[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic]If you want to get off, all you have to do is honestly say, i cant be fair. Can you honestly say that?[/quote]

Sure, but when I was on chemo, I had a temporary medical excuse. I think though, that temporary excuse ended up being permanent.

But the one time I was doing jury duty, I remember the trial was for this lady that shoplifted some feminine hygiene products. Honestly, I was the the last possible jury candidate in the court, and was never called. But if I was, I probably would have said something to the effect that I probably wouldn’t be the best candidate because I fail to see why we need to spend so time and energy to go through with a trial over shoplifting feminine hygiene products. Couldn’t we settle this outside of court with some community service and probation?

[Coronita]

Damn, maybe next time I get called for jury duty, I need to stop wearing my t-shirt that says “guilty as charged” ??

[Coronita]

Some place outside of the US?

[Coronita]

I don’t disagree that in the past HP did use to sell high quality hardware products. At least before fiorina days.
I just chose not to use them because of their premium and arrogance and my personal bias

There eCommerce software division, on the other hand, was sort of a joke, which was the bulk of my limited involvement with them. Many people probably didn’t even know they a had a ecom software group that tried to productize something in the past. It wasn’t pretty. but some reason they got the idea that they were great with printers and computers, that e-commerce enterprise software would have been a walk in the park .Sort of like the mentality that intel had thinking they are great at x86, 5G LTE would be a walk in the park. It didn’t end pretty for both companies.

As far as their printers goes. I definitely stayed away from HP when they started gouging their inkjet printer customers. One of there strategies was to sell printers at cost or even a small loss because they know they could make a lot money on the cartridges they sold. in fact, they were the ones put the chips in the cartridges that would make the cartridge expire early well before the useable ink that was still left inside. and then when there were refill companies designing ways to get around those inside the cartridges, they were also the companies that tried to sue under anti-piracy/theft laws to prevent people from defeating the cartridge expiration chips. They lost a few lawsuits over it if I recall…

I’ve been kinda a then Sun Microsystems, IBM/Lenovo, Epson , Brother kinda person…
I have had so many Brother laser printers that I bought for work and home. They just work so well, and their supplies are reasonably priced.
my latest color laser all in one is just awesome.

[Coronita]

[quote=paulflorez][quote=Coronita]See if I was black, I probably would have been hired according to what Eric said.[/quote]

Black engineers continue to have an abysmally low rate of representation in engineering. Sounds like Eric was feeding you bullshit. Eric would not have hired you if you were Black. Eric wanted to hire another Eric. That’s still how the industry is. People hire people who are like them and avoid hiring people who are different. Not only does it hurt under-represented minorities, but it also hurts the ability of businesses to innovate. Echo chambers are not the optimal places for innovation.[/quote]

I totally agree which is partly the reason why I was pretty happy why HP ended up the way it did, especially after Carly made it into a big mess.

There were so many other instances of unconscious bias throughout my career both when I was an intern and when I was an after I was an FTE. I won’t event begin to tell you the stories at then Motorola in Schaumburg, IL. back decades ago….beyond the original experience that I couldn’t move a computer to a different cubicle before getting a unionized furniture worker to do it that would take a few weeks, a good part of my internship there. I mean, it was pretty tough to get in to “Motorola” as a undergrad asian EE engineer because when you applied, you had to jump through all these technical hoops during the interview. But once you got there, and shared a corporate housing with the other interns , you learned that it was hard to get in as you were asian, worked your ass off, didn’t nearly get invited to as many of the off hour happy hours and etc, and just plain ackward social vibe. But if you were African American intern roommate, you got to do the cool student intern events, parties, had a well organized mentor, well organized events specifically for all the african american interns there, a support network among other fellow AA interns and engineers,marketing, finance employees..And if you were like my white roommate, you were invited to all the happy hours, the chicago cubs games, after work softball, etc… Didn’t need to slave away at the tectronox spectrum analyzer testing the gain of a recover before a deadline, got make a lot of cool powerpoint presentations about the much smaller job you did. And were guaranteed a full time job after you graduated from college the few days you had left with your internship.

