February 2009
5 posts
1 tag
I plan to return to more earnest writing tomorrow,...
January 2009
13 posts
1 tag
“Although spending at this level will reduce the assets more quickly, the goal of...”
– Bill Gates – 2009 Annual Letter: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Although his first annual letter was rambling and, in the way it was pimped up and prettified by a PR staff - self-indulgent, Bill Gates’ status report is a very useful review of the critically important work that the...
1 tag
Handling Rejection
Handling rejection constructively is one of the most important parts of prospecting for jobs or business. It is part of the job hunt exactly like it is part of any other activity with a long sales cycle. My reaction to rejection is a “work in progress” - it isn’t an aspect of business that comes very naturally for me. Yesterday, I received an email from a senior executive at...
In this economy, we're all entrepreneurs | from... →
“On the money” advice from a NYC VC about career building, entrepreneurship and the position of the job hunter in the current economy.
Career Change Then & Now (III)
Over the last five years, the change in how individuals use information technology has accelerated. This has made a huge impact in how one seeks jobs or business opportunities. During my last big search in the mid-90s, it was a big deal that I had email, the kind of PC on one’s desk was a constraint on what kind of tasks I could do, and communicating with large, widespread groups of...
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Career Change: Then and Now (II)
The business world and the labor force have changed very significantly since my last extended period looking for work or business opportunities in 1996-97.
Globalization of the world economy was underway, but the consequences were not yet as far reaching as now and the phenomenon was less-well understood. At that time, we were just a few years past the debate over NAFTA (actually, even now the...
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January 20, 2009
I began to be able to imagine this moment on Super Bowl Sunday, February 3, 2008. Barack Obama was already a sensation, having won the Iowa caucuses in January 2008. But Hillary Clinton had defied the polls and won the New Hampshire primaries. Obama won South Carolina, Clinton won Nevada (though, if memory serves, she got fewer delegates due to the Obama organization’s superior caucusing...
3 tags
Career Change: Then and Now
For the second time in my career, I find myself engaged in an extended career transition (first time was in 1996-7) and I will address a few posts about how the experience has changed over the past 12 years.
The circumstances are different now:
In 1996, I voluntarily left a secure government position because I wanted to work in a more dynamic field where my work would have more impact. Last...
3 tags
Man on Wire
This weekend our family watched the documentary film Man on Wire about the 1974 high-wire walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York. You can search online reviews of the film to read about its innovative mixing of fiction with documentary styles (the director structured it like an Ocean’s Eleven-style heist film) and its results in the ongoing 2008 film awards...
My Trouble with AAPL
continuations:
A while ago I started buying some shares in GOOG, AMZN and EBAY as they declined heavily. Those trades have worked out well (so far) and I feel good about owning companies that I believe still have a lot to gain from the secular move online (in the case of EBAY not so much from the core business as from Skype and PayPal). I have not been buying AAPL, despite the fact that I am...
3 tags
Link to a great resume tip →
This one is not, as advertised, just for software engineers and it’s also not just for people applying to work in start-ups/small companies. The current economic climate has turned even the largest corporations into start-ups as far as hiring practices are concerned. Lines that “sound good,” but don’t directly translate into a concrete value-add for the employer are...
2009 - Very Simply and with Hope
January 1 dawned very cold here in Brooklyn and I had committed to run in the traditional New Year’s Day run of my new running club. It was 15 degrees as I drove over to Prospect Park. I spent part of every previous winter for the past ten years in Russia: it’s funny how quickly the human organism becomes unaccustomed to real cold. Stretched and warmed up indoors for about an hour,...