This piece in Slate on veterinarians is very good and very grim: Our Business Is Killing. It’s all about the centrality of euthanasia when it comes to being a vet, and how that responsibility — killing animals effectively — takes a huge hit on all the humans involved.
Being a vet is a great thing and it can bring much happiness to people and pets. But anyone considering choosing that profession should read that Slate piece first.
It’s been a tumultuous time when it comes to the current workplace, or at least business writers think so. From quiet quitting to the Great Resignation, writers can’t stop coining terms about pseudo quitting. So we have pieces on quit quitting, on rage applying and my new favorite, calibrated contributing. Even places like the WSJ join in with this piece on High-Earning Men Who Are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours. It’s as if readers of business magazines and websites can not get enough pieces on worker unhappiness.
That was before times though. Now workers, at least IT workers, have something to be truly unhappy about: being laid off. You can read about it everywhere, from the Verge to the New York Times. It seemed like every IT company was suddenly shedding workers, from Facebook/Meta, to Microsoft, to Salesforce, to Google……even IBM, which had a decent year compared to the rest of the list. The reasons for the layoffs were varied. Facebook/Meta continues to have a bad business model. Others like Microsoft went on a hiring bender and the layoffs are almost a hangover. There’s also been talk that some of the companies were just following the others and trying to look tough or something. One tech company that did not lay anyone off: Apple.
Layoffs suck. If you get caught up in a layoff program, you can find many guides as to what to do. Here is one layoff guide: What to do before during and after getting laid off.
If you only pay attention to the tech job market, you may guess it applies to the job market in general. But if you read this, Mass Layoffs or Hiring Boom? What’s Actually Happening in the Jobs Market, you get a different picture. The job market is a jumble now due to the fallout of the pandemic. I suspect it is going to take another year to settle down.
In the meantime, good luck with your work. Things aren’t as bad as they may appear. Despite all the think pieces and the tech layoffs. Stay positive.
You might not but I bet someone might. Because it’s not just any old SE….it’s Steve Jobs’ Macintosh. Uncreate has the details:
(Jobs) didn’t stop using Apple products, though, instead working on this Macintosh SE until 1994. Amazingly, it still has files from its days on Jobs’ desk on its drive, and as an incredibly desirable artifact from his “Wilderness Years”, is expected to bring over $200,000 at auction.
For rich fans of Apple, this would be some crazy good thing to have in your collection.
It’s Monday. End of Summer. There are many things you could be doing in the last quarter of the year. One of them should be updating your resume, regardless of whether or not you are looking for a job.
A challenge with updating your resume these days is running into AI that filters you out for jobs you are applying for. To see what I mean, check this out. How to find a job and make your search for work less terrible – Vox. Some of that I disagree with but I found these two suggestions helpful:
Don’t leave off skills, even if they seem basic. Are you proficient at Excel? List it. “Your odds of getting an interview and a job if you have a facility with Microsoft Office goes up hugely,” Fuller said.
Don’t leave unexplained gaps. If you took a year off to write the Great American Novel, say so. Otherwise, it will look like you were doing nothing, and you might be screened out.
After you update your resume, make sure your LinkedIn is up to date and consistent with your resume. If you say you have five years experience doing XYZ and XYZ does not show up on your LinkedIn, employers will wonder why. So be consistent.
I thought this piece was insightful and worth reading: Too Many Jobs Feel Meaningless Because They Are.
One of the examples from the piece was especially insightful:
Consider the case of Eric, a history graduate hired to oversee a software project ostensibly intended to improve the coordination of different groups in a large firm. Eric only discovered after several years on the job that one of the firm’s partners had initiated the project, but that several others were against it and were acting to sabotage its success. His job — and that of a large staff hired beneath him — was a meaningless effort to put into place a change that most of the company didn’t want.
This is not to imply that all companies are like this. Companies can be efficient and well aligned and the vast majority of the people in it can feel like the work they are doing make a difference most of the time. However there are also companies which are not well aligned and there are conflicts within the organization. When that happens, the work being done may be meaningless, despite the fact that someone wants it done.
Work can be hard for a number of reasons: too much of it, difficult people to work with, etc. But it can also be hard if it is meaningless, even if everything else is good.
