Half of all problems can be ignored and they will turn out all right. Somehow magic will happen.
The other half of the problems we will just make them worse by trying to fix them. If you don’t have a good solution then don’t muck with it.
The important thing is to focus on just a few things which make a real difference and let everything else work itself out.
Filed under Uncategorized
Equal Marriage Rights
Suddenly lots of folks have discovered that maybe government should get out of sanctioning marriage — except they don’t really mean it.
>>> Example: Some would argue that rather than allow marriage among gays that the government just get out of the marriage business altogether and allow traditional marriage to be between a man and woman — but outside of government definition. This newfound solution to a modern problem sounds good but really it just sidesteps the larger implication of ‘what is marriage’.
‘Marriage’ is about economics and property rights more often than love and just wanting to live life with someone.
We could probably solve this quickly if government really did decide that ‘marriage’ happened between two people and was none of the government’s business … and if everyone that wanted to claim benefits and/or property rights filed for ‘civil union’ status then we could fix this quickly … whether man-woman, man-man, or woman-woman.
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Am straight, married and with two kids. I admit to not understanding the attraction to the same sex … but I also accept that it happens for other folks and it is normal for them. It would be nice if the Supreme Court redefined ‘marriage’ as meaning ‘civil union’ and we march on …
Filed under Uncategorized
JOBS / #Telework / Reversing Trends? Best Buy calls it quit on ‘flexible work’ … http://wp.me/p1SbJI-cB
Best Buy has become the second major employer within the last week to throw its telework/telecommute employee program overboard.
I have several interpretations of what is happening.
#1 – This is not an indictment of telework/telecommute as a form of workplace participation. It is appropriate for some forms of work and not others.
#2 – Companies are getting leaner and meaner (hopefully ‘efficient’). These companies seem to believe that the ‘remotely connected workforce’ is disconnected from the reality of corporate culture (how we make money).
#3 – Organizations really can do much more these days with fewer people on the payroll.
When you are trying to do more with less it is hard to throw someone into the fight when they are not exactly there, physically present.
‘Hey you!’ has long been a useful policy in most industries and organizations: when something needs to get done then now is good … so who is available to get it done now?
A counterargument is that these organizations (Yahoo! and Best Buy) just need to manage their workforce better. I agree. However, I run a virtual company myself and have often found it difficult to get my remote telework/telecommute folks (12 out of 18) to appreciate the business challenges that we face: their life is usually a set of well defined tasks and ‘hey you!’ doesn’t work well at all.
Abandonment of the flexible workforce by two very large firms does not make a trend … but it should tell us something about where BIG business is going: doing more with less requires far more interaction than perhaps our current telework and telecommute approaches may be able to deliver when it comes to corporate teambuilding vice task teambuilding.
by Bill Golden
WGolden@USAJobZoo.com
Filed under Uncategorized
”The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then get elected and prove it.”
—P.J. O’Rourke
Filed under Democratic Party, Politics, Republican Party
Strangely most people want to believe the worst. Seldom do facts matter when you can tell a great story about an evil threat and how your group (whomever that group is) is the only thing standing between evil and the loss of ______.
BTW, please send money to help us in our fight.
Was reading a lament earlier today from someone that has been working their ass off to try to create a middle of the road group within the GOP: honest conservatives with a strong libertarian streak but not given over to hyperbole and appealing to emotion as the reason to do X, Y or Z.
Seems that the rug keeps getting pulled out from under them and/or they are finding a huge number of folks just seem to want to follow the ridiculous … facts are slung all over the place but seldom are the facts factual … and few seem to care.
How do you compete against that?
Filed under Politics
JOBS / Life / Career Changes / Income Expectations / TeleEverything / Retirement … and about those damned robots
by Bill Golden
CEO, USAJobZoo.com
aka IntelligenceCareers.com
Think different. Start yesterday. That is when the future arrived.
What made for success in the past is not a guarantee for the future … your market value no longer ‘always increases’ … expect some skills to remain popular but value to drop … some to increase … expect flat salaries over the next decade … wherever you go there you are: always have a Plan B as you will probably change your core ‘what I do for a living’ at least 5-8 times before you finally collect a retirement check … from your 401K or IRA which you funded throughout your life … right?
How often will you change jobs in life? Survey sez …
A Department of Labor report from summer of 2012 found that the average American age 18-46 would change employers an average of 11.3 times … half of those changes would be between the ages 18-24.
++++ This information is not based on our current generation but on the experiences of Boomers born between 1957-1964.
++++ I realize that the numbers are probably quite different for today’s age group of 18-24 … many of whom are still trying to find that first job.
For those ages 24 and under: employment in your age group has always been challenging. In the old days (like 20 years ago) we still had a lot of manual-based labor jobs that you could always slide into while figuring out what life meant and where it was taking you. Those same opportunities are far fewer today … but so is the requirement for education. Survey says that for those currently under the age of 30: college degrees matter, even when applying for jobs that do not pay well.
As for salary and income expectation, things have changed immensely since even the mid-2000s. For experienced professionals it was not uncommon for an employer to ask you for a salary history for either your last 2-3 jobs or for the last 10 years. The idea behind was that real talent is always growing in compensation — resumes can say anything but the proof is in the money that you get as to how good you are.
In a recent Atlantic Magazine article entitled Robots Won’t Steal Your Job Next Decade (They’ll Just Steal Your Raise), the magazine talks about income remaining flat through about 2017 and then a miracle happens where income just takes off … recovering to 2005 levels by 2020 … or almost recovering to 2005 levels … if the miracle happens — which Atlantic calls the Little Orphan Annie theory of recoveries — catchup growth is always just a year away, until it’s another year away.
Future Outlook
We do more with less. MUCH LESS … or perhaps more grammatically correct: many fewer … people … we can do more with many fewer people … and at higher profit margins, too.
The headline of the Atlantic Magazine article mentions ‘Robots’ but what we are really talking about is the ability of information technologies when combined with physical and organizational processes.
Automation of processes, collaboration, logistics integration and manufacturing are the challenges that our workforce faces today and in the immediate future; these are the folks whose primary role in our economic society is to trade services for a paycheck … and since they no longer live on a farm then they need that paycheck to buy food and they need that paycheck to do all the things which they can no longer do as when our culture was primary rural and small town … as it was just a generation or so ago.
We need a bigger conversation about JOBS JOBS JOBS … because the future has arrived.
Think different. Start yesterday. That is when the future arrived.
Best regards,
Bill Golden
WGolden@USAJobZoo.com
Filed under Uncategorized
JOBS / $$ / March 1st Sequestration Cuts … 800,000 civilian furloughs coming … this is going to hurt | USADefenseIndustryJobs.com – http://ow.ly/hTrNb … Bill Golden has a few thoughts on this topic.
Filed under Uncategorized
Thought + Facts > Rant
