Bargains at Auction End

It's become clear to me that the best auction bargains are often at the end of the auction, not at the beginning. At the end, the bidding is just less intense - whether due to exhaustion on the part of the audience, or a thinning out of dealers, or a lack of any more cash on the part of the remaining people, or whatever. It didn't occur to me that attending the end instead of the beginning deliberately might be a good strategy until I was forced to do so because of work. Coming in late, and fresh, really helped (I got a set of Candlewick cups and saucers for next to nothing in one, and several boxes of good glass at another), so I've started going late - very late - to auctions.

The Job Auction

Now that I'm on the job market, I feel right at home, just like I would at an auction, only with those funny glasses that generate multiple copies of what the wearer sees. The people in possession of job openings have not one but dozens of recruiters casting around for bids. The job-seeking audience is huge, competitive, and bidding urgently, although in some cases it looks like the job owner is just kidding, or dyspeptic, or was drunk when writing the job requirement description.

It strikes me that the researchers in the audience are likely to be better at this than the engineers. After all, a bridge has to stand up to traffic first time out, whereas good research usually requires a very large scrap heap of failed tries. A job search is a lot more like the latter.