- The Age of Tech Superheroes Must End
Among these companies and their precursors, there are examples of smart founders who were able to use their power to help their companies grow sustainably. But they tend to be the exceptions that prove the rule. “Once a trend starts, then all founders want it, but I can count on three fingers the founders that should be in complete control of their companies with no governance or oversight,” says Sarah Cone, founder of venture capital firm Social Impact Capital.
Fortunately, the trend isn’t really catching on outside of Silicon Valley. In 2017, just 14% of companies went public with permanently unequal voting structures, according to data from the Council of Institutional Investors.
There are legitimate reasons—from the founder’s, if not necessarily the investor’s, perspective—why founders would want more control. Many serial entrepreneurs have had the experience of being pushed out of a previous company or forced to sell earlier than they would have liked. And for decades leading up to the previous tech-stock bubble, says Mr. Kedrosky, VCs had much more power than founders and were not afraid to use it. Even first-time founders have heard these stories, he adds.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-age-of-tech-superheroes-must-end-1528387420?ns=prod/accounts-wsj
- Young Workers No Longer Get the On-the-Job Training They Need — So They’re Finding It Elsewhere
According to Peter Capelli, director of The Wharton School’s Center for Human Resources, companies want workers they don’t have to educate, and his research has found that employers don’t train young workers like they used to.
In 1979, per Capelli, the average young worker received 2.5 weeks of training per year. By 1995, training time fell to just 11 hours.
More recent comparable data has been hard to find, says Capelli, but the Wharton professor says that by 2011 “only a fifth of employees reported receiving on-the-job training from their employers over the past five years.”
Also:
Since 2011, when Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, began to gain public attention, their popularity has grown exponentially. Last year, by one estimate, 23 million people signed up to take their first MOOC. All told, since 2011, more than 800 universities have offered over 9,000 courses to 81 million registered users, according to the same report.
- Does your job match your personality?
- Good News for Hustlers: Being Busy Could Actually Be Good for You
The researchers conducted a series of eight experiments and had the participants establish the ways that they were busy, by doing things such as asking them to write down the reasons why they had such a packed schedule, or telling the undergraduates involved in the study that data found they were busier than the students at neighboring schools.
The study looked at the ways that this feeling of busyness affected how the students made decisions about the foods they ate, whether they opted to exercise or relax and whether they chose to save money for retirement versus spending it. The researchers found that when people were influenced to see themselves as busy, it boosted their ability to have self-control.
- Skipping Your Lunch Breaks? Even Your Boss Wants You to Go out for a Bite, a New Study Says.
But, according to our research, bosses want their employees to get out for a break. So, there’s a real disconnect happening, because the vast majority (88 percent) of North American bosses in the study said they thought their employees would say they were encouraged to take a regular lunch break, but only 62 percent of employees actually felt encouraged.
Takeaway: Just as great coaches recognize the need for their players to recuperate in order to perform their best, your boss likely knows that your break helps, rather than hinders, your work. But it does seem that not every boss is communicating that idea in the most effective way.
Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash