(Part 3) Best business culture books according to redditors
We found 1,664 Reddit comments discussing the best business culture books. We ranked the 556 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 41-60. You can also go back to the previous section.
44. When Cultures Collide, 3rd Edition: Leading Across Cultures
4 mentions
Nicholas Brealey Publishing
Nobodies
An excerpt from "The New Yorker"
holy shit
P U R E
>The big economic story of our times is not the Great Recession. It is how China and India began to embrace neoliberal ideas of economics and attributed a sense of dignity and liberty to the bourgeoisie they had denied for so long
but wait there's more
>For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us.
>McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations.
i think im going to die from an overdose of ideology
I am reading a book right now called "Managing Oneself" by Peter F. Drucker. It's super short (60 pages with huge margins and large font). I think it might be worth your while to read. In it he talks about people exactly in your situation. He would postulate that maybe you're much better in a sub-management position than a management position. He would also postulate that it's not so much about "advancing your career" as it is figuring out where you fit in and how/what you contribute. In other words, perhaps you took this current job because you felt like you needed to advance your career because that's what people do. But the advancement of a career does not necessarily correlate with happiness.
I hope I don't sound like I am telling you this is the way it is. That's not my intention. Your situation just reminded me of the book I am reading and thought it might provide some alternative perspective and insight for you.
Good luck!
The Great Enrichment of the past two centuries has one primary source: the liberation of ordinary people to pursue their dreams of economic betterment
That is Deirdre McCloskey and behind the Wall Street Journal paywall and I tried every obvious trick to get around it but cannot. If you have never taken a look at her bourgeois trilogy (starts with The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce) you might want to. She is an equal opportunity gadfly and apparently she has read more books than anybody I have ever met in real life.
I graduated from a top-tier university with really great GPA, great opportunities, and surrounded by ambitious friends. About a year after graduation, my life was in shambles. I didn't have a job and I sat around doing very little most of the time. It took me over a year to get a job (a terrible one) and almost five more years to crawl back into the real working world.
Given that background, here's a few pieces of advice I can offer:
To circle back to my first point about fear, recognize that fear is usually a result of pushing toward the unknown or stepping outside of your comfort zone. Given that your current comfort zone isn't very comfortable for you, recognize that when you feel fear, you're thinking about changing something or actively changing something. Even if you just walk up to that fear bubble and stick your toe out of it and recoil, congratulate yourself on confronting your fear. Period. It's a bold move and for many people fear keeps them locked into things they are not happy with.
Splitting these big commitments up into smaller pieces helps you overcome your own mental hurdles. It helps you celebrate the small wins (I went INTO the gym this week! I ran on the treadmill for 5 minutes!) -- which are what matter. If you can string together 15-20 small wins in a row, you're well on your way to whatever goal you set.
First, you are comparing apples and oranges. Any time you compare yourself to someone else you're taking your own internal thoughts and feelings and comparing them to someone's projection of themselves. What you're doing is looking at people's proverbial Facebook feeds (where only the good stuff gets posted) and comparing it to your own life (where both good and bad things happen). People's lives are all different and all face unique sets of challenges. Even the most successful people you know struggle mightily with issues that you aren't aware of. DO NOT fall into this trap and whenever you do, close Facebook / Instagram / Twitter and go for a walk.
Second, learn your own origin story. Again, this might sound stupid, but I am firm believer in this strategy. I told you above that my life fell apart within a year of graduating from school. What I didn't tell you was how obvious it should have been to everyone that this would happen. Looking back, I have come to understand all the decisions I made as my best attempt to survive the various stages of my life. Without getting into too many of my own details, I quickly realized that MY story was an integral part of ME and it is a key differentiator between myself and many other people I meet today. Very few people I meet have gone through some of the shit I've gone through and very few people have developed some of the behaviors and oddities that I developed to even be ALIVE today. So, when I find myself saying "you're almost 30 and haven't done 'blah blah blah' I tell myself "hey you're on your own path, doing your own thing and, given your origin story, you're doing pretty goddamn well for yourself."
>Most importantly, do you guys believe I can change for the better?
You've got it backwards. All of your questions above are far more important than this one. Yes, it's nice to have some people who believe in you and what you're doing, but those shouldn't be strangers on the internet. Build a support circle. Find someone that you can be weak and lost and confused in front of. That's part of this process and it's part of life. It doesn't matter what I think (nor would my answer to this question have any bearing on reality). It's entirely up to you what you do and what paths you choose to take.
edit: I needed to clean up the formatting a bit. I hope that was helpful.
Adjust demeanor and appearances as required. It's called marketing yourself. Presidents do it. In fact, there are entire books that aim to teach you just that.
Planner with 6+ years' experience, and a master's degree, chiming in.
Make sure you have some tangible skills, like GIS. Also be prepared to move anywhere in the country (or world). I.e., be as flexible as possible, because, as someone else said, planning is a bit of a niche market and there aren't a million jobs in any given locale. Get as much work experience as possible while you're still in school and can afford to work for free or close to free.
While you're at it, get a book (like this one) on how to write a resume and make it look good (and keep it to one page). Do something to stand out. The market is, in fact, flooded with job-seekers and you need to make it both easy to not throw your resume away, and easy for the hiring manager to want to give you a second look.
Another idea: if there happens to be some sort of natural disaster when you graduate and are looking, there are always going to be jobs with state and federal money assisting in the cleanup and rehabilitation. E.g., after Sandy, I saw lots of (temp) community planning jobs in NJ and NY helping with community revitalization.
One final thought. If you don't want to be flexible and know exactly where you want to work, you can, first, tailor your education towards that end. I knew a guy who did that and got his dream job right out of grad school. Second, you can move to that area and go to all the networking events and really target your applications (geographically). Accept something less than what you want initially just to have some stability and build a resume in your chosen location, and never stop looking for the next thing. Expect to change jobs a lot. Everyone else will.
I strongly encourage you to finish and get your degree. Yes a degree is better than no degree. But I feel that there's more to it than just 'having a degree.'
College is what you make of it. In this last year, you have two scenarios.
You could 1) get by with the minimum amount of work and 'get your degree'
OR
2) work your ass off, network, apply for internships/jobs/clubs, learn things while NOT in class(whether it be picking up a new skill/developing your mind/programming/etc.), i.e. get your sht together.
I recommend you read the 10X Rule by Grant Cardone or watch some content on the Simple Programmer YT channel by John Sonmez. I wrote a blog post reviewing the 10X Rule too. You might pick up some external motivation, but hopefully, you eventually become intrinsically motivated to be a badas.
TL;DR: The conflict over "power users" is due to the fundamental anonymity mismatch created by a site that creates usernames, tracks user involvement but permits no user identification or community beyond 15 characters and two scores. If you care to learn more, read on. If you don't, the following will bore the shit out of you.
I've given this a lot of thought. I've been fortunate to befriend an extremely intelligent social media guru (in the academic sense, not the SEO sense) and the reading list I've gotten off of her has been illuminating as fuck. The following theory owes its creation to the following books:
You are not a gadget
Predictably Irrational
Reality is Broken
The Starfish and the Spider
Further discussion can be found here and here. I realize it's pretty goddamn rude to front-load a conversation with a bibliography and footnotes but I want to emphasize that this is not something I treat flippantly. I have never had as much influence over the behavior of the world as I feel we all do at Reddit and the behaviors we see and experience are, in my opinion, a new social ground that deserves study. Using the 10/10 rule, I believe that public forums such as Reddit are likely to become the preeminent form of communication in the future and wrapping one's head around the foibles and failings of the medium while it still remains the domain of the early adopter is an investment that will pay off in spades going forward.
