My New Pet Peeve

I have recently found myself becoming somewhat irate with the phrase “many people … ”. It is usually used in context that is to describe a common action that is perceived to be a misconception or to be a belief. I know that I have used this previously myself. It’s not hard to find it in my previous posts, you just have to go back a few of them and it would be right there, glowing in the middle of the post somewhere.

Here’s an example: “There are so many people out there who will tell you that you can't. What you've got to do is turn around and say,'I can. Watch me.”

― Layne Beachley

The reason why I have developed negative opinion is due to the lack of factual support of the actual statement. Factual support is the base of business writing in my opinion. This phrase is usually used when there’s no proof of the statement, and only personally observation exists. Frankly speaking, this observation is usually filled with judgment of the described behavior. In my opinion this is the first step in the passive aggressive boisterous statement, which will enlighten the herd to listen to the enlightened one.

From now on, I am making a concerted effort to eradicate this phrase from my personal use and hopefully I will limit my exposure to any sources of information that use this primitive form of influence

What would Tim Ferris Do?

http://www.fastcompany.com/3004896/software-developer-caught-outsourcing-his-own-job-china?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29

So I read the aforementioned article today and I immediately recalled a famous book by Tim Ferris, which provided private outsourcing as a way to reduce the amount of time that you work. I thought that the book was thought provoking at the time that I have read it, but I was skeptical to say the least about the real life application of those principles.

I think that legally speaking the company may have a case against this worker, if they can prove damages. That is going to be difficult to do, seems like more investigation would certainly have to be done to achieve that. What’s interesting however is – “Amazingly, the developer received glowing performance reviews from human resources while pulling his outsourcing scam”.  That must be an interesting company where the direct supervisor does not do performance review. Human Resources can assess past behavior and complaints, if they are forced to review performance, if someone has more free time to contribute to the social aspect of the job, as this article suggests, then I think the review would be good and there shouldn’t be anything amazing about it.

Anyways I wonder what would Tim Ferris say about this event.

Cover Letters can work.

And this is how it’s done.

http://www.businessinsider.com/student-sends-great-cover-letter-for-internship-at-bank-and-its-now-going-viral-on-wall-street-2013-1

I would like to do a quick play by play as to what made this cover letter standout in my opinion. First of all, he clearly introduces himself and recalls the place that they met previously. So this is not a “shot in the dark”/random application with a cover letter, in fact the person may have told the kid to “send him a resume and he would look at it” during their meeting however brief it may have been, but he attached a cover letter anyway – That’s smart.

Secondly he introduces the resume well and explains the experience with humor while also equating himself to the other applicants “I’m not going to over inflate the titles to make it sound more impressing” - Very subtle but also effective. In fact, interns are not expected to have all the experience in the world. Their optimism is usually much highly valued. During those second and third paragraphs he makes the cover letter read honest and bold. I would go as far as to assume that the person that he sent it to may have shown those qualities to the student and he used them in the tone of this cover letter. Which is perfect.

Possibly a deliberate typo on the word “crap”, this is extremely subtle. In my opinion in the world of auto correct and constant spell check everywhere (most browsers, word) it’s difficult to make a typo as blatant as “crapp”. Given that this kid clearly cares about this application, due to the aforementioned clues, I think he made it on purpose. Here’s why: the effect of swearing or using objectionable language is lessened when you make a typo (this is purely subjective to me). So he got to say crap without looking as vulgar – fulking A.

Then he mentions in passing that he already had an internship in wealth management and that he is taking specific courses and tells them about his plans, which I presume would align with this industry. Overall this Cover Letter is not just a slam dunk, it’s a 360 self oop dunk. You cannot write a better cover letter. 

Incentive Stock Options VS. Non-Qualified Stock Options

Cam across this interesting article, I'll past the useful breakdown chart from this article to this post:
http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2008/03/05/whats-the-difference-between-an-iso-and-an-nso/

