job satisfaction

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The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Caplan

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, assortative mating, behavioural economics, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, deliberate practice, deskilling, disruptive innovation, do what you love, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, experimental subject, fear of failure, Flynn Effect, future of work, George Akerlof, ghettoisation, hive mind, job satisfaction, Kenneth Arrow, Khan Academy, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market bubble, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Peter Thiel, price discrimination, profit maximization, publication bias, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, school choice, selection bias, Silicon Valley, statistical model, Steven Pinker, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, trickle-down economics, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, yield curve, zero-sum game

When you compare workers with equal incomes but unequal educations, education has no clear effect on job satisfaction.26 Some researchers actually find job satisfaction goes down as education goes up.27 One plausible reason: education raises expectations. College graduates are harder to please because they compare themselves to fellow college grads and feel entitled to a “good job.” But on balance, we should stick to the moderate position that—income aside—education has zero average effect on job satisfaction. Happiness. Better-educated people are, on average, happier.28 Does education really turn you into a happier person?

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In one way, then, social returns are more straightforward than private returns. The byzantine tax code and patchwork welfare state are distractions from what counts: production.6 Job satisfaction, happiness, and the joy of learning. Though the better-educated have greater job satisfaction and happiness, the reason is largely material: the educated enjoy their jobs and lives more because they make more money, not because their careers feel more fulfilling.7 Does education have any independent impact on job satisfaction or happiness? While some researchers detect mild benefits, others discover that—money aside—the well-educated feel worse about their lives.

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When average income and education rise, status attainment requires more income and education (Caplan 2014b). 10. Comparisons first regress job satisfaction (SATJOB) and happiness (HAPPY) on a constant, demographics, year, real personal income (log of CONRINC), and education. An extra year of education raises job satisfaction by .007 steps on a 4-point scale, and happiness by .015 steps on a 3-point scale. After adding CLASS to the explanatory variables, however, an extra year of education has .000 effect on job satisfaction, and raises happiness by only .005. 11. See, e.g., Sapolsky 2005, Tamashiro et al. 2005, and Blanchard et al. 1993, and broader discussions in Adler, Boyce, et al. 1994, pp. 20–21, and Smith 1999, pp. 163–65. 12.

Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference by William MacAskill

barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Branko Milanovic, Cal Newport, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, clean water, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, experimental subject, follow your passion, food miles, immigration reform, income inequality, index fund, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, job automation, job satisfaction, Lean Startup, M-Pesa, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microcredit, Nate Silver, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, randomized controlled trial, self-driving car, Skype, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, William MacAskill, women in the workforce

which some psychologists have argued is the key to having genuinely satisfying experiences: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1990). There are other factors that also matter to your job satisfaction: See the information and references cited in “Predictors of Job Satisfaction,” 80,000 Hours, August 28, 2014, https://80000hours.org/career-guide/framework/job-satisfaction/job-satisfaction-research/#predictors-of-job-satisfaction. He traveled in India: See Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 39–50. while Jobs and Wozniak were trying to sell circuit boards to hobbyists: Jeffrey S.

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Personal fit Personal fit is about how good you’ll be in a particular job. An important part of this is whether you’ll be happy doing the work. People often want job satisfaction as an end in itself, but it’s also a crucial factor when thinking about impact: if you’re not happy at work, you’ll be less productive and more likely to burn out, resulting in less impact in the long-term. However, we need to be careful when thinking about how to find a job you’ll love. There’s a lot of feel-good misinformation out there, and the real route to job satisfaction is somewhat counterintuitive. On June 12, 2005, Steve Jobs stood in front of the graduating class at Stanford and gave them his advice on what they should do with their lives: You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever—because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

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If you focus only on what you’re currently passionate about, then you risk committing to projects that you soon find you’re no longer interested in. This takes us to our third point against passion, which is that the best predictors of job satisfaction are features of the job itself, rather than facts about personal passion. Instead of trying to figure out which career to pursue based on whatever you happen to be most interested in today, you should start by looking for work with certain important features. If you find that, passion will follow. Research shows that the most consistent predictor of job satisfaction is engaging work, which can be broken down into five factors (this is known in psychology as the job characteristics theory): Independence—To what extent do you have control over how you go about your work?

Shorter: Work Better, Smarter, and Less Here's How by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

8-hour work day, airport security, Albert Einstein, behavioural economics, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Brexit referendum, business process, call centre, carbon footprint, centre right, classic study, cloud computing, colonial rule, death from overwork, disruptive innovation, Erik Brynjolfsson, future of work, game design, gig economy, Henri Poincaré, IKEA effect, iterative process, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, Johannes Kepler, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, means of production, neurotypical, PalmPilot, performance metric, race to the bottom, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, tech worker, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, women in the workforce, work culture , young professional, zero-sum game

Giving people more control over the physical design of their workplaces increases their job satisfaction and productivity. In one experiment, researchers put people in one of three offices: a bare-bones minimalist office, an office that had been decorated for them with some plants and pictures, and an office that they could decorate themselves. They found that people who got to decorate their own offices felt better about their employers, said they were more physically comfortable, had higher rates of job satisfaction, and were more productive than the other groups. The presence of decor had a slight positive effect on productivity, but being able to decorate your space had an even bigger effect.

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Could productivity gains and reports of increased happiness at companies that shorten their workweeks be examples of the Hawthorne effect and thus wear off soon? Fortunately, some of the companies that switched to four-day weeks have actually measured employee happiness and job satisfaction over time. When I visited Synergy Vision in London, managing director Eileen Gallagher had just compiled the results of their latest job satisfaction survey, which they had conducted throughout the company’s six-month trial with four-day weeks. As she pointed out to me, happiness levels started out high, then actually dipped in the second month as people struggled with the reality of figuring out how to make four-day weeks work (something you wouldn’t expect to see with the Hawthorne effect).

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University of Auckland professor Jarrod Haar surveyed executives and employees before and after the trial. He found that team psychosocial capital and cohesion—both of which predict the ability of groups to work together productively, as well as job satisfaction and well-being—were higher after the four-day-week trial than before, as well as team creativity. Employees reported higher readiness to change, job satisfaction, and engagement, and improved capacity to achieve work-life balance—all of which further boosted workplace happiness. Shortening the workweek can also improve the lives and well-being of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship can present substantial mental health challenges.

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere by Tsedal Neeley

Airbnb, Boycotts of Israel, call centre, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, discrete time, Donald Trump, future of work, global pandemic, iterative process, job satisfaction, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, lockdown, mass immigration, natural language processing, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, Silicon Valley, social distancing

In successful teams, people learn and feel that other members care about their well-being or individual growth as a function of being on the team. Teamwork, therefore, offers opportunities for each person to expand their knowledge, acquire new skills, and be exposed to new perspectives. Even if these opportunities don’t have a direct effect on the team’s measurable results, individual growth often leads to increased job satisfaction that in turn enhances the team’s productivity. In the absence of this criterion, people can develop negative sentiments. Nearly everyone has at one time or another worked in a situation where they feel that they are not developing and that their emotions are unmet within the team; consequently, their engagement is likely to diminish.

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These growing trends piqued the interest of management scholars who wanted to figure out whether the lived experience of remote workers was better or worse than that of their on-site colleagues. One study hypothesized that those who worked away from the office would show an increase in measures of productivity because they no longer had to endure the time and stress involved with commutes and that the convenient work arrangements would heighten people’s sense of job satisfaction, provided they had good relationships with their teammates. The study’s hypothesis proved correct. Remote workers loved their logistical conveniences. No more anxiety about getting to early morning meetings on time. No more staring at long traffic lights or dodging impatient drivers recklessly switching lanes in a traffic jam.

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REMOTE WORKERS NEED AUTONOMY The hallmark of remote work success is the ability to self-direct and capitalize on the gift of managing your own work processes. Hackman’s insight on the importance of individual growth extends to remote workers’ need to choose where and how they work. In fact, a through line across decades of studies into remote work identifies autonomy as pivotal to job satisfaction and performance. By autonomy, I mean the ability to self-govern. In remote work, this translates to flexibility in the timing and location of work. With the exception of periods that call for coordinated efforts with teammates, having control over where, when, and how you work matters a great deal—and for good reason.

What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society by Paul Verhaeghe

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Alan Greenspan, autism spectrum disorder, Berlin Wall, call centre, capitalist realism, cognitive dissonance, deskilling, epigenetics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Gregor Mendel, income inequality, invisible hand, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Louis Pasteur, market fundamentalism, meritocracy, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, post-industrial society, Richard Feynman, Silicon Valley, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, The Spirit Level, ultimatum game, working poor

The success of the reform wasn’t just due to the fact that hard work ensured relatively rapid promotion and pay rises — because, from a certain level on, salary ceases to be an incentive.7 From a psychological perspective, academics mainly felt good because they finally had control over their own careers, being protected from nepotism, backroom deals, and other shady practices. This did wonders for their self-esteem, which in turn increased their motivation to work, along with their job satisfaction. On top of that, they identified with and felt loyal towards the organisation that made this possible. Within the span of a single generation, however, this situation changed dramatically, with the result that, nowadays, university staff, especially if they are young, feel that they have very little influence over their careers.

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A meritocratic system is unquestionably beneficial at the outset. As the manager of her own life, the individual obtains more say over her work, and is paid better, too. Her loyalty to the enterprise for which she works and which is offering her these opportunities accordingly grows. Not only does her job satisfaction increase, but also her sense of responsibility, both towards her own work and towards the enterprise as a whole. She is part of it; it is her company, school, or hospital, and she’s happy to work a few extra hours when necessary. Morale improves, and morals are enhanced. Working for an enterprise like this is a pleasant experience.

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Human-resources policy was rationalised, with individual and quantifiable merits gradually taking centre stage. Responsibility without power is a formula that is bound to create trouble, and that is exactly what has happened. Just about any psychological study of employee motivation shows the negative impact this has on commitment, motivation, and job satisfaction, as well as on the quality of the work done. In the pre-digital age, directors took policy decisions, and plans filtered down from headquarters to the various branches and departments. This process took months, and had the advantage of involving the lower echelons. Very often, modifications to plans were proposed further down, to tie in better with the reality of the work floor, usually without senior management even having to be consulted.

Capital Without Borders by Brooke Harrington

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, British Empire, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, classic study, complexity theory, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, diversified portfolio, emotional labour, equity risk premium, estate planning, eurozone crisis, family office, financial innovation, ghettoisation, Great Leap Forward, haute couture, high net worth, income inequality, information asymmetry, Joan Didion, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Roose, liberal capitalism, mega-rich, mobile money, offshore financial centre, prudent man rule, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, Robert Shiller, South Sea Bubble, subprime mortgage crisis, the market place, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, upwardly mobile, wealth creators, web of trust, Westphalian system, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

the answer is given as follows: “STEP members spend their professional lives working with families and tackling real problems.”101 For professionals whose counterparts in finance and law often spend more time engaging with papers than with people, being face-to-face and solving highly individualized problems (rather than routine or standardized ones) provide important sources of meaning and pleasure to daily work. Research on other occupational groups confirms that job satisfaction is linked to a strong sense of purpose, meaning, and engagement, net of salary levels.102 There are, of course, less noble motives for wealth managers’ job satisfaction. Bruce, the American working in Geneva, said that his primary source of job satisfaction was the “intellectual challenge of playing cat and mouse with tax authorities around the world.” The appeal of this kind of multidimensional international problem solving may be why the profession lures people from academia: of the sixty-five participants in the sample, three were former professors, in the fields of law, literature, and journalism.

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Defining and defending the boundaries of their expertise, as described above, is a matter not just of capturing fees but of positioning within a hierarchy.76 This competition for rank is one way that professions establish themselves as a field of practice and contribute to “the institutional design of the social order.”77 To explore these dimensions of contemporary wealth management, this section will examine salaries, job satisfaction, and nonmonetary sources of compensation for practitioners. Prestige, pay, and positioning Among all the fields that have emerged in the modern division of labor, finance dominates in many ways, both through its transnational reach and through its command of payment and privilege.78 While salaries are always an important component of professional status, they are accorded particular importance within finance.79 By that measure, wealth management occupies an intermediate space in the field: not the lowest-paid, but nowhere near the high end.

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Wealth management, while it is a part of the financial services industry, is nevertheless very different from the rest of the field because of its path-dependent ties to the ethic of knightly service, loyalty, and self-effacement. But what was once a masculine ideal linked to the code of chivalry is—somewhat ironically—becoming associated with feminine behavior in contemporary practice. Time and job satisfaction Although wealth managers are paid less than many of their comparably skilled peers in finance, the participants in this study noted many nonmonetary forms of compensation that make the trade-off worthwhile to them. For one thing, most wealth managers work a forty-hour week, which is quite low compared to others in financial services.100 This appeals to men and women alike.

Why We Work by Barry Schwartz

Atul Gawande, call centre, deskilling, do well by doing good, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Higgs boson, if you build it, they will come, invisible hand, job satisfaction, meta-analysis, Paradox of Choice, scientific management, Silicon Valley, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Toyota Production System

So every worker spends half of his or her waking life deprived. Perhaps the pay compensates, but I don’t think so. And existing research bears me out. In a comprehensive article about the significance of salary to job satisfaction, Timothy Judge and colleagues reviewed the results of eighty-six studies that included about fifteen thousand employees. Their analysis of the data from all these studies combined suggested that level of pay had very little effect on either job satisfaction or pay satisfaction. So it is unlikely that pay compensates for routinized, meaningless work. More likely, such workers are resigned to living lives in which their work is nothing but drudgery.

