Changing Jobs

Today is my last day at my current job. Next week I'm starting a new one.

I've stayed with this company for more than 12 years. I've seen it grow from a small rented office to the largest exporter of my country. I've lived through its complete rise and fall.

I'm filled with mixed feelings, but I look back over the past 12 years with gratitude and appreciation for the rich professional and personal experience. I also look with hope and confidence in the future. It's very important to always strive to be a better man and a better worker. And to the colleagues and friends I leave behind, I wish them all the best.

I close this post with the quote: "Every end is a new beginning".

Global Management Challenge

I'm a member of the team that will represent Portugal next week, 22-23 of April 2009, in the International Final of the Global Management Challenge competition.

The Global Management Challenge is the world's largest strategy and management competition which includes 30 countries. It was actually started in Portugal back in 1980 and it's continuously spreading around the world.

The competition itself consists of 8 virtual companies, one company per team, competing against each other for the highest share value at the end of five rounds. There are many decisions to be made: how much to produce of each product, how much to spend in research & development and advertising, the configuration of the distribution network, how many workers to hire with which salary and so forth.

The simulator itself is quite complex, and the fact that the development of the economical environment is not known, and that you are competing against other 7 teams makes it even more complex.

For more information on the competition, please follow the links below:

• Global Management Challenge - Portuguese Site
• Global Management Challenge - International Site
  

I'm looking forward to meet and compete with the other 29 countries, and I'll do my best to properly represent Portugal. Wish me luck!

Quick update: Russia won the International final! Portugal (my team) finished in 8th among 30 countries.

Economics 101

I read somewhere that "economy is the science of fulfilling infinite desires with finite resources". I couldn't agree more.

Human beings are unsatisfied by nature and will always want more, better, faster, smaller, bigger, you name it. The pursuit of that ideal of a better future is what moves us forward.

Along the way, we have to make some hard choices, since we have limited means, such as time, money, energy and so on. Time is by far the most scarce resource of all. We can never buy more, and every spent minute is gone for good. Regarding money, we can choose to spend right after we have it for the sake of the instant gratification, or save and defer the spending for some time in the future (delayed gratification).

Most of us dream and fantasize of unrealistic hopes. They tend to be impossible in nature, because most of the excitement and pleasure comes with the wanting, not with the fulfillment. If all of our desires would come true quickly, they would suddenly become meaningless. And at the very same time that one desire is satisfied, another one, even bigger pops up.

On this note, I'd like to post here an excerpt from the movie 'The Life Of David Gale':

"What is it that you fantasize about? World Peace? Do you fantasize about international fame? Do you fantasize about winning a Pulitzer prize? Or a Nobel Peace Prize? An MTV music award? Do you fantasize about meeting some genius hunk extensively bad but secretly simmering with noble passion and willing to sleep on the wet spot?
Fantasies have to be unrealistic, because the moment, the second, that you get what you seek, you don't, you can't want it anymore. In order to continue to exist; desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It's not the "it" that you want, it's the fantasy of "it". So desire supports crazy fantasies.
This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Or why we say the hunt is sweeter than the kill or be careful what you wish for, not because you'll get it, but because you're doomed not to want it once you do. So the lesson of Lacan is "Living by your wants will never make you happy". What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you've attained in terms of your desires, but those small moments of integrity and passion, rationality, even self sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others."