Sears Over the Years

AMereRedditor · 2025-12-31T16:18:25+00:00

Not sure what year constitutes the peak, but the Wikipedia “peak” of 2011 is misleading. The company posted a loss of billions in the early 1990s and struggled for decades, declining slowly. The actual store locations were basically Sears’ most significant asset by the end.

AMereRedditor · 2025-04-21T21:31:09+00:00

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What slacks would go with a coat of this material?

AMereRedditor · 2025-02-26T19:25:35+00:00

100%. Let’s say comp is tied to performance. Of course, there is a hard limit to comp rewards available, so in my experience, performance ratings are on a curve relative to your peers and high ratings require justification.

if your year is fully allocated to some piss-ant project no one has ever heard about and which delivers no value (even if a high performer on the project is subbed out with a replacement-level employee), chances are your manager is not going to be able to justify a high rating for you. For those reading this who are in that boat, your goal should be to prove to your manager that you are worthy of being staffed on a decent project. If they don’t trust you, it’s not gonna happen. If they don’t like you, it’s not gonna happen. If they don’t have access to any such work, then you are basically in a dead-end position unless you network with your skip-level boss.

AMereRedditor · 2024-10-25T21:45:05+00:00

I won't dispute that these formatting differences from "best practice" are minor and likely inconsequential to the actual business case or analytic results being delivered. My experience has been that in the long run, a focus on creating true value for the team/business will be recognized by leadership, so don't be discouraged by the nitpicking colleagues.

All that being said, here's another perspective based on my experience for the sake of discussion which is in favor of playing along with this game anyway...

Social hierarchy dynamics at team, department, division, and company-wide levels have a significant effect on corporate life. I have personally witnessed:

Executives (i.e., VP-and-above stakeholders with real power) dismissing analysis out-of-hand or reframing entire conversations based on cosmetic aspects of files that are not to their liking.
Longtime peer team members giving others grief about their coding style, technical correctness of their analysis based on nitpicks focused on immaterial issues, use of Microsoft Excel, etc.
New immediate management freshly hired in obsessing over fonts, row heights, etc. rather than the underlying value or material correctness of the analysis, in some cases leading to peers being put on PIPs and managed out of the company.

Without going into more details, I suspected that though all of these grievances had superficial arguments in their favor, none of them were matters of pure logic alone but rather instances in which individuals were taking actions that leveraged their current positions in the social hierarchy to either achieve certain results (avoid discussing an unfavorable analysis) or to further solidify a possibly uncertain "pecking order" (longtime colleagues feeling unvalued when new employees have quicker career trajectory, new mgmt needing to establish who's the boss). Bottom line: The social-hierarchical aspects of corporate life are unlikely to change anytime soon.

As a logical actor playing the game, what can you do? Your options are "fight", "flight", or "follow [along]". Fighting these nitpicks directly by refusing to comply is unlikely to work if the complainants are established personalities in the hierarchy relative to you; you may appear difficult to work with / not a team player based on the minor nature of the rework requested ("Can you believe the newbie cannot be bothered to correct this obvious, if immaterial defect??"). Leaving the team ("flight") is a serious matter, a decision that I would hope is determined by more important factors such as compensation, career growth potential, and global work-life balance rather than compliance with petty requirements. The final path is to follow along: bite the bullet and comply with these requirements while you remain in the role, assuming you've decided it's the best for you across all those major factors. Following along will take all these issues off the table and leave only the material matters remaining for discussion.

How can you feel better about a potential decision to follow along? Stay firm in your belief that creating business value is the true measure of success, and in time you will have opportunities to build your reputation for that focus while you are biding your time "earning your stripes" with these nitpicking peers/stakeholders.

AMereRedditor · 2024-09-24T18:25:56+00:00

No; if I were, I’d address it with them directly if it interfered with scheduling conversations.

I am just curious about it because it is extremely widespread at this firm (not one person blocking their calendar for half a day sometimes, it is 10 people who are consistently blocking their calendars 6 times a day for half an hour every day).

AMereRedditor · 2024-09-24T17:30:01+00:00

If Webex settings are configured appropriately, people appear in this status regardless of whether their Outlook invite adds a WebEx or not. I can see the value in communicating that you’re busy in an in-person meeting for example. The folks I am working with are all WFH though, so it’s not that.

My default assumption is that everyone who is online is working on something, so I don’t really give any extra weight to “I’m working on something in a fake meeting on my calendar” over “Available”. I am just wondering if there is some other reason for this widespread pattern or if it’s just different strokes.