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A company starts to have trouble, because of low profits, high costs, and poor customer service. This leads to efforts to cut costs and make the company “lean and mean”: less training, salary reductions, layoffs, part-time workers, a freeze on hiring and promotion. These changes lead to decreased worker motivation to excel, decreased effort, even worse customer service, less job satisfaction and more turnover, which in turn leads to more trouble for the business. In short, you take discretion, engagement, and meaning out of work and people get less satisfaction from doing it. As they get less satisfaction from doing it, they do it less well. As they do it less well, their supervisors take even more discretion away.

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New York Times Magazine, February 23, 1986: 44–47, 58. Hirsch, F. Social Limits to Growth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, 1976.* Hodson, R. Dignity at Work. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.* Judge, T. A., R. F. Piccolo, N. P. Podsakoff, J. C. Shaw, and B. L. Rich. “The Relationship Between Pay and Job Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis of the Literature.” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 77 (2010): 157–67. Jussim, L. “Self-fulfilling Prophecies: A Theoretical and Integrative Review.” Psychological Review, 93 (1986): 429–45. ——. “Teacher Expectations: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, Perceptual Biases, and Accuracy.”

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard by Fredrik Erixon, Bjorn Weigel

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American ideology, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, BRICs, Burning Man, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, classic study, Clayton Christensen, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, commodity super cycle, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, dark matter, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, financial engineering, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, George Gilder, global supply chain, global value chain, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Herman Kahn, high net worth, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, industrial robot, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Martin Wolf, mass affluent, means of production, middle-income trap, Mont Pelerin Society, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, Peter Thiel, Potemkin village, precautionary principle, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, Productivity paradox, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subprime mortgage crisis, technological determinism, technological singularity, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transportation-network company, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, University of East Anglia, unpaid internship, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, Yogi Berra

The Conference Board, an economics consultancy, suggests that dissatisfaction with work in the United States has been growing for several decades and that a majority of the workforce is now dissatisfied rather than satisfied with their jobs.3 Academic research confirms that job satisfaction in the US has been on a downward trend since the 1970s.4 This trend challenges the usual perceptions about what drives job satisfaction, such as pay or job security. While they are important, surveys suggest that job satisfaction, in the United States at least, is also linked to economic dynamism and opportunity. Although workers are materially better off today than they were in the 1960s, and have safer working environments, many are afforded fewer economic opportunities and consequently have lower aspirations.

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Several chapters will discuss developments in other economies than those in the West, but only when it is relevant for our discussion about Western capitalism. In this book, references to the Western world, Western economies, the West, or similar expressions mean North America and Western and Central Europe. 3.Cheng et al., “Job Satisfaction.” 4.Blanchflower and Oswald, “Well-Being, Insecurity, and the Decline of American Job Satisfaction.” 5.Crabtree, “Worldwide, 13% of Employees Are Engaged at Work.” 6.Dreyer and Hindley, “Trade in Information Technology Goods.” 7.The Economist, “Planet of the Phones.” 8.Bogost, “The Secret History of the Robot Car.” 9.The “second half of the chessboard” is an expression by Ray Kurzweil to explain the power of exponential growth.

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Figure 8.1 Firm entry and exit rates in the United States, 1977–2012 Diminishing turnover rates are an unhealthy sign because, aside from bringing new technologies, new firms are the ones that challenge incumbents, and – usually – create better-paid jobs. Their value for the economy is shown through increasing productivity growth. But, as Western economies mature, people tend to stay hired in old firms. While that might be appealing to some, especially if job satisfaction is good, it is a recipe for a society distancing itself from a dynamic economy. Old firms hired about 80 percent of the total US workforce in 2012 compared to 65 percent in 1987, while the workforce employed by start-ups decreased sharply.24 Entrepreneurship is also on an aging trend. In 1989, almost 11 percent of young households (aged 30 and younger) owned shares in private companies; in 2013 that number was down to less than 4 percent.

The Job: The Future of Work in the Modern Era by Ellen Ruppel Shell

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 3D printing, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, big-box store, blue-collar work, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, company town, computer vision, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, deskilling, digital divide, disruptive innovation, do what you love, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, emotional labour, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, follow your passion, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, game design, gamification, gentrification, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, human-factors engineering, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial research laboratory, industrial robot, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, job satisfaction, John Elkington, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, move fast and break things, new economy, Norbert Wiener, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, precariat, Quicken Loans, Ralph Waldo Emerson, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban renewal, Wayback Machine, WeWork, white picket fence, working poor, workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, young professional, zero-sum game

as many as 92 percent of US workers Robert P. Quinn, Graham L. Staines, and Margaret R. McCullough, “Job Satisfaction: Is There a Trend?,” Manpower Research Monograph No. 30, US Department of Labor, 1974, https://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/​dis/​infoserv/​isrpub/​pdf/​Jobsati­sfaction_3674_.PDF. fewer than half of all Americans “2016 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement: Executive Summary,” Society for Human Resource Management, 2016, https://www.shrm.org/​hr-today/​trends-and-foreca­sting/​research-and-surveys/​Documents/​2016-Employee-Job-Satisfaction-and-Engagement-Report-Executive-Summary.pdf. The vast majority Amy Adkins, “Employee Engagement in U.S.

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Surveys show that in the 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s—when many Americans labored in factories, and when fewer employers offered “meaningful” jobs—as many as 92 percent of US workers reported being satisfied with their jobs. And not all respondents were satisfied for the same reasons. White-collar workers—a small minority at the time—rated challenging work as the most important factor in job satisfaction. Blue-collar workers—who were most workers at the time—prioritized financial reward. Blue-collar workers also assigned greater importance than did white-collar workers to relationships with coworkers, duration of work hours, fringe benefits, and job security. Basically, blue-collar workers were far less concerned with being challenged than they were with job security, working conditions, and relationships.

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Though not all workers benefited from these policies, and many full-time workers still earned a poverty wage, conditions had improved for millions of American workers. And while many if not most workers might not have felt “self-actualized,” or even challenged by their jobs, they did feel a sense of security and belonging that made them claim to be satisfied with their working lives. In the 1980s, job satisfaction in the United States began the steady decline from which it has yet to recover. Since the turn of the century through this writing, fewer than half of all Americans claim to be satisfied with their jobs—giving low marks to such factors as compensation and benefit levels, opportunity for advancement, treatment by supervisors, training opportunities, and job security, among other things.

Puppet 3 Beginner's Guide by John Arundel

business logic, cloud computing, Debian, DevOps, job automation, job satisfaction, Lao Tzu, Larry Wall, Network effects, SpamAssassin

ssh module / Time for action – deploying an SSH configuration file STRING argument / Substitutions substitutions / Substitutions substrings, comparisions / Substrings sudoprivileges, managing with / Managing privileges with sudo sudo command / sudo sudoers filedeploying / Time for action – deploying a sudoers file syntax / Time for action – deploying a sudoers file syntaxchecking / Syntax checking sysadmintasks / A day in the life of a sysadmin job satisfaction / Job satisfaction T tasksscheduling / Scheduled tasks templateusing / Using templates Nginx virtual host / Time for action – templating an Nginx virtual host inline templates / Inline templates about / Templates template function / What just happened? text substitution / Text substitution U unless attribute / Running commands selectively unless command / Running commands selectively unless statement / Unless statements usercreating / Time for action – creating a user, What just happened?

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Introduction to Puppet The problem Configuration management A day in the life of a sysadmin Keeping the configuration synchronized Repeating changes across many servers Self-updating documentation Coping with different platforms Version control and history Solving the problem Reinventing the wheel A waste of effort Transferable skills Configuration management tools Infrastructure as code Dawn of the devop Job satisfaction The Puppet advantage Welcome aboard The Puppet way Growing your network Cloud scaling What is Puppet? The Puppet language Resources and attributes Summary Configuration management What Puppet does The Puppet advantage Scaling The Puppet language 2. First steps with Puppet What you'll need Time for action – preparing for Puppet Time for action – installing Puppet Your first manifest How it works Applying the manifest What just happened?

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It can mean sysadmins who happily turn their hand to writing code when needed, or developers who don't fear the command line, or it can simply mean the people for whom the distinction is no longer useful. Devops write code, herd servers, build apps, scale systems, analyze outages, and fix bugs. With the advent of CM systems, devs and ops are now all just people who work with code. Job satisfaction Being a sysadmin, in the traditional sense, is not usually a very exciting job. Instead of getting to apply your experience and ingenuity to make things better, faster, and more reliable, you spend a lot of time just fixing problems, and making manual configuration changes that could really be done by a machine.

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future by Julia Hobsbawm

8-hour work day, Airbnb, augmented reality, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cal Newport, call centre, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Graeber, death from overwork, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, digital nomad, driverless car, emotional labour, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Greensill Capital, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Ocado, pensions crisis, remote working, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snow Crash, social distancing, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Upton Sinclair, WeWork, work culture

See also Ria Patel, ‘Arup’s New Hybrid Work Model Allows 6,000 UK Employees to Choose Their Working Days Across a Seven-Day Week in New Era for Flexibly Working’, Arup, 20 May 2021, https://www.arup.com/news-and-events/arups-new-hybrid-work-model-allows-6000-uk-employees-to-choose-their-working-days 7. Sara Bean, ‘Digital Mobility to Work Anytime, Anywhere is Key to Job Satisfaction’, Workplace Insight, 26 May 2016, https://workplaceinsight.net/ability-work-anytime-anywhere-now-key-job-satisfaction/ 8. Mark Bergen, ‘Google Wants People in Office, Despite Productivity Gains at Home’, Bloomberg, 15 July 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-15/google-googl-wants-employees-to-return-to-office-despite-productivity-gains 9.

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Loading people up with impossible deadlines or heavy-handed approaches is wrong and ultimately counter-productive. It creates ill will, toxicity, and often a backlash. Research by leadership academic Amanda Goodall clearly links boss competence with well-being, as does McKinsey research which states: ‘relationships with management are the top factor in employees’ job satisfaction, which in turn is the second most important determinant of employees’ overall wellbeing’.12 An example of where this can all go horribly wrong is Twitter’s appointment of Dantley Davis in 2019 as head of design, which was supposed to shake-up his teams with what the New York Times quoted him as saying was ‘tough love’.13 They reported on the effects of this approach: Mr Davis, the company’s new vice president of design, asked employees to go around the room, complimenting and critiquing one another.

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World Health Organisation, ‘Occupational Health: Stress at the Workplace’, 19 October 2020, https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/ccupational-health-stress-at-the-workplace 9. 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, https://www.edelman.com/trust/2021-trust-barometer 10. ‘Autonomy in the Workplace Has Positive Effects on Well-Being and Job Satisfaction, Study Finds’, University of Birmingham, 24 April 2017, https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2017/04/autonomy-workplace.aspx 11. See ‘The Great Resignation: Why People Are Leaving Their Jobs in Growing Numbers’, NPR, 22 October 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1048332481/the-great-resignation-why-people-are-leaving-their-jobs-in-growing-numbers; EY Study, ‘More Than Half of Employees Globally Would Quit Their Jobs if Not Provided Post-Pandemic Flexibility’, 21 May 2021, https://www.ey.com/en_ro/news/2021/05/ey-study--more-than-half-of-employees-globally-would-quit-their- 12.

GDP: The World’s Most Powerful Formula and Why It Must Now Change by Ehsan Masood

Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, biodiversity loss, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, energy security, European colonialism, financial engineering, government statistician, happiness index / gross national happiness, income inequality, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Mahbub ul Haq, mass immigration, means of production, Meghnad Desai, Mohammed Bouazizi, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, statistical model, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, zoonotic diseases

Masood’s book helps raise those questions and others in a thought provoking manner. That’s much needed in every endeavor these days, and needed in few places more than in the economics profession.” — Simon Constable, Forbes “In lively prose, Masood argues that GDP is flawed because it ignores volunteering, housework, environmental degradation, job satisfaction, and income inequality.” — Kirkus Reviews “An interesting book. Masood doesn’t merely criticize the overreliance on GDP: he also explores ongoing efforts to develop a satisfactory substitute or supplement that would yield a more accurate picture of economic activity and its effects.” — Foreign Affairs “Masood contends that GDP is a bill of goods the developed world foisted on emerging nations.

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That is because it is not set up to recognize important aspects of our lives that are not captured by the acts of spending and investing. There is no room in GDP for volunteering or housework, for example; nor does it recognize that there is value in community or in time spent with families. More measurable things such as damage to our environment are also left out, as is job satisfaction. GDP doesn’t even measure the state of jobs. Greenspan’s was by no means a lone voice cautioning against reading too much into GDP beyond what it says about the state of production, or spending, or incomes. From the earliest days, its inventors, including Simon Kuznets and the British economist John Maynard Keynes, understood that it is not really a measure of prosperity, and Kuznets in particular became skeptical of the way in which his invention was being used as a proxy for this.

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The New York Times summed up the Census Bureau’s finding with the headline in its September 16, 2014, edition: “You Can’t Feed a Family with G.D.P.” GDP hides other problems too. In spite of repeated criticism and from much earlier times, it has consistently failed to value volunteering. Nor does it value housework, job satisfaction, time with friends and family, or other means through which we experience quality of life. GDP also fails to include any measure of the economic impact of environmental degradation. For example, countries that are poor in an economic sense but rich in other ways, such as an abundance of plant and animal species, known as biodiversity, will rank low in the GDP tables.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, behavioural economics, call centre, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dean Kamen, deliberate practice, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, functional fixedness, game design, George Akerlof, Isaac Newton, Jean Tirole, job satisfaction, knowledge worker, longitudinal study, performance metric, profit maximization, profit motive, Results Only Work Environment, scientific management, side project, TED Talk, the built environment, Tony Hsieh, transaction costs, zero-sum game

In 2004, Deci and Ryan, along with Paul Baard of Fordham University, carried out a study of workers at an American investment bank. The three researchers found greater job satisfaction among employees whose bosses offered autonomy support. These bosses saw issues from the employee's point of view, gave meaningful feedback and information, provided ample choice over what to do and how to do it, and encouraged employees to take on new projects. The resulting enhancement in job satisfaction, in turn, led to higher performance on the job. What's more, the benefits that autonomy confers on individuals extend to their organizations.

