Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Graham Industries VR1A
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
First Investors Corporation: Worst Company to Work For
My experience with First Investors is not unlike that of many others. It started out at a career fair, or maybe it didn't but shortly after I attended a career fair I got an email from a First Investors recruiter asking me to set up a time to interview with them. They gave me a date over thanksgiving break, and I was able to attend. I suited up and when I got there I was in a room with probably 25 other prospective candidates. They told us how they review thousands of applications for the seats we were in(Total BS) and how we will be able to help people. They told us about how much money we will be making, up to 100k in the first year if you work hard. I couldn't help but smile when I thought about all the things I would be doing with that stupid amount of money. After the little group meeting, we were individually called in to have a quick personal interview with a current employee of the company. They asked the regular old where do you see yourself in 5 years question and sent me on my way. They neglected to tell us that we would be paid straight commission, have no benefits at all, and have to pay for our own licensing. They let you know all this once you "accept" the position.
I thought I could give it a try. Just make it work. They make it seem so easy. As if you aren't selling something people don't need. They wanted me to start the first day I moved back, which was a monday. I definitely need a week to adjust and get moved back in before I started working. I also had to have my "Bank Book" filled out with 100 names. Its basically just a organized notebook where you can write down all the contacts you can think of because you will be calling them. I just wrote down as many names as I could to make them happy, never had any intention of calling them. I would have much rather cold called.
The first weeks you are there all you do is "train" and by train all you do is sit in a room with the other trainees and go over your licensing material, which you paid for. Monday through Friday, 9-2pm, with a conference call on monday at 2pm. Go in, read the book, take practice tests, leave. Awesome. Easy, and you don't get paid. There's really no point in going in. You don't benefit at all from reading the book there. I started to get skeptical of the many glorius things we were told in the welcome seminar. I kept looking in the parking lot for the nice cars. I never saw one. The supposed top producer at my office drove a Toyota Corolla. Maybe he just isn't into cars I thought.
It took me about 6 weeks to complete my tests, series 6, 63, and my life insurance license. I scored an 86 an 90 on the Series 6 and 63 respectively. You don't get to find out what you scored on the life insurance, only if you pass or not. One person failed their first test, I couldn't help but feel great inside because of this. After all my tests were passed, I finished my last one on a friday. I was no longer considered a trainee and I would be staying all day Friday, Saturday, and till 9pm on monday . Tuesday I would be going to the First Investors University training program in New York. Nine Days where I would learn the presentations. Finally I would learn something about this business. I was very very wrong. The Training program consists of sitting in a room from about 9-5 learning presentations on the first investors products that you will in turn regurgitate to potential clients. You are taught exactly what to say If a client asks why in gods name the commission rate is so high. 5.75% is a little bit ridiculous, their answer: "You get me". The thing is that you aren't worth even 1%. The other people in the training class with me were complete and utter retards. No one knew how a stock got its price, or even what the market was doing. The job is to sell shitty products. Its like cutco knifes, but instead of getting a nice knife, you get a terribly performing mutual fund or a life insurance policy that will rape you on premiums.
The best part of the presentations are that you should put 90% of the prospects into the same mutual fund. The Growth and Income fund. So since you already know what you are going to put them in before you even meet them, are you really worth 5.75%? Most definitely not.
The commission schedule is also something to gawk at. 5.75 sounds like a lot, and it is. On a $10000 sale thats $575 taken by the company. Sounds great for the Rep that got the sale. It gets broken down further however. A level 1 rep will get 21% of the commission, or $120.75 and that will be split with the rep's guide, 60/40. So you will walk away with $72.45. Should also mention that it takes 10000 points to go from level 1 to level 2. All this does it raise your real commission. It eventually goes up to level 3 where it ends at 44% commission rate. The fact that you have to take a senior rep with you on your first appointments until you have reached level 2 just shows how much they really care about the new employees. They make it seem like they are doing a nice thing for you. Feel like you have someone there to help you out in case something goes wrong. It all sounds nice until they mention the commission split in a little piece of paper that you have to sign. Always have their hands in your pocket. You have to sell $100,000 worth of products to be able to work on your own.
They call this job very entrepreneurial. And that's about the only thing they don't lie about. You have to find your own clients. The only thing you are supplied with is a desk, and a phone. That's it. No computer. Once you are a Registered Representative, you are expected to set 10 appointments for your first week. This means you have to break out your "Bank Book" and start calling anyone you have ever met and had phone numbers for. Family, friends, aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents friends, friends of friends. Set up 10 appointments. You are expected to have them setup for the first week you come back from training. Now I should mention that I am 22, and had graduated from college not even a month before this. Anyone that knew me already knew this. Lets not forget 80% of my "bank book" consisted of people my age. Two people had jobs. And I can guarantee you they weren't going to invest anything. And if I did sit down with them I would tell them not to waste their money. How can you sell a product, that you yourself would not buy.
