TransformingYourCareerTransformingYourself

More and more on the professional anonymous networks we are bumping into this tragedy: the aging professional forced out their well-paying jobs. Here in Reddit Career Guidance is the  thread  about the plight of a 57-year-old male who had been laid off. Of course, he's upset. But he shouldn't be.  Pro Publica  documents that more than half of those over-50 will not leave their jobs voluntarily. That's the way it goes. Sure, file a lawsuit but age bias is hard to prove. Employers know have to conduct a termination so that other factors are cited to justify the process. Also, litigation is slow-moving. Of course, he wants to make comparable money. Pro Publica found only one in 10 can pull that off. There are plenty of useful suggestions for him on Reddit. An option I would strongly recommend is freelancing. That could be in his own profession or through using other skills in other lines of work. In an  award-winning podcast  I discussed that approac...

It's a start. And OpenAI's mindset about technology has been patience. In fact, its founders didn't know if its generative AI being developed would work. Although ChatGPT and DALL - E are causing a sensation of interest they are not really ready for primetime. Now released by OpenAI is the AI classifier. Its function is to determine human from content generated by a number of AI programs, not only that from OpenAI. However, OpenAI admits it fails about three-fourths of the time, reports The Wall Street Journal . Also it has to be used in conjunction with other tools.  Educators already possess some of those other tools. Their need is urgent to figure out if student work has been done by AI or by themselves. If students are skillful in setting up the prompt that will produce the report or essay they need they could be submitting "A" work. Even seasoned educators might not be able to "smell" out that it is AI production. When I was a college instructor I u...

  There are those who contend the cover letter is obsolete. Maybe that is an overstatement. But more help-wanted ads limit the response to transmitting a resume. Given that and the glut of talent chasing good jobs the resume becomes so important in a search for work, both traditional full-time and gig.  Therefore, the  new study from MIT  by Emma van Inwegen, et al. on resumes should be getting attention. The title is "Algorithmic Writing Assistance on Jobseekers' Resumes Increases Hire." The research focused on those who used an algorithm writing service for their resume and those who didn't (control group). The former had the probability of an 8% higher hire rate. Their compensation was 8.4% higher than that of the control group. Essentially the service used in the study performs two main tasks. One is to correct mistakes in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and usage. It is well known that any such error can result in having the resume tossed. Immediately it s...

It's getting to be a familiar story: the ongoing falloff in worker engagement.  Gallup  documents that only 32% of employees are fully engaged.   Well,  SteelSTORED's  Michael McGurk has a novel solution for that. At least for the construction industry. That's bringing shipping containers on-site. In the process, shipping containers used during construction projects also can boost profit margins. After all, engaged workers are more productive ones. In this  article,  McGurk, who provides end-to-end shipping container solutions, explains how even small things can make employees feel good about themselves and therefore their labor and their employer. For example, how about providing a classy clean warm or air-conditioned restroom - instead of one of those awful outdoor "potties?" It's easy and it's cost-efficient to retrofit a shipping container for that. Here is  McGurk's backgrounder  on the shipping container for hygiene. Tha...

 First Lad B etty Ford was one of us: open about being flawed (enough to need at stint in rehab), not glam, and average in most ways. All she lacked was a weight problem to have been classified Everywoman.  You bet, she made us feel good about ourselves. Most of us women didn’t back then (1974 – 1977) as the second round of women’s liberation was just emerging. Sigh. How we want Betty back in these confusing times. Too many of us have been losing some of our newly found self-confidence. For the first time in about 34 months (Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp had cast a spell of self-esteem on me) I allowed two women to bully me. I feel such shame at how I have regressed.  But instead of Betty we have a First Lady who somehow has gotten caught in DoctorateTitleGate. That’s Jill Biden. Not her fault but there it is. At a sports event she was referred to as "Doctor." She has a Ph.D., not the MD. Megyn Kelly, who has engineered a comeback, put the knock on Jill for somehow all...

The buzz in media is all about how AI chatbots could overtake myriad functions in the practice of law. Also there is the extensive coverage of the angst about layoffs and performance-based terminations because of the slowing economy.  Meanwhile there hasn't been much attention to the employment implications of non-lawyer-owed law firms. Already Utah and Arizona have loosened regulations on that. A post on Fishbowl Big Law takes up the issue. The likely owner, some responses speculate, could be a private equity firm. Here is the thread. PE is known to blow up what is in order to max profit. Therefore, the law firm sector as we have known it could mutate into a business that is quite different.  For example, the number of partners and associates needed could be reduced and how they are "allowed" to approach their tasks could be made more efficient. With the resulting glut of talent compensation could be significiantly reduced. The established power system? That could go poo...