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Yet too many businesses remain woefully behind the science. Most twenty-first-century notions of management presume that, in the end, people are pawns rather than players. British economist Francis Green, to cite just one example, points to the lack of individual discretion at work as the main explanation for declining productivity and job satisfaction in the UK. Management still revolves largely around supervision, if-then rewards, and other forms of control. That's true even of the kinder, gentler Motivation 2.1 approach that whispers sweetly about things like empowerment and flexibility. Indeed, just consider the very notion of empowerment.

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This cuts commuting time for staff, removes them from physical monitoring, and provides far greater autonomy over how they do their jobs. The American airline JetBlue was one of the first to try this approach. From its launch in 2000, JetBlue has relied on telephone customer service employees who work at home. And from its launch, JetBlue has earned customer service rankings far ahead of its competitors. Productivity and job satisfaction are generally higher in homeshoring than in conventional arrangements in part because employees are more comfortable and less monitored at home. But it's also because this autonomy-centered approach draws from a deeper pool of talent. Many homeshore employees are parents, students, retirees, and people with disabilities those who want to work, but need to do it their own way.

Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? by David G. Blanchflower

90 percent rule, active measures, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Clapham omnibus, collective bargaining, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, driverless car, estate planning, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, George Akerlof, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, John Bercow, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Nate Silver, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, obamacare, oil shock, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, p-value, Panamax, pension reform, Phillips curve, plutocrats, post-materialism, price stability, prisoner's dilemma, quantitative easing, rent control, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, urban planning, working poor, working-age population, yield curve

Thinking about the next twelve months, how likely do you think it is that you will lose your job or be laid off—very likely, fairly likely, not too likely, or not at all likely? (variable = joblose) I simply coded the job satisfaction score from 1 to 4, with 4 = very satisfied. The score varied markedly from those who said job loss was not at all likely (3.42), not too likely (3.21), fairly likely (3.05), and very likely (3.04). Job satisfaction is thus higher if your job is secure. Conversely, job insecurity hurts as it lowers job satisfaction. The decline in income is not the only thing that hurts; having a job conveys higher self-esteem. Insecurity lowers job satisfaction. It is not just the unemployed in the United States who are hurting; prime-age men and women who are labor market non-participants are, too.

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There is some evidence of an asymmetry or “wage ratchet” in the UK. Workers in expanding plants receive a pay premium while those in contracting plants suffer no pay disadvantage, which is consistent with the claim that wages are more flexible upward than downward. On the same theme, job insecurity lowers job satisfaction.19 We know this from self-reports from workers on how satisfied they are with their jobs and how fearful they are of losing that job. Table 2.1 shows that in France, Italy, and the UK there was a rise in perceptions of job insecurity between 2005 and 2010 as the Great Recession hit. Job insecurity was higher in 2015 than it was in 2005 in these three countries but lower in Germany.

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Albania; Argentina; Australia; Azerbaijan; Belarus; Belgium; Bosnia; Brazil; Brunei; Bulgaria; Cambodia; Canada; Chile; China; Colombia; Costa Rica; Croatia; Czech Republic; Denmark; Dominican Republic; Ecuador; El Salvador; Estonia; Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Honduras; Hungary; Iceland; Iraq; Ireland; Israel; Italy; Japan; Kyrgyzstan; Laos; Latvia; Lithuania; Luxembourg; Macedonia; Malta; Mexico; Myanmar; Netherlands; Nicaragua; Nigeria; Norway; Paraguay; Peru; Philippines; Poland; Portugal; Puerto Rico; Romania; Russia; Serbia; Singapore; Slovakia; South Africa; South Korea; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; Tanzania; Turkey; the UK; Ukraine; Uruguay; the United States; Uzbekistan; and Zimbabwe. Blanchflower 2009; Blanchflower and Oswald 2017. 26. The U-shape is confirmed by other studies (Deaton 2008; Stone et al. 2010; Van Landeghem 2012; Wunder et al. 2013; Schwandt 2016). Gazioglu and Tansel (2006) found that job satisfaction in the UK was U-shaped according to age. It even turns out that there is evidence of a midlife crisis in apes (Weiss et al. 2012). Glenn (2009) argued that it was appropriate to only look at patterns without controls; we disagreed (Blanchflower and Oswald 2009). 27. I estimated OLS regressions in every case containing only an age and age-squared terms pooled across countries.

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us by Dan Lyons

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, antiwork, Apple II, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hacker News, hiring and firing, holacracy, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, John Gruber, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Menlo Park, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parker Conrad, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, RAND corporation, remote working, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, software is eating the world, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, web application, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

This was taking place not just at start-ups and not just in the tech industry, but in many industries and many countries around the world. Job satisfaction in Britain and Germany has been steadily eroding since the 1980s. In the United States, the percentage of workers who say they are satisfied with their jobs dropped from 61.1 percent in 1987 to 50.8 percent in 2016, according to the Conference Board, a research firm, which adds that it’s “very unlikely” that job satisfaction will ever return to 1980s levels. Worldwide, only 13 percent of workers feel “engaged”—meaning enthusiastic at work and committed to their companies—according to Gallup, which has tracked this since 2000.

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., Margaret Warner, and Holly Hedegaard. “Increase in Suicide in the United States, 1999-2014.” National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief no. 241, April 2016. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db241.htm. Green, Francis, and Nicholas Tsitsianis. “Can the Changing Nature of Jobs Account for National Trends in Job Satisfaction?” Department of Economics Discussion Paper 04/06 at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England, 2004. https://www.kent.ac.uk/economics/documents/research/papers/2004/0406.pdf. Kellaway, Lucy. “Why Is Work Making Us Miserable?” Financial Times, January 22, 2017. https://www.ft.com/content/98d74346-de67-11e6-9d7c-be108f1c1dce.

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Financial Times, January 22, 2017. https://www.ft.com/content/98d74346-de67-11e6-9d7c-be108f1c1dce. LaBier, Douglas. “Another Survey Shows the Continuing Toll of Workplace Stress.” Psychology Today, April 23, 2014. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-resilience/201404/another-survey-shows-the-continuing-toll-workplace-stress. Levanon, Gad. “Job Satisfaction Keeps Getting Better.” Conference Board, September 6, 2017. https://www.conference-board.org/blog/postdetail.cfm?post=6391. Ma, Alexandra. “A Psychological Ailment Called ‘Hikikomori’ Is Imprisoning 500,000 Japanese People in Their Homes—and It’s More of a Threat than Ever.” Business Insider, January 14, 2018. http://www.businessinsider.com/hikikomori-worrying-mental-health-problem-traps-japanese-at-home-2018-1.

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? by Aaron Dignan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, basic income, benefit corporation, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, butterfly effect, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, DevOps, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Elon Musk, endowment effect, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, gender pay gap, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, Goodhart's law, Google X / Alphabet X, hiring and firing, hive mind, holacracy, impact investing, income inequality, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, loose coupling, loss aversion, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, mirror neurons, new economy, Paul Graham, Quicken Loans, race to the bottom, reality distortion field, remote working, Richard Thaler, Rochdale Principles, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, six sigma, smart contracts, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, source of truth, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The future is already here, the High Line, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, uber lyft, universal basic income, WeWork, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Talent and skills don’t matter if we don’t have the maturity—the courage and humility—to welcome the conditions for continuous growth. And our ability to do this has a lot to do with what psychologists call the four dimensions of core self-evaluation: locus of control, neuroticism, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. Our self-appraisal across these factors plays a predictive role in areas such as job satisfaction and job performance. Locus of control, though, is of particular interest as we explore mastery. The concept was developed by psychologist Julian B. Rotter to describe the degree to which people think they can control the outcomes of events in their lives. People with an internal locus of control believe that they have a high degree of influence over what happens to them.

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Management guru W. Edwards Deming had it right when he said, “Pay is not a motivator.” But then what is it? In 1959 psychologist Frederick Herzberg proposed an answer to that very question in what would come to be known as his two-factor theory. In trying to understand the factors that lead to job satisfaction, he discovered that the opposite of satisfaction was not dissatisfaction. Rather, satisfaction and dissatisfaction appeared to be driven by two completely different sets of variables. Motivators included job characteristics such as recognition for achievement, meaningful and interesting work, involvement in decision making, and advancement or personal growth.

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Hygiene factors, on the other hand, included company policies, job status and security, supervisory practices, and—you guessed it—salary and benefits. Addressing these factors reduced dissatisfaction by improving the job environment. What does this mean for the world of compensation? It means that increasing salaries that are too low can reduce job dissatisfaction, but increasing salaries that are already generous won’t increase job satisfaction in any meaningful or lasting way. It won’t make us any happier either. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, household income above $75,000 a year doesn’t make us measurably happier. Below that level, increases or decreases in income were correlated with happiness.

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century by Rodrigo Aguilera

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer age, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Hans Rosling, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, long peace, loss aversion, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, moral panic, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, principal–agent problem, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, savings glut, Scientific racism, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Slavoj Žižek, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Stanislav Petrov, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, tail risk, tech bro, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, unbiased observer, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, Y2K, young professional, zero-sum game

The Spring 2017 survey showed that only a net 35% of employees felt they were satisfied with the amount of influence they had over their jobs and a net 12% of employees felt that the organization that they worked for “inspired the very best in me in the way of job performance”.4 It should come as no surprise that workers don’t feel valued, since the modern corporation isn’t designed to promote job satisfaction but rather to generate profit for its owners — satisfaction is merely a byproduct for the lucky ones that work in a company that adequately rewards effort and provides meaning or purpose to the work being done. Unfortunately, the consequences of this are significant: the absence of job satisfaction is a strong predictor of mental health problems, including anxiety and depression, burnout, and self-esteem issues. One meta-analysis of the relationship between work life and mental health summarized the problem: There is growing evidence that current trends in employment conditions may be eroding levels of job satisfaction — and directly damaging the physical and mental health of employees.

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This comes despite being a country that waxes lyrical about its Protestant work ethic and which some evidence suggests is actually happier the more it works.2 The British, blessed with EU-mandated labor benefits (that Brexit might very well erode or dismantle), do a bit better: 64% satisfaction according to one recent survey from the Chartered Institute of Personal Development (CIPD).3 It should be mentioned that measuring job satisfaction is no less problematic than measuring life satisfaction (you can be satisfied with a mediocre job) but, thankfully, previous CIPD surveys asked more interesting questions. The Spring 2017 survey showed that only a net 35% of employees felt they were satisfied with the amount of influence they had over their jobs and a net 12% of employees felt that the organization that they worked for “inspired the very best in me in the way of job performance”.4 It should come as no surprise that workers don’t feel valued, since the modern corporation isn’t designed to promote job satisfaction but rather to generate profit for its owners — satisfaction is merely a byproduct for the lucky ones that work in a company that adequately rewards effort and provides meaning or purpose to the work being done.

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One meta-analysis of the relationship between work life and mental health summarized the problem: There is growing evidence that current trends in employment conditions may be eroding levels of job satisfaction — and directly damaging the physical and mental health of employees. New working practices and rapid technological advances are changing the nature of many jobs. Employees are regularly being required to work well beyond their contracted hours, often unwillingly, as organisations struggle to meet tight deadlines and targets. Work practices are becoming more automated and inflexible, leaving employees with less and less control over their workload.

Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants by Maurice E. Stucke, Ariel Ezrachi

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Boeing 737 MAX, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cloud computing, commoditize, corporate governance, Corrections Corporation of America, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, delayed gratification, disinformation, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Chrome, greed is good, hedonic treadmill, incognito mode, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, information asymmetry, invisible hand, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, late fees, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Network effects, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, payday loans, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price anchoring, price discrimination, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, search costs, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Hawking, sunk-cost fallacy, surveillance capitalism, techlash, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, winner-take-all economy, Yochai Benkler

Redefining the Competition Ideal to Reflect Our Values 1.Charles Duhigg, “Wealthy, Successful, and Miserable,” New York Times Magazine, February 21, 2019, https://nyti.ms/2NimgU5. 2.Gad Levanon, “Job Satisfaction Keeps Getting Better,” Conference Board, September 6, 2017, https://www.conference-board.org/blog/postdetail.cfm?post=6391; David Z. Morris, “U.S. Job Satisfaction Hits Its Highest Level Since 2005,” Fortune, September 1, 2017, https://fortune.com/2017/09/01/job-satisfaction-highest-since-2005/. 3.Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Social and Welfare Issues: Inequality,” accessed May 3, 2019, https://www.oecd.org/social/inequality.htm. 4.Carlotta Balestra and Richard Tonkin, “Inequalities in Household Wealth across OECD Countries: Evidence from the OECD Wealth Distribution Database,” OECD Statistics Working Papers, January 2018, https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/inequalities-in-household-wealth-across-oecd-countries_7e1bf673-en#page7. 5.United Nations Human Rights Council, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights on His Mission to the United States of America,” A/HRC/38/33/Add.1, June–July 2018, https://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1, 4. 6.Liz Alderman, “Europe’s Middle Class Is Shrinking.