I lied and said I set 8 appointments. I would call friends and bullshit with them. I texted them before calling on the phone so they would know it was me and could play along. I had a hard time even finding 8 people to do this with. But I did it and it kept the manager off my back until I could leave for proper training. It was at this point that I figured it wasnt for me. A full friday, part of saturday, and 12 hours of monday. Sitting at my desk, starring at names in my bank book of people that I knew would not ever be investing, and that its not my fault.
For those that are thinking about joining first investors. I leave you with this. The manager will constantly have their hands in your pocket collecting your commission, If you get a sale that is, and the will not help you out at all. They will give you a supplemental pay of a paltry $250 a week, but understand that they consider this a loan against your future earnings, and not actual pay. The manager will constantly be busy looking for new recruits because my "class of 12" ended up dropping to 4, by the time I left, and I can only imagine that the girl that had to go to a credit consolidation company to help her with her personal debt and also failed her licensing test isn't still around.
I thought I could give it a try. Just make it work. They make it seem so easy. As if you aren't selling something people don't need. They wanted me to start the first day I moved back, which was a monday. I definitely need a week to adjust and get moved back in before I started working. I also had to have my "Bank Book" filled out with 100 names. Its basically just a organized notebook where you can write down all the contacts you can think of because you will be calling them. I just wrote down as many names as I could to make them happy, never had any intention of calling them. I would have much rather cold called.
The first weeks you are there all you do is "train" and by train all you do is sit in a room with the other trainees and go over your licensing material, which you paid for. Monday through Friday, 9-2pm, with a conference call on monday at 2pm. Go in, read the book, take practice tests, leave. Awesome. Easy, and you don't get paid. There's really no point in going in. You don't benefit at all from reading the book there. I started to get skeptical of the many glorius things we were told in the welcome seminar. I kept looking in the parking lot for the nice cars. I never saw one. The supposed top producer at my office drove a Toyota Corolla. Maybe he just isn't into cars I thought.
It took me about 6 weeks to complete my tests, series 6, 63, and my life insurance license. I scored an 86 an 90 on the Series 6 and 63 respectively. You don't get to find out what you scored on the life insurance, only if you pass or not. One person failed their first test, I couldn't help but feel great inside because of this. After all my tests were passed, I finished my last one on a friday. I was no longer considered a trainee and I would be staying all day Friday, Saturday, and till 9pm on monday . Tuesday I would be going to the First Investors University training program in New York. Nine Days where I would learn the presentations. Finally I would learn something about this business. I was very very wrong. The Training program consists of sitting in a room from about 9-5 learning presentations on the first investors products that you will in turn regurgitate to potential clients. You are taught exactly what to say If a client asks why in gods name the commission rate is so high. 5.75% is a little bit ridiculous, their answer: "You get me". The thing is that you aren't worth even 1%. The other people in the training class with me were complete and utter retards. No one knew how a stock got its price, or even what the market was doing. The job is to sell shitty products. Its like cutco knifes, but instead of getting a nice knife, you get a terribly performing mutual fund or a life insurance policy that will rape you on premiums.
The best part of the presentations are that you should put 90% of the prospects into the same mutual fund. The Growth and Income fund. So since you already know what you are going to put them in before you even meet them, are you really worth 5.75%? Most definitely not.
The commission schedule is also something to gawk at. 5.75 sounds like a lot, and it is. On a $10000 sale thats $575 taken by the company. Sounds great for the Rep that got the sale. It gets broken down further however. A level 1 rep will get 21% of the commission, or $120.75 and that will be split with the rep's guide, 60/40. So you will walk away with $72.45. Should also mention that it takes 10000 points to go from level 1 to level 2. All this does it raise your real commission. It eventually goes up to level 3 where it ends at 44% commission rate. The fact that you have to take a senior rep with you on your first appointments until you have reached level 2 just shows how much they really care about the new employees. They make it seem like they are doing a nice thing for you. Feel like you have someone there to help you out in case something goes wrong. It all sounds nice until they mention the commission split in a little piece of paper that you have to sign. Always have their hands in your pocket. You have to sell $100,000 worth of products to be able to work on your own.