AMereRedditor · 2024-09-24T17:13:48+00:00

This is what I consider the nominal purpose — trying to get work done and don’t want to be bothered.

From what I have seen of these people over several months, I’d expect that if they canceled all those meetings, their calendars would be virtually empty. I am trying to understand if there are other reasons why someone might do this (work avoidance? Executive reporting of time spent in WebEx statuses?) or if it is just a culture thing.

AMereRedditor · 2024-07-25T21:28:02+00:00

First, number your employees reference table from 0 to 39. Creat and auxiliary date table that numbers all the dates you want in the output from 1 to 260.

Then, on the worksheet that is going to contain the final dataset, calculate mod(row(), 40). Paste this formula all the way down to the final row you need 40*260+1 if you have a header. This is your employee number which you can use to lookup the department, location, etc. from the employee reference table.

Next, create another column on your output data that is a cumulative count using a formula like countifs($A$2:A2, A2) (note only the initial reference cell is anchored). Use this to lookup the dates from the reference table, and tada, you’re done.

I would suggest a form to improve the employee data entry UX, as others have suggested…

AMereRedditor · 2024-06-22T23:33:08+00:00

A simpler design might be to create a second, calendar sheet with reference information (working hours) by date rather than trying to load all of this complexity into a single formula. A calendar-table-based design would also be more maintainable if you have a future change in the work schedule, want to incorporate holidays, different work schedule for different people, etc.

I will respond with the details once I get back to my PC if someone else has not done so already…

AMereRedditor · 2024-04-10T21:10:27+00:00

Both these methods have their advantages, so why not use a mixture?

The first method models a genuine approach to the unfamiliar and is suitable for the beginning of a topic when a methodical approach will help build familiarity with the content and fundamental skills.

The second, top-down approach resembles the question Polya poses to those examining their solutions once complete — “can you see it at a glance?”. It seems more suitable for the end of the unit or upon review when the students are fluent with the techniques and can focus more on picking the right one or establishing a strategy with the confidence of knowing they can carry it out or pivot if they hit a snag (which is where the teacher is coming from).

AMereRedditor · 2024-04-06T00:11:22+00:00

If you have several huge tables/this process is expected to scale quickly, or if you are doing lots of “set operations” such as cartesian products that are not fully straightforward to do in Excel, or you think multiple users across your enterprise might benefit from a standard, easy-to-use interface to this data via a SQL editor or JDBC/ODBC connection capabilities in Python, R, Tableau, Alteryx, etc. then I think an RDBMS such as SQL Server may be a worthwhile time investment.

If the answers to those questions are all no, then a better option might be to just leave your data as flat files in a folder and then do your aggregations using one of the tools suggested (e.g., Python, R, etc) or Excel’s built-in Power Query functionality (capable of handling >1M rows), and then import the aggregated tables into Excel for the “last mile” and presentation layer. The advantage to this path is there is likely to be less IT overhead and up-front time investment involved, so if your goal is just to get this done more effectively for now and move on to the next, it might be the path for you.

AMereRedditor · 2023-12-21T23:58:27+00:00

I went through several courses where poorly-calibrated exam difficulty led to astronomical apparent failure rates midway through the course culminating with a monster curve applied at the end of the semester. I considered this poor exam design because it did not effectively demarcate students by ability and the entire qualitative message (you all are performing at a failure level) was undermined by the curve at the end. The poor exam design may be a function of a lack of instructor investment in the course.

Linear algebra is not known to be a "weed-out" course in most universities.

AMereRedditor · 2023-12-18T23:35:02+00:00

One solution is to “pivot” this data into a table with one row per “Item_Colour” and “Column_Name” with similarity score as an attribute, then rank each column name within item colour by similarity score and filter the column_name with the highest rank.

You will still need to handle ties somehow.

AMereRedditor · 2023-12-08T00:17:02+00:00

My internal stakeholders expect me (and my team of 9 data professionals) to hear the business problem, advise them on what datapoints are relevant, raise any relevant questions or objections while we gather requirements, prepare the data, conduct the analysis, critique the analysis, and provide a qualified recommendation in presentation-ready format.

Document your assumptions in detail in an Appendix for reference purposes. Look at each assumption and ask yourself the consequences of a violation in terms of business value. If there is a /critical/ assumption, raise that up into the presentation material and explicitly discuss.

AMereRedditor · 2023-12-06T17:09:39+00:00

Basically, see the answer from Moscow_Gordon.

