Seemingly trivial things that intrigue you

First.Aspect

rick_chasey said:

Interned with a patent lawyer for a month.

Not a good job for me.

He’d throw me examples of old cases and I’d have to guess if the patent was breached or whatever it’s called.

Might as well have coin flipped.

Internships are next to pointless. It's like basing whether or not you have enough petrol for your trip on whether or not the engine starts.

Hence your comment about flipping a coin.

Besides, I'm not a lawyer. Different profession.

First.Aspect

briantrumpet said:

First.Aspect said:

briantrumpet said:

Haha, a good friend of mine is an IP specialist. His training? Huddersfield School of Music.

He can't be a patent attorney. And I'd be interested to know if he/she/they is/are a TM attorney or a solicitor (different professions in the UK) Or neither, which is worse, depending on the advice he/she/they is/are giving.

Not sure about his level of training, but I think he's into valuation, rather than the legal bit. I've never had the courage to ask how he went from music to IP.

I need to not give you an opinion about IP valuation specialists.

But I will.

The "best" valuation specialist in the UK was someone who for a while co branded with a firm I was at.

He gave a talk.

Step 1, he said, was how much do you need your IP to be worth, and we can work back from there?

So, Brian, do any of your other friends read Tarrot cards or practice homeopathy?

I'll stop now.

briantrumpet

First.Aspect said:

briantrumpet said:

First.Aspect said:

briantrumpet said:

Haha, a good friend of mine is an IP specialist. His training? Huddersfield School of Music.

He can't be a patent attorney. And I'd be interested to know if he/she/they is/are a TM attorney or a solicitor (different professions in the UK) Or neither, which is worse, depending on the advice he/she/they is/are giving.

Not sure about his level of training, but I think he's into valuation, rather than the legal bit. I've never had the courage to ask how he went from music to IP.

I need to not give you an opinion about IP valuation specialists.

But I will.

The "best" valuation specialist in the UK was someone who for a while co branded with a firm I was at.

He gave a talk.

Step 1, he said, was how much do you need your IP to be worth, and we can work back from there?

So, Brian, do any of your other friends read Tarrot cards or practice homeopathy?

I'll stop now.

Haha. Probably just as well I've never asked him...

First.Aspect

briantrumpet said:

First.Aspect said:

briantrumpet said:

First.Aspect said:

briantrumpet said:

Haha, a good friend of mine is an IP specialist. His training? Huddersfield School of Music.

He can't be a patent attorney. And I'd be interested to know if he/she/they is/are a TM attorney or a solicitor (different professions in the UK) Or neither, which is worse, depending on the advice he/she/they is/are giving.

Not sure about his level of training, but I think he's into valuation, rather than the legal bit. I've never had the courage to ask how he went from music to IP.

I need to not give you an opinion about IP valuation specialists.

But I will.

The "best" valuation specialist in the UK was someone who for a while co branded with a firm I was at.

He gave a talk.

Step 1, he said, was how much do you need your IP to be worth, and we can work back from there?

So, Brian, do any of your other friends read Tarrot cards or practice homeopathy?

I'll stop now.

Haha. Probably just as well I've never asked him...

Yeah, sorry.

What I do can for some be lucrative, and for most is renumeratively okay (is that a word?) but hellishly hard.

But this means there are all sorts of hangers on.

There are valuers, searchers, people who offer to just to the admin, people who claim to be able to do drafting, technical analysis, or both, but who can't actually legally represent and can't give decent advice anyway or they'd be charging what I do, some who offer strategic advice, which probably means something I give to my clients anyway, only in an informed way.

Some don't know what they don't know.

Some give okay advice, some don't.

Some, not many, actually give good advice, such as good commercial advice, which to be fair I am only better placed to give to the extent that I know how much I am going to cost.

Some, such as UK patent examiners, give sage advice advice to seek qualified advice from people like me.

Don't know what category your friend is in, so it's not fair to get out the creosote and that big old brush.

First.Aspect

So, I went down an opinion poll rabbit hole.

And I found out that in answer to, "Which of the following parties do you trust the most to protect the union between Scotland the rest of the UK?" 17% said SNP.

https://whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/which-of-the-following-parties-do-you-trust-the-most-to-protect-the-union-between-scotland-the-rest-of-the-uk/

First.Aspect

I suspect a similar proportion would struggle with the "What is your favourite colour" question and fall victim to the Gorge of Eternal Peril.

rick_chasey

Hadn’t realised this:

https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1611284859468611584?s=46&t=SQ40xPO0aYrj_AOtQRpJIw

Most common tenure is owning your home outright, roughly 1/3

morstar

That is surprising initially.
I think splitting the rented figures is a bit misleading. I’d make that split a secondary metric of rented. That would make rented far more substantial.

