Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Careers”
![New York-to-Paris automobile race: [Automobile stuck in snow]](https://i0.wp.com/www.manasclerk.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/LoC-3b16110u-New-York-to-Paris-automobile-race-stuck-in-snow-c-1908-CROPa.jpg?fit=862%2C618&ssl=1)
A tweet from @JaneHadfield mentioned a recent post by Cynicus Economicus, who asks “So what exactly is this optimism [about the economy] all about?” His answers are interesting, and reminded me about something I wanted to talk about here regarding jobs and the idea of anchoring. He notes that there is very little to really be happy about. Yet people are talking as if things are turning around and the risk is behind us. What’s going on?
Calculated Risk has posted a couple of interesting graphs showing the variance in the lengths of unemployment over the last 40 years (U.S. only). It’s what I’ve been saying: you don’t want to go unemployed these days because those without jobs aren’t going to get new ones. CR’s points are worth noting: … if the level of normal turnover was …
A friend of mine made up her mind in college that she was going to be a professional singer. She worked hard at it, did the various groups, choirs and solo performances. She even went pro in a little jazz quartet with some others. After college, she decided to continue her studies and went to a prestigious conservatory in New …
There is no single, best way to solve business problems. Or career problems. Or project problems. Or marriage problems. Or any one type of problems. You’d think that more than two decades after Fred Brooks told us that, at least in software, we would know that there is no silver bullet. The reason is simple: Life is complex. Most of …
Did you know that if you start work during a recession, you are likely to never make as much as someone who started working during good times? This is probably not news to you: Forbes and the Wall Street Journal both covered this back before the class of 2009 graduated in May.
It turns out that economic research showed that people who graduate during a depression not only make less money when they come out, because the market is depressed and jobs are scarce, but they continue to make less for years to come and may never catch up with people who are exactly like them but graduated a couple of years earlier during a run-up. Even when times get better, they still earn less money for the same jobs.
The reasons for this should be obvious, but that hasn’t stopped people from continuing to spout useless claptrap.
For example, Forbes’s David Serchuk (“How To Graduate In A Recession”, 2009 April 16) wrote that:
Having the bad luck to graduate in a recession can mark someone’s entire career, as it can lead workers to start careers at smaller firms that pay less….
[S]ometimes having your plans shattered can bring you to make a career out of what you’d really like to do with your life, as opposed to simply chasing the money.
John Osborne, later in the article, said that
Graduating into a recession or a Great Recession or whatever we are calling it is a great gift, a real blessing in disguise. Why? For two simple reasons: You are learning in dog years (one year equals seven years of experience), and you are getting more experience since you are more actually valuable.
If your Bullshit Detector hasn’t already gone off, it should. Forbes, of course, doesn’t make money by telling people the truth which is why they seemed blissfully unaware of the impending crash even though everyone knew that it was coming. These are nice thoughts but they clearly aren’t true, or at least aren’t true for the vast majority of graduates.
To see why this is bullshit, we need to look at why recession-era graduates will make less, even after the recovery. [read full post]
Research published this month “examine[s] the effects of self-perceptions of incompetence on power holders’ tendency to aggress.” Or, why bully bosses are likely to be incompetent at their role. [Full Post]
Article in NY Times about how job search firms can rip you off.
![Employees at Mid-Continent Refinery [ca. 1943 Tulsa, OK (LOC). By John Vachon]](https://i0.wp.com/www.manasclerk.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2179123915_75b400bf47_o-men-group-Employees-at-Mid-Continent-Refinery-c-1943-Tulsa-OK-LOC-Vachon-John-e1377964113665.jpeg?fit=862%2C519&ssl=1)
Here are the Top 5 job assignments to produce learning with commentary: [full post]
“He’s such a cold bastard! Even the room gets a chill when he walks in!”
We’re weren’t even out of the room and my consulting pal was already berating our client. He had point: it had been chilly in there, and the client — never someone who filled your heart with bonhomie — was in particularly icy form that day.
[Click through to read how Temperature affects our emotions and even intellectual performance]
Tom Foster has a post recently about what to do when your manager starts to give your management tasks to a coworker, all the time saying that you are still the boss. I’ve had this happen and I wish that I had known this bit of advice back then. It wouldn’t have helped any — but I would have perhaps …
