Work

It was about nine at night. Tiredness usually started to set in at this point in the night when consecutive late nights at work seemed to pile up with no sign of letting up soon. The tunnel was dark on both ends. I decided to get a final tea for the day, about my fourth, to push through the last bit of work.

As any good consultant might do, I was crunching through some numbers – nothing difficult – but they just weren’t working out. Our team had a hypothesis that product A made up to 90% of a business’ revenues. But when I ran the numbers of a few different clients, some fell in line with that hypothesis, and some were completely off. The equation to calculate for the monthly spend of product A was particularly confusing. I was spinning my wheels here and if it’s one thing we learned over and over again in training, it was to not let those wheels spin and ask for help. Plus, if one thing is sure about my co-workers, it’s that they’re incredibly intelligent and could easily help me through any confusing math.

My particular section (product A and product B) for the project was shared between me and another senior co-worker. He was fresh out of prestigious business school X and was eager to show a young college-grad all that he had learned in the three extra months that he had been working before me. I liked him, and for the most part we work well together. But, like any person you spend close companionship for a sudden and endured amount of time, we had a couple small, well things, and might have snapped at each other a little bit. It didn’t help that this young MBA was dealing with a college-grad that has been describe by his peers as ‘maybe too confident for his experience and age.’ By nine at night, there were already a couple of snaps recorded for the day.

But I relented, because even this maybe-too-confident associate isn’t too proud to ask for math help. I went over to my partner’s desk across the floor to ask for help. We went through all the calculations. Of course I was wrong. And he was wrong a little bit (but not nearly as wrong as I was, although I would never say anything). We worked everything out, but darnit, the end answer was still the same. Different clients had different revenue mixes. I took a quick break to go back to my desk and find some literature that might help.

That’s it! The revenue mix depends on how much of product B you have because product A was static.

I ran to tell my partner and drew out a quick graph, showing a straight line for product A and a slope of about 2x for product B. “It makes sense, but product A is not static.” Oh yeah. Shoot. “Well,” he told me, “let’s add it up. These fees are fixed for product A. One, two, three. Then there is a $1 charge for each of product A. 1x. Then there is a $.50 handling fee for each of product A. 1.5x. So y=1.5x+172. Product B doesn’t have any fixed costs. There is again a $1 charge and a $.50 handling fee for each of product B. So y=1.5x. Hmmm.”

The first graph was erased and a new one drawn up. But if they both had a slope of 1.5x, then they were parallel and the difference is always the fixed costs of product A. As I was drawing the graph, my partner told me, “That doesn’t make sense. Not when the different client revenues are added. The difference isn’t $172 every time.”

“Well,” I said, “there is always an addition to product B, for archiving purposes.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s call that z. y=1.5x +z.. But that still gives us the same slope and a parallel line, just higher.”

“If the x axis is months, then z will always be added each month. So it’s a function of x.” There was no need for that extra caffeine, this puzzle got my brain pumping again.

“Yes. Actually, it is x.”

“Yeah, that’s right, since the same number of product A is archived and lumped into product b at the end of the month.”

“That makes y=2.5x for B.” A third and final graph was sketched out with line A starting high and slightly increasing while line B started at the axis and climbed quickly.

That’s it. It just depends on the number of product A and product B to get a client’s revenue mix. So simple. We gave each other congratulatory high fives in honor of our intellect – or rather our ability to remember seventh-gade math. We quickly rang our manager, who was delayed at the airport, to give him our findings.

“That’s good. Our client will want to know that. But there’s one problem. We want to know about the revenue mix for the entire market, not just one client of theirs.”

Ugh. Our heads dropped at the same time. “But, it depends,” I tried to plea.

“It depends for a single case study, but we need to know where the market is.” It was no use, he was completely right.

I set back to my desk, fresh algebraic equations in hand, to work out some more numbers and try to get a sense of the market. There’s just no pleasing anyone in this line of work. That’s what is so frustrating some times. But then again, that’s why it’s fun and stimulating as well.

I’ve been enjoying my job for the past three months.