News You Can Use: 9/5/2018

The Source: Shrinking Family

  • Amazon becomes world’s second company to be valued at $1tn

    On Tuesday, a rise in the share price of Amazon, which is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the US, briefly took it above the trillion-dollar watermark for the first time.
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    Bezos has become the world’s richest man in the process, with a net worth estimated at more than $167bn on Tuesday, according to Forbes.

    Amazon went public at $18 a share in 1997 – on Tuesday those shares hit $2,050, pushing the value of the whole company over $1tn. Amazon ended the day valued at $995bn, just short of its new record.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/04/amazon-becomes-worlds-second-1tn-company

  • Why work has failed us: Because it’s making it impossible to start a family

    It now costs $31,000 more (adjusted for inflation) to raise a child from infancy to the age of 18 than it did in 1960. Between 1985 and 2011 alone, the cost of childcare went up by 70%, even though wages barely grew. Given that the cost of food, diapers, transportation, and housing has either gone down or stayed the same, this increase largely comes down to the ballooning cost of paying for other people to look after our children.

    This was the exact same period in which women began entering the workforce in far greater numbers. Between 1962 and 2000, women’s labor force participation increased from 37% to 61%, leading to an estimated $2 trillion in economic gains. But in a disconcerting twist, women’s workforce participation actually started declining between 2000 to 2016, dipping from 60.7% to 57.2%. Pew Research suggests that the rising cost of childcare is likely responsible for the increase in stay-at-home moms over the last decades.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90223475/american-childcare-is-an-expensive-nightmare-is-it-fixable

  • A mental hack for surviving bad bosses
  • Sheryl Sandberg’s New Job Is to Fix Facebook’s Reputation—and Her Own

    Now, Ms. Sandberg’s mandate is to spend a majority of her time on safety and security vulnerabilities. She formed a SWAT team to do what she and other Facebookers had struggled with when faced with a crisis: bridge the gap between the technical and business sides of the company to act decisively. The new team makes recommendations to the group of Facebook’s top executives that meet every Friday—known internally as the M-team—with Ms. Sandberg running the show, according to a person familiar with the operations. The shift “from reactive to proactive detection is a big change,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in August.

    Many of the changes that are being put in place to clean up the Facebook platform will be expensive and could have an impact on growth, putting a brake on the ad-revenue machine that Ms. Sandberg built. In July, when Facebook reported that a surprise slowdown in revenue growth for the second quarter was likely to continue along with an unexpected increase in costs for security and privacy, investors shaved almost $120 billion in value from the company’s valuation—the biggest one-day loss ever for a U.S.-listed company.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/sheryl-sandberg-leans-into-a-gale-of-bad-news-at-facebook-1536085230

  • Consider these things before jumping ship with your coworkers

    Furthermore, if you’re generally happy at work and have a bunch of colleagues leaving, that could serve as an opportunity for you to take over some of their responsibilities and prove what a valuable asset you are to the company. Being that person who shows those incoming new hires the ropes can also help you stand out to your employer and perhaps pave the way to a promotion.

    On the other hand, if you’re not necessarily in love with your job and don’t see a compelling reason to stay, you might consider jumping ship along with your colleagues. This especially holds true if your work is collaborative in nature, and you feel that losing those coworkers will substantially impact day-to-day life at the office.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90228545/consider-these-things-before-jumping-ship-with-your-coworkers

News You Can Use: 1/4/2017

  • Ethical Sourcing: Do Consumers and Companies Really Care?

    According to Steve Polski, senior director of responsible supply chains and sustainability at Cargill, consumers consistently say they want more sustainable products and services but are often unwilling to pay a premium. Polski has spent years researching this topic, and he has found that consumers care about a company’s sustainability and ethical sourcing efforts and may reward it with brand loyalty, but they generally don’t want to pay more for the products.

    Also:

    The survey also found just how much consumers said they were willing to pay for ethically and sustainable sourced products. Thirty percent said they would pay up to 5% more and 28% said they would pay up to 20% more for such products. A quarter of consumers also said they actively sought sourcing origin information when they made their most recent purchase.

    http://spendmatters.com/2016/12/26/ethical-critical-strategic-sorts-sourcing-supplier-management-best-posts-2016/

  • Why Your Annoying Boss Micromanages You

    The Science of Us explains that, like most people, when you feel powerless or helpless, your first instinct is to exert control over the things you do have some control over, and if you’re a boss or manager, that might mean your employees. While we know that most people work best when they’re given independence and autonomy, and when managers trust their teams to make the best calls when they need to, well, sometimes good old psychology just takes hold.

    http://lifehacker.com/why-your-annoying-boss-micromanages-you-1790380406

  • Simon Sinek on Millennials in the Workplace

    This fellow is a little smug, but he makes some really interesting points.
  • 3 Predictions For Apple’s Supply Chain In 2017

    China isn’t the only Asian country Apple could continue to work with. The Wall Street Journal reported that it may manufacture products in India and could be currently working toward a deal for this with the Indian government.

    However, this seems to be more of a matter of speculation and deduction than pure fact, since Apple did not comment and Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, openly said that there were no plans to start producing in the country earlier this year.

    Forbes contributor Tim Worstall also pointed out that most of the benefit would go to Apple, with the Indian economy itself not gaining too much from the company’s presence there. This sits in contrast to Apple’s work in China, which also benefits the country in addition to the business’ sales themselves.

    http://www.strategicsourceror.com/2016/12/3-predictions-for-apples-supply-chain.html

  • 7 things Silicon Valley needs to stop doing in 2017

    Stop acquiring companies and products just to kill them:
    Some of the greatest apps and sites ever created were acquired as they were rising in popularity, then terminated. Remember Posterous, Pownce, Dodgeball, reMail, Nextstop and Friendfeed? These were all innovative, powerful, well-designed apps or services that were terminated on purpose because they were so good.

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/3153884/it-industry/7-things-silicon-valley-needs-to-stop-doing-in-2017.html

Photo: Anchor Lee