My friends sometimes approach me with career anxieties, under the false impression that writing about economics makes somebody a good career advisor. My counsel is typically something like optimistic incrementalism. Don’t quit your job, mastery comes with time, job satisfaction comes with mastery… that sort of stuff.
When the same friends ask my roommate, an entrepreneur building a financial services app, they’re whiplashed with radical optimism. Get the hell out of there! Quit if you have to! You’ll be happier doing just about anything else!
I never said it outright, but I assumed that my cautious approach was more responsible, even if it seldom proved more inspirational. But according to a new study of youth unemployment by economists Martin Gervais, Nir Jaimovich, Henry Siu, and Yaniv Yedid-Levi, my incrementalist advice, while appropriate for the worst periods of the Great Recession, isn’t so great, overall.
Instead, there is what you might call a “dream-job premium.” Jumping between jobs in your 20s, which strikes many people as wayward and noncommittal, improves the chance that you’ll find more satisfying—and higher paying—work in your 30s and 40s.
via Quit Your Job – The Atlantic.
Video: Dwayne Wade Moving On
Coron, Palawan: 8 Must-See Places In This Paradise
Still deciding between Coron vs Batanes vs Siargao.
In the recent years, Coron has become a must-visit destination not only for Filipinos but also foreign tourists who want to relax, unwind, and enjoy breathtaking land and seascapes.
An island that lies off the coast of Palawan, Coron has stunning rock formations, pristine white sand beaches, and is home to one of the cleanest lakes in the Philippines.
Plan ahead and make sure to make time for some of these destinations in Coron.
via Coron, Palawan: 8 Must-See Places In This Paradise.
Another reason to spend money on experiences rather than things—the positive benefits of anticipation – Quartz
All of the studies indicated that anticipation of an experience is more exciting and pleasant than the anticipation of a material purchase—regardless of the price of the purchase. In the case of crowds queuing up to make purchases, those in line for an experience (such as a play or admission to a theme park) generally are in better moods and on better behavior than those in line to buy material goods. In a press release, Gilovich said one reason the research is important to society is that it “suggests that overall well-being can be advanced by providing an infrastructure that affords experiences—such as parks, trails, beaches—as much as it does material consumption.”
via Another reason to spend money on experiences rather than things—the positive benefits of anticipation – Quartz.
Let the Body Rest, for the Sake of the Brain – The Atlantic
Something I need to take seriousy.
In fact, according to Roenneberg’s groundbreaking study in Current Biology, about one-third of people living in first-world countries are required to wake up two hours before their circadian clocks, or “natural waking times,” tell them to, and 69 percent of people have to wake up one hour before their bodies would like them to.
Of course, different people require different amounts of sleep and although there’s no universal rule for how long we should all be sleeping, it’s becoming increasingly clear that working late and waking early can cause serious problems. It’s not just repeated sleep deprivation that does people in, either. Just one restless night can seriously affect us in the morning.
Getting less than five hours of sleep a night makes people dumber and less able to concentrate, and it can make people more susceptible to false memories, according to a new study published in the September issue of Psychological Science.
via Let the Body Rest, for the Sake of the Brain – The Atlantic.
John Wick: An Idiot Killed His Puppy and Now Everyone Must Die – The Atlantic
Strangely excited to watch this movie.
John Wick, played with quiet, slow-burning grace by Keanu Reeves in what’s being billed as a comeback for the 50-year-old actor, is both. At the beginning of the film he seems like any Wall Street banker or startup whiz who has cashed out early to enjoy life with his wife, Helen (Bridget Moynahan, seen only in flashbacks and blurry iPhone clips). That’s until Helen dies of a serious but unspecified illness, leaving Wick all alone in his sleek, monochrome mansion as a living, breathing, sobbing manifestation of Sad Keanu.
In one of the most emotionally manipulative plot devices ever seen on film, the doorbell rings, and he takes delivery of a puppy, a canis ex machina, ordered by Helen before she died to give Wick something to love. The bond is instantaneous: The adorable dog and the handsome man eat cereal together, and snuggle up in bed, and drive around in a killer 1969 Mustang—sometimes breaking into what looks like an airport to do doughnuts and handbrake turns in front of gas tankers—and for a fleeting moment it seems like the movie might have the makings of an existential buddy comedy. Only a thug, Iosef (Alfie Allen), who’s eyed Wick’s car in a gas station, breaks into his house with a handful of friends late at night, beats up Wick, steals the car, and kills the puppy.
This is 2014 in immature, animal-worshiping, Cute Emergency-retweeting America. You come at a puppy, you best not miss its owner, whose mystique as one of the most ruthless killers ever to wear Kevlar is quickly established in the following exchange between the owner of a chop shop (John Leguizamo) and Iosef’s father, Russian crime lord Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist):
Viggo: I heard you struck my son. May I ask why?
Aureilo: Because he stole John Wick’s car and killed his dog.
Viggo: Oh.
Iosef doesn’t just kill John Wick’s dog, as Wick expresses in possibly the fiercest monologue Reeves has ever delivered: He kills his hope, and in doing so, unleashes the full fury of a now footloose and fancy-free angel of death. John Wick kills, by my count, 78 people in the movie’s 93 minutes, and he doesn’t just kill them, he toys with them first like a cat with a mouse, delivering a stray bullet in the shoulder or a kick to the kneecap before offing his targets with two shots to the head, assassination-style. The movie’s tagline is “Don’t Set Him Off,” but it really should be “This Idiot Killed My Puppy and Now Everyone Must Die.”
via John Wick: An Idiot Killed His Puppy and Now Everyone Must Die – The Atlantic.
