For hiring, 2025 was a brutal year to search for a job. The Wall Street Journal reports that 2026 could be worse: "At a gathering of CEOs in Midtown Manhattan this month organized by the Yale School of Management, 66% of leaders surveyed said they planned to either fire workers or maintain the size of their existing teams next year. Only a third indicated they planned to hire." The WSJ adds that pullback from adding manpower could be temporary. But given shareholders' demand for cost-efficiency and the continual improvements in AI, chronic unemployment could become standard. However, there is a solution. An old-fashioned one. That's becoming a solopreneur, that is setting up your own business without partners or employees. The model dates back to ancient times. The golden age of the solo business owner in America had been from the late 1800s to about the mid 1920s. There had been a wave of immigrants, discrimination against them and few jobs. They drove pushcarts ...
It's nothing new. Law firms chase star talent and pay premium compensation for those twinklers. Way back in 2021, Paul, Weiss' Brad Karp hammered in Bloomberg Law the critical importance of that star power. Law firms which don't have the financial resources to recruit, hold and motivate them could stop growing, going out of business. What is new are these current realities: the current frenzy of the chase and annual compensation reaching $40 million. Well, equity partners who aren't stars will help pay for that payout. Law.com predicts haircuts for some of them this year. There always had been a caste system in Big Law, a niche in which prestige is an embedded value. Never were all equity partners equal. It had been standard to de-equitize those not cutting it or even force them out. A strategy of shaming usually was effective to get them to exit. Now, it's more brutal. Already the number of equity partners is being reduced. That's to ensure top dollar fo...
Monitor postings on Reddit subunits focused on careers and it's no longer news that PhDs, both newly minted and those already in the labor market, generally are finding the credential an obstacle in the search for a job or even contract assignments. No, not an asset. Let's cut to the chase. The highly educated have to get smart about this, fast. With some exceptions, I advise those I coach to leave the PhD off job-search materials. The negative assumptions among those hiring range from that you expect too much money to you'll be a know-it-all. When my boutique collapsed post-9/11 and I had to land a survival job I lopped off everything but the BA. At the interview I dumbed-down my vocabulary. Sure Harvard was started in 1636 but America remains anti-intellectual. In addition, the integration of AI into strategy and operations makes knowledge work in general less and less marketable. That's the narrative of our times: Advanced degrees having low or no ROI. The result,...
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