I was only asked if I wanted to come back as a full time engineer several months later about 2 months before my graduation after I got a full time job at then rinky dink Qualcomm. There it was a painful interview… Directors, managers, engineers , the only thing the systems engineering group cared about was asking technical skilled questions. no bullshit 49ers questions and frankly no one at least in that dept gave a shit what color you were as long as you were good enough to answer all the questions .. I was sold….well at least until they decided to have all of us pull cables out of the base station equipment for testing 90% of the time as the primary job function…. And then when I tried to transfer into their software engineering group, met some bullshit excuse from that group why I couldn’t… I guess because by that time, Qualcomm had slightly declined, hired a bunch of people for ailing Nortel and Motorola, and brought over some of that frat boy mentality into Qualcomm much easier software engineering group, since funny thing was many of them didnt require a master’s degree and several years of work experience in software as I was told. and frankly couldn’t code themselves out of a wet paper bag if their life depended on it ..hence why their base station business was an absymal failure and eventually sold to Ericcson. So I left there too, and went to the Bay area. (Probably cost me a fortune in stock options. …slightly mitigated by two ipos up there, lol)

I think when I retire from this industry maybe in 1-2 years if they fire/lay me off with my half golden parachute, I’m contemplating publishing my memoirs on LinkedIn just to stir the pot:

“Memoirs of an Angry Asian American Engineer That Got Fucked Over Many Times By Unconscious and Conscious Bias ”
Since at that point I won’t give a shit which bridges I burn.

I would have a lot to say on both the general problem of these biases and how any sort of affirmative action is just lipstick on a pig and not really doing shit to solve the problem, just pretending to fix the problem..At least in engineering though, these biases don’t bubble up nearly as frequently as in other industries , at least not until you get into senior leadership roles.

[Coronita]

[quote=an]Coronita, when it comes to higher education, it’s worst being Asian than white.[/quote]

I remember when I was a freshman in college. I was interviewing for an internship at HP. Same as my friend. My friend and I both had limited work experience in electrical engineering. We both had roughly the same understanding and grades, after all we were lab partners.

We both had the same interview with the same guy, I’ll call HP asshole.

We were both asked the same 3 technical questions, figuring out the resistance, current , voltage of various circuits. I got 2 out of 3 correct. He got 1 out of 3 correct. In the last 15 minutes of the interview, the same asshole, Eric, made a snide comment about how I couldnt do all 3 questions, lecture about how we expect all candidates to know these questions , and another lecture about how HP prides itself on diversity and specifically said we hire “a lot of black engineers” (his exact words)..

My friend shared me what he and “Eric” talked about…. Football and the 49ers. he was complemented how well he got 1 out of 3 questions correct, no mention of how “diverse” HP is and no mention about how many “black engineers we hire”…

Eric was white. I got a rejection letter for the HP internship… My lab partner was white and could carry a much longer conversation about the 49ers…and so got the internship.

This is what the the essence of
unconscious bias. See if I was black, I probably would have been hired according to what Eric said. if I was white, I probably would have been hired like my lab partner, because I could have that all american 49er convo to blend in.. being neither, I was fucked even if , as a freshman I did answer 2 of 3 interview questions that took 2/3 of the entire interview…and that was for an engineering technical skills based position… I can’t imagine what the arbitrary criteria would have been even more so for something in sales or marketing…

And it had a very ugly result…You see, throughout my career, I never ever sought a job with HP. I was celebrating when Carly Fiorina destroyed HP, and when many people at HP from that Palo alto office were looking for a job when I was still up there, I made sure to toss all their resumes in the trash can, among many reasons, many of their engineers had their head up in the clouds with that sorry excuse of a distributed software architecture called “e-Speak”…. I never entertained a resume from Palo Alto HP. Neither did anyone in my group…never bought any office equipment from HP, or computer, or computer peripherals with HP label on it.

For me, there was no unconsciousness in my bias. I was young them, and didn’t know better ..

