So I had an evaluation the other day. My supervising editor, Bill, came in and we had a nice chat. I outlined my goals and described the obstacles I foresaw. For his part, he told me how he thought I could overcome those obstacles, and informed me of qualities management values. Overall I thought it was a useful exercise that left me …
Google gets into the cable-laying business (which I don’t think is quite as lucrative as the search-advertising business)
One of the most fascinating economic stories of the past decade has been how the hapless investors who poured billions of dollars into Global Crossing, Worldcom and the like paved the way for the success of Indian outsourcers, Web 2.0 bandwidth hogs and all manner of other innovative enterprises. These telcos (over)built a global …
Elections? Equal opportunity. Workplace? Not so much.
When I consider the narrowed field of Democratic presidential candidates, I don’t think that much about them in terms of race or gender. That, to me, is a huge development. Sure, those factors will loom in our final choice. But it’s not everything. And that shows how far we’ve come.
You’d think that if we’re considering a black man and …
The day classical music mattered
Classical music matters in my household. That’s because my husband, Chris, makes his living in that field, as a professional clarinet player.
Before I met Chris, I could not tell a French horn from a flugel horn, Mendelssohn from Mozart, Menuhin from Midori. Okay, I still can’t (but aren’t you impressed that I can spell them?). Like …
China’s economy continues to dominate in the polls, if not in reality
Another poll question on the economic power of nations, this time from Gallup (via Greg Mankiw):
“Which one of the following do you think is the leading economic power in the world today?”
China: 40 percent
The United States: 33 percent
Japan: 13 percent
The European Union: 7 percent
India: 2 percent
Russia: 2 percent
This is even …
When to disclose illness at work
Last week, my “mom” Marlene Kahan sent me a link to Lisa Belkin’s article in The New York Times: “I’m Ill, But Who Really Needs to Know?”
At first I thought it was an FYI forward; Marlene and I share many things, among them duels with our respective chronic illnesses that have deeply affected how we live and work. The article
…
The best jobs for 2008
There’s a lot of anxiety these days about job security. Maybe it’s the oncoming recession. Maybe it’s the presidential campaigns, which keep telling us we’re anxious about job security. Maybe it’s the job evaluation I’m having later today (for a workplace that shunned evaluations for years, suddenly we’re up to one a quarter). Whatever …
Back and significantly worse for the wear
So I’m back from skiing at (downhill) and near (cross country) Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks. The photo above is taken from somewhere around the top of the mountain. I’m pretty sure I took it right after making a couple of cell phone calls, because (a) I’m a total dork and (b) the tops of mountains are the only places in the …
My final post: Farewell, dear readers!
My colleague Andrea Sachs has a story in the Global Business section of this week’s magazine about Seth Godin’s latest book.
Godin is something of a character, a marketing guy who sells a ton of books largely by feeding people recycled common sense. I met him last year and asked him about that — why people perpetually want to be …
The price of a lottery
The Associated Press had a great piece of enterprise reporting earlier this week about how much money California could get for privatizing its lottery. Governor Schwarzenegger has been throwing around the figure $37 billion — a particularly nice number considering the state faces a $14.5 billion budgetary shortfall — but the AP got its …
The real cost of the Iraq war
The Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz, who is a professor up at Columbia University, swung by the office this morning for a meet-and-greet. Noble-Prize-winning… must be a nice way to be introduced.
Stiglitz was here to promote his soon-to-be-published book on the true cost of the Iraq war, which he and Linda Bilmes of Harvard …
Death of the American foreign correspondent
Who wants to graduate from J-school, toss some things in a suitcase and set off for a career covering the far reaches of the earth? Who would eschew the comforts of a desk in a midsize American city for the mountain trails of Viet Nam, the opium dens of Egypt, the crowded factories of China? Who wants to conduct interviews in another …