Peter Diamond

In the summer of 2016, I worked for a sales company (previous documented in  Sale Team Six ). As part of the company, I was part of a variety of campaigns, including one for cable and phone provider AT&T, or more specifically their DirecTV service. The majority of this job consisted of going door to do and trying to convince people to sign up for a cable plan, and as soon as they'd either reject me or sign up, I'd leave and move on to the next customer. It was grueling work, but it was simple and didn't require much keeping up with people. Well, one day I'm reviewing my leads for the upcoming week, and I notice a familiar name. It's one of my cousins, but one of the ones I never see. I'll refer to him as Bill. I mention this to my supervisor (we'll call him Ted), and he remarks that family members are ripe for sales, as they usually inherently trust you, which gives you the leg up compared to random strangers. I, however, have some kind of a soul stil...

The critically acclaimed period drama Mad Men  centers around an ad agency and its employees adapting to a world transitioning through the 1960s. In season 5, episode 4 (entitled 'Signal 30'), two employees, Lane Pryce and Pete Campbell, have a series of miscommunication and disagreements that result in a fist fight in the middle of the office. The events are as follows. Lane Pryce is the financial chief and a founding partner of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Originally from England, he has always found it difficult to woo clients the way that the American executives in the accounts department can. Suddenly finding himself with newfound confidence, he enlists expert account man and fellow partner Roger Sterling to train him on how to talk to a client. After Roger gives Lane a lengthy lesson on how to talk to potential costumers, Lane sets off to get dinner with a representative from Jaguar Cars. Lane's dinner goes incredibly poorly. After attempting to use many of th...

In order to understand how team production works with the gift exchange, lets look at examples of gift exchange with varying levels of teamwork involved. As a general trend, an increase in teamwork and coordination usually increases the quality of the gift exchange. Little to no teamwork Birthday presents: Birthday presents are perhaps the most simple and ubiquitous form of gift exchange. It's someone's birthday, so you give them something as a gift. There is often very little coordination involved, as people like when the gift is a surprise. This can result in shoddy gifts from uninformed gift-givers, but if you're lucky both parties are in sync and a great gift is given. This is more or less a complete crapshoot, and really just depends on how well you know the person. Secret Santa: Much like with birthday presents, Secret Santa involved very little coordination. In fact, part of the rule is that no one knows who has been picked to give a gift to whom, henc...

Before we get into how the various choices within a college education affect income risk, there's a big decision that occurs right before that has a huge affect on income risk: the decision to go to college in the first place. Regardless of career path or major or anything, college is EXPENSIVE. By investing money into a college education (or, more likely, taking out student loans to pay for it), you are betting that the salaries open to you as a college graduate are larger enough than what you'd get with a high school education that it outweighs your student debt and the opportunity cost of all the time you're spending at a university instead of working. Now, obviously, everyone taking this class has made the exact same choice for this, but it's definitely important to consider how going to college affects your income risk. If income risk was the primary motivator for everyone in this class, then we can assume, at least for this group of people, that getting a degree r...

In looking back at my four "real" blog posts (discounting the post about my economists and the test post, of course), I haven't really noticed a lot in terms of themes. I like to tell stories, and I definitely like to infuse humor into those stories, but I've really tries to be varied in terms of the experiences and the settings of the blog posts. Outside of primarily involving organizations, there aren't a lot of recurring connections. In terms of class material, however, I've noticed that the topic of management appears in most of them, and not just the one where the prompt specifically asks about it. In Transaction Costs and Organization in the World of Music , I discussed an RSO's free-form management style. Despite having an official president, virtually every single decision was done as a group of equals which had its own pros and cons. In Opportunism in the Workplace , I lamented my former boss's invisibility. In Sale Team Six , the week where...

Illinibucks ™ : the chaotic new currency that UIUC introduced in the year 2017 for the purpose of relieving allocation issues with on-campus services. Immediately, the questions everyone asked were be "what services are these used for?" and "how should I, Peter Diamond, use my Illinibucks™?" and of course "what would this actually affect?" What are they used for? The short answer is: anything that involves priority or queues. The long answer is: look at this list. Registration : Tired of waiting to get your time ticket and register after all the courses you want have already filled up? You can spend Illinibucks™ to shoot right to the front of the line! Don't miss out on all those great classes just because you're a Freshman! Advising : Advising appointments are always (in my experience) on a first-come-first-serve basis. With Illinibucks™ you can bypass this and get advising as soon as you want. This also reduces the amount of time you nee...