" '... most things don’t work,' [Elad] Gil said. 'Most of the time, you should actually figure out when do you give up and when should you actually quit. It’s really hard to know.'" -  Reposted by  Yahoo Finance  from Fortune, January 29, 2023 Since Gil is an angel investor he has borne witness to a lot of that. Yet the pressure to innovate keeps accelerating for all businesses in this time of rapid technological, economic, and political change. That’s part of what is driving the wild excitement about ChatGPT. As we know: New ideas implemented well which take off are kinds of Swiss Knives. They can accomplish all sorts of objectives ranging from developing new business to attracting more funding especially through the stock market to enhancing the brand.  At Apple, the late Steve Jobs had that down cold.  Dentons, a global law firm, hit it big with its  consulting services such as Global Advisors . That diversification gives it a hedge as technology...

  Business is business. But the fact that it is business in a highly capitalistic culture doesn't give those we used to call “the captains of industry” permission to be value-free of social mores. After all, business is a human institution.  Yahoo Finance  reports, the recent layoffs in tech have been described as having a "sense of inhumanity." For instance one former Google employee found out about getting the ax via a media report in The New York Times and being locked out of corporate email.  There are myriad versions of that brutality. Actually, they are nothing new. Forever it seems that for decades in the American way of capitalism employers have been getting away with cold indifference to what taking away someone's job entails. In 1982, the director of a manufacturing corporation called me into his office at 4:45 PM on a Monday. He delivered the bad news. I cried. He looked at his watch. There was nothing I felt I could do. It was pre-social media and...

  "It's the other lawyers." That's what a now-franchise owner told me during coaching. He wasn't happy operating the family's six food shops. Actually, he had enjoyed practicing law but left it when he realized he was losing his health and more. The more included not being able to get and stay sober. On Abovethelaw, RollonFridays, and professional anonymous networks, we hear a lot of beefs from lawyers. Usually the solution is to do a lateral. As  Bloomberg Law  reports, 2022 had been a big year for that for law firms such as DLA Piper, Debevoise, Gibson Dunn, and Paul Weiss.  But the undercurrent of extreme dissatisfaction that is rarely mentioned is what lawyers inflict on each other. After all, essentially the system is adversarial. Recently, though, that factor was flagged on Fishbowl Big Law. Here is the  thread.   Interestingly, it didn’t get much attention, at least not yet. Of course, that doing each other in is professionally justified a...

Yes, it could get  that  bad. The kind of bad former chair of Proskauer Allen Fagin sketches out in Law.com . He had been in the that bad of The Great Recession. So, Fagin posits about the now: Suppose Profits Per Equity Partner plunge at certain law firms two digits. Like 40%. Simultaneously the value of equty partners' houses could go under water. All could be worsened if, as Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp warned in a Bloomberg Law interview, the brandnames who bring in and hold onto the business lateral elsewhere. The firm could actually go kaput. The game operates on the wattage of star power. Incidentally, Karp was also around in 2008. He made it his mission not to terminate associates. He had just been voted in by the partners. Meanwhile, if the that bad unfolds meanness could be unleashed throughout the firm. That happens all the time in all sectors.  If the law-firm culture goes totally toxic all classifications of workers - partners, associates, paralegals, IT...

 " ... a slowdown in personal-computer sales ravages the industry."  - Yahoo Finance , January 27, 2023 Because of that Intel is having a hard time of it. And, by observing those even 10 years younger than I have concluded: This pause could mutate into a long-term trend. Mobile phones now are smart enough to take over many of the functions that PCs do. Younger generations use their phones and don't even wonder about any need for a PC.  As yet, I haven't kept up with smartphones enough to identity what tasks I could be performing on my android and stop doing on my Lenova laptop. Of course, anyone aware of that gap could and maybe should label me as "old." My professional life still is a tale of two technologies: PC and mobile phone. Sure, I continue telling myself: As soon as work calms down I will make it my mission to master the smartphone. But my comfort zone is the PC. In the morning I get right on it and feel whole. When I turn on my phone I brace for un...

"Nearly half of workers (45%) aren’t planning to wait around to get a pink slip before looking for other sources of income, saying they plan to get a side gig amid the economic uncertainty. Some of that may take the form of freelance opportunities, but many Americans are looking at the gig economy as well."   Yahoo Finance , January 27, 2023 No, it isn't just tech. Massive layoffs have spread to other sectors.  Goodyear  just announced 500 job cuts. Yahoo Finance also notes that the arts, finance, and recreation are getting hit hard.  Overall, as I am hearing from my intuitive career coaching clients, employees  expect  reductions-in-force in addition to performance-based firings at their job. Of course, they hope they won't receive the tap on the shoulder. But they haven't been just sitting there waiting for whatever.  The majority, just as the media confirms, have developed multiple sources of income. Some are passive such as playing the option...

It's come to this. The economy has soured. That's to the point that just about everyone in the loop gets it that it is downright necessary to lay off so that profits can continue to grow in challenging times. Now law firms can conduct actual reductions-in-force without being perceived as really bad guys (and gals). For two years most have held back on that. They observed the pile-ons for law firms which did lay off in post-pandemic times. There was Cooley, for instance. That was then.  Kent Zimmermann, a consultant at Zeughauser, describes the shift in  American Lawyer.  The code for that development is: making lawyers "more accountable." (In non-legal such as IBM, SAP, and Dow, the term is  "belt tightening," ) Therefore, lawyers at all levels in large law firms should be braced for terminations. The content on professional anonymous networks such as Reddit Big Law and Fishbowl Big Law is bound to become a chronicle of RIFs. That's a major change from t...