First off, the statement "everybody wants to take the idols down a notch" is indisputable truth, for varying values of "everybody." I would say that messages of support are far more likely to come in via PM and that messages of disparagement are far more likely to come in via public forum. The end result is that "take the idols down a notch" is a socially-condoned behavior while "worshipping the idols" is something that will generally get you shunned. The exception is when Reddit at large is busily worshipping you - post something that Reddit loves and people saying "I love this redditor" will get upvoted. Even then, however, the number of PMs of support you get is generally 5x the number of public accolades. The prevailing culture of Reddit is very much aligned with the (apocryphal?) Japanese proverb "The nail that sticks up will be hammered down."
The reason this attitude prevails is due to the tripartite nature of Reddit and the incongruities it causes. Reddit is, at once and simultaneously,
No one place can be all three of those things without friction.
From a "news" perspective, Reddit could be compared to, say, Gizmodo. The difference is that Gizmodo is a top-down, conventional news site where a select few insiders produce content for a sea of outsiders. The boundary is obvious there - if your name is on the article, you're a for-pay employee. The criticism heaped upon Gizmodo is entirely appropriate because they're journalists. Letters to the Editor date back to the Revolutionary War. Reddit, however, has most of the same characteristics as Gizmodo, minus the editorial wall. So whereas "yell at the name you recognize" is a tradition well-served and understood in the world of journalism, in the everyone-as-editor world of Reddit "yell at the name you recognize" tends to concentrate the insults from those who contribute the least on those who are contributing the most.
From a "video game" perspective, Reddit might as well be Farmville. We see each other's scores growing and when someone else's score grows vastly faster than ours, we're likely to presume they're cheating (particularly when the rules of the game are largely secret and passed down amongst users primarily via folklore). Reddit is also one of the least-rewarding video games ever created, as there are no multicolored sprites or triumphant marches played when a comment or submission scores well. As such, the "hipsterism" of Reddit promotes attacks on those with high karma because, after all, only nerds would spend so much time on a video game that can't even hold a candle to Pac Man. Finally, scores on Reddit are highlighted prominently and are an intrinsic part of the "game" even though the scores hold absolutely no value. Reddit puts "players" in a gold-farming frame of mind without giving them anything to spend their gold on.
Reddit falls apart the most as a "social site." Unlike standard PHPBB communities, you can click on a username and learn exactly nothing about them on Reddit. You can't even see what their top contributions have been. Reddit awards users with a "trophy" for verifying an email address - which occupies the same lofty perch as producing the top daily comment or top daily post on a site with 500,000 users. Reddit is barely removed from the 100% anonymity provided by 4chan - with the exception of the "power users." The fact that we borrowed the term from Digg (where it meant something) and use it here (where it totally doesn't) only makes matters worse, particularly when combined with the poorly-understood mechanisms of Reddit's anti-spam filters. Most Redditors presume that they get a "posting too fast" warning in any given subreddit because they lack the karma to bypass the filter. When I mention it, people are usually flabbergasted that I run into the same problem, despite having a top 20 or 30 combined karma score of all time.
And it's the anonymity mismatch that causes the biggest problem, in my estimation. Ask any redditor to name 5 reddit accounts other than his own and he'll have a hard time. Of those he remembers, dollars to donuts they'll be names that he either a) sees a lot or b) really pissed him off in a flamewar at some point. The rest of it is entirely too anonymous to remember. Probably half of p-dub's comment karma comes from people upvoting him so they could say "do your homework." Probably 3/4ths of L3mm1w1nkz's comment karma comes from his signature "PS I am a shithead." Gimli_the_dwarf, despite having a lot to say and extremely insightful posts, is going to be remembered for "And my axe." This is why novelty accounts flourish on Reddit - they're easy to recognize, easy to remember, and easy to reward.
The flip-side, of course, is they're also easy to punish. The reason Randall doesn't post as xkcd any more, if I had to guess, is that as soon as people decided that xkcd wasn't indisputably funny people jumped on him. That's why so very many of the names that were prominent on this site a year ago are now gone - the opportunities for interaction are so very rare that -
TL;DR Wall of text, Warsaw specific info on salaries and renting flats, some cultural advice, Poland = Great.
I see there's some really good advice but usually from people outside Warsaw and Warsaw is really quite different from the rest of the country. I lived there for 10 years so I'll offer some hints.
As an American graphics designer at a decent company, you can easily make around 8000 PLN before taxes. Being an American and having experience from there will give you the upper hand if you apply for a job at an international company. I don't exactly know what tax rules apply to non-Polish citizens so you have to figure that out for yourself but it's around 5500 PLN if Polish tax laws apply. Anyway, applying for a graphics design job will get you much more money than teaching English, simply because there is a lot of people already doing that. I think you can expect somewhere around 4-5k before taxes so not really worth it in your position.
Renting a flat is quite tricky. Warsaw is big and public transport quality varies depending on the place you're at but is usually very good. Assuming your husband will be working in downtown (Śródmieście), you'd want to rent a flag in Śródmieście, Żoliborz, Ochota, Mokotów, Wola, maybe Wilanów or Praga Północ (avoid Praga Południe, they sound similar but are very different). Avoid northern and southern outskirts because you'll be stuck in traffic and overcrowded buses that will take an hour to get you to your workplace. Targówek, Bemowo, Białołęka, Bielany, Wawer should rather be out of the question. Ursynów goes both ways because metro (subway) is there so if you can rent something near a stop then it's ok but sucks otherwise.
You might be used to long commutes from the US but it's entirely possible to spend 40 minutes a day or less on commuting both ways so don't waste your time.
Someone has already mentioned gumtree.pl for renting a flat (renting a flat in Warsaw is here). szybko.pl is also very popular in Warsaw. There are two ways to rent a flat, either directly from a person owning the flat or through an agency. If you rent through an agency, you'll have to pay them a hefty amount for doing simply nothing since you yourself found the ad. It usually amounts to around 1 monthly rent. Landlords will also expect an upfront security payment of 1 monthly rent, as a sort of insurance for anything you might break in the apartment while you stay there. You also need to know that a lot of apartments are rented without the furniture, even if it's there on the photos, you need to look in the description. I assume you don't speak Polish so this might be hard for you. In this case, I would suggest contacting an agency, like metrohouse - I know this one caters to English speakers but there surely are others and asking them to find offers that might be interesting for you could be a good solution. You'll have to pay for that service of course but if you find an ad on a website yourself and it's from an agency, you'll pay either way so that's an option to consider.
Rent prices differ tremendously. You can have a big apartment in an unsafe neighborhood for dirt cheap but you won't be happy about it because it's far, far away from any civilization and well, unsafe. You should be able to rent something really comfortable for around 3000 PLN or less a month, with furniture and all the home stuff that you need (dish cleaner, fridge, sometimes a tv, also washing machine; be aware that each apartment has its own washing machine but we do not usually have dryers). Utilities are usually paid separately and will amount to ~300 PLN a month if you don't have children, this includes electricity, water, heating. You will need an Internet connection as well, in most of the places it's cable provider UPC, you can get Internet without the TV if you want. It's not expensive, 30 Mbps will cost you around 60 PLN. One more thing to remember is parking. There's a paid parking zone in downtown and extends to other places too so if you get a flat in that area (here's a map, everything in red and blue is paid parking zone), you will either need a parking garage or work something out with the landlord (it's possible to get a pass for your car if you live in the zone but it's quite some paper work to do so be clear about it with your landlord if you need it).
Overall, you'll need around 8500 PLN after taxes to live comfortably, including your student loans. That's not really that much for two people but might be a lot for only one. You said your husband got a good job offer so I'm assuming it's somewhere around that. 3000 PLN for flat and utilities, 2300 PLN for your student loan and ~3000 PLN for very comfortable living.