This is applicable to the US tax system

ISO	NSO
Tax Qualification Requirements:	* The option price must at least equal the fair market value of the stock at the time of grant. * The option cannot be transferable, except at death. * There is a $100,000 limit on the aggregate fair market value (determined at the time the option is granted) of stock which may be acquired by any employee during any calendar year (any amount exceeding the limit is treated as a NSO). * All options must be granted within 10 years of plan adoption or approval of the plan, whichever is earlier. * The options must be exercised within 10 years of grant. * The options must be exercised within three months of termination of employment (extended to one year for disability, with no time limit in the case of death).	None, but an NSO granted with an option price less than the fair market value of the stock at the time of grant will be subject to taxation on vesting and penalty taxes under Section 409A.
Who Can Receive:	Employees only	Anyone
How Taxed for Employee:	* There is no taxable income to the employee at the time of grant or timely exercise. * However, the difference between the value of the stock at exercise and the exercise price is an item of adjustment for purposes of the alternative minimum tax. * Gain or loss when the stock is later sold is long-term capital gain or loss. Gain or loss is the difference between the amount realized from the sale and the tax basis (i.e., the amount paid on exercise). * Disqualifying disposition destroys favorable tax treatment.	* The difference between the value of the stock at exercise and the exercise price is ordinary income. * The income recognized on exercise is subject to income tax withholding and to employment taxes. * When the stock is later sold, the gain or loss is capital gain or loss (calculated as the difference between the sales price and tax basis, which is the sum of the exercise price and the income recognized at exercise).

Florida’s Unemployment Benefits System to be Virtual

A 35-year-old system of filing for unemployment benefits is due to change in Florida. There is a plan in place to make it completely virtual, by having everyone complete online applications to apply for the assistance. It was renamed as the Reemployment Assistance program in Florida, and is set to go virtual in October.

This can be an improvement to their process, which currently takes about 6 weeks from the time the claim is filed to the time the first payment is made. Currently a part of their process is a confirmation from adjudicator, which happens either by phone, email or mail. After switch to the online method of filing they can potentially rely mostly on online chat, email and phone. This may be used to speed the process up.

There are a few concerns in regards to this change, first is accessibility. The argument is that not everyone has a computer at home, and this may create a barrier for the people that are more disadvantaged on the economic scale, which presumably are likely a large part of the customers of this particular program. This is supported by the research findings of the PEW Research Center:

It’s evident that people that will be impacted by this change are the people with a lower level of education and people with lower income.  These are the same people that may be working at the jobs that are at risk, or jobs with higher level of turnover.

LINKEDIN BEST PRACTICES: BASICS

This is going to be my first article in a series of a few that will talk about becoming the better business tech geek in the 2013. I will try to distil some of the advices out there by aggregating and summarizing them.

WHAT YOU WANT

First of all, if you haven’t got a LinkedIn profile, it is certainly a good idea to have one as many recruiters use it to find talent and many people use it to keep in touch when it comes to business relationships. Then you should fill the profile out so that it summarizes your professional profile. Think of it as a resume kept online.

This is a great start, now you have some online presence, which means that people can find you online. And that’s the key of this service really is to have that presence and a neat little point of introduction to you. People usually come across profiles by doing searches for either name or other key words, like particular skills or companies.

Now that you know what’s the purpose of this profile, let’s look at how you can keep track on how well this profile is doing. 

-       Your search appearances and profile views, which are on located on the right column of your home page. You can also view the industry that these views are from.

-       The incoming messages and Connect requests from people that you may not know directly. This is a good thing, but be aware of the mass connectors out there that may not use LinkedIn to create meaningful relationships. I’d accept an invitation from someone that I had at least a couple of messages long conversation usually, but I would likely deny the request of some random person. Good article on this is here: http://www.careerealism.com/dont-linkedin-collector-user/

This information is sourced from here http://www.careerealism.com/linkedin-strategy-clues/

HOW TO GET IT

If you want to get more views, then there are a few things you can do:

-       Update your profile and keep it current as things are happening. For example, got a new certification, great time to update that field on LinkedIn. This will push out this change as an update to your network; some may click on your profile and Voila! You got the view, or they can click like on the update and it would be pushed out to their network as well. 

-       Sign up and participate in groups, you can join group of interest and the ones that are relevant to your field. This can expose you to other people in your field and not only get views but also connections from these groups. (Hint: if you really want to network online look into LION – LinkedIn Open Networking groups).

-       Ask for recommendations. It’s great to say all these things about yourself but it’s a much bigger deal if someone else vouches for you.  Also you can get your skills endorsed, I find that with these people usually reciprocate once you have endorsed some of their skills, so take a gander at your list and see what you can vouch for, it’s actually pretty fun.

Some points are taken from this link http://socialmediatoday.com/monica-romeri/1016676/6-linkedin-best-practices

Video about organizational view on Safety

My Critique of the HR Professional article “HR and the MBA” January 2013 Issue

I am very wary of when I get to read an article that quotes statistics and numbers, because they can be skewed in any direction that you want. This is usually done by omission and by interpreting insufficient data. This article does not push readers to any particular conclusion, by just saying that MBA is a personal choice, which in my opinion was evident before the survey. However the way the survey was reported leaves more to be desired.