So forgive me if I roll my eyes when someone mentions about how “diverse” they think they are champions of “diversity”. In my experience, most of the time people who claim they are champions of diversity are most of the time full of shit and have a lot of unconscious biases lurking in their closets that either they don’t realize or even if they do, don’t care so long as they have something they can do to easily check the diversity box….

[Coronita]

I’d prefer the new term.. “unconscious bias”.

For example,

Is an asian american male being denied senior management positions at tech firms simply because he isn’t a big NFL or NBA fan or a frat boy? It’s a very interesting discussion, though it probably wasn’t meant to be applied to this category of people.

Take my company for instance. Out of roughly 25 directors, senior directors, and VPs. it’s just interesting that I’m the only asian male. Probably because I learned to play the game. I talk about football and basketball, not because I really care,. I suspected memorizing the statistics helps when it comes to promotions…. That and my unexpected interest in cars and SCCA club racing. More so than my actual skillset….Looks like I was right..Too bad I don’t like golf. There would have come in handy too, lol.

[Coronita]

[quote=ucodegen]Holy crap. I don’t get how White Supremacy Culture is centered around getting the ‘right’ answer and ‘showing your work’…

These people seem to forget that Asians also emphasize the same thing.. and your tiger mom makes sure of it! I didn’t know that Asians were white too!! As well as ‘dark skinned’ people from India, who are black… but not black.. because they work hard to be successful.

They are forgetting that our current numbering system is not really white – it is Arabic. If it was white, it would be something like XXI for 21. It gets worse real quickly. The circumference of the earth is about 24,901 miles, or “MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMCMI”… humm.. time for some M&Ms…

So if a bridge collapses because the stress loading was incorrectly calculated because the emphasis was not on getting the correct answer nor on showing the work so that it could be double checked. Would the resulting collapse of the bridge be considered a racist event? What about crash of an airplane?

Oy Vey.[/quote]

When it comes to education and career opportunities, the average Asian male of course is white. that’s why things like sca-5 and prop 16 conveniently disregard asians as minorities. Prop 16, which ironically got defeated because not only asians overwhelming voted against it , but so did latinos….I guess now because both asians and latinos make up a large percentage or UC and CalState demographics based on merit, both groups really don’t want any sort of government heavy hand changing that….lol.

Still waiting for Biden to pick an Asian male as part of his leadership team….not holding my breath.

[Coronita]

[quote=carlsbadworker][quote=Coronita]I’m not doing so well this year. My returns suck. they are around 4%. Everyone else is doing double digits… [/quote]

FYI. Index is up 4% this year. So “everyone else is doing double digits” is sample bias.[/quote]

I didn’t even check. I assumed they were better. My totals are in for today. Currently sits at 4.73%

[Coronita]

In Stimulus We Trust, lol

[Coronita]

I’m not doing so well this year. My returns suck. they are around 4%. Everyone else is doing double digits… Price I pay I guess to being more conservative….I wish I had the guts to still gamble on big option positions or those leveraged 3x funds….

My most recent biggest change was moving my kid’s 529 from the predominantly heavy concentration of Vanguard small cap, mid cap, and large cap stock only choices to what they call “Commencement Day 2024/2025” fund….I guess it’s suppose to remove a some of the risk by putting a higher percentage into things other than stonks! The odometer on my kid’s college fund rolled over , and I no longer need to actively contribute to it. Maybe I pulled the trigger too early…

[Coronita]

[quote=svelte][quote=Coronita]
I think my umbrella is through a company called RLI. It doesn’t have to be the same as your homeowners and auto, you just need to maintain the minimum liability on the rest of your insurance. I’m sure of that…[/quote]

I would be afraid you’ll end up with insurance companies pointing the finger at each other in a situation like this.

I have all mine through the same company…I probably pay a tad more but it will be harder for them to deny a claim.

I also stay with well known companies. My dad went with some small insurance company for his rentals. One of the rentals had a major fire while occupied by a tenant and the insurance company refused to pay. He had to take them to court to collect from them. Lots of time, hassle, and sleepless nights to save a few bucks.[/quote]

I think what you are referring to is often overlap and gaps in insurance. Yes, that does happen too. usually with the more rinky dink insurance companies …In my case, cost wasn’t the only factor, it was also the availability of insurance.