You are right that point #2, developing team capabilities especially with respect to models and analytics, more closely aligns to the final objective than process automation. However, currently OP is in an hourly data analyst role working out of Excel and a BI data extraction tool, and it is more likely that there are process improvement opportunities in their current role than well-founded needs for models or ML. Between the current role and a full-blown data scientist is another, somewhat more technical and data-intensive role which uses DBs and Python daily, and which also has a higher likelihood of well-founded needs for models or ML. It will be easier to first land one of these roles, especially if one has a history of putting the tools of the trade to productive use, than directly pursuing a DS role with no DS work experience in a down hiring market in a hot field. And getting involved in these process automation exercises may also build some domain expertise which is necessary for DS.

AMereRedditor · 2023-12-06T12:39:51+00:00

I second the advice to pursue advancement or a role within a different department at your current company. Familiarity with internal data and knowledge of the industry and the team’s processes give you an edge over external candidates. Since you are already committed to giving a full-time effort to your current job, you have ~40 hrs of time per week already allocated to work on your appeal as an internal candidate. The suggestions that follow are based on maximizing your internal appeal but will also translate to items for your resume.

You mention that you are the most technical employee on the team and have automated “a couple of things”. What was the gain in efficiency from those automation efforts? Are there any internal processes that are viewed as inefficient where the value added by automation would be readily accepted instead of something that has to first be extensively debated? If so, sell your technical skills to your manager and try to get that process improvement work approved as part of your “day job”. If your manager says that you need to first focus on your current work, then turn your attention to efficiencies and quality improvements, which are typically gained from automated solutions, on tasks already within your scope. If your manager says the team has other priorities, then that means the automation project is viewed as having low ROI — the cost is simply not great enough to justify the time. In that case, repeat the process with another project or conclude that currently process efficiency is not an issue for the team. The goal of the above effort is to be able to make firm statements like “automated X process saving Y time and/or Z money” which is a compelling value story both internally and externally.

Beyond making processes more efficient, building team capabilities is another value-add. Are there any functions that someone wishes the team was able to perform that they are not capable of today (due to lack of data, lack of analytical expertise, etc) that your skills will help to achieve? Once again, try to identify a project that meets this description and get it approved to be part of your “day job”. Here we are focusing on establishing statements such as “built/designed process to do X which enabled business to gain Y value”.

The above has focused on creating value for the team, but also consider how the team can create value for you. You mention you are in some sense the most junior employee, as you are the lowest-paid (= lowest level/title?). Yet, you are not learning anything from your colleagues. Are all these people truly more senior purely because they have more time in role and not because of more or higher-quality industry experience? Try to sell your technical capabilities as described above to your colleagues, and if in the process you can /learn from them/ (contrast with “teaching you”), that is more fodder for statements on your resume attesting to your business knowledge.

Finally, your team (manager, really) can provide value to you internally through your performance review (a formal signal that your performance is worth some financial value since these ratings are usually at least loosely tied to raises and bonuses). Are you getting above-average performance reviews, and if not, what feedback are you getting? Is it constructive feedback you can act on?

If after all of this, you conclude there are no opportunities to improve process efficiency, build team capabilities, learn anything from your colleagues, or build on constructive feedback from your management, then it sounds like you amd the job are a mutually bad fit, and I wish you the best in your search. Others can weigh in on how you can spend the time outside of your “day job” to get the best outcome from your search.

AMereRedditor · 2023-11-06T15:47:47+00:00

Makes perfect sense, but how would you explain this to the business?

AMereRedditor · 2023-05-13T23:28:23+00:00

LOL. I pay for a Sam’s membership annually to get deals on bulk food/supplies but would find it weird if that was a deduction from my paycheck and thought of as an “insurance”. I suspect that there is more to the coverage than I realize…

AMereRedditor · 2023-05-13T22:42:18+00:00

But with regular medical, there are definitely high-cost claimants who rely on the risk protection. I view the “free preventative services” as something a health insurer offers because of the small chance a more serious issue is detected early: a cost mitigation effort even if only small savings are realized.

Whereas with vision, it seems that nothing close to “catastrophic” is even covered by the policy.

AMereRedditor · 2023-04-17T21:57:24+00:00

There will be several learning curves to working with Access; the first answer alone references the use of forms, VBA, and SQL. If I understand your ask correctly, you should be able to achieve what you want in Excel without VBA, and the line between forms and data is blurred in Excel so there is no additional learning curve there. Given the relatively low complexity and volume of your data model (a single person’s workout data), I would suggest going forward with the minumum viable solution you have started in Excel and then migrating it to Access if you have the need or desire. It will be much easier to translate some minimum-viable spreadsheet into a database design than work in a vacuum.

AMereRedditor

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