It’s less surprising when you consider age. We are an aging population and you’d expect most over 60’s to have paid off mortgages. Especially given house prices for the over 60’s were far more affordable.

As mentioned in subsequent posts, it’s a bit fptp skewed.

rick_chasey

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

pblakeney

rick_chasey said:

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

One caveat being that owning a house outright doesn't necessarily mean having loads of disposable cash. It just means what you have goes elsewhere.

As an example, I am mortgage free yet I have never earned enough to pay 40% tax.

First.Aspect

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

One caveat being that owning a house outright doesn't necessarily mean having loads of disposable cash. It just means what you have goes elsewhere.

As an example, I am mortgage free yet I have never earned enough to pay 40% tax.

Distinction between wealth and income I suppose.

Because of where I live, the most my house will be worth in todays money is £450-£500k. So I am less wealthy than a friend from school who teaches primary and earns 1/3 what I do but lives in Surrey. Simply because he got on the property market there.

pblakeney

First.Aspect said:

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

One caveat being that owning a house outright doesn't necessarily mean having loads of disposable cash. It just means what you have goes elsewhere.

As an example, I am mortgage free yet I have never earned enough to pay 40% tax.

Distinction between wealth and income I suppose.

This.
I don't count house value as wealth until sold/inherited, when it becomes disposable.

rick_chasey

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

One caveat being that owning a house outright doesn't necessarily mean having loads of disposable cash. It just means what you have goes elsewhere.

As an example, I am mortgage free yet I have never earned enough to pay 40% tax.

Well all the old biddies living on their own in 6 bedroom houses in my mother in law’s cul-de-sac could be living the high life if they downsized. Alas.

They’d rather live like miss Havisham while the families grow up their kids in houses where the kids have to share bedrooms.

Makes sense.

First.Aspect

rick_chasey said:

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

One caveat being that owning a house outright doesn't necessarily mean having loads of disposable cash. It just means what you have goes elsewhere.

As an example, I am mortgage free yet I have never earned enough to pay 40% tax.

Well all the old biddies living on their own in 6 bedroom houses in my mother in law’s cul-de-sac could be living the high life if they downsized. Alas.

They’d rather live like miss Havisham while the families grow up their kids in houses where the kids have to share bedrooms.

Makes sense.

Will this forum exist for long enough to necropost when you are arguing that you shouldn't be forced from your hard earned home in order to fund your children onto the property ladder?

pblakeney

rick_chasey said:

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

One caveat being that owning a house outright doesn't necessarily mean having loads of disposable cash. It just means what you have goes elsewhere.

As an example, I am mortgage free yet I have never earned enough to pay 40% tax.

Well all the old biddies living on their own in 6 bedroom houses in my mother in law’s cul-de-sac could be living the high life if they downsized. Alas.

They’d rather live like miss Havisham while the families grow up their kids in houses where the kids have to share bedrooms.

Makes sense.

Their house, their lives, their choice.

Jezyboy

The IP chat was genuinely more interesting than going round the housing market for the umpteenth time.

pblakeney

Jezyboy said:

The IP chat was genuinely more interesting than going round the housing market for the umpteenth time.

Agreed. I will bow out as I've made my points before.

orraloon

What's intriguing me just now is not the statistics on relative house ownerships, nor managers good, bad or indifferent.

It's the absence of small feathered friends on the bird feeder. Crows still stamp about on the roof and keep having a go at the (now secured to minimise the robbing) hanging feeder. But very low consumption rates, and very few hedge sparrows etc seen. Post- BigFreeze consequences? Little fellas didn't survive as well?

Though as typing this by the window, one sparrow visited briefly. Before times there would a gang of them.

First.Aspect

Jezyboy said:

The IP chat was genuinely more interesting than going round the housing market for the umpteenth time.

Jesus.

veronese68

First.Aspect said:

Jezyboy said:

The IP chat was genuinely more interesting than going round the housing market for the umpteenth time.

Jesus.

He's definitely not saying the IP chat was interesting, more a reflection on how many times we've discussed the housing market I'd say.

Jezyboy

First.Aspect said:

Jezyboy said:

The IP chat was genuinely more interesting than going round the housing market for the umpteenth time.

Jesus.

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment.

Also I have a slight interest in that given I was recommended it as a career a long time ago...

