2019, 10:32:35 PM »
As a small business owner I live by mustachian values

- Focus on what you're good at
- Invest capital carefully and appropriately
- Scrutinise your expenses
- Always seek to improve
- Capitalise on inherent advantages
- Work well with others - have an understanding of your social environment
- Sell out at the end and retire early

Seadog

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #13 on: May 10, 2019, 09:07:58 AM »
The job you are looking for is "capitalistic business owner".

Strongly disagree. I've never seen a company adhere to what I would consider Mustachian values. I used to work oil & gas. If we needed to pick up something small, or even go out to lunch, we would routinely take a company F350 truck. Never once was the suggestion of biking made, nor did I ever even hear of a company that provided bikes for running corporate errands, and I think 98% of people would balk at it, harder and faster than they would even at biking to work period. 

A "Mustachian Vacation" is a bicycle camping trip. Almost by definition, most people get off on corporate retreats where they can spend someone else's money, stay in a hotel they would never personally pay for, and eat meals that they would never personally indulge in.

As a small business owner I live by mustachian values

- Focus on what you're good at
- Invest capital carefully and appropriately
- Scrutinise your expenses
- Always seek to improve
- Capitalise on inherent advantages
- Work well with others - have an understanding of your social environment
- Sell out at the end and retire early

I think that all just falls into the category of "prudent" vs "mustachian", not unlike the person who thinks they're a financial superstar because not only do they pay all their bills, and even manage to save 5-10% towards retirement, but are still leasing a car, $100 cell plan, and a mortgage on a home that has more than 2 bedrooms for every person. !Reckless =/= Mustachian.

I think the issue is that so much company stuff involves the coordinated efforts of sometimes hundreds of people and the associated opportunity cost can be tremendous. I remember one time when no commercial flights were available to get me to a place that needed me 1600 km away, the company actually looked into chartering a private plane for me, which also wasn't available on short notice, so ended up paying like $150/hr to rent a truck + driver, to drive me. That one trip probably cost the company $4000. More than that however was the rig's 1.5 days of down time, which could clock in at $50k/day. So while worthwihle from one standpoint, there is nothing mustachian about paying several dollars per km to move a 175 lb package of mostly water.

Contrast that with how I go on vacation. Being semi-FIREd I can go more or less whenever. So I scour the deal websites for maybe 1 of 10 places I'd like to go, over a period of 2-3 months, for durations of 4-6 weeks. Flying to low CoL places like Asia, I can often spend less than I would on vacation than I would living in Canada. The target I shoot at for a flight is 5 cents CAD/mile. Then you can live there for like $25/day. That's what I mean by mustachian. Or Jacob's extreme version where you're living in a tent in the desert. I'm pretty sure any employer asking that of an employee during a business trip would be reported to the labour board.     

 

Seadog

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #14 on: May 10, 2019, 10:05:45 AM »
Um...

My DH works for the Canadian government and they are insanely cheap about travel, even for their executive level staff. DH has worked in many departments at a fairly senior level, and although there are plenty of examples of budgets that have to be spent and therefore some dumb spending, but he's seen A LOT more cases of strict limitations on spending.

Perhaps we're talking about two different levels of budgetary constraint. Often I've seen in both gov't and private sector travel some sort of policy to the extent of "trips must be ideally booked 1 month in advance, and the cheapest fare offered must be taken" even if this results in double the travel time, or an extra night in transit. The goal of most people seems to be "hit the budget". The goal for a mustachian seems to be "hit as close to zero as reasonably possible, while accounting for additional benefits and costs".

If a mustachian budgets for gas, and days are nicer than expected so bikes more to the store and work, and gas goes down, at the end of the month they don't have a big gas fire. The goal was always to bike as much as possible, drive as little as reasonably possible, and get that much closer to FIRE, so in that sense a budget is largely pointless, as you spend what you need to, have a definition of "needs" that falls into the lowest 5%, and save the rest. Many big orgs I feel wouldn't have biked in the first place because "hey it's in the budget", and may very well have had a gas fire at the end of the month, or at least used it as a justification to buy bigger cars, lest their gas budget get cut next year.   

