Archives for March 2010

Adventures in car shopping (Part deux)

March 30, 2010 by Dave Hampton

I continue to collect advice and experiences as I look for some new wheels. By the end of the weekend, things had converged to a Ford Fiesta, and a Renault Clio. Both are around 19K euro new, offer good “B” class emissions (very green, so the business gets a big tax credit), and good ratings in the car guides. (Engineers always consult someone’s spreadsheet before deciding anything).

I made an appointment to test drive the Fiesta for Monday morning and biked over in a warm rain. Unlike the US, you get to drive the salesman’s car, so it really provides a good feel for how well the car will wear and how the kids accessories fit in. I took it out onto the A2 and climbed the mightiest hill north of Maastricht (1% grade, 1/4 mile); the 1.2 L engine muscled up without having the engine drown out the radio. I drove through a neighborhood, taking the drempels (speed bumps) a mite quickly; my head didn’t bump the ceiling and my coffee didn’t spill. I used to do a test where I’d belt a toddler into the back seat; if they cried and I could still hold a normal conversation up front, that was a passing mark. Unfortunately, no toddler at hand, so I didn’t evaluate this quality.

The salesman asked if I was serious: I looked serious and said that I was. He told me I’d receive an e-mail offer and we solemnly parted.

I asked about a 4 year, 30K km/year lease on a 20K euro car; the answer came back, about 450 euro per month.

Doing a bit of quick math, the lease then costs 5400 per year, so 21,600 over 4 years. since maintenance, insurance, and road taxes are thrown in, this sounds like a reasonable deal.

A friend on LinkedIn suggested that looks could be deceiving, however: if the car goes back early or over mileage, then huge penalties accrue. I asked the dealer to estimate a lease for 3 years / 40K km/year. The answer came back, 500 euro per month.

Another friend suggested that dealers give a discount of at least 15% if I negotiated and took a payment plan. Assuming I negotiate well and put down a few thousand, I asked my bank how much the financing would be for 15K euro on a 36 month payment scheme. The answer came back, 450 euro per month.

There are clearly many paths to the same answers in the Netherlands.

Adventures in car shopping, Dutch-style

March 28, 2010 by Dave Hampton

The costs of renting a car to go back and forth to Cambridge are getting to be well in excess of the costs of buying a car, so I’ve decided to let the business invest a bit of cash in some mobility.

Shopping for cars in the US is always an exercise in research and negotiation: I never actually get the better of a salesman, but I’ve become adept at trying and (like all American men) I think I get pretty close to the mythical “Good Deal”.

I don’t know what the equivalent experience might be like in the Netherlands? But the one, certain Universal of Car Shopping is that I’m going to get killed if I don’t have skilled help.

So I enlisted a Dutch friend, knowing that he would know the process, be absolutely focused on getting value for guilder, and enjoy chewing down the salesmen. I had a budget, an vague idea that a VW Polo was a good car, a desire to get green technology, and certainty that we wanted to take every angle allowed under the business taxes..

We started at a used-car showroom, where we could compare lots of in-budget models with good fuel efficiency (A or B on the Brandstoflabel, right, assuring a 20% tax credit). I was immediately ready to take the Mercedes convertible for 24K, or (someone else’s) classic red Jaguar in the parking lot. But we steered towards the Clio, the Polo, the Fiesta, the Corsa, the 207, while I slowly got my mind around Euro-car buying.

There are differences. In the US

I size up the car and the salesman

I take a test drive

I settle on a feature package

I negotiate the financing.

Along the way, I shake my head and start to leave at least 3 times.

I usually wrap things up, reducing the salesman to weeping frustration, within five hours.

In contrast, among the Dutch,

We have coffee.

We study the brochure together.

We review a table of prices, sorted by packages and options.

If we are interested, we may make an appointment for a test drive at a future date.

If still interested, then we have to decide on financing strategy: a financial lease (a payment plan after which I own the car) or an operational lease ( a series of lease payments after which I return the car). Only a financial lease may be negotiated.

The salesman takes notes, thanks me for my interest, and promises to send a quote by email in a day or so.

If still interested, I may accept.

Augh…where’s the bid, where’s the negotiation? Where’s the fun ?!

So, I await the weekends bids, and have test drives scheduled for Monday morning.

Images of spring

March 26, 2010 by Dave Hampton

The willows are budding,

The speed traps are sprouting,

The bicycles are in flower,

and Dutch light glows through rainstorms at sunset.

Expat personality types

March 25, 2010 by Dave Hampton

Why do people seek out expatriate opportunities?

I think that there are a lot of positive reasons: surveys often cite people wanting to experience foreign cultures, expand their travel opportunities, further their career or academic development, or just seeking novelty and adventure. A substantial number have married foreign nationals.

Still, I have a nagging suspicion that people firmly attached to their home communities or satisfied with their lives are unlikely to make the break to expatriate living. Does this imply that we’re more likely to feel alienated or dissatisfied with life prior to leaving?

“I was left with a feeling – a restlessness, a yearning for a place to call home…which could be the homeland we long for and which lies truly nowhere, or elsewhere, or everywhere, or perhaps only somewhere deep within ourselves.”