Possibly wouldn't have suited it as one of my favourite things about my current role is occasionally clocking off early to play Xbox. Also I sucked at foreign language.

First.Aspect

veronese68 said:

First.Aspect said:

Jezyboy said:

The IP chat was genuinely more interesting than going round the housing market for the umpteenth time.

Jesus.

He's definitely not saying the IP chat was interesting, more a reflection on how many times we've discussed the housing market I'd say.

I got that, thanks. A good old rant at snowflakes is always cheering, though.

morstar

rick_chasey said:

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

Yes, but the ownership rate isn’t an issue in that regard. The value / growth of property values is the issue. Which is a symptom of the lack of supply.

You can’t be annoyed old people have paid for their houses. You can be annoyed younger generations won’t have the same opportunity.

Pross

rick_chasey said:

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

One caveat being that owning a house outright doesn't necessarily mean having loads of disposable cash. It just means what you have goes elsewhere.

As an example, I am mortgage free yet I have never earned enough to pay 40% tax.

Well all the old biddies living on their own in 6 bedroom houses in my mother in law’s cul-de-sac could be living the high life if they downsized. Alas.

They’d rather live like miss Havisham while the families grow up their kids in houses where the kids have to share bedrooms.

Makes sense.

Would those houses being sold help the market at all? I can’t see the market for 6 bedroom houses being particularly large. I suspect most retirees are living in 3 or 4 bedroom houses at most. Arguably that is worse as it is the size most young families are looking for but in many cases one or two spare rooms will be useful for having their grandkids or other guests stay over.

morstar

My mum and dad have kept a very small mortgage purely for financial reasons but to all intents and purposes own their house.

They looked at all the options around moving into retirement places and eventually ruled it out as prohibitively expensive with a bad RoI and less desirable quality of life. Loss of space didn’t help.

They are tying up a 4 bed house but should they be forced to move?

Stevo_666

rick_chasey said:

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

One caveat being that owning a house outright doesn't necessarily mean having loads of disposable cash. It just means what you have goes elsewhere.

As an example, I am mortgage free yet I have never earned enough to pay 40% tax.

Well all the old biddies living on their own in 6 bedroom houses in my mother in law’s cul-de-sac could be living the high life if they downsized. Alas.

They’d rather live like miss Havisham while the families grow up their kids in houses where the kids have to share bedrooms.

Makes sense.

A few questions on this:
- How do you propose getting the old biddies out of their 6 bedroom houses?
- What sort of income demographic do you think would be able to afford 6 bedroom houses?
- Are you bothered that this is only a timing difference? (As the the old biddies will pop their clogs before too long).

rick_chasey

Stevo_666 said:

rick_chasey said:

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Goes a way to explain the wealth inequality

One caveat being that owning a house outright doesn't necessarily mean having loads of disposable cash. It just means what you have goes elsewhere.

As an example, I am mortgage free yet I have never earned enough to pay 40% tax.

Well all the old biddies living on their own in 6 bedroom houses in my mother in law’s cul-de-sac could be living the high life if they downsized. Alas.

They’d rather live like miss Havisham while the families grow up their kids in houses where the kids have to share bedrooms.

Makes sense.

A few questions on this:
- How do you propose getting the old biddies out of their 6 bedroom houses?
- What sort of income demographic do you think would be able to afford 6 bedroom houses?
- Are you bothered that this is only a timing difference? (As the the old biddies will pop their clogs before too long).

I don’t, I just think it’s weird we have a culture where it’s normal for old people to live in houses that are far too big for them and young families are priced out of houses that are the right size for them.

The people mentioned in my anecdote are all pensioners so I’d imagine they’re all pretty bottom quartile earners.

Timing is everything and people are retired for roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of their lives - just because you’re retired doesn’t mean you’re likely to die in the next decade.

rjsterry

First.Aspect said:

rjsterry said:

First.Aspect said:

rjsterry said:

First.Aspect said:

rjsterry said:

First.Aspect said:

rjsterry said:

First.Aspect said:

rjsterry said:

First.Aspect said:

rick_chasey said:

First.Aspect said:

You are going to make a great manager RC. Get people to the office and keep an eye on them...(stop them posting on social media, that sort of thing). Under no circumstances empower anyone.

Was explaining to my bosses that I spent a decade as a junior basically being bullied into doing the right things, so if they want me to manage people well they probably need to get me some formal teaching.

It doesn't make much difference in my experience. Such training either tells you how to suck eggs, or it is baffling fluffy nonsense. It depends whether or not you are a good manager or not in the first place.