Richard Branson Is Right: Time Is the New Money | Inc.com
I want to work for a company that adopts this.
Richard Branson just announced he would be giving Virgin employees unlimited vacation. He’s either nuts or knows something others have yet to discover: You’ll make more money if you give people their time back.
Why We Trade Time for Money
The Industrial Age taught us the only way to make money was to trade time for it. The deal was clear, and always the same: You give me eight to 10 hours of your day, and I’ll give you some money. But in the Participation Age, something new is emerging. Companies are realizing that when you give people back their time, they will make you more money. It seems counter-logical, but it’s really quite intuitive. As usual, Branson is moving on an idea that traditionalists will only discover by watching him and the other early adapters in action.
Why Would Unlimited Vacation Work?
Why give up on a vacation system that’s been in place for 170-plus years? Because it was a bad idea then, and with a work force that did not grow up in the shadow of the Industrial Age, it’s an even worse idea today. Almost no one under 40 can relate to a time-based system that makes no sense in a results-based work world.
Branson didn’t figure this out; he’s actually a late adapter, which makes a lot of the work world archaic and completely out of touch with how to make money today. Fewer than 1% of U.S. companies give unlimited vacation. In fact, America gives the second-lowest amount in the world, behind only South Korea.
The data is in: When you give people control of their time, they make you more money. W. L. Gore Inc., the pioneer in rejecting the Industrial Age, is a $3 billion company with 10,000 stakeholders. They’ve had unlimited vacation since the 1960s and continue to grow exponentially.
via Richard Branson Is Right: Time Is the New Money | Inc.com.
TED: Hans Rosling on the HIV Epidemic
Hans Rosling’s TED talk on the HIV epidemic scared me. If the steady state of HIV infection is about 1 % of population then we are going to see about 1 million probably more because before steady state it gets worse fast and after society adjust to the HIV epidemic then we slowly stop getting worse. People stop unprotected sex.
Watch this ted talk if you are curious
The Marcoses never really left home | Inquirer Opinion
I’d share the whole article if that wasn’t considered unethical blogging.
Just read the whole damn thing.
Convicted but never jailed
This transaction involved leasing out two train station terminals at below market rates to a private foundation that she herself put up and headed. Philippine General Hospital Foundation was supposed to raise funds for the state-owned Philippine General Hospital but its hospital director told me then in an interview that PGH never got a cent from PGH Foundation. Mrs. Marcos signed the contract with LRTA on behalf of the foundation even though she was also the LRTA chair.
In 1996, the Supreme Court found Mrs. Marcos “guilty beyond reasonable doubt,” sentenced her to 12 years in jail and fined her the equivalent of the anomalous contract. Dans was acquitted because the Court found “no conspiracy” between him and Mrs. Marcos.
Around the same time that the government of Fidel Ramos—the dictator’s second cousin—was prosecuting Mrs. Marcos in court, it was secretly negotiating a deal that only came to light in 1996 when former Solicitor General Frank Chavez asked the Supreme Court to stop it. The deal would have allowed the Marcoses to walk off with 25 percent of all their ill-gotten wealth—here and abroad. Tax-free. In addition, all pending criminal and civil cases against them would be dropped.
But that wasn’t all. Chavez presented a letter dated Jan. 24, 1995, from Mrs. Marcos’ lawyer to Presidential Commission on Good Government chair Magtanggol Gunigundo saying “it is further understood that $50 million will be taken from the top as approved by President Ramos and your
(Gunigundo’s) good self.”
“Where will the $50 million taken from the top go?” Chavez demanded to know as he asked to court to permanently bar all compromise deals with the Marcoses.
via The Marcoses never really left home | Inquirer Opinion.
Are Your Employees Quitting YOU?
I’m surprised by the quality of post on linkedin.
Google+ -> Awesome Pics and Tech Community
Facebook -> Vacation/Baby/Wedding Pics
Linkedin -> Career Related Stuff.
This is so true. A lot of people quit because they feel nobody s listening.
You may have heard the phrase before, or maybe this is the first time. Employees don’t quit their job, they quit their boss. It’s a favourite of mine because it’s packed with truth.
Think about it. When you’ve made moves in your career was it because of the job itself or a bad leader? It was the ol’ ball and chain, I suspect. (I do understand there are times when employees move on because they are faced with the opportunity of a lifetime, but in my experience this is the exception, not the rule.)
In my first HR job I had a heavy recruitment component to my role. I have to admit that after recruiting full time for 1+ years I was ready for a change. But I didn’t make the switch because of this alone. No, it was largely due to my manager. She wasn’t a horrible person but she lacked management experience and over time I decided she wasn’t someone I wanted to spend time with. So I moved on.
Could something have been done that would have kept me there longer? The answer is yes. Even though I was hitting the end of my learning curve with my existing duties there were other responsibilities I could have been exposed to. Plus it was a growing business so there would have been other opportunities down the road for growth and learning.
For those of you that are wondering if I left for more money, the answer is no. For a junior role, I was paid a pretty penny. I made more at that job than I did at my next two jobs. But I still left. The money wasn’t enough to hold me there. Nine times out of ten, when an employee says they’re leaving for more money, it’s simply not true. It’s just too uncomfortable to tell the truth.
So, what can be done?
via Are Your Employees Quitting YOU?.