Peter Diamond

As we come to the end of the semester, there comes a time to reflect on all of the lessons we've learned from the class. This is sometimes referred to as "ICES forms time", but there are also ways to reflect on a class that actually matter. Hopefully, this blog post and all others like it are helpful in ways that the ICES forms are not. Lessons Learned What have we learned in Econ of Orgs? Well, I'll certainly never forget that finger guns refer to the holdup problem. But outside of that, I've learned a ton about management structures. As someone who would like to go into Project Management upon graduation, this is certainly something that interests me. The various types of managers, monitoring, and rising to your level of incompetence are all things that I feel will stick with me well into my professional career. Class Structure The class structure was perhaps a bit too optimistic. While it makes perfect sense to have every class open to student di...

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...