While there are certain character traits that will help/hinder, it sounds like you were just sent on the wrong courses.

No I'm actually quite good at it (although the nature of the people who do my job means it is a low bar), I just don't want to.

Saying that, does anyone know how to get a decent workload or even a smidgen of initiative out of generation snowflake?

We have an industry wide problem of young people coming into the profession very much wanting to be spoon fed and not working past 6, even when they know this leaves a steaming pile for their boss to finish.

If you tell them anything isn't good enough, you either get tears or a complaint to HR. And no, it's not me...

I think a certain amount of pushback against the long hours and shouting at people culture is healthy.

Be more picky about who you hire. Make it clearer what you expect at interview. If you really want people to work 60hr weeks, don't pretend the hours are 9-6. Ask better questions to test whether they have the abilities you want. Once hired give people some agency in seeing rewards for improved productivity - if soft-pedalling gets you more or less the same as pushing yourself, why bother. I can't help you with reducing juniors to tears.

We don't hire people already trained, in many cases. So you only find out whether a PhD/1st class hons is one of the ones who has aptitude for the job, or a block head, after a year or so. Even then, sometimes the penny can drop.

More the issue is getting the commitment out of them so you can figure out of they aren't progressing because they are not getting enough done, or because they are never going to get there no matter how much practice they get.

Basically, it's figuring out if we can transition them from what they might regard as "busy" when they were studying or as a postdoc, to what they need to be able to take on to justify the salaries they feel entitled to.

What would you say are the skills that differentiate between a good and an indifferent candidate?

Hard to explain.

As Ted Lasso would say, it's like pornography - difficult to define but you know it when you see it.

It is certainly not merely academic grades or industrial R&D experience, though. And we can't ask new trainees questions about patent law or inventions, because none of them have any knowledge or experience when they first join.

We just have to use a bit of spidey sense, some tried and tested noddy "invention spotting" tests, and some psychometrics.*







*(which we mostly refer to if our spidey sense suggests that the gregarious blue sky thinker we've just interviewed might not be happy working long hours alone, or if the highly ambitious person asking about partnership might not be patient enough to slog their guts out for a decade first).

Is the bit in bold the problem? If you can't articulate it, how can you expect a new employee to achieve it other than by chance.

Hard to explain to non-patent professions or aspiring patent professionals.

I'm happy to try but you'll die of boredom.

In the context of the day to day work, explaining what we need and what is wrong with what someone is doing is quite easy.

But before someone starts, it is hard to say how they will adapt.

The greatest issue, and the one that I can't get my head around, is how we get any of those of a certain generation to try hard enough to figure censored out for themselves eather than asking teacher (me), or act like they want to be doing my job or higher, in 10 years time.

If you are hiring people straight out of HE, and that HE doesn't have a vocational component then someone in your organisation needs to do the training. And probably that training needs to be more structured than just hoping they'll pick it up. I do sympathise as I keep finding new things that I think our junior staff should have learnt already but apparently haven't. That said they often bring in new skills that we don't have. Another thing is making sure that they ask enough questions: they often don't know what they don't know.

As regards boring me to death, I was looking up the RMT's finances last night, so do your worst 😀.

Separately, and sorry this is an interesting discussion for me, we do loads of training internally.

I personally put about 50-100 hours a year into it, that I can be bothered to record. For a trainee, every single bit of work needs reviewing. To turn them into a not trainee, we red line it, or push it back with questions, have calls to point out issues without giving the answer, etc., or give up because we are out of time and just do it. 4 or 5 rounds back and forth isn't uncommon with someone several years in, to get something in range to be filed or sent to a client. The precision needed is insane.

We also do tutorials for the legal exams, and send them on courses.

This doesn't sound that different from what we need to input with our trainees. The big difference is what they can get paid.

morstar

My wife’s best friend was a high achiever from good stock. Both parents dr’s, she went to Cambridge and got a 1st in some engineering subject. Went into Patent law kind of by accident and made partner and a decent amount of money.

But she seemed to be constantly doing exams with absurdly high pass marks and very demanding content. She only stayed as partner for probably 2 or 3 years before deciding a decade or so of patent law was more than enough for anybody.

Safe to say I’d have lasted about a month (not that I’d ever have been offered a position).

orraloon

I keep getting these email 'alerts' for a LinkedIn account I haven't accessed in bleep knows how many years. Today's announced that I had appeared in 2 searches this week, one being South Wales Police 😳🤔