First of all it does not identify their sample, “840 HR Professionals were contacted” can be very diverse or homogenous. What’s the response rate?, what’s the demographics breakdown? Is that a sufficient sample size for the population?. I don’t know any of this. Frankly, I started to skim through the rest of the article after not finding these facts reported in the article. These are the basics of covering the survey. I expect to find this kind of reporting in the professional magazine.

Ubuntu on the Phone, Ubuntu from the Phone

I have dabbled in the Ubuntu and Linux environment on and off throughout the past few years. I always get excited when they have a new product coming out and I am certainly excited about this here. There are 2 things that Ubuntu wants to do, first is to provide the Ubuntu Phone, which looks like it's built for multitasking which is pretty exciting. The next thing is to allow you to maximize the use of your phone by allowing you to connect it to the Monitor and Keyboard and having the Phone do the heavy lifting of the actual Ubuntu OS running.
This would allow potentially to have just one device for everything, which is kind of mind-bending.
Here's a few vids that I found on YouTube.

It's a celebration People :)

Windows 8 Advantageous Position.

The competition between PC and Mac had diluted over the recent years. We saw a dynamic shift into the mobile computing and increasing competition in the wake of recent changes, which has birthed an ever-complex technological battle for dominance on various level of product offerings.

Presumably if you look at the B2C environment then Mac and PC are competing on the desktop, tablet and smartphone operating system platforms, as well as tablet hardware. Apple is well known for the so-called harmony in the apple environment, of how devices just work well together. Windows looked at that and took it a step further by actually putting together an operating system that works pretty much the same way on all the devices, which is brilliant.

On the Smartphone platform they have augmented their strategy that they have used with Windows for computers by setting a specific requirement on the processors, which results in the same experience from phone to phone in terms of performance. This is their key to carving out a niche for themselves. If they can continue this, they can be the perfect antidotes to the vicious product cycle of the IPhone. IPhone gets a new marginal improvement every 6 months, which makes the older models a little bit more obsolete. Windows and Android can get more phones released in that period of time with their OS.  This in turn allows Windows and Android platforms to posses the more cutting edge hardware phones, while Apple is still lagging behind. Now Windows can roll out updates to all the phones more quickly, and Andorid has to come through the OEM. This hybrid approach really provides Windows Phone 8 with a winning strategic advantage in my opinion.

If you look at the tablet competition, I feel like Apple has been rehashing their offering over and over again and has not offered anything of value since they implemented a front-facing camera, contrary to that Windows is allows Pro version users to get access to full Windows 8 Experience along with USB support, that’s just a future product that makes a much more appealing alternative to regular computing. I must say that I am intrigued with the potential that Windows has ahead of them. I feel like they will gradually take over the IPad and Android in the coming years in the tablet arena.

Desktops have and still will be the place of PC dominance. Mac and it’s premium pricing has a niche market and will maintain some of it going forward but all in all I see Apple loosing most of it’s market share and being the major looser in the coming years. If you think about the velocity of technological companies rise and falls, Mac in 5 years has risen sharply and will gradually come down in the next coming years.

When you think of sharp rises and sharp falls think of Blackberry, they were popular for about 5 years and have pretty much fallen off the people’s wish lists over 2 years.

I think this song summarizes my opinion of Blackberry and the supposed rebirth with the Black Berry 10.

Podcast thoughts

Listening to another Recruiting @animal podcast right now. And they are grilling this Gen Y wannabe marketing person @lexiKubrak. I find it really strange when one person starts to generalize from her point of view based only on what she saw in her circle or what the professors sold to her during school.  Seriously there are different classes within a society and gen Y experience is not universal. I would say that it not productive to generalize like that. It would serve better to stick to social classes and consider the age, not the generation. For example, lower to middle class university grad most likely held a McJob during university and accumulated plenty of retail experience, where as someone from the upper class may have more internship experience and great connections. It’s clear that each party has certain strengths and you really need to recognize them and try to capitalize on that.

If you are stuck in the job search rot answer these questions:

-       Who did you talk with yesterday about your job search?

-       Who are you talking with tomorrow about your job search?

-       How much time are you committing to a job search? If you want a full time job you should commit full time hours during the search to find employment.