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Is Your Job Too Expensive?
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2008 Comment (3)Most of us have to invest money in our careers, whether on a new suit, a good haircut, or an M.B.A. We treat these as necessities but rarely talk about them as such.
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece over the weekend that tackled the financial straits of Pennsylvania's middle class.
Here and elsewhere, middle-class earnings aren't keeping up with the cost of living. Rising gasoline and food prices, health bills, child-care and education costs are leaving less to set aside for retirement. With the housing market in turmoil, even the asset many had come to count on—the value of their homes—is threatened.
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Newspaper Says Buh-Bye to Blogger
Tweet Share on Facebook April 18, 2008 Comment (1)Former Washington Post reporter Michael Tunison says he just got dooced for identifying himself and his employer on the popular NFL blog Kissing Suzy Kolber, where Tunison has been blogging as the "Christmas Ape."
I've reported on blog-related firings, as well as shared experts' advice on heading off this kind of misfortune. It's worth noting how Tunison outed himself (with a blog entry titled "Drunk Blogger Staggers Into the Light" that refers to his work at the Washington Post via a hyperlink to "this dying medium" and includes a generous littering of expletives). This is what Tunison has to say, from Editor & Publisher:
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An Extra 13 Weeks to Find a Job
Tweet Share on Facebook April 17, 2008 Comment (4)A potential reprieve for the laid-off and looking: The House Ways and Means Committee approved a bill yesterday that would extend unemployment benefits, as lawmakers seek additional economic stimulus beyond the tax rebate plan. From Congressional Quarterly:
The legislation is expected to be a key element of a second economic stimulus package that congressional Democrats plan to move in the coming weeks, possibly as part of the fiscal 2008 war supplemental funding bill.
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Don't Take My eBay Away, Boss!
Tweet Share on Facebook April 15, 2008 CommentBruce Tulgan, founder of RainmakerThinking, author of It's Okay to Be the Boss, and an expert on managing younger generations of workers, has some terrific advice, to continue yesterday's discussion of Web-threatened bosses and Web-browsing workers.
First, make sure you know what your immediate manager's policy is when it comes to this. Discuss the parameters of acceptable online activities. What's permitted and what's not? Second, be honest with yourself. Maybe you should keep a timelog for yourself and see how much time you are really wasting. If it turns out that it's not that much, then you can share that with your boss. Let your boss know that you do spend time online, but that you keep track of how much so you make sure it doesn't get out of hand.
Third, make sure that—however much time you do spend online—it doesn't distract you from getting lots of work done very well very fast all day long. Make sure you are accomplishing all of your assigned goals, meeting high quality standards, and beating every deadline. Be able to demonstrate as much. Fourth, keep close track of all the hard work you are doing and the results of your efforts. Again, timelogs will help you demonstrate how much work you are doing. You should also use your to-do lists as checklists to keep track of all the tasks, responsibilities and projects you are tackling and be able to demonstrate all the valuable results you achieve. Make sure your boss knows how valuable you are and you'll be in a lot less danger of ever losing your job.
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So, Your Boss Hates the Internet
Tweet Share on Facebook April 14, 2008 Comment (3)Last month, I wrote a story that covered several ways employees have used their office or home computers and wound up getting fired. Blogger Barry Leiba took me to task for a story that he says is made up of obvious points and ignores "the real problem of unreasonable employers and irrational disciplinary action." Leiba wants to know: "Where's the advice about dealing with the boss who's afraid of those blog things, and is willing to sack people prophylactically, even when they maintain appropriate work/life boundaries?"
Of course, for a person who is actually called in to the boss's office to be fired, it's a bit late to wonder how to delicately manage the unreasonable employer.
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How to Get the Internship
Tweet Share on Facebook April 11, 2008 Comment (9)If you want the job, you must intern, intern, intern: It's the refrain that never ends. The educational—and often unpaid—experience is recommended for careers from fashion designer to investment banker. But the really good internships can be enormously competitive, so how do you land the summer stint of your door-opening dreams?
TheStreet.com has 10 tips for making it happen.
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Don't Be Like American Airlines
Tweet Share on Facebook April 10, 2008 CommentThe mess American Airlines is in right now is an obvious cautionary tale for other airlines, but it's also a lesson for you and me.
Take a look at what Dan Garton, American's executive vice president of marketing, had to say yesterday at a press conference when he addressed the airline's grounding of flights because of problems with MD-80 wiring that didn't comply with a Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directive:
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Work Doesn't Have to Make You Fat
Tweet Share on Facebook April 9, 2008 Comment (2)This nation's collective weight problem probably has plenty to do with its collective workweek. It's increasingly common for Americans to work as much as a 70-hour week, and work fatigue is correlated to weight gain, according to a 2005 study by the University of Helsinki Department of Public Health.
Our loyalty is more often to our work than to our health—and to give equal energy to both might actually run us mad. It's really just our luck that fast-food restaurants are quick and easy to find en route to the next appointment (I found this to be especially true when I lived in suburban Chicago). And when we're working so hard to provide value to our companies and keep moving forward in our careers, aren't we entitled to some small richness at lunch and/or a relief-soaked splurge in the evenings?
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Slit in Short Skirt Causes Drop in Productivity
Tweet Share on Facebook April 8, 2008 Comment (5)A sky-high slit in a short, tight skirt is a productivity killer. I know it, because I saw its effects firsthand this morning.
I was on my way to work when I crossed paths with the skirt. The 20-something female who was wearing it was otherwise professionally attired—pumps, shoulder bag, collared shirt, etc. Men and women alike were tripping off sidewalks and causing knots in their necks craning to see this skirt. People backtracked to see if it had been a trick of the eye. Later, the skirt was on my train platform. Again, heads turned faster than wind turbines. People may have missed their trains. How many minutes of manpower were lost in the course of a Tuesday morning, thanks to this skirt? And what happens when she gets to work?
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Are Typo-Tyrants Out of Touch?
Tweet Share on Facebook April 7, 2008 Comment (2)There's a fascinating discussion underway at careers blogger and author Penelope Trunk's site. It's all abot typos. Sorry, it's all about typos.
See, Trunk says typo-tyrants who demand perfection of bloggers are out of touch, because there's "a new economy for writing. The focus has shifted toward taking risks with conversation and ideas, and away from hierarchical input (the editorial process) and perfection."
I think my favorite point in Trunk's argument is in "Spellchecker isn't perfect":
And anyway, it's nearly impossible for us to catch the errors that Spellchecker misses. If it were tenable to proofread one's own stuff, then there would never have been a copy editor to begin with. And there is research to show that if the first and last letter of a word are correct then our brain adjusts for all the letters in between.
So, I gesus my etidor will udnresntad this?