Now about how it's like in Poland - I'm Polish so I might be biased :) Warsaw is also quite different from the rest of Poland so I'll offer two views for you. You'll be OK in Warsaw, it's a really nice city, a lot of people speak English, even at local shops. The food is great and quite cheap, although some things might be expensive to get, like good steak. I really loved the city itself but it depends on what you like, and some people hate it. It's a fast paced, crowded (not as much as LA or NY of course, but still) but very active. If you enjoy partying, you'll find it more difficult than in other more tourist friendly cities (Cracow, Wrocław) but there are a lot of great clubs, pubs and restaurants around downtown. There's a lot of great things to see there but that's for another post, you can also get a lot of info on the Internet. One nice thing is that you're only around 6 hour drive (by car or train) from the Baltic sea to the north or Tatry mountains to the south. Even closer are the Mazurian lakes (north-east). Poland is quite a beautiful country although obviously not as diverse as US. It's only as big as New Mexico, and considerably smaller than California (Texas is twice its size). In three hours (by train, longer by car) you can get to Cracow which is a very well known tourist destination, a lot of things to see here and around the city (Auschwitz concentration camp museum, Wieliczka Salt Mine and a number of things in Cracow itself).
As I said, Warsaw is quite different from the rest of the country. In small towns and villages it's possible you won't find anyone speaking English so if you're lost and want to ask for directions - tough luck (less of a problem now with GPS and Google Maps). They will be also far less tolerant. You didn't mention race but it can be a problem if you're not white, even in Warsaw but obviously less so than in smaller cities or towns. But generally everyone are quite friendly, unless they do not look friendly and first impression won't usually fail you here. Even if they don't speak English, everyone will try to help you out, maybe they know someone who speaks it and they'll call them and pass you the phone so that you can ask questions or something.
Someone else mentioned the weather so you should know already. It's way colder in winter but around the same in the summer as LA, here's temperature and humidity comparison between Warsaw and LA for the past 5 years.
One more thing I wanted to tell you is to be aware of cultural differences. Americans are often seen as obnoxious and for a good reason. Yelling at restaurants and laughing loudly so that the people in the pub across the street can hear you will make other people want to stab you with a blunt fork multiple times. Keep your voice down around other people. "Customer is always right" is not always the rule, just because you're paying for something doesn't mean you get to boss or badmouth the clerk. Be polite. Sorry if this offends you but I have really seen numerous Americans behave this way. Also, tipping rules are not as strict as in the US, you should tip waiters, pizza delivery guys and taxi drivers but not hairdressers and in general, it's not 100% mandatory. If you're not happy with the service, you don't tip. I generally suggest this book, it's about business interactions but a lot of it translates great to everyday life. It's not about Poland specifically so you might find it interesting for other reasons.
In general - the opinions I've heard about Poland, and Warsaw in particular, are almost always positive, including from Americans. Not only from tourist point of view, also expats claim Poland is great. If you want to try something else, it can be a great experience for you. If you both get jobs, you will live very comfortably with a lot of expendable income (for Polish standards) but you won't save any substantial amount in USD simply because we don't make nearly enough here ($30k a year is a good salary in Warsaw and great elsewhere). Our beer is cheap and girls are beautiful (though that may, or may not, be relevant to you) so come along!
I highly recommend 'Who Gets Promoted, Who Doesn't, and Why':
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Gets-Promoted-Doesnt-Second/dp/160774600X
Hey everyone! I’m seeing many questions from budding or new data scientists in the thread trying to figure out the best path ahead - How do I get started in a career in data science? What skills do I need? What should I major in?
As we all know, data science is becoming increasingly popular, yet the term is still hotly debated.
So to start us off, my view is that a data scientist is basically a statistician who can program. Data science is the art of using the latest computer science and statistical techniques to collect, analyze, visualize, and otherwise draw conclusions from data. Most of the thorny topics being discussed these days about bias, quality of data, modeling, learning, and data cleaning all come from the healthy body of statistics we've built over the last 100 years. The novelty of data science comes from a technical need to be able to handle the volume of data now available and to wrangle it from many disparate forms into a clean, usable format. Beyond that, all the other skills attributed to a data scientist - visual communication skills, good written skills, subject matter expertise - hold true for anyone doing science, from biology to anthropology.
What’s interesting to note is that the skills needed by a true “data scientist” are exceedingly rare. Using Drew Conway’s data science Venn diagram (yes, I still reference this one), one needs to have:
Hacking skills: These are programming and scripting skills, but are often not taught in universities or even in industry.
Statistical experience: Not many people are trained in formal statistics beyond simple linear regression. A good data scientist should be an expert in questions of bias, advanced modeling, and causal inference.
Machine learning: I’m going to single out machine learning chops, as not every hacker + stats person has these. It takes a special skill set to build efficient neural networks and to understand how they do/don’t work.
Substantive expertise: The data scientist may not need to be an expert in the field themselves but, if they’re not, they better learn enough of it from an expert to be able to interpret results or think creatively. At DataKind we solve this by teaming non-profits with the data scientists to bring their expertise.
The good news? With this diversity of skills needed, there are lots of pathways you can follow and no one way. For example, Drew himself was a computer science undergrad who went on to get a Ph.D. in political science. His graduate work drew him into the world of statistics and data, including machine learning concepts that inspired him to study the social networks of terrorists and do predictive analytics on voting behaviors. He also has great communication skills, picked up some basic visualization, and has strong business and management savvy from his time in government and intelligence. Other people I know have come from mathematics backgrounds and then picked up programming and computer science to be able to build more advanced models. No matter how you get there, you’ll need to build up your programming and stats skills and not lose sight of your soft skills of communication and creativity.
To learn more about the paths of data scientists, I also recommend a great book Sebastian Gutierrez, one of the moderators of /r/datascience put together called Data Scientists at Work - http://www.amazon.com/Data-Scientists-Work-Sebastian-Gutierrez/dp/1430265981
The bad news? There are lots of pathways you can follow so it can feel overwhelming to figure out how to get started.
The Internet is now littered with online courses to teach you data science. Check out Coursera first and foremost. There are also fellowships through Insight and the Data Incubator that will round out your data science training over about 12 weeks. I’m also a huge fan of John Foreman’s Data Smart for a good intro to data science algorithms and thinking if you’re more of the self-learning type. Of course the best way to learn is to do: Check out online competitions through Kaggle or DrivenData to take part in machine learning competitions. Start small and look at questions you’re genuinely interested in. Lastly, don’t underestimate the power of meeting people in person. Immerse yourself in the data science community as best you can. Attend local Meetups, check out webinars or local conferences, and keep posting questions on /r/datascience of course and you’ll soon be well on your own data science path. When you’re ready to start the job search, don’t forget that we do a monthly jobs round up over at DataKind to help you use your powers for good - check out our list for January!
No matter how you get there, enjoy the journey. Data science is a thrilling and exciting field and whether you know Linear Algebra backwards and forwards or not is not as important as rolling up your sleeves and having fun digging in wherever you’re at. Good luck!
Have you read this? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdom-Crowds-Many-Smarter-Than/dp/0349116059
There is a great book I read a while ago that hits on this a little. What I always recall from this book was that there are just some things we need to approach with ethics, and morality (as generalized as possible) rather than political philosophies.
https://www.amazon.com/What-Money-Cant-Buy-Markets/dp/0374533652
Yep, pensions were used to bring in and pay for the C-level people who quit after a year anyhow and take a huge chunk from that pool as their severance bonus which is why for the most part that they don't exist anymore.
