Above Average

Comic for January 18, 2013:

Working Hard

Comic Strip for January 3, 2013


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Microsoft Office Needed to Work at Google

From John Callaham … Irony alert: Microsoft Office skills needed for some of Google's jobs:

Earlier this week, we reported that Google's Amit Singh, the head of their Enterprise division, believes that the company can get 90 percent of the businesses that use Microsoft Office to start using their own Google Apps products for their productivity software needs. It's an ambitious goal, but before they achieve it, they might start looking into hiring people in their own company that have skills in Google Apps.

As GeekWire.com points out, Google has a number of currently open job positions that require people to have some experience in using various Microsoft Office software. Just one example is listed on Google's job website for a new Insights and Innovation Analyst in the Partner Solutions division. Under "preferred qualifications", the job listing states:

3 years experience analyzing large data sets; proficient with analytical and presentation tools, including Excel (mastering pivot tables, graphs, and functions) and PowerPoint.

Seven Days With Only an iPad

By Brian Proffitt on 7 days with an iPad (and only an iPad)

For a week I would shut down my Linux and Windows virtual machines and even my Android smartphone and use my iPad exclusively for all of my work and personal computing needs. There would be one caveat: I would still use the phone for the telephony functions alone, since it's the only cell phone I have. But I turned off all auto-updates on my mail and Twitter accounts to reduce the temptation to check those accounts on the phone.

With these restrictions in place, would I be able to manage the workload of a free-wheeling professional writer on my iPad -- and do efficiently enough to also juggle the summer schedules of three active daughters?

Proffitt's conclusion at the end of the week:

The strength of the iPad right now is the consumption of content, and there is no doubt that it can do that well. After a long week, I watched some remastered Star Trek episodes on Netflix and started reading 1776 on the Kindle app.

This is what the iPad is best at, to be sure. It's not that it can't do real work, though. You just have to have the right apps, the right hardware, and be willing to work around the interface's limitations as you go. It can be slower than a PC platform to input content, but not to the point where you go crazy. IN the end, a week with the iPad turned out to be a pretty productive week that enabled me to do everything I needed to accomplish, and get some entertainment in as well.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Blurring the Lines Between Our Work And Personal Lives

Interesting thought from Clay Shirky. Is it surprising that employees, students, faculty, etc spend time on Facebook, Twitter, e-mail or shopping online? I don't think so, when we've created an environment that allows "work" to invade their personal life, shouldn't we expect their personal lives to invade work? I'd love to be able to do my job without looking at e-mail at night or on the weekends, but we've created an expectation that we're always available for work.

MANAGING MILLENNIALS

Clay Shirky in McKinsey Quarterly on managing millennials:

A famous observation about the net generation, the millennials, is, “They’re doing Facebook at their desks on a Tuesday morning,” which is certainly true. One of the reasons for that is that they’re also being asked to use PowerPoint in their homes on a Saturday afternoon. If you went to any manager and said, “Would you offer your 25-year-olds the following bargain: no more Facebook at work, and in return for which, I won’t call you after 6 PM or on weekends or ask you to watch e-mail.” I don’t think the managers would make that deal.

I don't disagree, but it's not only them being asked to do same.