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Redefining the Competition Ideal to Reflect Our Values When returning to Harvard in 2017 to attend his fifteenth business school reunion, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charles Duhigg observed that most of his classmates, although doing very well financially, seemed miserable and unfulfilled.1 They were weary of their work, which was insanely stressful; distrustful and wary of coworkers who were so eager for their next promotion that they were constantly undermining each other; and feeling a sense of emptiness when they questioned the meaning of what they were doing in their professional lives. And they were not alone. Though one survey found that job satisfaction levels across the United States had increased very slightly in the last ten years or so, to 51 percent in 2016, in a disturbing conclusion it also noted that they remain well below what they were in 1987, when 61.1 percent of workers reported being satisfied with their jobs—and moreover that it was unlikely that satisfaction would return to that level in the future.2 Duhigg’s classmates are unhappy despite well-paying jobs, but many of us don’t have the luxury of such well-cushioned unhappiness.

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., 235–36, 237 Smith on, 236–37 squeezed out by bad competition, 230 Ultimatum Game, 237–39, 240 See also noble competition competition ideology, 121–45 overview, xiii, 142–45, 291–92 and bank deregulation, 127–30 belief that competition is necessary and always good, 123–26 cost of competition ideology, 138–40 current oversimplified version, 228 for defusing responsibility, 282 for deregulating, 155–57 eroding social capital, 249–51 federal courts, 125–26 Federal Reserve Chairman, 128 and lobbyists, 152, 155–57 only choices are competition or communism/socialism, 233 and public program spending cuts, 184–85 reductive competition ideology, 126–30, 146–47, 155–57, 176 rise of, without qualifiers, 131, 131–32, 132 safety net for those left behind, 269–72 UK’s privatization of their water supply, 187–89 using to reframe toxic effects of competition, 281 utilizing in the absence of competition, 176–77 competition machine, 41–66 overview, 65–66, 70 and Boeing MAX jets‘ fatal flaw, 264–67 consumers‘ belief in, 47–48, 49 fraud discovery and placing blame, 45–47 government’s responsibility to provide regulatory guardrails, 264–67 horsemeat scandal, xii, 41–42, 45–47 steam engine metaphor, 42 competition machine conditions consumers do not notice quality degradation, 49, 58–62 diminishing profitability, 45, 49, 50–58 intense competitive pressure, 43–45, 44, 49, 50 sellers’ challenged by consumers’ failure to notice quality degradation, 49, 62–65 Competitive Escalation Paradigm, 35–36 competitors alignment of collective and individual interests of, 70 harm from race to the bottom, 4–6, 9–12, 25–27 identifying and exploiting customers’ weaknesses, 73–74, 82–84 limiting customer choices, 102–3 complex pricing, 82 conditional cooperation, 240–44 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), 268–69 consumers belief that high price = quality, 59–60 data on behaviors of, 87–91, 204–5, 207–9 data on emotions of, 205, 218–19, 220 gazelles with trackers metaphor, 92–93 identifying weaknesses of, 199–201 irrationality of, 71–74 job satisfaction levels, 227 life satisfaction levels, 247–49, 252 products with choice overload built in, 103–4 Trump rolling back financial protection for, 268–69, 285–86 See also competition machine conditions Cook, Tim, 221–22 CoreCivic, 166–70, 169, 173, 175, 177 Cornell University rejection rate, 15 corporations.

So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport

adjacent possible, Apple II, bounce rate, business cycle, Byte Shop, Cal Newport, capital controls, clean tech, Community Supported Agriculture, deal flow, deliberate practice, do what you love, financial independence, follow your passion, Frank Gehry, information asymmetry, job satisfaction, job-hopping, knowledge worker, Mason jar, medical residency, new economy, passive income, Paul Terrell, popular electronics, renewable energy credits, Results Only Work Environment, Richard Bolles, Richard Feynman, rolodex, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stuart Kauffman, TED Talk, web application, winner-take-all economy

And yet, for all of this increased focus on following our passion and holding out for work we love, we aren’t getting any happier. The 2010 Conference Board survey of U.S. job satisfaction found that only 45 percent of Americans describe themselves as satisfied with their jobs. This number has been steadily decreasing from the mark of 61 percent recorded in 1987, the first year of the survey. As Lynn Franco, the director of the Board’s Consumer Research Center notes, this is not just about a bad business cycle: “Through both economic boom and bust during the past two decades, our job satisfaction numbers have shown a consistent downward trend.” Among young people, the group perhaps most concerned with the role of work in their lives, 64 percent now say that they’re actively unhappy in their jobs.

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Generational Grumbling and the New Life Stage of Emerging Adulthood—Commentary on Trzesniewski & Donnellan (2010),” Perspectives on Psychological Science 5, no. 1 (2010): 89–92. See section titled “Slackers or Seekers of Identity-Based Work?” for the quote and related discussion. 4. Julianne Pepitone, “U.S. job satisfaction hits 22-year low,” CNNMoney.com, January 5, 2010, http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/05/news/economy/job_satisfaction_report/. 5. Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner, Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties (New York: Tarcher, 2001). 6. Interview with Peter Travers, Roadtrip Nation Online Video Archive, 2006, http://roadtripnation.com/PeterTravers.

Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI by Paul R. Daugherty, H. James Wilson

3D printing, AI winter, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, business process, call centre, carbon footprint, circular economy, cloud computing, computer vision, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, digital twin, disintermediation, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, friendly AI, fulfillment center, future of work, Geoffrey Hinton, Hans Moravec, industrial robot, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, knowledge worker, Lyft, machine translation, Marc Benioff, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, personalized medicine, precision agriculture, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sensor fusion, sentiment analysis, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snow Crash, software as a service, speech recognition, tacit knowledge, telepresence, telepresence robot, text mining, the scientific method, uber lyft, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics

What kind of growth, services, and products become possible? Your Office Robot To answer those questions, let’s start with a familiar process: categorizing and resolving complaints. In the past, much of the process work around sorting through customer complaints was done manually, and the tedium of many of those tasks detracted from people’s job satisfaction. At Virgin Trains, a train-operating company in the UK, for example, a team of customer service reps would manually read, sort, and route complaints. These repetitive activities diverted employees’ time and attention, and it fatigued them more than other work they did, like directly talking to customers.

…

See personalization cybersecurity, 56–58, 59 Darktrace, 58 DARPA Cyber Grand Challenges, 57, 190 Dartmouth College conference, 40–41 dashboards, 169 data, 10 in AI training, 121–122 barriers to flow of, 176–177 customization and, 78–80 discovery with, 178 dynamic, real-time, 175–176 in enterprise processes, 59 exhaust, 15 in factories, 26–27, 29–30 leadership and, 180 in manufacturing, 38–39 in marketing and sales, 92, 98–99, 100 in R&D, 69–72 in reimagining processes, 154 on supply chains, 33–34 supply chains for, 12, 15 velocity of, 177–178 data hygienists, 121–122 data supply-chain officers, 179 data supply chains, 12, 15, 174–179 decision making, 109–110 about brands, 93–94 black box, 106, 125, 169 employee power to modify AI, 172–174 empowerment for, 15 explainers and, 123–126 transparency in, 213 Deep Armor, 58 deep learning, 63, 161–165 deep-learning algorithms, 125 DeepMind, 121 deep neural networks (DNN), 63 deep reinforcement learning, 21–22 demand planning, 33–34 Dennis, Jamie, 158 design at Airbus, 144 AI system, 128–129 Elbo Chair, 135–137 generative, 135–137, 139, 141 product/service, 74–77 Dickey, Roger, 52–54 digital twins, 10 at GE, 27, 29–30, 183–184, 194 disintermediation, brand, 94–95 distributed learning, 22 distribution, 19–39 Ditto Labs, 98 diversity, 52 Doctors Without Borders, 151 DoubleClick Search, 99 Dreamcatcher, 136–137, 141, 144 drones, 28, 150–151 drug interactions, 72–74 Ducati, 175 Echo, 92, 164–165 Echo Voyager, 28 Einstein, 85–86, 196 Elbo Chair, 136–137, 139 “Elephants Don’t Play Chess” (Brooks), 24 Elish, Madeleine Clare, 170–171 Ella, 198–199 embodied intelligence, 206 embodiment, 107, 139–140 in factories, 21–23 of intelligence, 206 interaction agents, 146–151 jobs with, 147–151 See also augmentation; missing middle empathy engines for health care, 97 training, 117–118, 132 employees agency of, 15, 172–174 amplification of, 138–139, 141–143 development of, 14 hiring, 51–52 job satisfaction in, 46–47 marketing and sales, 90, 92, 100–101 on-demand work and, 111 rehumanizing time and, 186–189 routine/repetitive work and, 26–27, 29–30, 46–47 training/retraining, 15 warehouse, 31–33 empowerment, 137 bot-based, 12, 195–196 in decision making, 15 of salespeople, 90, 92 workforce implications of, 137–138 enabling, 7 enterprise processes, 45–66 compliance, 47–48 determining which to change, 52–54 hiring and recruitment, 51–52 how much to change, 54–56 redefining industries with, 56–58 reimagining around people, 58–59 robotic process automation (RPA) in, 50–52 routine/repetitive, 46–47 ergonomics, 149–150 EstherBot, 199 ethical, moral, legal issues, 14–15, 108 Amazon Echo and, 164–165 explainers and, 123–126 in marketing and sales, 90, 100 moral crumple zones and, 169–172 privacy, 90 in R&D, 83 in research, 78–79 ethics compliance managers, 79, 129–130, 132–133 European Union, 124 Ewing, Robyn, 119 exhaust data, 15 definition of, 122 experimentation, 12, 14 cultures of, 161–165 in enterprise processes, 59 leadership and, 180 learning from, 71 in manufacturing, 39 in marketing and sales, 100 in process reimagining, 160–165 in R&D, 83 in reimagining processes, 154 testing and, 74–77 expert systems, 25, 41 definition of, 64 explainability strategists, 126 explaining outcomes, 107, 114–115, 179 black-box concerns and, 106, 125, 169 jobs in, 122–126 sustaining and, 130 See also missing middle extended intelligence, 206 extended reality, 66 Facebook, 78, 79, 95, 177–178 facial recognition, 65, 90 factories, 10 data flow in, 26–27, 29–30 embodiment in, 140 job losses and gains in, 19, 20 robotic arms in, 21–26 self-aware, 19–39 supply chains and, 33–34 third wave in, 38–39 traditional assembly lines and, 1–2, 4 warehouse management and, 30–33 failure, learning from, 71 fairness, 129–130 falling rule list algorithms, 124–125 Fanuc, 21–22, 128 feedback, 171–172 feedforward neural networks (FNN), 63 Feigenbaum, Ed, 41 financial trading, 167 first wave of business transformation, 5 Fletcher, Seth, 49 food production, 34–37 ForAllSecure, 57 forecasts, 33–34 Fortescue Metals Group, 28 Fraunhofer Institute of Material Flow and Logistics (IML), 26 fusion skills, 12, 181, 183–206, 210 bot-based empowerment, 12, 195–196 developing, 15–16 holistic melding, 12, 197, 200–201 intelligent interrogation, 12, 185, 193–195 judgment integration, 12, 191–193 potential of, 209 reciprocal apprenticing, 12, 201–202 rehumanizing time, 12, 186–189 relentless reimagining, 12, 203–205 responsible normalizing, 12, 189–191 training/retraining for, 211–213 Future of Work survey, 184–185 Garage, Capital One, 205 Gaudin, Sharon, 99 GE.

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See Watson (IBM) “if-then” rules, 25 Illumeo, 142 image recognition, 66 incubators, 162 industries, redefining, 56–58 Inertia Switch, 23 inference systems, 64 information analysis, 10 information technology (IT) cybersecurity and, 56–58, 59 in process automation, 5 Init.ai, 121 innovation, 152 generative design and, 135–137 observation and, 69–72 See also experimentation; research and development (R&D) Institute for the Future, 187 institutional review boards (IRBs), 78 inSTREAM, 47–48 Intel AI Day, 188 intelligence, extended and embodied, 206 intelligent agents, 65 IntelligentX Brewing Company, 76 interaction, 107, 139 jobs with, 143–146 See also augmentation; missing middle interaction agents, 143–146 interaction modelers, 120 internet of things (IoT), 34, 36, 37 interrogation, intelligent, 12, 185, 193–195 intuition, 191–193 inventory management, 30–33 iPhone, 176 IPSoft, 55–56, 139, 164, 201 iRobot, 24 IT security, 56–58, 59 Järborg, Rasmus, 55 job creation, 11, 113–115, 208–211 in data supply chains, 179 education and training for, 132–133 ethics compliance and, 79 explainers, 122–126 in manufacturing, 20 in marketing and sales, 100–101 in sustaining, 126–132 in training, 100, 114–122 See also fusion skills job loss, 19, 20, 209 job satisfaction, 46–47 job searches, 198–199 John Radcliffe Hospital, 197 Johnson & Johnson, 82 judgment integration, 12, 191–193 Kaiser Permanente, 188 Kaplan, Jerry, 60 Kelton, Fraser, 97 Keshavan, Meghana, 82 Kik, 91, 97 Kindred AI, 200 Kiva Robots, 31 knowledge representation, 63–64 Koko, 97, 117–118 Kowalski, Jeff, 137 Kraft Phone Assistant, 91 Lambda Chair, 136–137 Lange, Danny, 43 Las Vegas Sands Corp., 76 Laws of Robotics, 128–129 leadership, 14–15, 153–181, 213 blended culture and, 166–174 data supply chains and, 174–179 in enterprise processes, 58–59 in manufacturing, 38 in marketing and sales, 100 in normalizing AI, 190–191 in R&D, 83 in reimagining processes, 154, 180–181 learning deep reinforcement, 21–22 distributed, 22 reinforcement, 62 in robotic arms, 24–26 semi-supervised, 62 sensors and, 24–26 supervised, 60 unsupervised, 61–62 See also machine-learning technologies Leefeldt, Ed, 99 Lee Hecht Harrison, 199 legal issues.

Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century by Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez, Monique Tilford

asset allocation, book value, Buckminster Fuller, buy low sell high, classic study, credit crunch, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, fiat currency, financial independence, fixed income, fudge factor, full employment, Gordon Gekko, high net worth, index card, index fund, intentional community, job satisfaction, junk bonds, Menlo Park, money market fund, Parkinson's law, passive income, passive investing, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, retail therapy, Richard Bolles, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, software patent, strikebreaker, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, Vanguard fund, zero-coupon bond

LaBier found that focusing on money/position/ success at the expense of personal fulfillment and meaning had led 60 percent of his sample of several hundred to suffer from depression, anxiety and other job-related disorders, including the ubiquitous “stress.”1 Even though the official workweek has been pegged at forty hours for nearly half a century, many professionals believe they must work overtime and weekends to keep up. A 2003 national survey from the Center for a New American Dream found that 3 in 5 Americans feel pressure to work too much.2 In addition, a 2005 Conference Board study revealed that Americans are growing increasingly unhappy with their jobs. The study found widespread declines in job satisfaction among workers of all ages and across all income brackets.3 We are working more, but enjoying life less (and possibly enjoying less life as well). We have developed a national disease based on how we earn money. What Do We Have to Show for It? Even if we aren’t any happier, you’d think that we’d at least have the traditional symbol of success: money in the bank.

…

You aren’t violating your commitment to your profession by asking that question. Nor are you expressing disloyalty to your boss or dissatisfaction with your job by considering how you might spend your money if you were doing something else. If you love your job, the simple monthly exercise of asking this question will only increase your job satisfaction because you will increase your certainty that you are there by choice. IMPLICATIONS OF THIS STEP Step 4 is the heart of this program. Don’t worry if your life purpose or your internal yardstick is not crystal-clear. For some individuals this program has been the process by which they defined their values and purpose.

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Major pension funds have gone bankrupt, many corporations are shifting saving for retirement back onto the shoulders of workers and some even wonder about the security of our national social security safety net. ◆According to a recent Conference Board report, Americans are growing increasingly unhappy with their jobs. The decline in job satisfaction is widespread among workers of all ages and across all income brackets.13 ◆A poll conducted by the Center for a New American Dream found that more than half of Americans say they would be willing to give up a day’s pay a week for an extra day of free time.14 We’ve had enough, it would seem, of making a dying in such a crazy world.

Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life by Richard Florida

Abraham Maslow, active measures, assortative mating, back-to-the-city movement, barriers to entry, big-box store, blue-collar work, borderless world, BRICs, business climate, Celebration, Florida, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, dark matter, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, demographic transition, edge city, Edward Glaeser, epigenetics, extreme commuting, financial engineering, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, income inequality, industrial cluster, invention of the telegraph, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, megacity, new economy, New Urbanism, Peter Calthorpe, place-making, post-work, power law, Richard Florida, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Seaside, Florida, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, superstar cities, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the strength of weak ties, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, urban planning, World Values Survey, young professional

To more accurately gauge how these factors interact, Irene Tinagli of Carnegie Mellon and I conducted a multivariate statistical analysis that included measures of place satisfaction, job satisfaction, financial satisfaction, and a sense of safety and stress, as well as control variables for demographic factors such as age, race, gender, and income. Together, according to Tinagli’s analysis, place, financial, and job satisfaction accounted for a quarter of the total variance in overall life satisfaction—a substantial amount statistically speaking. This becomes even clearer when we consider that all of the demographic factors taken together, including income, account for only 1.2 percent of the variance in overall life satisfaction.6 The place we live is more important to our happiness than education or earnings.

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Seligman, “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5, 1, 2004, pp. 1-31.Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “Economic Growth and Subjective Wellbeing: reassessing the Easterlin Paradox,” Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, May 9, 2008, http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/EasterlinParadox.pdf. 3 Also see Angus Deaton, “Income, Aging, Health, and Wellbeing Around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll,” Center for Health and Wellbeing, Research Program in Development Studies, Princeton University, August 2007. 4 Nick Paumgarten, “There and Back Again,” New Yorker, April 16, 2007. 5 Robert Manchin, “The Emotional Capital and Desirability of European Cities,” Gallup Europe, presented at the European Week of Cities and Regions, Brussels, October 2007. 6 The correlation coefficients between overall happiness and various factors are as follows: financial satisfaction (.369), job satisfaction (.367), place satisfaction (.303). Compare with income (.153), homeownership (.126), and age (.06). The regression coefficients (from an ordered probit regression) are as follows: financial satisfaction (.342), place satisfaction (.254), job satisfaction (.254). Compare with income (.039), age (-.06), and education (-.09). 7 The overall correlation between income and community satisfaction is relatively weak (.15). 8 Veolia Observatory of Urban Lifestyles, Life in the City (Paris), http://www.observatoire.veolia.com/en, 2008. 9 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, HarperCollins, 1990; and Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, Basic Books, 1997. 10 See Teresa Amabile et al., “Affect and Creativity at Work,” Administrative Science Quarterly 50, March 2005, pp. 367-403.

The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead by David Callahan

1960s counterculture, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, business cycle, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, David Brooks, deindustrialization, East Village, eat what you kill, fixed income, forensic accounting, full employment, game design, greed is good, high batting average, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, job satisfaction, junk bonds, mandatory minimum, market fundamentalism, Mary Meeker, McMansion, Michael Milken, microcredit, moral hazard, multilevel marketing, new economy, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old-boy network, PalmPilot, plutocrats, postindustrial economy, profit maximization, profit motive, RAND corporation, Ray Oldenburg, rent stabilization, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, War on Poverty, winner-take-all economy, World Values Survey, young professional, zero-sum game

At the same time, only half of workers say they get a sense of identity from their job, a third say they'd be happier in another job, and nearly half say they are stressed out a great deal of the time at work. Many workers also gripe about how much money they make (not enough), their health insurance benefits (or lack thereof), and their chances for promotion (poor). While job satisfaction is relatively high, it has been declining over the past decade, and loyalty among most workers is paper thin: One 2002 survey found that only a quarter of workers plan to stay at their jobs for at least two years and that half wouldn't recommend their company to someone else. Barely a majority of workers in this survey said their employer treated them fairly and, on balance, the survey classified only 24 percent of workers as "truly loyal."

…

Surveys on the ethics of corporate employees by several organizations, including the Ethics Resource Center, do allow for comparisons over time, but most of these surveys only began a few years ago. Throughout the book, I have mainly used opinion-survey data in an effort to understand the public's views about personal values, job satisfaction, economic security, social trust, perceptions of fairness, and the like. Here and there, I have found surveys on Americans' attitudes toward different forms of cheating, such as auto-insurance fraud, music piracy, or tax evasion. Typically, though, these polls are one-shot deal, and don't allow for serious comparisons over time.

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., 1976–2000," unpublished paper. [back] 6. David Brooks, "The Triumph of Hope," New York Times, 12 January 2003. [back] 7. On anxiety, see Robert Putnam's analysis of DDB Needham Life Style Survey data, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 475. On job satisfaction, see Fligstein and Shin, "The Shareholder Value Society." Evidence of growing insecurity and anxiety is by no means ironclad and this remains a disputed point among scholars. See, for example, Kenneth Deavers, "Downsizing, Job Insecurity, and Wages: No Connection," Employment Policy Foundation, May 1998.

Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess by Robert H. Frank

Alan Greenspan, business cycle, clean water, company town, compensation consultant, Cornelius Vanderbilt, correlation coefficient, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, full employment, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, global village, haute couture, hedonic treadmill, impulse control, income inequality, invisible hand, job satisfaction, Kenneth Arrow, lake wobegon effect, loss aversion, market clearing, McMansion, means of production, mega-rich, mortgage debt, New Urbanism, Pareto efficiency, Post-Keynesian economics, RAND corporation, rent control, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, telemarketer, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, winner-take-all economy, working poor

Because most of us spend the majority, or at least a large proportion, of our waking hours on the job, our satisfaction with our lives as a whole depends importantly on how satisfied we are with our jobs. A consistent finding in the industrial psychology literature is that job satisfaction increases with the degree to which workers enjoy autonomy and choice with respect to which tasks they do and the manner in which they perform them.48 In laboratory experiments, for example, subjects allowed to choose their own activities spent significantly longer times on a task than did those to whom activities were assigned arbitrarily.49 Autonomy is, of course, not the only factor that influences job satisfaction. For example, workers tend to find greater satisfaction in jobs that provide greater opportunities to make use of their skills.50 And numerous studies have found that job satisfaction increases with the variety of tasks workers are called on to perform.51 The list is endless.

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For example, workers tend to find greater satisfaction in jobs that provide greater opportunities to make use of their skills.50 And numerous studies have found that job satisfaction increases with the variety of tasks workers are called on to perform.51 The list is endless. For instance, if pay were the same, people would choose safe jobs over risky ones; quiet jobs over noisy ones; jobs with convenient parking over those without; jobs with security over those without; and so on. Giving workers more autonomy sometimes results in greater productivity, sometimes not. When it does, it will of course be in the interests of profit-seeking employers to grant additional autonomy.

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Cash on the Table 1Raines, 1998. 2Quoted by Pearlstein, 1997, p. A12.d REFERENCES Aaron, Henry J., and William G. Gale . Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996. Agho, Augustine O.; Charles W. Mueller; and James L. Price . “Determinants of Employee Job Satisfaction,” Human Relations, August, 1993: 1011-19. Ainslie, George. Picoeconomics, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Alesina, Alberto, and Dani Rodrik . “Distribution, Political Conflict, and Economic Growth: A Simple Theory and Some Empirical Evidence,” in Political Economy, Growth, and Business Cycles, ed.

The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity by Lynda Gratton, Andrew Scott

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, asset light, assortative mating, behavioural economics, carbon footprint, carbon tax, classic study, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deep learning, delayed gratification, disruptive innovation, diversification, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, falling living standards, financial engineering, financial independence, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, future of work, gender pay gap, gig economy, Google Glasses, indoor plumbing, information retrieval, intangible asset, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Lyft, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, New Economic Geography, old age dependency ratio, pattern recognition, pension reform, Peter Thiel, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, The Future of Employment, uber lyft, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, young professional

Perhaps even more intriguing is that high wage jobs, and the long hours they demand, may also contain aspects that are enjoyable. This is not to deny the stresses and pressures that come with such positions, but it is striking that studies show that job satisfaction increases with the wage attached to a job.5 It could be that wages are what drive job satisfaction or that the less manual and routine a job, the more enjoyable it is. What seems to be the result is that the more enjoyable a job, the longer hours a person is prepared to work, other things being equal. The enigma of leisure But there are other reasons for feeling time-poor.

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., The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (The Macmillan Company, 1899). 4Costa, D., ‘The Wage and Length of the Work Day: From the 1890s to 1991’, Journal of Labor Economics (1998): 133–59. 5See for instance Grund, C. and Silwka, D., ‘The Impact of Wage Increases on Job Satisfaction – Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Implications’, IZA Discussion Paper 01/2001. 6Ramey, V. A. and Francis, N., ‘A Century of Work and Leisure’ (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2006). 7Aguiar, M. and Hurst, E., ‘Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Five Decades’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (3) (2007). 8Becker, G., ‘A Theory of the Allocation of Time’, Economic Journal (1965): 493–517; Linder, S., The Harried Leisure Class (Columbia University Press, 1970). 9http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4899aaf8-0e9f-11e4-ae0e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3nJ2crVXm 10Goldin, C., ‘A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter’, American Economic Review 104 (4) (2014): 1–30. 11Elsbach, K. and Cable, D.