Retirement Heist
You reap what you sow.
we have to build robust, redundant, online-to-offline-and-back networks of rapid communication via trusted networks. trust being in the meat space & heart space that exists between people, not trust based solely on some level of upvoting or amazon.com reputation system or what not. that type of crowd sourcing for importance is part of it, but cannot, should not be all of it. too open to manipulation.
befriend 3-5 online berners closely enough that you trust eachother to connect via other channels. ask each of your network to spread out that way as well. We have to become the Starfishes to thwart the Spiders in the media.
you're not alone.
books that have helped me: http://www.amazon.com/Somebody-Around-Insider-Secrets-Hired/dp/0312373341
Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn't Want You to Know---and What to Do About Them by Cynthia Shapiro
Link: http://amzn.com/B003K15PC4
No one will ever tell you they have an issue with you. No one likes confrontation and they figure if you don't know the imaginary, unofficial rules of Corporate America, then you don't belong there anyway.
HR is not there for you. HR is there to keep the company from getting sued. Makes friends with someone and ask them to give you honest feedback about how you behave/come across and any insider tips on the culture at the office. It's the only way to survive.
I've never been at a job more than a couple years. Edit: mostly because I don't do politics and butt kissing and get so bored I stop doing my job.
This is something you should think deeply about, and take my thoughts with a grain of salt. You can start building your portfolio right now and surpass the skill level of all of the students in 1 year to their 4 years. If you are dedicated and you practice your craft, research, and really dig deep you can be hirable within a year. College is a huge waste of money and doesn't guarantee shit. I just finished reading this book which talks a lot on the subject and has influenced my opinion.
give this book a read.
honestly I am just starting to try it out too, so I don't know all the answers.
but yeah, a provisional sounds like a good place to start
There is a lot of books on this topic.
EDIT: here's a couple good ones:
Free Culture
Here Comes Everybody
or anything by Noam Chomsky or Robert W. McChesney
cough http://www.amazon.com/Data-Scientists-Work-Sebastian-Gutierrez/dp/1430265981 cough
Data Scientists at Work (http://www.amazon.com/Data-Scientists-Work-Sebastian-Gutierrez/dp/1430265981) it's an interview series with the following data scientists and 1 investor in data companies.
Note: I wrote it so I'm a bit biased when I say you'll love it because it's the greatest book ever written by me. :)
Also - I did an AMA about it that you might find interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/datascience/comments/2oyzvu/i_wrote_data_scientists_at_workama/
English isn't my 1st language.
Ok so vyvanse is a stimulant. It the little brother of Adderall but you can't abuse it because the neurostimulant isn't in the pills. The pills work as a catalyze for you liver to produce the right amount of neurostimulant for you brain.
So if you have a lot of protein when you take your pills you will get a better boost of energy.
First month are like heaven. Limitless like... until it come to a point where you feel all the secondary effect. Depends on your body but me my skin was so tight, my teeth was sensible and I had to drink a lot of water...
Those effect are not strange to an overdose of amphetamine ... vyvanse is an amphetamine.
I stopped using it because the benefits didn't outweight the drawback.
I was put on concerta since then.
But a pills ain't a magical remedy you need to work on yourself and to understand ADHD.
ADHD is like diabetes ... instead of your blood lacking insuline you're lacking dopamine receptor.
This video will start you on understanding more ADHD/ADD : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyDliT0GZpE
I recommend reading : Healing ADD form Dr. Daniel G Amen.
But don't purchase is home healing kit it's retarded as fuck. His home healing kit are for stupid mom who put there kids too early on ritatin or think that because her boy's can't stand still and prefer to play videogame they must certainly have adhd.
Get a good psychologist. One that work with other ADHD people. I'm followed by one and it's like my self-development mentor. He's there to help you even if you need to pay him but it will help you. I see him really like on of the only person that I can talk about the struggle that I have with being productive or dealing with emotions. Like this subreddit instead of talking about sexual strategy you talk about self-development)
Clean your lifestyle.
Videogame or everything that come close to instant gratification when you day is just starting it's a no no ... especially at the beginning of your treatment. Your Dopamine is like your willpower. It isn't infinite. An ADHD person don't have a lot of it or can't produce at a faster rate. Everything that is instant gratification is your worst enemy in the long run. As said in the video : You're the most high-tech rocket on the planet earth with the most powerful computer... but you have no fuel. You can't move....
But you will say ( especially under vyvanse ) but dude i'm super productive I found all the info I needed for my paper way faster than before ... or some shit like that... You will start being productive at being unproductive. I was able to teach myself a shitload of thing about dieting/nutrition/fitness ... but I forgot to do my school assignment... I was productive at being unproductive.
What was the most useful to me at that point was getting good grades not reading about nutrition, that can come after I've done my task. It's like taking a shit but not pulling your pants down ... you get thing done ... but not in the logical order.
How do you know you're moving in the right way ?
Be accountable.
Start scheduling your life. Put the big rock 1st etc... This will give you an idea : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VNmIxkyHd8
Be A-C-C-O-U-N-T-A-B-L-E
Ex : I keep a pen&paper log for my gym session ... multiple time I thought I wouldn't need it ... 2-3 day later I found myself skipping gym day. There is something that push me to go back and get stronger in writing down the number I just lifted.
It will develop a good quality that men's of today lack : Rigorousness and discipline.
The think is to have the habits of scheduling your day and start doing what you scheduled when it pop-off on your phone/agenda/computer/what ever. I had the bad habits of scheduling my day but pressing ''snooze'' on the even that keep popping up.
Summary : By scheduling you have more control over your life. More control = less anxiety and less screwing around. We ADHD can't see the consequences in the future. We have a great skill to see the big picture but don't feel it. I'm sure you are like this when you start a team project ... you wait before everything fit in the big picture before starting the 1st step ahaha. 2nd great skill is : You can be overfocused ( on the wrong thing ) and achieve thing faster than everyone else. By scheduling you gain control day by day instead of doing a sprint at the end. Life is a marathon.
2nd worst ennemy : " I don't feel like it"
I still struggle with this one.
You're weapon : you need to trick your brain.
Need to study or start the research for a paper or w/e ... ADHD have a problem with estimating time ... When people ask me how much time it will take me ... I DON'T KNOW ... It will take the time that it will take ...
So to trick my brain I schedule 15min ... yeah just that
What it will do :
In 15min you will have time to understand the problem you have in front of you. You will have the good informations to guess how much time it can take you to achieve your task, information that you didn't have prior to that. In 15min your anxiety will rise and plateau. That feeling of not being able to finish something and feeling of being overwhelm by the task will seem much smaller now. You gain control of the #1 survivability skill that your ancestor gave you : Connecting the dots.
When the hunter saw the footprint on the grass he connected the dots between seeing the footprint but not seeing the prey, and estimating that there was something there and it's now gone. You're brain connected the dots from previous experience and future outcomes and came up with prediction... what we call instinct/guts in some case.
When you start nothing you're in an illusion of control. You can't have feedback if you're not doing the actions and it's much simpler to imagine the outcomes. That is where procrastination gain is power, in the illusion of control. Much simpler to learn about stupid shit on reddit than to learn what you saw in class. The same "pathway of neurone" (By that I'm illustrating the fact that you brain gain the same satisfaction, you're brain is always developing himself) are used but one give greater outcomes than the other.
You become stronger by Feedback Analysis Further reading on that : Managing Oneself by Peter f. Drucker
BUT BE CAREFUL !!!
Do not become Rigid ... this is where discipline come into play.
Rigidity in a lifestyle come from having your standard way to high. You need to hit the ball before scoring home-run.
What do you do if you didn't start where you needed to start ? You reschedule in the hopes that the next time you will feel better and be more prepare or you try to use the rest of the time you schedule and try to use it as much as you can ?
I struggled with that and I still do but I have a better control over it.
I found myself skipping gym session because I didn't feel I would be able to do my Strength Set and after my Hypertrophy set ... so I didn't go to the gym...
One is better than zero.
Now when I feel exhausted or my anxiety is too high I say to myself : OK just go there and do your Strength set and call it off. So I go there do my set and.... magically my brain is in the right mood and I finish what I needed to do ! MAGIC ... not just science.