The questioning of the dates, airports, or whether the travel needs to happen at all never comes up. The dates, airports, and the fact you need to travel are taken as a given. If I can personally save $500 on an overseas flight by taking a 6 hr bus for $50 from say Ottawa to Toronto, I'll do it. Same thing if it means leaving 2 days early, or breaking say a 30 hour flight to Oz into two smaller trips which involves a 3 day stop over in somewhere unique like Hawaii or Singapore. I've never seen this sort of thing in gov't or corporations. In fact, despite having done it before to both save the company money, and add personal trips onto both ends of a work trip, this level of complexity would make some bosses uncomfortable. Most organizations are populated by average people, and when you step outside of the realm of average/normal, they naturally get antzy and uncomfortable.   

mm1970

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #15 on: May 10, 2019, 10:37:46 AM »
The job you are looking for is "capitalistic business owner".
Yes.

But we are always looking to cut costs here, obv as we are a poor start up.

There is, however, no incentive really for doing so.  Except maybe a "thanks".  No cut of the savings or anything, no promotions unless you are in acct.

Bucksandreds

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #16 on: May 10, 2019, 05:32:39 PM »
The job you are looking for is "capitalistic business owner".
Yes.

But we are always looking to cut costs here, obv as we are a poor start up.

There is, however, no incentive really for doing so.  Except maybe a "thanks".  No cut of the savings or anything, no promotions unless you are in acct.

No. Capitalism disregards mental,physical and environmental health all in the name of profit.

Bloop Bloop

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #17 on: May 10, 2019, 07:54:50 PM »

As a small business owner I live by mustachian values

- Focus on what you're good at
- Invest capital carefully and appropriately
- Scrutinise your expenses
- Always seek to improve
- Capitalise on inherent advantages
- Work well with others - have an understanding of your social environment
- Sell out at the end and retire early

I think that all just falls into the category of "prudent" vs "mustachian", not unlike the person who thinks they're a financial superstar because not only do they pay all their bills, and even manage to save 5-10% towards retirement, but are still leasing a car, $100 cell plan, and a mortgage on a home that has more than 2 bedrooms for every person. !Reckless =/= Mustachian.


Where do you get the idea that I or my business have any similarity to someone who only saves 5-10% towards retirement, leases a car, has a $100 cell plan, etc?

What about my business is non-Mustachian?

Bloop Bloop

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #18 on: May 10, 2019, 07:57:09 PM »

The questioning of the dates, airports, or whether the travel needs to happen at all never comes up. The dates, airports, and the fact you need to travel are taken as a given. If I can personally save $500 on an overseas flight by taking a 6 hr bus for $50 from say Ottawa to Toronto, I'll do it. Same thing if it means leaving 2 days early, or breaking say a 30 hour flight to Oz into two smaller trips which involves a 3 day stop over in somewhere unique like Hawaii or Singapore.

Maybe because businesses tend to have specific objectives in mind, and spending an extra 2 days at an airport, or even a fun destination, is not one of those. If a business can achieve $5000 in productivity over those 2 lost days, then why should it try to save $500? It makes no sense. It can generate greater wages for its staff by being productive.

Indexer

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Re: Jobs wher mustachian virtues are rewarded?
« Reply #19 on: May 11, 2019, 08:10:32 AM »
The job you are looking for is "capitalistic business owner".
Yes.

But we are always looking to cut costs here, obv as we are a poor start up.

There is, however, no incentive really for doing so.  Except maybe a "thanks".  No cut of the savings or anything, no promotions unless you are in acct.

No. Capitalism disregards mental,physical and environmental health all in the name of profit.


Capitalism is an economic system that encourages entrepreneurship and innovation. No where does it state it has to ignore those things in the name of profit. Some people ignore those things in the name of profit and those people are capitalists, but not all capitalists ignore those things. Actually, if consumers put a focus on those things then businesses will as well, and there are whole businesses/products dedicated to those interests.

As a small business owner I live by mustachian values

- Focus on what you're good at
- Invest capital carefully and appropriately
- Scrutinise your expenses
- Always seek to improve
- Capitalise on inherent advantages
- Work well with others - have an understanding of your social environment
- Sell out at the end and retire early

I find most small business owners are more frugal than most Americans, especially when it comes to the business. There are exceptions though, my own father being one. He was frugal when he started his business, but once it started making a lot of money he started spending a lot of money.

The CFP even teaches that personal financial planning can be thought of as handling personal finances like it's a small business. Cash flow statements, balance sheets, and making decisions based on the need's of the business rather than impulses. For instance, if a small business needs a truck to move equipment they are looking at price, towing capacity, fuel economy, cost of ownership[repairs], and not leather seats, bluetooth, interior comfort, and branding.