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Index The letter f following an entry indicates a figure 3.0 scenarios here–here, here, here, here 3.5 scenarios here–here, here, here 4.0 scenarios here–here, here–here, here, here 5.0 scenarios here–here, here, here, here, here, here–here Acorns here activities of daily living (ADL) here adolescence here–here, here adult equivalence scales here age cognition and here–here corporations and here explorers and here–here government policy and here independent producers and here life stages and here–here, here–here portfolios and here predictability of here segregation and here–here, here–here, here, here–here age process algorithms here, here ageing process here, here ageism here, here agency here, here, here finance and here–here agriculture here–here Amazon here anxiety here appearance here Apple iPhone here reputation here Archer, Margaret here Artificial Intelligence (AI) here, here, here, here education and here human skills and here medical diagnoses and here–here, here skills and knowledge and here–here Asia here assets here, here see also intangible assets; tangible assets; transformational assets assortative mating here–here, here Astor, Brooke here Autor, David here–here, here Baby Boomers here–here beauty here Becker, Gary: ‘Treatise on the Family’ here, here–here, here behavioural nudges here Benartzi, Shlomo here benefits here–here see also welfare Bennis, Warren here birth rates, decline in here–here, here brain, the here–here, here–here cognition here Braithwaite, Valerie here Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre here Buffett, Warren here–here Calico (California Life Company) here Calment, Jeanne here careers breaks and here changes and here–here dual careers here, here, here cell aging here centenarians here, here–here change here–here catalysts for here–here corporations and here–here, here education and here–here government policy and here–here, here identity and here–here inequalities and here–here mastery and here–here planning and experimentation and here–here rate of here–here Cherlin, Andrew here chess here children here, here–here, here Christensen, Clayton here Cloud Robotics here cohort estimate of life expectancy here, here, here companies here, here–here, here–here Amazon here Apple here–here change and here–here, here creative clusters here–here economies of scale and here–here Facebook here flexibility here–here, here–here reputation and here–here research and here small business ecosystems here–here technology and here–here Twitter here value creation here–here WhatsApp here compression of morbidity here–here computing power here–here, here–here see also Moore’s Law connectivity here–here consumerism here, here consumption complementarities here–here consumption levels here, here continuums here corporations here–here, here–here see also companies creative clusters here–here independent producers and here–here creativity here cross-age friendships here crucible experiences here–here Deep Learning here dementia here depreciation here developing countries life expectancy and here–here, here state pensions and here Dickens, Charles: Old Curiosity Shop, The here diet here Dimson, Elroy here disabilities here discounting here discretionary time here diverse networks here, here–here Doctorow, Corey: Makers, The here Downton Abbey effect, the here–here Doyle, Arthur Conan here driverless cars here, here dual career households here, here, here Dweck, Carol here–here dynamic/diverse networks here, here–here Easterlin’s Paradox here economy, the here–here agriculture and here–here gig economy here job creation and here–here leisure industry and here service sector and here sharing economy here, here stability and here education here, here–here, here–here see also mastery experiential learning here–here, here, here human skills and judgement and here ideas and creativity and here institutions here–here learning methods here mental flexibility and agility and here–here multi-stage life and here specialization here–here, here, here technology and here, here, here training here efficacy here, here, here–here elasticity here–here emerging markets life expectancy and here state pensions and here emotional spillover here employers here–here, here employment see also companies; employment changes age and here, here–here, here–here changes and here, here, here–here, here–here city migration and here–here creation here–here demographics and here, here–here diverse networks and here–here elasticity and here–here environmental concerns and here–here, here family structures and here–here, here, here–here, here, here, here–here flexibility and here–here, here, here–here, here–here, here–here, here hollowing out of work here–here, here, here home and here job classification here–here knowledge and skills and here levels here, here matches here–here mobility here multi-stage life and here office-based here paid leave here participation rates here–here, here pay here–here, here psychological contract here satisfaction here–here self-employment here–here specialization and here–here statistics here status and here supply and here–here technology and here, here–here, here–here, here, here, here–here, here unique human skills here–here, here vacancies here–here women and here–here working hours here–here, here working week here–here employment changes here, here, here–here companies and here–here industry sectors and here–here, here entrepreneurship here–here see also independent producers equity release schemes here experiential learning here–here, here, here experimentation here, here–here, here–here explorers here–here, here–here adventurers here age and here–here assets and here crucible experiences and here–here options and here–here searchers here, here exponential discounting here exponential growth here–here Facebook here families here, here, here–here, here children here, here–here, here dual career households here, here, here marriage here–here work and here, here finance here, here–here see also pensions age process algorithms here, here agency and here–here automation and here–here costs here–here efficacy and here–here equity release schemes here flexibility here governments and here–here, here, here–here health and here housing and here–here hyperbolic discounting here–here inheritances here–here investment here, here–here, here–here, here, here old age and here–here pay here–here, here pension replacement rates here–here, here, here–here portfolios here–here psychology and here–here retirement and here–here fitness and health here–here see also health Fleming, Ian here flexibility here, here–here, here, here–here, here–here, here corporations and here–here government policy and here–here working patterns and here flexibility stigma here, here Ford, Henry here Foxconn here Frey, Carl here Friedman, Stewart here–here, here Fries, James here, here Future of Work Consortium here future selves here–here future selves case studies Jane here–here, here–here Jimmy here–here, here galumphing here–here gender here, here see also women inequality here–here, here–here, here, here, here specialization of labour here, here–here, here, here, here–here Generation Y here generational attitudes here gerontology here Giddens, Anthony here, here gig economy here–here globalization here Goldin, Claudia here, here Google here governments here, here–here, here inequalities and here–here pensions and here–here rate of change and here–here Gratton, Lynda here Shift, The here growth mindset here–here Groysberg, Boris here Haffenden, Margaret here Hagestad, Gunhild here–here, here Harvard Grant Study here health here, here–here brain, the here–here chronic diseases here–here, here compression of morbidity here–here dementia here diseases of old age here–here finance and here improvements in here–here inequality here, here–here infectious diseases here public health here stress here–here healthy life expectancy here heterogeneity here hollowing out of work here–here, here, here home, work and here household here–here see also home economies of scale and here–here relationships here, here–here, here, here housing here–here imputed rent here, here ownership here HR policies here–here human skills here–here, here, here, here hyperbolic discounting here–here Ibarra, Herminia here identity here–here, here, here–here, here–here see also self-control; self-knowledge improvisation here–here imputed rent here, here income see also welfare distribution here growth and here inequalities here–here, here–here skills and knowledge and here–here income effect here–here independent producers here–here, here–here assets and here case study here–here creative clusters and here–here learning and here–here prototyping here–here reputation and curating and here–here India here–here Individual, the here Industrial Revolution, the here–here, here, here, here inequalities here–here gender and here–here, here–here, here, here, here government policy and here–here health here, here–here income here–here, here–here life expectancy and here–here, here–here, here infant mortality here intangible assets here–here, here–here, here case studies here–here, here–here, here corporations and here–here endowed individual characteristics here, here independent producers and here marriage and here productive assets see productive assets time and here transformational assets see transformational assets transitions and here–here vitality assets see vitality assets International Labour Organization (ILO) here ‘Women and the Future of Work’ here investment here, here–here, here–here, here Japan centenarians here–here life expectancy here, here–here,here–here, here pensions and here population decline and here job classification here–here job creation here–here job satisfaction here–here juvenescence here, here–here, here Kahneman, Daniel here Kegan, Robert here Keynes, John Maynard: Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren here knowledge see skills and knowledge Kurzweil, Ray here labour market see employment Lampedusa, Giuseppe : Leopard, The here law (occupation) here–here leadership here learning methods here leisure class here leisure industry here, here, here–here leisure time here, here, here–here, here–here, here–here Keynes, John Maynard and here life expectancy here–here, here see also long life best practice here, here calculating here–here, here chronic diseases and here–here cohort estimate of here, here, here developing countries and here–here diseases of old age and here–here government plans and here healthy life expectancy here historical here, here, here increase in here–here, here India and here–here inequalities in here–here, here–here, here infant mortality and here Japan and here, here–here, here–here, here limit to here–here period life expectancy measure here, here–here public health innovations and here South Korea here US and here–here Western Europe here life stages here–here, here–here age and here–here experiential learning and here explorers and here–here, here–here independent producers and here–here, here–here juvenescence and here, here–here multi-stage model here, here–here, here, here, here–here, here–here, here new stages here, here see also life stages case studies portfolios and here–here, here–here three-stage model here, here–here, here–here, here–here, here–here, here–here, here–here transitions and here life stages case studies diversity and here Jane here–here Jimmy here–here, here lifetime allowances here–here, here, here liminality here Linde, Charlotte here lockstep of action here–here, here London here–here London Business School here long life see also life expectancy as a curse here, here as a gift here, here Luddites, the here machine learning here marriage here–here Marsh, Paul here Marshall, Anthony here mastery here–here matching here–here Millenials here Mirvas, Philip here Modigliani, Franco here MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) here, here Moore’s Law here–here, here Moravec’s Paradox here, here morbidity here–here compression of here–here Morrissey, Francis here mortality here mortality risk here multiple selves here–here National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress here neighbourhoods here neoplasticity here neoteny here, here new experiences here occupations here–here old age dependency ration here–here, here Ondine, curse of here options here, here–here Osborne, Michael here paid leave here Parfit, Derek here participation rates here–here, here peers here–here pension case studies Jack here, here–here, here, here Jane here, here, here–here, here, here, here, here, here–here Jimmy here–here, here, here–here, here, here, here–here, here three-stage life model here–here, here–here, here–here pension replacement rate here–here, here, here–here pensions here, here–here, here see also pension case studies amount required here–here funded schemes here goals and here government policy and here–here investment and here, here occupational pensions here–here Pay As You Go schemes here–here, here, here pension replacement rate here–here, here, here–here reform and here state pensions here–here, here period life expectancy measure here, here–here personal brands here pharmacy (occupation) here planning here plasticity here–here play here–here politics, engagement with here Polyani’s Paradox here–here, here population here–here, here–here portfolios (financial) here–here portfolios (life stage) here–here, here–here switching costs here transitions and here–here posse here–here, here possible selves here, here–here possible selves case studies Jane here–here Jimmy here–here, here Preston, Samuel here production complementarities here, here–here, here productive assets here–here, here case studies here, here, here–here, here, here, here, here–here, here, here marriage and here transitions and here professional social capital here–here prototyping here–here psychology here, here–here see also self-control age process algorithms here, here automation and here–here behavioural nudges here saving and here–here pure relationships here, here pyramid schemes here re-creation and recreation here–here, here–here recruitment here reflexive project, the here regenerative community here, here, here Relation P here relationships here–here, here, here children and here–here divorce and here–here, here dual career households here families and here–here, here–here friendships here, here–here household here, here–here, here, here marriage and here–here, here–here matches and here–here multi-generational living here–here, here options and here–here pure relationship here switching roles here, here, here, here–here reputation here–here, here–here, here–here retirees here–here retirement see also pensions age of here, here, here, here, here–here, here consumption levels and here corporations and here, here government policy and here–here stimulation in here, here risk here risk pooling here robotics here, here, here, here see also Artificial Intelligence role models here routine here routine activities here routine-busting here routine tasks here–here Rule of here here Sabbath, the here sabbaticals here–here Save More Tomorrow (SMarT plan) here–here Scharmer, Otto here second half of the chessboard here–here segregation of the ages here–here, here–here, here, here–here self-control here–here, here–here age process algorithms here, here automation and here behavioural nudges here self-employment here–here self-knowledge here–here, here finance and here–here service sector here sexuality here–here Shakespeare, William King Lear here sharing economy here–here, here, here short-termism here–here skills and knowledge here, here–here, here see also human skills earning potential and here professional social capital and here–here technology and here–here valuable here–here Slim, Carlos here smart cities here–here independent producers and here–here social media here, here–here society here spare time here see also leisure time standardized practices here–here Staunton, Mike here strategic bequest motive, the here–here substitution effect here switching here, here, here, here–here tangible assets here–here, here, here, here, here see also housing; pensions case studies here, here, here, here, here, here transitions and here taxation here, here–here Teachers Insurance and Annuity Assurance scheme here technology here, here see also Artificial Intelligence computing power here–here, here–here see also Moore’s Law driverless cars here–here, here education and here, here, here employment and here, here–here, here–here, here, here, here–here, here human skills and here, here innovation and here matching and here relationships and here teenagers here–here, here–here, here, here Thaler, Richard here thick market effects here–here Thomas, R. here time here, here–here see also sabbaticals discretionary time here flexibility and here–here, here Industrial Revolution, the here–here, here–here, here intangible assets and here leisure and here, here, here–here, here–here, here–here restructuring here, here spare time here working hours here–here, here, here–here working hours paradox here–here, here working week, the here–here, here time poor here–here trade unions here transformational assets here, here–here, here–here, here, here, here case studies here–here, here–here, here–here, here–here, here, here, here, here crucible experiences and here corporations and here transitions here, here–here, here–here, here corporations and here financing here–here government policy and here, here nature of here–here portfolios and here–here re-creating here recharging here–here tribal rituals here Twitter here Uhlenberg, Peter here–here, here UK, occupational pension schemes and here–here Unilever here universities here US here–here compression of morbidity and here occupational pension schemes and here Valliant, George here value creation here vitality assets here, here–here, here case studies here, here–here, here, here, here–here, here, here, here, here transitions and here–here website here week, the here–here weekend, the here, here weight loss here welfare here–here see also benefits Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania here–here, here WhatsApp here Wolfran, Hans-Joachim here women see also gender children and here–here relationships and here, here, here work and here–here Women and Love here work see employment working hours here–here, here, here–here working week, the here–here, here Yahoos here–here youthfulness here–here Bloomsbury Information An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 © Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, 2016 Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? by Raj Raghunathan

behavioural economics, Blue Ocean Strategy, Broken windows theory, business process, classic study, cognitive dissonance, deliberate practice, do well by doing good, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, fundamental attribution error, hedonic treadmill, job satisfaction, longitudinal study, Mahatma Gandhi, market clearing, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Phillip Zimbardo, placebo effect, science of happiness, Skype, sugar pill, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Thorstein Veblen, Tony Hsieh, work culture , working poor, zero-sum game, Zipcar

GOAL AVERAGE RANK 1 Great/fulfilling relationships 3.19 2 Being happy 3.31 3 Great career success 4.78 4 Being rich 5.46 5 Being a good person; helping others 6.23 6 Being free to do as you please 7.44 7 Job satisfaction 8.12 8 Physical health 8.86 9 Being famous 9.45 10 Respect/admiration of peers 9.56 11 Spiritual growth 10.19 12 Being really good at something/achieving mastery 11.23 13 Figuring out the meaning of life 11.34 14 Finding your purpose in life 11.79 15 Physical attractiveness 12.22 16 Being powerful 12.67 Sixteen “Life Goals” and Their Average Rank Across Respondents As it turns out, there’s an intriguing reason why people don’t ask the Genie for happiness.