Possibly, but as this article argues, there are at least three areas where robots and suck at:
Creative endeavours: These include creative writing, entrepreneurship, and scientific discovery. These can be highly paid and rewarding jobs. There is no better time to be an entrepreneur with an insight than today, because you can use technology to leverage your invention.
Social interactions: Robots do not have the kinds of emotional intelligence that humans have. Motivated people who are sensitive to the needs of others make great managers, leaders, salespeople, negotiators, caretakers, nurses, and teachers. Consider, for example, the idea of a robot giving a half-time pep talk to a high school football team. That would not be inspiring. Recent research makes clear that social skills are increasingly in demand.
Physical dexterity and mobility: If you have ever seen a robot try to pick up a pencil you see how clumsy and slow they are, compared to a human child. Humans have millennia of experience hiking mountains, swimming lakes, and dancing—practice that gives them extraordinary agility and physical dexterity.
Read the entire article; there’s much more in it than that. But if your job has some element of those three qualities, chances are robots won’t be replacing you soon.
This piece: What it’s like to be a modern engraver, the most automated job in the United States — Quartz, reminded me once again that the best use of technology is to augment the people doing the work, and not simply take away the work. Must reading for anyone who’s believes that the best way to use AI and other advanced tech is to eliminate jobs. My believe is that the best way to use AI and other advanced tech is to make jobs better, both for the employee, the employer, and the customer. The businesses that will succeed will have that belief as well.
(Image from this piece on how humans and robots can work together.)
According to Haydn Waters, a writer at CBC, the mail robots at the corporation are being discontinued. Instead:
Mail will be delivered twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday) to central mail delivery/pickup locations on each floor.”
What gets lost in alot of discussions of robots, AI, etc., taking all the jobs is that the drivers for the decisions is not technology but economics. If there is no economical need for robots and other technology, then that technology will not just appear. There is nothing inevitable about technology, and any specific technology is temporary.
Of course there will be more use of robots and AI and other technology to replace the work people may currently do. The key to finding work will be to continually improvise and improve on the tasks one has to do to remain employed. That’s something humans do well, and technology will struggle with for some time in the future, AI hype not withstanding.
If you are looking to build AI tech, or just learn about it, then you will find these interesting:
This piece makes a strong case that he is: Why Tim Cook is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple. I’d add to it and say that people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were great people at a great time and a great place. Steve Jobs wasn’t terribly successful at NeXT: he was still great, but the timing of his ideas wasn’t and the company itself wasn’t either. Tim Cook and Steve Ballmer are very good CEOs, but they are not in the same league as Jobs and Gates, and you could argue that the time has come and gone for both Apple and Microsoft.
Apple has many good months and years ahead. We will have to wait and see if they can regain the golden era of Jobs and his new iMacs, iPods, and iPhones.
Is this you: despite having a great resume and being really good at your job, you aren’t appreciated at your current workplace or you are struggling to find a new place to work? If so, I encourage you to read this: The Life of a Free Agent Kicker | The Players’ Tribune
It doesn’t matter if you love or hate football, it is a great example of how you need to think in order to stay positive and maintain perspective when your work situation gets tough.
You can be great at your job, you can have a record of success, and you can still be rejected by employers. It can happen to anyone. You have to stay ready, stay focused, and do your best when the next opportunity comes along. Read the article and grab some perspective.
If you are a software developer or someone working in IT, you need to consider having more than a good resume or CV. You should consider having:
If you use github.io to host your professional web site, you get to cross off #2 and #3 with one effort.
I was reminded of this when I went to check out this page: DevProgress Tech Volunteer Questionnaire. You can see them asking for this information. It makes sense: if you are looking to hire a developer, it would be great to see not just what people are saying about them on LinkedIn, but what their code looks like too.
For some employees, putting code on github may not be an option. In that case focus on the first two and have a page somewhere on the web that discusses why you can’t host code there.
This post on Quora has a long list of jobs unique to specific countries. For example, in Iran, there are professional licence plate blockers, like this guy:
And why doe such a job exist? You will have to read this: What is a unique job that you’ve only seen in your country? – Quora
The whole thread contains dozens of jobs you can’t believe exist, but once you know something about them, they make sense. A great read.
Over at Operating Partner, DFJ, Heide Roizen has a great case study of how to negotiate with someone as tough to deal with as Steve Jobs. You may not be in IT, and you may never have to negotiate with someone as demanding and smart as Jobs, but check it out: you can learn something useful and read a great story too.
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