They call this job very entrepreneurial. And that's about the only thing they don't lie about. You have to find your own clients. The only thing you are supplied with is a desk, and a phone. That's it. No computer. Once you are a Registered Representative, you are expected to set 10 appointments for your first week. This means you have to break out your "Bank Book" and start calling anyone you have ever met and had phone numbers for. Family, friends, aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents friends, friends of friends. Set up 10 appointments. You are expected to have them setup for the first week you come back from training. Now I should mention that I am 22, and had graduated from college not even a month before this. Anyone that knew me already knew this. Lets not forget 80% of my "bank book" consisted of people my age. Two people had jobs. And I can guarantee you they weren't going to invest anything. And if I did sit down with them I would tell them not to waste their money. How can you sell a product, that you yourself would not buy.
I lied and said I set 8 appointments. I would call friends and bullshit with them. I texted them before calling on the phone so they would know it was me and could play along. I had a hard time even finding 8 people to do this with. But I did it and it kept the manager off my back until I could leave for proper training. It was at this point that I figured it wasnt for me. A full friday, part of saturday, and 12 hours of monday. Sitting at my desk, starring at names in my bank book of people that I knew would not ever be investing, and that its not my fault.
For those that are thinking about joining first investors. I leave you with this. The manager will constantly have their hands in your pocket collecting your commission, If you get a sale that is, and the will not help you out at all. They will give you a supplemental pay of a paltry $250 a week, but understand that they consider this a loan against your future earnings, and not actual pay. The manager will constantly be busy looking for new recruits because my "class of 12" ended up dropping to 4, by the time I left, and I can only imagine that the girl that had to go to a credit consolidation company to help her with her personal debt and also failed her licensing test isn't still around.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
First Steaming
After many months and two jobs later, I finally assembled my Graham Industries TVR1A Steam engine. The crossheads were attached too tightly and it made the crosshead guides not fit correctly, if at all. After some grinding, I thought to myself, "Hey maybe I didn't put it together right. Sure enough after taking it apart and reassembling it I found the problem The crosshead guides were being screwed in too tight and this caused them to warp.
I steamed up my Maccsteam 3.5" marine boiler and gave it a very amateur steaming. The timing must be off, because the engine only ran for about 30 seconds on its own, although there could be many other things that are going on that I am not considering. I will check the timing tomorrow to make sure, and hopefully update more frequently now that I have settled down into my new job
I steamed up my Maccsteam 3.5" marine boiler and gave it a very amateur steaming. The timing must be off, because the engine only ran for about 30 seconds on its own, although there could be many other things that are going on that I am not considering. I will check the timing tomorrow to make sure, and hopefully update more frequently now that I have settled down into my new job
Saturday, November 21, 2009
AENY Trade
This week I made about $35 after commissions. I only did one trade this week. I was long AENY for about 20 minutes. I got in at 2.90 and out at 3.00. The expectation was for it to get to 3.60, but I never saw it go there. Just too speculative, I would rather lock in my profit at $.10 per share. I was only long 500 shares. There was way too much resistance to push it higher than $3.00. Easy enough, free easy money. I can't complain!
The stupid day trading rule set by the SEC means that in any 5 day period I cannot do more than 3 trades where I am in and out on the same day. It makes things difficult, and the only way to get around this rule is by having $25,000 in your account. Hurts the small guys like us.
The stupid day trading rule set by the SEC means that in any 5 day period I cannot do more than 3 trades where I am in and out on the same day. It makes things difficult, and the only way to get around this rule is by having $25,000 in your account. Hurts the small guys like us.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
New Job and Trading Profits!
I left my job at yale to join Subway Headquarters. Now instead of playing with all the gadgets I can get my hands on I tick away a spreadsheet all day in my cubicle, but I do get free lunch! It's not quite as cool or exciting as I thought it would be. I started monday. I do the budgets for the international subway regional administrations(I think). I take a number that was given to me, divide it by 12, and enter it into the proper account. That's about it. For 8 hours a day. Not much to it. I don't have the internet anymore either. I miss it sometimes, but I am learning to cope. The Cubicle does need to be decorated.
I have become quite the master at excel. I almost never use the mouse anymore. The keyboard shortcuts make doing repetitive tasks very easy. I have barely even scraped the surface of what excel has to offer sadly.