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Getting Flow Back into Your (Work) Life If flow is a critical determinant of both happiness and success, then it follows that finding flow at work is important, as we spend the bulk of our “waking life” at work. However, most of us do not find work to be as meaningful or satisfying as we should—or could. A recent worldwide survey revealed that about twice as many employees are dissatisfied with their jobs as are satisfied. This wasn’t always the case. In the 1970s and 1980s, job satisfaction in the United States was much higher than it currently is. Most people recognize that it’s a shame to find work meaningless and unfulfilling. Which is why, as Herminia Ibarra, author of a book called Working Identity, notes, so many of us dream of quitting our jobs one day and doing something more meaningful.

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If neediness lowers happiness, one might assume that the opposite of neediness—avoidance—would enhance happiness. But that’s not the case. The discomfort that avoidants feel with intimacy spoils the quality of their relationships. This is a problem that avoidants face both in romantic and in workplace settings. For instance, avoidants experience lower job satisfaction than do either the needy or the secure. Avoidants are also prone to being less satisfied with the help they get from others, and this in turn makes them less likely to engage in healthy collaboration with others. Unsurprisingly, therefore, avoidants aren’t very effective as leaders. A final reason why being avoidant lowers happiness is because, like neediness, it leads to loneliness.

Wealth Without a Job: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Freedom and Security Beyond the 9 to 5 Lifestyle by Phil Laut, Andy Fuehl

Alan Greenspan, British Empire, business process, buy and hold, declining real wages, fear of failure, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, index card, job satisfaction, Menlo Park, Silicon Valley, women in the workforce

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Laut, Phil. Wealth without a job : the entrepreneur’s guide to freedom and security beyond the 9 to 5 lifestyle / Phil Laut and Andy Fuehl. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-471-65645-3 (cloth) 1. New business enterprises. 2. Entrepreneurship. 3. Job satisfaction. 4. Success in business. I. Fuehl, Andy, 1962– II. Title. HD62.5.L38 2004 658.1'1—dc22 2004002226 Printed in the United States of America. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ftoc.qxd 7/9/04 8:20 AM Page vii C O N T E N T S Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Earning the Income You Want from Work You Love 11 The Old Methods No Longer Work in Today’s Economy 19 Chapter 3 What the Global Economy Means to You 27 Chapter 4 The Emotional Dynamics of Change 31 Chapter 5 Three Ingredients to Effective Change: Awareness, Acceptance, and Action 61 Chapter 6 Your Recovery from a Good Upbringing 71 Chapter 7 Stop Wasting Your Energy 107 Chapter 8 Your Mind Is Not a Democracy 131 Chapter 9 Mental Flexibility for Peak Performance 159 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 vii ftoc.qxd 7/9/04 8:20 AM Page viii viii Contents Chapter 10 Overall Business Model 179 Chapter 11 Negotiation 185 Chapter 12 Secrets of Compelling Communication 193 Chapter 13 Learning to Sell the Easy Way 209 Chapter 14 Putting It All Together into a Plan 249 Appendix 263 About the Authors 267 Index 273 flast.qxd 7/9/04 8:20 AM Page ix A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S W e extend our heartfelt thanks to the many people who have aided and inspired us in the creation of this book: Linda Konner, our literary agent, for her guidance and wisdom.

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Then there is the depressing discovery that salary offers are lower than the job that was left, even though pointing this out may not be politically correct. A so-called side business can offer benefits far beyond the income that it produces. Some of these benefits are: • It can be a prudent first step toward a full-time business of your own. ccc_laut_intro_1-10.qxd 7/8/04 12:22 PM Page 9 Introduction • It can increase your job satisfaction by reducing dependency on your job. • It can be a risk-free way to learn a new occupation. • It can be a way to discover if you would enjoy some new occupation. • It can be a way to grow and expand your mind, discover your true potential and who you really are. Additionally, the fact that job security has disappeared means that you are likely to be in the job market several times during a career, sometimes willingly and other times not.

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Known enemies! This may seem a mere play on words until you consider the sometimes 83 ccc_laut_ch06_71-106.qxd 7/8/04 12:24 PM Page 84 84 Your Recovery from a Good Upbringing suppressed animosity between employers and workers that seems to be expressed only from time to time in labor strife. Job satisfaction is impossible if you view your employer as an adversary. If you follow rule 9, you perform at less than your best or sabotage your success. Why? Excellence always rocks the boat. If you follow rule 10, success does not seem to be worth the price. People try to prove this to be correct by creating endless obstacles and struggles.

Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Thomas Ramge

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Air France Flight 447, Airbnb, Alvin Roth, Apollo 11, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, banking crisis, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Checklist Manifesto, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, conceptual framework, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fundamental attribution error, George Akerlof, gig economy, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, invention of the telegraph, inventory management, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, land reform, Large Hadron Collider, lone genius, low cost airline, low interest rates, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, market design, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, multi-sided market, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, Parag Khanna, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price anchoring, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, random walk, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, statistical model, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, tacit knowledge, technoutopianism, The Future of Employment, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, transaction costs, universal basic income, vertical integration, William Langewiesche, Y Combinator

In 2011, a former Amazon engineer named Steve Yegge garnered international attention when he shared his thoughts on his ex-boss in a rant on Google Plus that he had not meant to post publicly. “Bezos is super smart; don’t get me wrong,” Yegge noted. “He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.” On Glassdoor, the website where employees can anonymously rate their employers and managers, Amazon has ranked notoriously low in job satisfaction compared to other darlings of Silicon Valley. Many reviews complain about the demands placed on employees and declare that they have no autonomy. A 2015 New York Times investigation of working conditions among office staff found that employees are “held accountable for a staggering array of metrics” about different aspects of the firm’s operations—running about fifty pages long—and are asked to explain detected inefficiencies in weekly and monthly business review sessions.

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In part, though, it is also an attempt to refocus those participating in the market on the diversity of preferences that influence job choices. By using salary prominently in internal talent markets, managers and employees would be tempted to optimize largely on price, thereby running the risk that market participants will overlook other dimensions that are important for job satisfaction. Price can be deemphasized in such internal job-matching platforms by mandating that all parties stick to firmwide salary bands, which are not individually negotiable. That way, some flexibility in agreeing on a salary is retained but the emphasis on it is reduced. Talent-matching platforms are an intriguing way to inject markets rich with information into the organizational structure of the firm.

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INDEX abundance of capital, 142–143, 194 of resources, 220–221 accounting, 90 development of, 91–95 reform of, 172–173 Air France Flight 447, 157–159, 170–171 Airbnb, 70 airline industry, 112 Akerlof, George, 40 Alation, 70 Alexa, 79, 164 Alexandria library, 21 algorithms, 5, 8–9, 71–77, 81, 82, 84, 136, 210 development process for, 71–72 fintechs and, 153 firms and, 128 lack of diversity in, 12 open, call for, 167 opportunities provided by, 74–75 Alibaba, 2, 75, 163, 196, 215 Allende, Salvador, 176, 177 Altman, Sam, 189 Amazon, 9, 30, 52, 68, 69, 74, 75, 76–77, 79, 87–89, 96, 102, 107 annual revenues of, 87 data-rich market structure and, 130 feedback effects and, 164 as a firm, 88–89, 106 low job satisfaction in, 88–89 market concentration in, 161 market model of, 87–88 network effects and, 164 research & development in, 196 scale effects and, 164 American Express, 127 American Research and Development Corporation, 216 Andreesen, Marc, 189 Angkor Wat, 21 animal skins (as currency), 48 antitrust measures, 12, 165 Apollo spacecraft, 22, 159 Apple, 55, 75, 79, 121–122, 169, 196, 215 Apple Music, 74 Apple Pay, 135–136, 146 Arendt, Hannah, 223 Armstrong, Neil, 22 artificial intelligence.

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg

affirmative action, business process, Cass Sunstein, constrained optimization, experimental economics, fear of failure, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, old-boy network, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social graph, Susan Wojcicki, women in the workforce, work culture , young professional

., “Well … She Wants It More: Perceptions of Social Norms About Desires for Marriage and Children and Anticipated Chore Participation,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 34, no. 2 (2010): 253–60, which surveyed college students and found no difference between men and women in their self-reported level of desire to marry. 3. For reviews of studies about job satisfaction and turnover, see Petri Böckerman and Pekka Ilmakunnas, “Job Disamenities, Job Satisfaction, Quit Intentions, and Actual Separations: Putting the Pieces Together,” Industrial Relations 48, no. 1 (2009): 73–96; and Brooks et al., “Turnover and Retention Research: A Glance at the Past, a Closer Review of the Present, and a Venture into the Future,” The Academy of Management Annals 2, no. 1 (2008): 231–74. 4.

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., The Sponsor Effect: Breaking Through the Last Glass Ceiling, a Harvard Business Review Research Report (December 2010): 5–7. 2. Studies have found that people who are mentored and sponsored report having more career success (such as higher compensation, a greater number of promotions, greater career and job satisfaction, and more career commitment). See Tammy D. Allen et al., “Career Benefits Associated with Mentoring for Protégés: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Applied Psychology 89, no. 1 (2004): 127–36. A study of several thousand white collar workers with at least a bachelor’s degree found that sponsorship seemed to encourage both men and women to ask for a stretch assignment and a pay increase.

Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui by Karen Kingston

job satisfaction, yottabyte

There was once a wonderful book by Declan Treacy with just that title (sadly, it’s no longer in print), in which he described the desks and business practices of some of the top entrepreneurial businesspeople in the world, who all keep paperwork to a minimum. A clear desk means a clear mind, and a clear mind has vision and perspective. If you are bogged down in paperwork, that’s exactly where you’ll stay. Working with a clear desk increases productivity, creativity, and job satisfaction. An excellent habit to acquire is to always leave your desk clear whenever you finish. It is psychologically far more uplifting to start with a clear desk than with mounds of paperwork, which makes you feel defeated before you even begin. So start now by removing from your desk absolutely all paperwork that awaits your attention and all objects that are not absolutely vital.

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Make it clear when you will be available, and do the same with emails and voice calls (use autoresponders and voicemail messages to inform people). Give an emergency access route when absolutely necessary and you’ll find most people will adapt to your rules. By planning your interruptions instead of having them constantly bombard you without any control, your productivity and job satisfaction will increase, and your immune system will not take such a pounding. In lab experiments, animals given control of their environment live longer, have higher antibody counts, and fewer ulcers. Your choice. One man sent an email to tell me, “I am busy clearing the clutter. Now I see more clutter than ever.

The Personal MBA: A World-Class Business Education in a Single Volume by Josh Kaufman

Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Atul Gawande, Black Swan, Blue Ocean Strategy, business cycle, business process, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Heinemeier Hansson, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Dean Kamen, delayed gratification, discounted cash flows, Donald Knuth, double entry bookkeeping, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, en.wikipedia.org, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Santayana, Gödel, Escher, Bach, high net worth, hindsight bias, index card, inventory management, iterative process, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, loose coupling, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, Network effects, Parkinson's law, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, place-making, premature optimization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rent control, scientific management, side project, statistical model, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subscription business, systems thinking, telemarketer, the scientific method, time value of money, Toyota Production System, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, Y Combinator, Yogi Berra

Sometimes that response is well defined—as we discussed earlier, your body knows exactly what it needs to do to regulate blood glucose. Often, however, you don’t know exactly what is wrong—or how to fix it. Think of a perception as abstract as “job satisfaction”—there’s a set point in your mind that stands for “how happy I should be at work,” and your perception of job satisfaction is an average of your actual experiences at work. Pleasant experiences move the average higher, and unpleasant experiences move the average lower. If your perception of “job satisfaction” is lower than you think it should be (your Reference Level), your brain will kick into action—“I’m not as happy as I should be . . . Something needs to change.”

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This mentality led to the widespread use of financial incentives to influence behavior: salary, bonuses, stock options, and so on, in an effort to encourage business professionals and managers to act in the best interest of corporate shareholders. There’s an enormous (and growing) body of evidence that direct incentives often undermine performance, motivation, and job satisfaction in the real world.13 Despite more useful competing theories of human action, 14 the search for the magic stimulus continues in business school classrooms to this day. In Search of Distribution Any technique, however worthy and desirable, becomes a disease when the mind is obsessed with it.

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely

Alvin Roth, An Inconvenient Truth, assortative mating, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Burning Man, business process, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Demis Hassabis, end world poverty, endowment effect, Exxon Valdez, first-price auction, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, IKEA effect, Jean Tirole, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, loss aversion, name-letter effect, Peter Singer: altruism, placebo effect, Richard Thaler, Saturday Night Live, search costs, second-price auction, Skinner box, software as a service, subprime mortgage crisis, sunk-cost fallacy, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, ultimatum game, Upton Sinclair, young professional

A few months later we aren’t as annoyed by the color of the cabinets, but at the same time, we don’t derive as much pleasure from the handsome floors. This type of emotional leveling out—when initial positive and negative perceptions fade—is a process we call hedonic adaptation. Just as our eyes adjust to changes in light and environment, we can adapt to changes in expectation and experience. For example, Andrew Clark showed that job satisfaction among British workers was strongly correlated with changes in workers’ pay rather than the level of pay itself. In other words, people generally grow accustomed to their current pay level, however low or high. A raise is great and a pay cut is very upsetting, regardless of the actual amount of the base salary.

