TransformingYourCareerTransformingYourself

How many of us Boomer females wanted to be Kitten! Just like we had wanted to be Caroline Kennedy.  Kitten was that cute younger daughter on "Father Knows Best."  Played by Lauren Chapin she seemed to hold a special place in Jim Anderson's heart. And unlike our working class fathers who chowed down food at all hours in the kitchen because of shift work, Kitten's wore a suit as an insurance salesperson, was always home for dinner in a dining room and listened. Anderson even smiled when she said something cute. Most of our own fathers were too bone tired to notice we were there. At the time I didn't realize Kitten was my age. Starting at nine years old. Back then, with the darkness of Depression-era parents ever present (mostly fearing another economic collapse), we offspring tended to be born old. Never be young.   Well, Chapin has died, at the age of 80. My age. Like so many of us she did run into health problems. For her it was cancer. As the saying goes, life in...

Performance reviews. They now have a new wrinkle, at least in tech. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google, Meta and Microsoft are among the tech players embedding AI use in the performance review. There are all versions of assessment, ranging from achieving productivity gains to creating a new workflow tool the team can leverage. This, of course, adds not only to the angst associated with being formally evaluated. It significantly shifts what you should be paying attention to. That is, if you want to keep your job and perhaps aspire to a promotion. There is also all the decoding that overall must be done when you interpret what's in that review. For instance, when I coach those in professional services such as law they strain to decide if what's flagged as "needing" improvement" represents well-thought-out mentoring feedback or a legalized kind of warning that you could be on the way out.  In addition, there's the possible political aspect: Someone in p...

  Not so much the tariff thing. The 800+ plunge on the stock market primarily had been generated by a Substack post by Citrini Research. Running 7,000 words it sketched out a hypothetical in which the bullishness about AI is so on the money that it destroys the money. As AI quickly moves along in improvements it wipes out just about everything from the historic value of human intelligence to the commercial and personal value of human relationships.  Here's a snippet: "It should have been clear all along that a single GPU cluster in North Dakota generating the output previously attributed to 10,000 white-collar workers in midtown Manhattan is more economic pandemic than economic panacea. The velocity of money flatlined. The human-centric consumer economy, 70% of GDP at the time, withered. We probably could have figured this out sooner if we just asked how much money machines spend on discretionary goods. (Hint: it’s zero.)" And all this could possibly kick in by 2028.  The...

So, how bad is this going to get? This week? For how many years we Boomers have left? Dow Jones Industrial Average Index Index: DJI Compare 48,811.03 USD ▼  -814.94 (-1.64%) today February 23, 2:55 PM EST   ·   Market Open  

   A group in tech I have consulted with, employed and unemployed, "help" each other for this primary reason: They know that when one gets a big job or a contract they usually will bring in others on the network. So, all the participants keep active on what they can exchange in order to continue being considered useful.  That's the essence of networking. That is, horse trading. Although the transactions might be genial, they are not about what a wonderful talented professional you are and how you deserve a break in your need to earn a good living, get ahead and/or bounce back after chronic unemployment. Reading the Epstein Files made that clear. Those in the loop had something good to trade. Maybe it was prestige as with MIT, Harvard and Stanford or the funds to pay a high fee for tax advice as with Leon Black.  That rigid exchange system is misunderstood by those who had been in stable or rapidly growing sectors. When knocked out of the box they are instructed by th...

A stunner, at least to them. But not to us coaches in the trenches. The middle-aged knowledge worker with blockbuster experience and an advanced degree from a top school becomes a "chronic unemployed." That is, without work for at least six months. They don't understand why they haven't been hired, even in the current challenging job market. They tell their stories over and over again on Reddit.  There is an obvious why they haven't picked up on what's going down. The short version of that is this: Their parents didn't endure the work conditions in The Great Depression. A Boomer, mine did. By time I was born the post-WWII boom economy was starting to kick in. So, yes, their options for earning a living had improved. But, they never stopped talking non-stop how brutal it had been. All of them had, because of their experience, evolved into hollowed-out human beings. What they had to put up with to get and hold work mirrors much of the ethos of the being emp...