My ThinkorSwim.com Account was finally funded. Took a long time because I was stupid and used the wrong routing number. I made the first trade today whilst at work using the amazing iphone app. I put in a buy at market order for VRMLQ@22.00. I hesitated for a couple of minutes. I could have had it for 21.70 or so. I had anxiety the whole time I was in the market. I was waiting for this stock to break out passed 22 but it never really happened. There was a lot of resistance so I decided to pull the plug. I am new to ThinkorSwim, and the Iphone app was a bit confusing to me. I kept entering my Sell order as a MOC or Market on Close order meaning an order to buy or sell stock or options at the end of the trading session at a price within the closing range of prices. MOC orders must be placed 45 minutes before the close of trading. I tried to sell at 1pm and I could not get the order to go through untill 2:42pm @22.30. So while I didn't get the price I wanted (23.50) I still made a profit even after commission, albeit only 4.97, thanks to SEC commission fees! Oh well, lesson learned and it didn't cost me a dime!
I have become quite the master at excel. I almost never use the mouse anymore. The keyboard shortcuts make doing repetitive tasks very easy. I have barely even scraped the surface of what excel has to offer sadly.
My ThinkorSwim.com Account was finally funded. Took a long time because I was stupid and used the wrong routing number. I made the first trade today whilst at work using the amazing iphone app. I put in a buy at market order for VRMLQ@22.00. I hesitated for a couple of minutes. I could have had it for 21.70 or so. I had anxiety the whole time I was in the market. I was waiting for this stock to break out passed 22 but it never really happened. There was a lot of resistance so I decided to pull the plug. I am new to ThinkorSwim, and the Iphone app was a bit confusing to me. I kept entering my Sell order as a MOC or Market on Close order meaning an order to buy or sell stock or options at the end of the trading session at a price within the closing range of prices. MOC orders must be placed 45 minutes before the close of trading. I tried to sell at 1pm and I could not get the order to go through untill 2:42pm @22.30. So while I didn't get the price I wanted (23.50) I still made a profit even after commission, albeit only 4.97, thanks to SEC commission fees! Oh well, lesson learned and it didn't cost me a dime!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Fun at work!
So I have been working with a new company for the past 8 weeks or so. It has been a fun time. It is a start up company that does electronics recycling. Basically we pay people for old electronics, refurbish them and resell them. A couple of projects I have worked on so far have been dealing with vendors in China for business arbitrage opportunities as well as a lot of technical work. The biggest project yet, was buying 80 returned xbox 360s. It wasn't until later on that I figured out the reason they were returned was because of so many of them having problems. These wouldn't be so easy to process as fixing broken ones requires you to open them up and replace the two heatsink mounts on the motherboard. It is not difficult, but it is time consuming.
Of the 80 we bought, 30 worked fine out of the box. Fifty of them had various problems. The majority of the broken ones suffered from the Red ring of death or RROD. A few here and there had the e74 or a disc drive problem. I looked up how to fix the RROD and it seemed doable for me. I will post a guide on how to fix it with some good pictures from a DSLR camera we got in too! I get to play with so many gadgets. I have attempted to fix 30 xboxes thus far, 25 I have successfully fixed, there are 5 that will be parted out so far.
I am doing the X-clamp fix and replacing the heatsink mounts with individual screws. It seems like all of the problems that happen to the xbox are caused by the way the heatsinks are mounted, and how the system deals with heat. Maybe I will watercool my xbox at home. That would be a fun project
Monday, September 21, 2009
Model Engines
I have always loved small model engines and model engineering. When I was 14 or so I bought a model R/C nitro powered buggy. I took it a part and put it back together hundreds of times and probably annoyed my neighbors with it more than anything else. Ok, maybe not the toys I have now, but this sounds like a bug.
What interested me most about it was the size of the engine and how well engineered they can be. I had fun with my nitro engine's and the accompanying trucks, but I wanted to actually build an engine that had more parts and was a little bit more intricate. I got into watching videos on Youtube featuring model steam engines. Once I got enough money to actually order one I decided on the Graham Industries TVR1A twin cylinder marine engine. It came well packaged and was difficult to assemble. It has over 175 parts and many of which are very very small. Here it is all assembled. I cant wait to be able to run it when my boiler comes shortly.
What interested me most about it was the size of the engine and how well engineered they can be. I had fun with my nitro engine's and the accompanying trucks, but I wanted to actually build an engine that had more parts and was a little bit more intricate. I got into watching videos on Youtube featuring model steam engines. Once I got enough money to actually order one I decided on the Graham Industries TVR1A twin cylinder marine engine. It came well packaged and was difficult to assemble. It has over 175 parts and many of which are very very small. Here it is all assembled. I cant wait to be able to run it when my boiler comes shortly.
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