Category Archives: Business & Marketing

“Your hands are not made to type memos”

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“Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class. The working class. Most jobs that existed 20 years ago aren’t needed now. Maybe they never were needed. The entire first decade of this century was spent with CEOs in their Park Avenue clubs crying through their cigars, “how are we going to fire all this dead weight?” 2008 finally gave them the chance.”

“Your hands are not made to type out memos. Or put paper through fax machines. Or hold a phone up while you talk to people you dislike. A hundred years from now your hands will rot like dust in your grave. You have to make wonderful use of those hands now.”

From an article on TechCrunch

What if you don’t want to be a manager?

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From a post by Anne Kreamer at HBR.org. It’s probably just my own heightened awareness, but a bunch of really timely articles have found their way to me in recent weeks.

“Companies continue to cling to the notion that one of the only mechanisms they have to acknowledge employees’ talent is to make them managers and then to continue to promote them into ever-higher levels of management — reflecting the misguided assumption that being good at something also means being able to (and wanting to) manage others doing the same thing.”

“As corporate executive I felt like I had to pretend to be something I wasn’t — I didn’t like being a manager, but I was a manager, so I had to appear to be interested in all the stuff that went along with being a manager. This is something social scientists call “emotion labor” — what you experience when you feel obliged to act differently from your natural inclinations.”

Advertising loses in a mudslide

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Media observer Bob Garfield on what we learned about advertising from the recent campaigns:

“Nothing that comes out of the mouth of a brand or any other institution has remotely the influence of what comes from the mouths of 7 billion bystanders freely trading opinions online.”

“What matters is what the public has to say about you — based on who the public believes you really are. … If people don’t like you, they are no longer eager to do business with you. And in a socially mediated world, not to mention a world of enforced transparency wherein your every move is searchable on Google in perpetuity, you can no longer advertise your way into their wallets, much less their hearts.”

“We are now and forevermore in the Relationship Era. What the GOP proved, and what all marketers must at long last internalize, is that you can’t advertise yourself out of a bad relationship.”

Mr. Garfield’s full post »

“Careers Are Dead”

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“There’s mounting evidence that the American labor market may never return to its pre-recession composition. The future is already here and it brings with it low-wage temporary or contract work as a way of life.

“According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost 30% of American workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs – defined as earnings at or below the poverty line to support a family of four – in 2020. This number will remain virtually unchanged from 2010.”

Forbes

Race Against The Machine

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Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, by Erik Brynjolfsson

“Terry Gou, the founder and chairman of the electronics manufacturer Foxconn, announced this year a plan to purchase 1 million robots over the next three years to replace much of his workforce. The robots will mke over routine jobs like spraying paint, welding, and basic assembly. Foxconn currently has 10,000 robots, with 300,000 expected to be in place by next year.”

“If technology exists for a single seller to cheaply replicate his or her services, then the top-quality provider can capture most—or all—of the market. The next-best provider might be almost as good yet get only a tiny fraction of the revenue.”

“…the top 0.01% of households in the United States—that is, the 14,588 families with income above $11,477,000 — saw their share of national income double from 3% to 6% between 1995 and 2007.”

“About 90% of Americans worked in agriculture in 1800; by 1900 it was 41%, and by 2000 it was just 2%.”