Note : The program I'm using is 5/3/1 from JimWendler.
In summary : Once your task is scheduled but you don't feel like it or there is an ''emergency'', Try to at least start something or do the One thing that give you the best outcomes. In my exemple : Strength is what build muscle, hypertrophy are just for aesthetic so I needed to at least do my strength set. Lower your standard so you don't feel overwhelm but the anxiety and start ASAP the task you needed to do.
I lost my line of thought will post this for now and come with everything I feel is missing.
I tried to write for an ADHD person and for a normal person. My english isn't perfect but everything seem fine.
TL:DR : Hey you weaktards there isn't a TL;DR. Feel the pain of reading a wall of text or maybe you're just not that interested in learning more about ADHD and you can go back touching yourself over GW or liking Cat picture over imgur.
Despite his silly name, Clay Shirky has written some fascinating articles about the Internet's effect on culture and content, probably the most insightful of anyone I've read. There's one about cognitive surplus, which unfortunately I can't find because he's since written a book called that and reviews of it are drowning out the rest of the results! Here is the TED talk he gave though. Here Comes Everybody is also a great read.
This book would be of interest to you, I think.
off the top of my head:
Meditations, with The Inner Citadel as a reader
Letters from a Stoic
A Guide to the Good Life by Irvine
Do The Work by Pressfield as well as The War of Art by Pressfield
Managing Oneself by Ducker
Man's Search for Meaning by Frankl
What Predicts Divorce by Gottman
Nicomachean Ethics
Models by Manson seems to be popular on reddit
So Good They Can't Ignore You by Newport, as well
I'm currently reading Triumphs of Experience by Vaillant and find it insightful.
It's actually tame by the standards of this sub probably, but the book What Money Can't Buy by philosopher Michael Sandel really gave definition to my ideas about the commodification of every part of our life under capitalism, and how corporations and the derived values encroach upon what makes life worth living. Probably perfect for someone getting introduced to generally left thought and it's an easy read.
Jason Brennan's Markets without Limits was an important moral theory about commodification and I think filled a huge gap.
Horwitz's Hayek's Modern Family is another one -although I couldn't find time to read it yet-
Private Governance by Edward Stringham is another contribution to the ancap institutional theory.
This year Jason Brennan will publish another book, Against Democracy, and it will probably be excellent, Jason Brennan is easly my top 5 libertarians alive.
One Simple Idea, Revised and Expanded Edition: Turn Your Dreams into a Licensing Goldmine While Letting Others Do the Work https://www.amazon.com/dp/1259589676/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_W-NQCbB252MCA
For software maybe look at Passolo or Catalyst. Haven't used either, know they're pretty popular. Maybe there's something newer, IDK
https://www.sdltrados.com/products/passolo/
http://www.alchemysoftware.com
LISA is defunct but LRC is still around https://www.localisation.ie
You also want to look at Terminology Management
http://www.cotsoes.org/sites/default/files/CST_Recommendations_for_Terminology_Work.pdf
OAXAL was designed for this sort of thing but I don't think anyone used it much.
IRL advice -
Hire someone bilingual w/native language being + residing in the country that's the localization target (don't have a Spaniard "localize" something for the Latin American market or vice versa). What country is the target? I know people in Poland, some of the Scandanavian ones. Usually it takes a team to do this correctly. You never automate translation/localization unless it barely matters.
\> business scenarios
Fair chance some of them will be offensive, unintentionally hilarious, or just not make any sense cross-culturally. Watch out for any gestures. OK sign means "You're an a--hole," for instance in about half the world. Also, in a lot of the Islamic world male-female interactions differ and it's considered a slight to shake with the left hand rather than just mildly odd/rude like in the US. Skirt length is an issue in parts of Asia. And you have to avoid anything with kings in a few countries and bones in mainland China. Also, things in the Anglosphere that are business concerns often just aren't elsewhere, so they may just be irrelevant.
Most regulations and agencies are also nationally, so that usually will be re-done. Anything HR related should just be done locally. EU member countries on the continent (as well as some former Communist countries) have an impenetrable morass of laws that you will probably need to hire a local bureaucrat to untangle. The US has pretty much no workplace and employment laws compared to most of the first world.
Read Kiss, Bow, Or Shake Hands - not the authors, no relationship.
https://www.amazon.com/Kiss-Bow-Shake-Hands-Bestselling/dp/1593373686
Good, but THIS is the BEST book on the subject of cross-culturally communication:
http://www.amazon.com/When-Cultures-Collide-3rd-Edition/dp/1904838022
Went through something like this recently. I’m 36. Never second guess having ambitions. Just have a plan and can articulate them. Also don’t be a dick. That never helps your case.
First, have a plan. Know what you want or at least an idea. Is it a specific role? Do you know what you need to learn / gain experience with in order to get it? What stretch assignments can you do and who can your shadow to build experience?
Second, start thinking about other employers who might be able to offer what you want. If you can, reach out to managers there to talk about your career aspirations. Your current employer is not the only way to grow. You don’t owe them anything more than a day’s work for a day’s pay.
Third, pull your manager aside and bluntly but professionally tell them what you want. Ask for their advice on how to get there, tell them what you’re doing on your own to build experience and ask for stretch assignments. Ideally, make a plan together that has deliverables on both sides.
Finally, see #2. Have a backup plan and be prepared to leave. There may be lots of reasons (budget for example) they can’t promote you that are beyond your immediate manager’s control. Alternatively, maybe your employer is taking you for granted and you are most valuable to them where you are. Or maybe there’s a personality conflict between you and your manager. If any of these is the case you’re not getting promoted, so it’s best to consider other options.
This book really helped put things into perspective for me. I still didn’t get the promotion I was looking for but have now taken a lateral move to build more experience (sometimes change is good). I figure if I’m not on track in a year I’ll go to the competition.
Good luck!
[edit] also if you want to be client facing, I suggest learning some sales skills.
a book
https://www.amazon.co.uk/10X-Rule-Difference-Between-Success/dp/0470627603
This is actually already on the minds of a lot of HR people at top companies. IMO, it is more about employee satisfaction at the company, with salary being part of the mix. Gallup did this huge survey using 12 questions to measure employee engagement. They said that if an employee answered with 5s on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being totally agree) to all of these questions, then that was one of the best indicators to company performance. Now, they're peddling this product to a lot of companies, and in my opinion (which counts for nothing), it works.
Read the book First, Break all the Rules, which is written by, surprise! The same guy who developed and is selling the survey.
right?
every day?
for doing good work?
you as a person?
job is important?
quality work?
about your progress?
I'm bored.
Profit incentive is not a panacea and it's introduction into all aspects of life can be corrosive to society. If you get the time, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets is an insightful read.
I can make a few general points, yes;
Granted, this experience comes from competitive gaming rather than PvE, and it's not specific to merc work, so perhaps your mileage will vary.
But "organizing the unorganized" is not ever a thing one person can enforce or structure. There's actually a huge amount of sociological work in this area with social media being what it is. (EDIT: Book recommendation, "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky - it set the bar for this kind of thinking.)
The outcome of this is that if you're going for this model, you need team players who haven't found a team and don't want one. That's a heavy, deep contradiction that I just can't see getting mass behind it.
Here's McRaven (the former head of JSOC) thesus
BIG PDF WARNING
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA493691
Here's his book:
http://www.amazon.com/Spec-Ops-Studies-Operations-Practice/dp/0891416005
Might want to checkout the ranger handbook too:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ranger.pdf
These books are good too:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Accidental-Guerrilla-Fighting-Small/dp/0195368347/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345805419&sr=8-1&keywords=accidental+gorilla
http://www.amazon.com/Starfish-Spider-Unstoppable-Leaderless-Organizations/dp/1591841836/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345805440&sr=1-1&keywords=starfish+and+the+spider
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdom-Crowds-Many-Smarter-Than/dp/0349116059 - would thoroughly recommend this
These are the books I've read recently and liked a lot:
These are not affiliate links.