For example, my agent is an allstate agent but also an agent for other triple A rated insurance companies. He does this for decades because insurance companies change their exclusions all the time and often times one carrier will drop people even if they made no claims, simply because their home was determined to be a in a fire hazard zone.

Allstate, for instance, right now refuses to insure people near a canyon and does not want to underwrite any new rental attached properties. So that’s one of the reasons why I have a mixture of insurance.

Also, there when it comes to rentals, different companies have different criteria when it comes to water claims. Some companies treat any water claim (whether it was your fault or not) as an incident, and too many incident makes you uninsurable for that carrier. So if you had someone upstairs flood one of your units, if you file a claim against your own insurance and have them go after the owner upstairs, even if it ends up being their fault, it still counts as a claim on your property. Some insurance co’s count per property incident. Some insurance co’s count per real estate portfolio. So it depends.

When it comes to auto, the gap usually around theft of person property inside a car…Sometimes, homeowners will say it’s auto and vice versa. There’s other situations like that too.

[Coronita]

[quote=zk][quote=Coronita]
Would be curious what the insurance co says, so do share after you find out :)[/quote]

The insurance company said that injuries to workers (which is my primary concern) would be covered under my homeowners/umbrella. She said that ideally they would have their own insurance and I would be secondary. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, but she did say that I’m covered.[/quote]

Interesting. Maybe as you embark on this project you can increase your umbrella temporarily to say some higher limit, like $10mil. And then when you’re done with the project, bring it back down to whatever you currently have ….added protection. I always say it’s better to be over insured than under insured…

[Coronita]

[quote=zk][quote=Coronita]Might be covered by an umbrella insurance policy. Don’t know, check with your underwriter of your umbrella if you have one..

umbrella insurance is pretty affordable: $5-10million policies go for about $1000..

you do need to maintain a minimum liability coverage across all your assets though.
It’s probably around $250k+ for each home and $250k+ for auto and watercrafts (at least that is the case for me)

There are some exclusions or limits but none of those I think are relevant to this situation. The primary exclusions/limits these days is apparently liability insurance for slander and libel on social media…I’m not kidding…

I think my umbrella is through a company called RLI. It doesn’t have to be the same as your homeowners and auto, you just need to maintain the minimum liability on the rest of your insurance. I’m sure of that…because I have a hodgepodge of insurance…my primary is through one agency, my rentals through another, most of my cars are through allstate, but two are through Hagerty because they are now old enough to be classified as “classic cars” lol.. it’s a royal pain, but the reason is I have the best coverage this way for the lowest price
.. no issues with the umbrella coexisting with multiple insurance.[/quote]

Thanks for the tips. I really appreciate it. I do have an umbrella policy; I’ll see what that covers.[/quote]

Would be curious what the insurance co says, so do share after you find out 🙂

[Coronita]

Might be covered by an umbrella insurance policy. Don’t know, check with your underwriter of your umbrella if you have one..

umbrella insurance is pretty affordable: $5-10million policies go for about $1000..

you do need to maintain a minimum liability coverage across all your assets though.
It’s probably around $250k+ for each home and $250k+ for auto and watercrafts (at least that is the case for me)

There are some exclusions or limits but none of those I think are relevant to this situation. The primary exclusions/limits these days is apparently liability insurance for slander and libel on social media…I’m not kidding…

I think my umbrella is through a company called RLI. It doesn’t have to be the same as your homeowners and auto, you just need to maintain the minimum liability on the rest of your insurance. I’m sure of that…because I have a hodgepodge of insurance…my primary is through one agency, my rentals through another, most of my cars are through allstate, but two are through Hagerty because they are now old enough to be classified as “classic cars” lol.. it’s a royal pain, but the reason is I have the best coverage this way for the lowest price
.. no issues with the umbrella coexisting with multiple insurance.

[Author]

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