Mail

Tattoo You

Mario Barth ["King Ink," November] is an extremely talented tattoo artist, with a gargantuan ambition and the ego to match. But, as someone with a decade of experience as a tattooist, I think the best way for a tattoo artist to build an empire is to make your best people 50-50 business partners in new shops. You make less overall, but you have much greater trust and flexibility for expansion. "McBarth's" Starlight Tattoo seems like a variation of a get-rich-quick scheme.

Tattooing is an ancient and revered art form that speaks to very basic human qualities. The process is unique and individualized, and that's why others haven't been able to harness the commercial potential of tattooing. The tattoo shops in Las Vegas megahotels don't offer as much of an authentic experience. What they do offer is a souvenir for the tourists and a place for tattoo artists to make money. Nothing wrong with that, but it isn't the real deal.

Steven Garsson
Account Manager
Prestige Flag & Banner
San Diego

Mario Barth has convinced a number of people to pay him well for his art. But it seems to me that people come to Mr. Barth because of who he is. To transform that personal charisma into a worldwide chain while maintaining his margins seems like a stretch. There's no lack of tattoo parlors or artists around the world. I think it's too early to learn about scaling up from this endeavor.

Dr. James Rusin
President
Rusin Medical Devices
Minneapolis

Firing by Proxy

It used to be that taking someone's job away ["Meet Rebecca. She's Here to Fire You," November] was a tough thing for a manager to do. You discussed it with your boss and with someone from HR. You lost sleep over it. And when the day came, you felt like crap. But you went and did it because it was the right thing to do, and it was what you got paid for. Firing should be tough, because the action has some pretty drastic impact on others. The absolute last thing we ought to be doing is making it easy for managers to fire someone from afar. Managers who lack the courage to fire in person need to find something else to do for a living. That's their job! Even Donald Trump does his own dirty work.

Bill Catlette
Co-author, Contented Cows MOOve Faster
Collierville, Tennessee

As a former executive who was involved in hiring and firing, I understand that letting people go is a part of the job. If a manager can't fire someone who is an underachiever or for some other reason doesn't belong at the company, he or she shouldn't be in a management position. Unfortunately, many mass layoffs are the result of corporate mismanagement. Instead of firing executives, they fire the little people.

Look at the photo accompanying your story. I wonder if Rebecca Heyman, the hired gun, is sitting in her own office cubicle or the cubicle of someone she just fired, someone with a family and other financial obligations?

Daniel P. Wixted
President
Public Adjuster
Sewell, New Jersey

Having personally delivered around a dozen pink slips (by age 25, no less), I can definitely relate to the desire to pass the buck. But I think it sends the wrong message to the person you're firing and to the rest of your team.

Most people who are fired have at least a friend or two in the company, and they'll hear all about the details of the firing. Terminating someone by proxy makes you appear less legitimate as a manager and can tend to make a big dent in morale. And that puts a dent in profits.

It's absurd for a company to separate itself completely from the process. And it's a sad day when we start ducking out of our basic responsibilities as managers and human beings in general.

Aaron King
President
Midtown Interactive
Detroit

Dealing With Renegotiation

It's simple: Gorilla Fuel reneged on a fixed-price commitment ["When Good Deals Go Bad," November]. Would Gorilla Fuel have accommodated its customers had the market gone down rather than up? I highly doubt it. Had Gorilla Fuel been better at running its business, it would have known that offering fixed-price contracts and backing them with floating-price purchases is risky. It should have known about futures and derivatives markets. This could have helped Gorilla back its sales staff with hedged or fixed contracts, thus protecting the company's margins and customers.

John Righeimer
President
Maverick Energy Consulting
Naperville, Illinois

Catering to Coders

Joel Spolsky [How Hard Could It Be? November] has it both very right and very wrong about managing software development projects.

He's right in suggesting that you should limit software developers to a maximum of 40-hour workweeks. You can't burn out your developers and expect results. He's also right about the need to attract superstar developers. Imagine hearing, "We can get away with mediocre staff" in any other industry.

But Spolsky is wrong about requiring developers to estimate the deadline for every small detail of their projects. By the time you get the estimates done, the client may have shifted the goalposts. Clients often develop their own understanding of the capabilities of the software, or their business environment changes. Or, worse, their budget changes.

Anthony Stevens
CEO
Xidey
Seattle

Joel Spolsky correctly points out some of the management techniques that tend to fail on software projects. But there are other, more important points to be made. For one, sometimes it isn't much help to involve the end users in the development of a software project. They have their own jobs to do and can't spare the time to help. Also, software developers themselves often don't know if they're incompetent. I've taken over half-finished projects from other coders and found that diligent souls can produce an utter mess.

Fred Seltzer
Jerusalem

My take is that software developers are more like artists than scientists. Until this is really understood by managers, software development efforts will continue to fail. We need to shift toward the idea that software development is not something that can be controlled and managed precisely.

Brad Gregory
Perth, Australia

A Good Policy To Have

Your article on life insurance ["Passing It On," October] puts forth a common myth about the industry. It's not entirely accurate that permanent life insurance is expensive. Permanent insurance gets an internal rate of return. The return may be low, but the fact remains that you are guaranteed to get back more than you put in. You can't say that about most investments.

Robert Segall
Managing partner
Saint George Financial Partners
New York City

Entrepreneurs Can Be Taught

George Gendron's article [Guest Speaker, October] left me excited about the future of entrepreneurship programs in our country. As a small-business owner and someone who works with high school students to encourage them to explore entrepreneurship, I think this article explains what it is to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs have to creatively mold ideas into productive companies, often using limited resources. The current state of the venture capital world can be discouraging for business owners. It's extremely important for young people to know that it's passion coupled with business knowledge that will ultimately make you successful.

Monica Allen
Co-owner
Allen Professional Graphics Group
Atlanta

Correction

In our roundup of espresso machines [Craves, November], we listed an inaccurate price for the Rancilio Silvia. The manufacturer's suggested retail price is $595.

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Correction: In an earlier version of this section we misspelled the name of the company Xidey.