- Cable and telecom companies just lost a huge court battle on net neutrality
The court verdict puts to rest — for now — a key question: Whether the Internet represents a vital communications platform that deserves to be regulated with the same scrutiny as the common networks of the past, such as the telephone system. Writing for the court, Judges David Tatel and Sri Srinivasan held that despite advances in technology, the underlying importance of the Internet to everyday communications and commerce makes it more similar to the phone system than not. Today, for example, consumers are accustomed to using not just the email accounts that their broadband provider gave them, but also using third-party services such as Gmail as well as Netflix, Amazon and Uber.
- What’s going on with IT hiring?
CompTIA, an industry group, said about 96,000 IT jobs were lost last month across all industries, not just the technology sector. That figure includes the impact of the approximately 37,000 telecommunications jobs sidelined by the Verizon strike, which was settled this month. But it was a rough month, by some estimates.
Analysts have been generally cautious this year about IT hiring trends. Although the unemployment rate for IT professionals is about half the national average of 4.7%, said CompTIA, some analysts use terms ranging from “modest” to “pre-recession” to describe IT hiring.
- The Psychology of Solitude: Being Alone Can Maximize Productivity, with Scott Barry Kaufman
- 4 Steps to Avoid ‘Death by Meeting’
Whether your meetings are derailed by the shiny object syndrome, or you get stuck in the weeds, the only person who can save you is you! That’s why, when I’m facilitating team events, I make sure that our agendas include business items as well as elements relevant to the team. That way, we weave in learning with business needs, giving team members an opportunity to practice and apply the skills they are learning.
What often happens, when a team gets stuck in the weeds or off track, is that team members start making eye contact with me: raising an eyebrow, in effect begging me to, “Get us out of here — we are stuck!” It always strikes me that it’s me, the guest facilitator, who is asked to save the day.
- Doth thou protest too much?
Many will applaud this effort to reign in what is seen as an out of control protest process. After all, the protest rate has grown some 45 percent during a period of time that total federal spending has dropped 25 percent. In 2001 there were about 700 individual protests filed with the GAO; in 2015 that number was over 2,500. Interestingly, of those protests on which GAO ultimately ruled, its “sustain rate” had dropped to 12 percent—from 18 percent just a few years earlier and 22 percent in 2001.
https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2016/06/03/insights-soloway-bid-protests.aspx
- How Google killed Nest and why acquisitions fail
I think the real problem is that when most companies do an acquisition they treat it almost like you and I would buy a car. They focus on the price and closing the deal after becoming interested in the firm’s products and/or services. But you don’t buy people, and a firm without the employees who made it a success is a failure in the making and worth a fraction of its assessed value. Part of the real cost of the acquisition is critical employee retention, and retention packages do a poor job of making people want to stay.
- Verizon to bid $3B for Yahoo’s core Internet business
First Verizon buys AOL, and now they are looking into buying Yahoo. Verizon is where all of your old embarrasing email addresses like (mustang_guy_1972_xx@yahoo.com) go to die.
http://www.cio.com/article/3080025/verizon-to-bid-3b-for-yahoo-s-core-internet-business.html
Photo: Isabella Jusková