I've heard very good things about this book: http://www.amazon.com/First-Break-All-Rules-Differently/dp/0684852861
Those other countries have populations that view their relationship with politics very differently than how Americans do. Americans value taking a fundamentally irreverent and or even an automatically rebellious view toward authority to begin with; flouting, bending, or breaking rules in all sorts of settings and contexts is considered "cool": "I do things MY way. Fuck what they say. I don't care" <audience cheers and applauds>. (A specific variation of that sentiment would be: "Fuck voting.") I found throughout Western and Northern Europe that anti-authority, rule-breaking behavior over there, whether in words or actions, is seen as either immature, stupid, inappropriate, and often contemptible. So let's look the most voting countries as of this year:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/02/u-s-voter-turnout-trails-most-developed-countries/
How about wearing translated version of this T-shirt in one of those top European countries? Think it would get the same looks and reactions as it would in the American version in America?
http://www.foulmouthshirts.com/Political-t-shirts/shirtpages/FUCK-VOTING.htm
Note that Australia was at the bottom of that list, 8 spots below the US. They have an irreverent attitude toward authority as well, even more so that the U.S.! They even have less regard for formality, too.
If you're interested in this kind of stuff, THIS is the book the best, an ultimate overview of cultural differences around the world:
https://www.amazon.com/When-Cultures-Collide-3rd-Leading/dp/1904838022
Nope, not bullshit. "Good education and a high rate of literacy lend people confidence in communi-cation. Vietnamese literary tradition is strong." - fra When cultures collide.
>Hvad er det med folk?
Din hasty generalization, ikke min. Jeg sagde ikke at "blot fordi man er født i Øst og Sydøstasien", at man så er god til matematik. Og kinesere != vietnamesere.
Efter 3 års studier omhandlende Asien er jeg udemærket klar over at man ikke skal generalisere. Vietnam klarer sig godt, fordi deres offentlige institutioner sætter undervisning højt på skemaet.
Og normalt skal man ikke gå ud fra at land- og byområder har samme velstand, men her er et lille citat fra Comparing Rural and Urban Primary Education in the Mekong Delta:
"Results indicate that there are far more similarities than originally suspected, particularly in material taught, teacher experience and education, gender balance and student attendance, and students’ plans for the future."
Someone messaged me about this, so I thought I'd share the answer here. They asked about how to become a better writer and a few tips:
Hey there,
Sure thing! There's definitely a lot of stuff out there. The best way to hone your craft:
Some other great resources are:
Niche down hard, as well. The more niche your writing, the more you're likely to be paid. That said, there are certain niches - mainly SaaS, online marketing, eCommerce, and online business - that tend to pay better than others. Sports, for example, is incredibly difficult to write about since most writers write for free.
Once you've figured out a niche, start going after high-end blogs in that niche to get guest posts. Once people start seeing your name on high quality work on high authority blogs, they'll start to come to you rather than you needing to look for work.
Which leads to my last point - always give it your best. Don't skimp on writing, even if you're not being paid. Something I lived by is The 10X Rule: Give 10 times the value of what you're being paid. Eventually, that will come back to you exponentially.
Hope this helps!! :) I may actually work on creating a course to put a few really serious people through. If you're interested, let me know - I'm not going to bother with it unless I see an interest.
Feel free to ask me any other questions!
I can relate to this a lot, I love philosophy and I jump around different clicks all the time.
To keep it short I went on a goal setting course set up by my employer and so many things popped up that made me realise I don't achieve anything because I don't set out to achieve anything.
If you have a sat nav that couldn't tell you where you are and you didn't know where you want to go it may have all the maps in the world but its useless.
Take half an hour out and actually write down where you are now and where you want to be and what's you need to do to get there.
Start 2016 off with a goal a month and stick to it, the only person stopping you achieving it is yourself!
Edit: Actually, heres a simple book to read, its only 52 pages and can be read in a day, it should help you kick start your planning! http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/142212312X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;creativeASIN=142212312X&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=finafreebefof-21
http://www.amazon.com/Nobodies-Modern-American-Global-Economy/dp/0812971841
I am currently reading the book, "One Simple Idea", and it has sections on how to generate ideas. I highly recommend it.
10x Rule 10x
The E-Myth Revisited E myth
48 Laws Of Power 48 Laws Of Power
If companies had not decided to move from pensions to 401k plans then government intervention would not be needed but as things stand now it is clear that 401ks have failed. See: http://www.amazon.com/Retirement-Heist-Companies-Plunder-American/dp/1591843332/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1343067702&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=retirement+heist
> McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen (2009): Slavery and Imperialism Did Not Enrich Europe. Unpublished.
> Makes sense, considering the content. I don't know where one would even begin to try publishing a "paper" that discards over a dozen different theories in just 34 pages.
It's a chapter from a book she's working on, part of a series. The first volume, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce, was published by University of Chicago press, so this book will probably be published by them, too.
Since your post is just empty sarcasm, I'm not sure which points of hers you object to.
You may be interested in Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski's book, Markets Without Limits, short summary here. They argue that anything you may permissibly do for free, you may permissibly do for money. They also map the landscape of common objections:
>1. Exploitation: Buying and selling certain goods—such as sex—might take pernicious advantage of others’ misfortune.
>
>2. Misallocation: Buying and selling certain goods—such as “free” tickets to “Shakespeare in the Park”—might cause the goods to be distributed unfairly.
>
>3. Corruption: Buying and selling certain goods—such as violent video games or pornography—might cause us to have bad attitudes, beliefs, or character.
>
>4. Harm: Buying and selling certain goods—such as naming rights for children—might harm people.
>
>5. Semiotic: Buying and selling certain goods—such as kidneys—might express wrongful attitudes, or violate the meaning of the good in question, or might be incompatible with the intrinsic dignity of some activity, thing, or person.
Michael Sandel takes up some of these objections in What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
Some thoughts about your particular situation:
You say "I hold the ticket and earn the right to do with it as I please because I paid for it." Of course, you have the legal right to do whatever you want with the ticket. But the question you're interested in is whether it's morally right to resell the ticket for profit, not whether you're legally entitled. A principle like by paying for something, I gain the moral right to use it however I please seems too strong--if I buy a knife, this doesn't give me a moral right to go around stabbing people. Perhaps by paying for things, we gain the moral right to use them however we please so long as we do not violate other constraints/rights. But then we're just back to asking whether there is some moral constraint that prohibits you from reselling the ticket for profit. So I don't think the fact that you paid for the ticket, by itself, can settle the issue.
On the other hand, why would we think that reselling the ticket for profit would violate a moral constraint? Your friend says that buying with the intent to resell is wrong. Maybe there's something to this (perhaps it treats the seller as a mere means?), but I'd like to see an argument better spelled out.
One final point: you might view your actions as providing a valuable service to the person who buys the ticket from you. They disvalue waiting in line more than you, but they value the ticket more than you. So it's hard to see how you're acting wrongly towards the buyer.
read the book "the education of millionares" i think it would help you.
I would recommend reading Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers.
Here are some additional links about the book. Forbes, NPR, and The Daily Show.
The basic idea is corporations have taken and trimmed the workers' pension funds. They do this with clever accounting, loopholes, etc. Watch the Daily Show interview. Ellen Schultz explains corporations are allowed to sell pension plans when they sell business units, they are allowed to pull funds from the pension plans to pay for golden parachutes, they take out life insurance policies on their workers, and all kinds of activities that are ethically questionable. Pensions are essentially empty nowadays, but a decade ago they had a surplus. I'm surprised this isn't more widely known.