 Dow, IBM, and SAP didn't bulk up on manpower during the pandemic. Yet, they are joining the corporations which did overhire and have laid off.  The Wall Street Journal reports that this development in the labor market is being called "belt tighening." Essentially employees are being told: We have decided to cut costs. You have to go. And that's that.  For even those who have been able to hang onto their jobs, they tell me in our coaching sessions that there is no "stop" mechanism on what employers may be mandating. The requirements usually escalate. You either buy in or you know you could be put on a PIP (Proposal to Improve Performance), then be axed. The law of supply and demand, at least as the employer interprets it, overrides all other values. What more and more employees are doing to cope, at least emotionally, is to develop hedges by creating multiple sources of income. In addition to their day jobs they pick up gig assignments, invest in income pro...

 "I don't want to be in this position ever again, and am thinking of switching to work that is more steady industry-wise. I have a masters degree in business administration ..."  Reddit Career Guidance, January 2023. Here is the thread. Where has this MBA been as the world of careers turned volatile? There are few if any safe harbors.  Even those laid-off from Big Tech who landed jobs in smaller businesses or other sectors have accepted they will remain vulnerable to the law of supply and demand as well as profit maxing. For many of them that was the transition from expecting to hang out with their former employer for as long as they wanted. Some had been just promoted. Then escorted out the door. Today, IBM joined the conga line of major layoffs. 3,900 cut.  However, this new way to earn a living - just-in-time and maybe involving career change - is plenty stressful. Here is the article on that I recently published in O'Dwyer Public Relations . There could be anti...

"Google CEO Sundar Pichai says he will take less pay this year as he joins JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon and Apple’s Tim Cook in taking a compensation hit" -  Yahoo Finance , republished from Fortune, January 25, 2023   In the dark days of the auto industry when the Japanese were eating Detroit's lunch, dinner, and breakfast, the Lee Iacocca team swooped in with a new concept for American capitalism. At least for its top rungs. That was the equality of sacrifice.    The rank and file at near-bankrupt Chrysler also were certainly making sacrifices. Those ranged from putting in extreme hours to save the corporation to not balking about the lack of raises and bonuses.   Iacocca took on the mission of the turnaround for a dollar a year. The executives he had poached from Ford, where he had headed marketing, risked 1) they would be without jobs if Chrysler went under and 2) there would be a hit to their brand if they didn’t succeed.   Currently wit...

  Let's cut to the chase. The majority of responses are positive. Those are to the question on Reddit Big Law from a 2nd year litigation associate in DC about if they should interview at Jones Day. Essentially the consensus is:  Go meet those lawyers and find out for yourself what they are about. So far 63 replies have come in. Here is the  thread. It has been downright Shakespearean, that is, how the mob has turned on Jones Day Everything. That ranges from its black box compensation policy to its taking on MAGA and other far-right business.  Most recently those piling on include The New York Times journalist David Enrich whose book "Servants of the Damned" goes on and on and on about Jones Day. Up to the present time, Abovethelaw has made a hobby pointing out Jones Day's alleged sins of omission and commission.  And, as a Human Resources communications expert and coach I am following the parental bias lawsuit  "Savignac v. Jones Day."  I would...

"Has anyone heard of someone not promoted to partner because they weren’t well liked?" Reddit Big Law, January 24, 2023. Here is the  thread.  No surprise, the consensus is that it is rare to become partner in a law firm without being well-liked. My hunch has been that former leader at Jones Day Mickey Pohl (now counsel) rose up the ladder not only because he is a fine litigator. Also, he is so likable.   In addition, there have been situations of demotion and job loss because the professional wasn't likable. Work is hard. Who wants those unlikables around. Of course, that reality dominates most of work life. When white-, blue-, and pink-collars come to me with problems with superiors, colleagues, and subordinates the usual cause is not engaging. That also plays out in romantic relationships. No ambiguity: It also shapes success in politics. Read Hedrick Smith on that (“The Power Game” ) The result is that there is no connect. That human being becomes isolated ...

Those who had they had a job wake up today to feel yet another arctic blast sweeping through media.  Axios  documents more rounds of layoffs in that sector. They extend from Adweek to NBC News to Vox. The latter is the parent of New York Magazine. Remember when that publication was hot and proclaimed the Me Generation. These reductions-in-force are even before AI chatbots start impacting how work is done and how little of it will be by humans. Maybe you can land something in programming. Forget content-creation per se. Public relations as an industry could go poof too.  So much for glam. With the economy uncertain and advertisers continuing to hold off, layoffs could continue throughout 2023 and beyond. Many of those jobs might not be coming back. Meanwhile there are fewer refuges for those forced out. Ever since journalism shifted from print to digital communications workers have had to reskill for other lines of work. Many related niches such as ghostwriting and c...