Natasha Gunn, Expatica Netherlands

“I need to throw away my cup of sorrows and forget: and the best way to do that, apparently, is to join the French Foreign Legion.”

all1rog, The Experience Project

The literature isn’t very helpful. Studies of successful expatriate managers (Jordan 1998) and behavioral inventories (Costello 2005) focus on adaptability rather than motivations.:

Caligiuri (2000) has recently studied expatriate adjustment using the “Big Five” personality traits (Goldberg, 1993 defines them as those which account for a majority of the variance in personality measures):

Extroversion: The degree to which a person is talkative and sociable and enjoys social gatherings.
Agreeableness: The tendency of a person to be interpersonally altruistic and co-operative.
Conscientiousness: The degree to which a person is strong-willed, determined and attentive.
Neuroticism: Negative emotional stability, showing characteristics of nervousness, moodiness and a temperamental nature.
Openness to experience: The extent to which a person is
aesthetically sensitive and aware of inner feelings and has an active imagination

Caligiuri’s results suggest that Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability are traits most positively related to expatriate success. Yet I would think that they would also be those most related to success in the home environment.

So, my question remains:

What are the personality traits that distinguish those who sojourn from those who stay at home?

In the Big Five context, are they people who are more dissatisfied (neurotic, perhaps, but wouldn’t that also make them less successful abroad?), or people who might have the easiest transition (openness, but why would they leave home?) .

Or perhaps some secondary characteristic, like confidence and curiosity, that isn’t part of the Big Five?

Or perhaps it’s determined by social context rather than personality type?

Note: If you want to read further, Rutgers maintains a public archive of Dr. Caligiuri’s papers and other related HR topics.

Stepping back for perspective

March 24, 2010 by Dave Hampton

Today has been a tough day for solving problems.

It’s not that the problems are inherently hard, but that they are intrinsically large. That means that they take time and fill the day, yet fail to close with a final solution.

Riding along the riverbank in the early summer sun to take a break, I reviewed my strategies. I must be making this harder than it needs to be. There are the inductive “Sleep on it, ignore it, wait for your subconscious to deliver a miracle” approaches; there are avoidance strategies like “Time will solve it, a bit of benign neglect will help, why not delegate”.

But if its my problem, then I only have two deductive strategies: appeal to principal or decompose to simpler chunks.

Divide and conquer is usually my approach, but I decided to try the alternative, appeal to a higher power, and called a friend working with startups in the entrepreneurship programs at MIT. He’s got a lot of practical experience and runs his own consulting business, so I feel like we share a lot of the same experiences.

On the positive side, he thought that the analysis and actions I’m taking are largely the right ones. My focus and task prioritization seemed right, and I hadn’t overlooked many things that needed to be in the mix. The UK project, in particular, seemed well defined and things were appropriately delegated: I’d just need to hang in and see it through.

My concerns about the Dutch business, that consulting was overwhelming development, and that I was spending too much time working for the business rather than letting it work for me, were more true. Part of the solution is to accept that consulting work cycles through peak and trough workload, and to be willing to push some tasks off into the coming quiet times without guilt.

The other was to be careful about respecting the boundary between consulting and contracting. I tend to be very hands-on, doing real work of analysis and reports, yet estimating time and pricing results as though I was simply and conversationally advising and connecting clients. In the future, I have to get the right distance and value set for each job and respect the scope of the tasks. Where “I’m here to help” was often the right stance in the corporate world, it invites mission creep as an outsider.

I do think it’s important to have a mastergroup or advisory board to turn to for occasional encouragement or reality checks in running a business. It’s probably especially important as an expat, where the social isolation is more pronounced. It won’t stop my having the occasional bad day, but it will help to keep things in perspective through the rough times.

Entrepreneuring with Expatica

March 23, 2010 by Dave Hampton

I happy to have been selected as the Expat Entrepreneur this week in Expatica.nl. It’s nice to be able to give them an acknowledgement in return: I have long subscribed to their RSS feed for local Dutch news in English, and consider them a reliable source of information and tips about life in the Netherlands. They sent a questioneer a couple of months ago and it’s great to join friends like Amanda and Tiffany among their profiles of folks making the effort (and taking the risks) to start new businesses here. (Expatica mentioned that I was the only male to answer the questions: surely I’m not alone on this?)

If you are interested in the topic more generally and are a member of LinkedIn, we maintain an Expat Entrepreneurs in the Netherlands group where you’re welcome to post questions, tips, and news. The conversations wax and wane but we try to keep the level of signal well above the noise: no job tips and no spam.

Pictures today are along the Maas river north of Maastricht at the Belgian border around sunset. It’s across the water from Itteren; I’m still trying to make up my mind about whether I’m ready for village life.

I have, however, found a little pied ‘a cottage outside Cambridge to use as a part-time space during the roughly 45% of my time that I’ll need to spend in England in the coming year. Right on a village green with good connections into town, furnished, and the price was (very) right.

And, besides and apartment, I’m still looking for a car here…