> I just don't understand how someone could even think to analyze handshakes to this degree.
>
> How empty does your head have to be to think that a simple greeting gesture is so meaningful?
Same thing for those body language "experts" they wheel out on American TV. How bored do you have to be to care? How dull do you have to be to think there are people with expertise in this? How deluded do you need to be to think that you can do this with any level of accuracy, or that what you're doing actually matters?
Clearest example I have for this (outside of like all middle management positions): https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber-ebook/dp/B075RWG7YM/
Back when I was contemplating the idea of moving up (I'd rather drink bleach), I purchased this book that gives you a number of tips on how to professionally suck the excrement out of management's ass. Our entire western society is built on the hierarchical system where your self worth is commodified, meaning unless you know the rules of the game you're never going to climb the corporate ladder.
Hope this helps you get to where you want to go.
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Gets-Promoted-Doesnt-Second/dp/160774600X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1458908740&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=who+gets+promoted+and+who+doesn%27t
> If someone could build a prototype, find investors, and bring it to market then I'd be thrilled with 5%.
Well, that's actually within the range that people get paid for licensing their ideas to companies. They do all the work and take all the risk, and you receive a royalty. If you're interested in this, you should read One Simple Idea by Stephen Key. It's a great book that explains everything about the licensing process. I've met the author in person, and he's a fantastic guy. Very generous and truly loves helping people.
Different cultures perceive what we (Americans) might interpret as concrete agreements to be loose understandings. It's not about values, it's about a cultural understanding of what something is. I have colleagues from India who massage the truth about minor, typically inconsequential facts because it's perceived as easier to glide over these things than discuss inconsistencies. I don't fault them, but it's important to know that this might happen when working in that environment. I'd like to see the contact we signed with Foxconn. I'll bet our negotiators thought everything was settled but left certain parts (like what will be produced at the plant, education levels of core employees, etc.) on the table due to inexperience.
All I'm discussing is in Kiss, Bow, and Shake Hands if you want to look in to it further.
What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel
http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/0143114948
Hm. I hope this is in the arena, but Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody might be of interest to you!
Good for you bilbobillikins! A couple of books that helped me make the transition were - High Output Management and First, Break All the Rules. Apart from this there is a great series of podcasts where Mike and Mark talk about various challenges and have a great perspective on how to deal with typical situation that managers would face. You can find them at Manager Tools website.
Very interesting article. Whenever this topic comes up I think about a couple books. First, Break All The Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths. These books outline what makes a manager great and how the greatest managers identify, motivate, and retain the most talented people in their organization. Interesting read.
Okay, I'll just ignore all other points for the sake of expediting this and focus on corporate money in politics.
Right now our government is owned by corporations. They pay for the elections and they pay for their own laws.
People that are suggesting redistributing wealth on a massive scale are idiots. Those who want money bad enough to work the system through sheer intellect deserve to be rich, it's what they wanted.
However, it is not deserved when they sacrifice their worker's benefits to put money in their own pockets. Quickly check out Ellen Shultz's book "Retirement Heist".
This is the world we live in, CEO's and corporations own our freedoms. They bend the laws to their will and are creating an income gap (income inequality) the likes of which the world has never seen. The earnings ratio of 14.5 to 1 in 2010 was an increase from the 13.6 to 1 ratio in 2008 and a significant rise from the historic low of 7.69 to 1 in 1968.
This gap has grown due to increasingly outright (yet unpunished) fraud in our countries banking system. Yes, it was legislation that weakened the requirements to purchase a home loan. But it was legislation that the banks bought.
Making sense yet?
A democracy is supposed to be for the people, by the people.
Looking at the economy through some kind of *ism is worthless.
What has happened is the control of how resources are distributed in the United States has been consolidated into just a few people and groups. Too few people are now deciding how resources are distributed. It is not a free market anymore because the market is fixed. It's not that they might be stupid, I'm sure that they are very smart. It's that no human is smart enough to have a small group decide how so many resources get distributed. Call it what you will the problem with the Soviet Union is the same as the problem with Goldman Sachs -- a small group of people are deciding how a huge portion of resources are being used and nobody is smart enough to do it well.
For example, they made the mistake in providing too much resources for people to build houses during the last decade. They, the bankers, have a social responsibility to say we have enough houses lets put some of this money we decide who gets into something else. That is the same type of mistake that Gosplan and Gosbank made.
The invisible hand of the market is a much better tool for allocating resources than small groups of people just because of the lack of human ability to see such complex systems for example the complexity of making a pencil. I believe in the Wisdom of the Crowd, that it is truly remarkable how well working together the audience does at answering tough a question on WhoWants to Be a Millionaire.
Go right ahead and tell me that a small group of people should decide how most of the resources should be used. Lots of people in Russia would agree with you.
If the people who lead the banks don't see what they do as a huge responsibility the system will crumble. When it does we might try to do the same thing like people who keep losing in Vegas yet return with the hope that this one time they might break the bank or we might try something else.
Although it is completely true that people taking care or people is a thousand times better than governments taking care of people, it is also true that if people are not taken care of seriously fucked up things happen to a society which is why I am supporting Obama one hundred percent in his fight against the Republicans trying to get people the help they need.
The best way to prevent the government from taking care of people is to be a self starter and go out and take care of people as a person. The more people are cared for by their church, families and communities more the need of the government to take care of them is nullified thus nullifying the need of government.
Lately, Goldman Sachs has been all for self. You would be surprised how often it is in one's best interest the interest of the other guy and the selfish thing to do is paradoxically the selfless thing to do. Our economic system if it is going to survive will have to face this and it's not up to me to make the decision. I am like you at the mercy of the small group of people who make those decisions. We are at their mercy and can only hope for their wisdom.
It's possible that the small group might start to make good decisions as we have seen in the last few years the small group who controls the Chinese economy make some what currently looks like great decisions. Live and learn.
Read The Starfish and the Spider. (or at least the summary: http://www.amazon.com/The-Starfish-Spider-Unstoppable-Organizations/dp/1591841836) It will likely explain what ISIS' strategy is. This is a far more tricky situation for developed countries than, "let's just use our more advanced technology to extinct them all!"
"The powers" really need to take time tore recognize what they're dealing with or it may just end up like another Vietnam.
This helped me.
Then I read this as well.
I have found that This Book explains a lot about the hiring process and the traps you may fall into to knock yourself out of the running.
I always give this book recommendation, but honestly it helped me sooooo much. I got my most recent job with the advice from this book (one that I thought I had absolutely no chance of getting) and it has some great tips in there. The hard copy is a bit pricey, but if you have a kindle or somewhere to read kindle books, that one's not so bad.
Best of luck!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wisdom-Crowds-Many-Smarter-Than/dp/0349116059
Right there with you and have taken a step back to realize that an office environment is something I need right now. Perhaps also a co-founder when I decide to start investing 100% in my company again. A book has really helped me in the last few months and I cannot recommend it enough -- Positive Intelligence.
http://www.amazon.com/Data-Scientists-Work-Sebastian-Gutierrez/dp/1430265981/
I feel like everyone who wants to work in a different country should read a bit about the differences in culture beforehand. A (imo) good source is Richard D. Lewis who describes a lot of different cultures in his book.
If you're going to lead a group there read about managing across cultures.
BUT: be aware that your company has it's own culture that, while often strongly influenced by the culture of the country, can have significant differences to what literature would suggest.
Possible Literature:
Richard D. Lewis - When Cultures Collide
Carte/Fox - Bridging the Culture Gap
You may be interested in The Education of Millionaires.
https://www.amazon.com/Education-Millionaires-Everything-College-Successful/dp/1591845610
It’s about a bunch of people from humble beginnings that persisted,scraped and fought until they became successful. I thought it was very inspiring.
Many [guest foreign workers] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guest_worker_program) are scammed into paying fees to join these work force programs, often they take loans from unsavory people at high interest fees. When they arrive here in the US for agricultural work(or in micronesia for garment factory work, or saudi arabia for construction labor work). In many cases their passports are then taken from them and they are held captive in their bunkhouses when not working. Theyllearn their room and board plus miscellaneous fees, and interest on any loans to cover these fees, exceed their wages. They are like slaves, except technically more profitable as slaves do not go into greater debt over time. Those who labor to free themselves from debt are often more productive and self-proficient than a slave that is literally owned.
Sex slavery is pretty much the above, the profession may have been the victims choice, it might not have, but they are not free to go and do not live in humane conditions.
We know what companies use varying degrees of unethical labor to make their products. But how many of us actually refuse to purchase or use them?
To reduce sex slavery, it would probably best best to legalize and regulate prostitution to reduce the profitability of black market/inhumane prostitution.
Modern slavery is indeed alive and well in the west. It just is difficult to track and prosecute, especially with how we allow corporations to distance themselves from the culpability of corporations who supply their raw materials use slave labor. Nobodies is a good introductory book on the subject
I recommend reading Who Gets Promoted, Who Doesn't, and Why. It has lots of insight into how companies work and anecdotes from people who have been successful in moving up the ladder. It also has some general misconceptions that people have.
You can find a summary presentation here.
Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski's Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests is a rebuttal to Sandel.
https://www.amazon.com/Markets-without-Limits-Commercial-Interests/dp/0415737354
Thank you for a great answer! :)
Your first and second suggestion remind me of a book i read many years ago called Positive Intelligence. In that book the author had identified 12 common mental saboteurs (that had more to do with attitudes than activities) that you were supposed to label as soon as you identified one of them. You were also supposed to do "PQ reps" that were more or less the same as checking in to your body. :)
I will start trying out all of your suggestions above as soon as I have the opportunity, probably at work on Monday morning. Thanks again! :)
There's a good book that goes into detail about your situation: Bullshit Jobs.
Energy accounting.
It is not like any of them. It has some features of capitalism (markets dictating production response), socialism (energy distribution) and a lot of features none of them have.
If you learn capitalist economics in college, it's a multi-year program. You're not going to learn it from me in a reddit post, but here's about the best summary I can make.
It begins with energy accounting - the assigning to every resource an energy value based on physics (the basic matter/energy conversion) and multiplied by the extractable and known-usable mass of the resource within the area controlled by the technate, and added to value of available imports, minus the value of expected exports. This sets a base modifier for prices that causes prices to climb for limited resources to reduce consumption to sustainable levels.
For renewable and abundant resources (those for which demand is less than renewable supply) price is essentially negligible and for all purposes becomes free. Accounting for these is transparent for the population at large, and is handled electronically behind the scenes only for the purposes of adjusting production to demand.
In a socialist economy the preferred item or form might be mandated by law. This prevents the production of items consumers might otherwise want and while in theory it's to increase the efficiency of production by producing one item and controlling employment levels, in practice it results in massive shortages whenever production and imports from more economically stable countries can't be subsidized (see Venezuela). In capitalism, markets dictate price entirely. Supply and demand create a balance, but this is short-term supply and demand. It takes no accounting for non-renewable resources, socialized environmental impacts, and only some consideration for long term projected growth or decline in demand (largely the result of the invention of futures markets).
The first prevents massive abuse of limited resources, but can result in mass shortages of vital goods. The second ensures as long as goods are produceable they are available as long as there is demand, but makes no accounting for long term sustainability, so products can become unavailable in the long run if resources run low, and the consequences of production are often simply ignored until its bad enough for the government to get involved and impose regulation.
Technocracy seeks to take the best of both of these - those things with limited supply can still be available at ever higher prices, set to control demand to sustainable levels, while abundant and renewable resources can be made available as desired. In either case, production is not controlled by a central authority as in socialist centralized economies, but is dictated by consumer action as in capitalism. Further, costs of environmental protection are rolled into the process - in many ways the concept of a carbon tax is a limited ad-hoc version of this. The technocratic version would cover all waste products and the full cost of cleaning them up as part of the energy price calculations, and thus an otherwise sustainable resource can become priced like an unsustainable one if the environmental impact of production is unsustainable.
Couple all that with a distribution system that sees everyone paid the same for their time (very much a socialist concept) combined with the goal of making resources and production as abundant as possible while pursuing post-scarcity, moving most labor-jobs to robots and automation and most other jobs to AI as soon as possible with the long term purpose and intent of making human labor obsolete and freeing up human time to focus on arts, invention, study, and anything else people actually value doing with their time.
I'll end by touching on a common criticism, that due to pay being separated from work people won't be motivated to do anything. The truth is a lot of work is bullshit and not necessary anyway. There are plenty of people who would work just because it's worth it to them to do it. Especially when it comes to things like invention - the greatest inventors have never in history worked for the sake of money. They did it because they loved discovering new and better ways of doing things. Einstein wasn't a physicist because the pay was good. He was a physicist because he loved it. Imagine how many people would be freed up to pursue their interests in academics, engineering or the arts if they could try out their ideas without fear of losing their house or starving if it didn't work out? Many people aren't entrepeneurs only because they fear the risks that come from leaving the work force. Many of them won't ever produce anything new no matter how much they try, but if even a few pay off it can be huge. Then imagine just how many people, due to growing up in poverty, never have the opportunity at all. Imagine if suddenly they all had the chance, limited only by their own work ethic and imagination.
Authors don't write because they hope for a big payday. They do it because they can't stand to NOT write. Actors don't act for the pay. Most actors never make ends meet with it and they keep doing it anyway. The big stars earn enough to live on for the rest of their lives in one or two movies, yet they keep coming back and doing it again.
The truth is people do NOT need money to motivate them to do something with their lives. They need money to motivate them to do shit they hate. So why not work to automate all that stuff? Make work obsolete, and keep paying people so they can live lives of meaning instead of toiling 1/3 of their life away doing things they hate, or which serve no real purpose.
The issues you are concerned about are not limited to places like Saipan and Guam. They are widespread throughout the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, just more prevalent and more visible in some places than in others. For just one treatment, see John Bowe's Nobodies. Mr. Bowe does call it "slave labor" but does not make the mistake of calling it slavery. And the worst things he describes took place in the southern United States, not the CNMI.
N.B. I cite Mr. Bowe despite the fact his book contains numerous inaccuracies, occasionally exaggerates, and is at least sometimes sloppy in its reporting of events. I can say this with confidence because I have personal knowledge of some of the the people, things, and events he discusses.
Calling it slavery is not helpful. The word is highly pejorative and both imprecise and inaccurate. You are taring an entire jurisdiction and the people who live there solely for the political shock value, to stir contempt for the islands and indignation against the islanders who run the place among people who otherwise are largely ignorant of the reality of the place.
I'm sure we can think of lots of examples of that sort of practice and agree that it is neither honorable nor worthy of emulation. Take a look at those videos again. Do you see anyone there calling it "slavery"? Those are people from all parts of the community united in pursuit of justice. People for whom the NMI is home and who live and experience the reality of the CNMI daily. Around 5,000 people participated in the Unity March. And Tina Sablan is an indigenous Chamorro in the mold of Bernie Sanders.
Rather than furthering social justice, calling it "slavery" triggers ego defensiveness and denial among the powers-that-be and significant segments of the voting population, causing them to dig in, policy and practices to become more rigid, and new legislation to be more draconian. Credit the reality rather than inflating the bogeyman. Just my friendly advice.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0226556646
There's a huge amount of research on this stuff. Start here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Wisdom-Crowds-Many-Smarter/dp/0349116059
It's clear that throwing darts will perform worse than asking which way people would bet in almost any situation.
And also read the book.
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B075RWG7YM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1