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A Accessory Transit Company, 154 acknowledging workers, 74–76, 80 acronyms, 120 adaptation, 157–90 assortative mating and, 191–212; see also assortative mating focusing attention on changes and, 159–60 hedonic, 160–84; see also hedonic adaptation nineteenth-century experiments on, 157–58 to pain, 160–67 physical, 157–60, 161n sensory perception and, 158–60 Aesop, 198–99 agriculture, obesity and technological developments in, 8 AIDS, 250, 251 airlines, customer service problems of, 142–43 alienation of labor, 79–80 American Cancer Society (ACS), 241–42, 249–50, 254 Andrade, Eduardo, 262, 265, 267–68, 299 anger, acting on, 257 author��s anecdote of, 258–61 driving and, 261 ultimatum game and, 268, 269–70, 273, 274, 276 animals: empathy for suffering of, 249 generalizing about human behavior from studies on, 63 working for food preferred by, 59–63 annoying experiences: breaking up, 177–79, 180 decisions far into future affected by, 262–64 annuities, 234 anterior insula, 266–67 anticipatory anxiety, 45 Anzio, Italy, battle of (1944), 167 apathy toward large tragedies, 238–39 drop-in-the-bucket effect and, 244–45, 252, 254–55 statistical condition and, 238–41, 242, 246, 247–49, 252–53 apologies, 149–51 for medical errors, 152 Apple, 120n battery replacement issue and, 141–42 art, homemade, 89–90 Asian tsunami, 250, 251 assembly line, 78–79 assortative mating, 191–212 altering aesthetic perception and (sour grapes theory), 198–99, 200, 201, 203 author’s injuries and, 191–96, 210–11 dinner party game and, 198 failure to adapt and, 200–201, 203–5 gender differences and, 209, 211 HOT or NOT study and, 201–5, 208, 211 reconsidering rank of attributes and, 199–200, 201, 205–10 speed-dating experiment and, 205–10 Atchison, Shane, 140–41, 146 attachment: to one’s own ideas, see Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias to self-made goods, see IKEA effect attractiveness, assortative mating and, 191–212 see also assortative mating auctions, first-price vs. second-price, 98–99 Audi customer service, author’s experience with, 131–36, 137, 149, 153–54 experimental situation analogous to, 135–39 fictional case study for Harvard Business Review based on, 147–49 B bailout, public outrage felt in response to, 128–31 baking mixes, instant, 85–87 bankers: author’s presentation of research findings to, 107–9, 121 bonus experiments and, 38–41, 51 Frank’s address to, 41 public outrage in response to bailout and, 128–31 bankruptcy, 129, 130 Barkan, Racheli, 39, 109–10, 299 basketball, clutch players in, 39–41 beauty: assortative mating and, 196–212; see also assortative mating general agreement on standard of, 203 Becker-DeGroot-Marschak procedure, 91 Beecher, Henry, 167 behavioral economics: goal of, 9–10 human rationality not assumed in, 6–7 revenge as metaphor for, 124n Betty Crocker, 87 Bible, Gideon’s conversation with God in, 288–89 blindness, adaptation to, 172–74 blogging, 65 Blunder (Shore), 117 boiling-frog experiment, 157–58 bonuses, 17–52 bank executives’ responses to research on, 37–39 clutch abilities and, 39–41 for cognitive vs. mechanical tasks, 33–36, 40–41 creativity improvements and, 47–48 experiments testing effectiveness of, 21–36, 44–46 Frank’s remarks on, 41 intuitions about, 36–37 inverse-U relationship between performance and, 20–21, 47 loss aversion and, 32–33 optimizing efficacy of, 51–52 public rage over, 21 rational economists’ view of, 36–37 social pressure and, 44–46 surgery situation and, 48–49 viewed as standard part of compensation, 33 in wake of financial meltdown of 2008, 131 brain: judgments about experiences and, 228–29 punishment and, 126 breaks, in pleasant vs. painful experiences, 177–81 Brickman, Philip, 170 business, experimental approach to, 292–93 C cake mixes, instant, 85–87 California, moving to, 176 Call, Josep, 127 cancer, American Cancer Society fundraising and, 241–42, 249–50, 254 canoeing, romantic relationships and, 278–79 cars, 215–16 designing one’s own, 88, 89 division of labor in manufacture of, 78–79 in early days of automotive industry, 94 hedonic treadmill and, 175 see also driving cell phones, 7 in experiments on customer revenge, 135–39, 145–46, 150–51 see also texting CEOs, very high salaries and bonuses paid to, 21 Chance, Zoë, 220, 300 changes: ability to focus attention on, 159–60 decisions about life’s path and, 287 in future, foreseeing adaptation to, 160, 171–74 status quo bias and, 285, 286 in workers’ pay, job satisfaction and, 169–70 charities: American Cancer Society (ACS), 241–42, 249–50, 254 calculating vs. emotional priming and, 246–48 emotional appeals and, 240–42, 248–50, 253–54, 256 identifiable victim effect and, 239–42, 248, 256 charities (cont.) mismatching of money and need and, 250–51 motivating people to take action and, 252–56 Chat Circles, 225 cheating, 76 childbirth, pain of, 168, 169n children: in growing and preparing of food, 121 parents’ overvaluation of, 97–98 chimpanzees, sense of fairness in, 127 chores, taking breaks in, 177–79, 180 civil liberties, erosion of, 158 Clark, Andrew, 169 climate change, 251–52 closeness, empathy and, 243, 245, 254 clutch abilities, 39–41 CNN, 238 Coates, Dan, 170 cockroaches, social pressure in, 45–46 commercial breaks, enjoyment of television and, 181n comparisons, hedonic adaptation and, 189 compensation, 47 changes in, job satisfaction and, 169–70 see also bonuses completion: employees’ sense of, 77, 79–80 Loewenstein’s analysis of mountaineering and, 80–81 computers, 233 consumer purchases, 185–88 happiness derived from transient experiences vs., 187–88 hedonic treadmill and, 175 placing limits on, 186–87 reducing, 185–86 spacing of, 185, 186 contrafreeloading, 60–63 Jensen’s study of, 60–62, 63 standard economic view at odds with, 62–63 Converse, 95 cooking: children’s involvement in, 121 enjoyment factor and, 62n, 105–6 semi-preprepared food and, 85–88 CO2 emissions, 251–52 counting strategies, 282–83 Count of Monte Cristo, The (Dumas), 123 creation, pride of: ideas and, see Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias self-made goods and, see IKEA effect creativity, bonuses and improvements in, 47–48 Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály, 49 cultures, organizational: acronyms and, 120 Not-Invented-Here bias and, 119–21 customer revenge, 131–51 against airlines, 142–43 apologies and, 149–51, 152 author’s experience with Audi customer service and, 131–36, 137, 147–49, 153–54 distinction between agents and principals and, 144–47 Farmer and Shane’s “Yours Is a Very Bad Hotel” and, 140–41, 146 fictional case study for Harvard Business Review on, 147–49 increase in, 143 Neistat brothers’ video on Apple’s customer service and, 141–42 passage of time and, 151 phone call interruption experiments on, 135–39, 145–46, 150–51 customization, 94–96 of cars, 88, 89, 94 effort expended in, 89, 95–96 overvaluation despite removing possibility of, 96 of shoes, 95, 96 D Dallaire, Roméo, 255 Darfur, 238, 253 Dart Ball game, 23, 34 Darwin, Charles, 157 dating, 191–235 market failures in, 213–15, 216–17, 220–21, 230–32, 233–35 playing hard to get and, 104 standard practice of, 224–25, 227–28 yentas (matchmakers) and, 213 see also assortative mating; online dating; speed dating decision making: author’s medical care and, 284–88 cooling off before, 257, 279 emotions and, 261–77 gender differences and, 274–76 irreversible decisions and, 285, 286 rationalization of choices in, 287 from rational perspective, 5–6 short-term, long-term decisions affected by, 264–65, 270–74, 276–77 stability of strategies for, 261–65; see also self-herding ultimatum game and, 265–70, 275–76 dentistry, adaptation to pain and, 161–62 design, taking people’s physical limitations into account in, 230–32 destroying work in front of workers, 74–76 Dichter, Ernest, 86 disease: adaptation to pain and, 165, 167 preventative health care and, 251, 256 “survivor” rhetoric and, 241–42 Disney, 154 distraction, performance-based incentives and, 30, 36 division of labor, 77–80 IT infrastructure and, 77, 79–80 Marx’s alienation notion and, 79 Smith’s observations on, 77–78 divorce, foreseeing outcome of, 173 Dodson, John, 18–20, 22, 31, 47 do-it-yourself projects, see IKEA effect Donath, Judith, 225 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 157 Doubletree Club, Houston, 140–41, 146 dreams, author’s self-image in, 182–83 DreamWorks SKG, 154 driving: momentary anger during, 261 safety precautions and, 6–7 texting during, 6, 7, 8 see also cars drop-in-the-bucket effect, 244–45, 252, 254–55 Dumas, Alexandre, 123 E Eastwick, Paul, 172–73 Edison, Thomas, 117–19, 122 effort: increase in value related to, 89, 90, 95–96, 105–6; see also IKEA effect joy derived from activity and, 71–72 meaningful work conditions and, 72 ownership of ideas and, 114–16 see also labor egg theory, 86–88 Eisner, Michael, 154 electric chair, 119 electricity, alternating current (AC) vs. direct current (DC), 117–19 emotional cascades, 265–78 gender differences and, 274–76 romantic relationships and, 277–78 ultimatum game and, 265–76 emotional priming: empathy for plight of others and, 246–48 ultimatum game and, 268–70 emotions, 43, 237–79 appeals to, willingness to help others and, 240–42, 248–50, 253–54, 256 decision making and, 261–77; see also decision making in past, humans’ poor memory of, 264 transience of, 257, 261, 270 see also empathy; negative feelings, acting on empathy: animals’ suffering and, 249, 252 apathy toward statistical victims and, 238–41, 242, 246, 247–49, 252–53 Baby Jessica saga and, 237–38 calculating vs. emotional priming and, 246–48 clear moral principles and, 255 closeness and, 243, 245, 254 drop-in-the-bucket effect and, 244–45, 252, 254–55 emotional appeals and, 240���42, 248–50, 253–54, 256 global warming and, 251–52 identifiable victim effect and, 239–42, 248, 256 overcoming barriers to, 252–56 rules to guide our behavior and, 254–55 thought experiment of drowning girl and, 242–43, 245 toward one person vs. many in need, 237–56 vividness and, 24, 243n, 244, 245 endowment effect, 285, 286 Enron, 216 evolution, mismatch between speed of technological development and, 8–9 experiments, 10–11, 288–95 business or public policy and, 292–94, 295 of Gideon, 288–89 medical practice and, 289–92 rational economists’ criticisms of, 49–51 see also specific topics Exxon Valdez oil spill, 249 F fairness, sense of: in chimpanzees, 127 decision making and, 266–67; see also ultimatum game gender differences and, 275–76 Fallows, James, 158 Farmer, Tom, 140–41, 146, 148–49 FedEx, 108–9 feedback, about work, 74–76 Feeks, John, 118–19 Fehr, Ernst, 125–26 financial incentives: meaning of labor and, 72–73, 76 see also bonuses financial markets, safety measures for, 7 financial meltdown of 2008, 7, 21, 216 chronology of events in, 129–30 desire for revenge in wake of, 128–31 lack of experimental approach to, 293 outraged public reaction to bailout in, 128–29, 130 Finkel, Eli, 172–73 First Knight, 50 fixation, pride in creation and ownership and, 89, 122 food: animals’ preference for working for, 59–63 semi-preprepared, 85–88 shortages of, identifiable victim effect and, 239–41 see also cooking Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 292 Ford, Henry, 78–79, 94 Forgea (white terrier), 249 Fox, Michael J., 254 “Fox and the Grapes, The” (Aesop), 198–99 Frank, Barney, 41 Frankl, Viktor, 45 free food, animals’ preference for working for food vs., 60–62 Frenk, Hanan, 161–65, 300 Friends, ultimatum game and, 269, 270–71, 272 frog experiment, 157–58 Frost, Jeana, 219–20, 229, 300 Fryer, Bronwyn, 148 furniture, do-it-yourself, 83–84, 96, 105, 106 future, foreseeing adaptation to changes in, 160, 171–74 G gardening: children growing food and, 121 enjoyment factor and, 105–6 gender differences: assortative mating and, 209, 211 decision making and, 274–76 pain threshold and tolerance and, 168–69 Gideon, 288–89 global warming, 158, 251–52 Gneezy, Ayelet, 135, 144–45, 150, 300–301 Gneezy, Uri, 21, 44, 301 Gore, Al, 158, 252 government policies, experimental approach to, 292–94, 295 H happiness: comparisons to other people and, 189 consumer purchases and, 175, 185–88 inaccurate predictions about, 170–71 return to baseline of, 170 transient vs. constant experiences and, 187–88 Harvard Business Review (HBR), 147–49 health care, see medical care hedonic adaptation, 160–84 to annoying experiences, 177–79, 180 author’s personal history and, 181–84, 189 blindness and, 172–74 breaking up experiences and, 177–81 changes in workers’ pay and, 169–70 comparisons to other people and, 189 consumer purchases and, 175, 185–88 extending pleasurable experiences and, 176–78, 179–81, 185, 186 in future, foreseeing of, 160, 171–74 happiness baseline and, 170 life-altering injuries and, 171–72, 174 moving to California and, 176 new houses and, 168–69 pain and, 160–67 romantic breakups and, 172–73 to transient vs. constant experiences, 187–88 using our understanding of, 176–81, 184–90 hedonic disruptions, 177–81 hedonic treadmill, 175 Heingartner, Alexander, 45–46 Henry, O., 98 herding, 262 see also self-herding Herman, Edward, 45–46 Hippocrates, 82 Hogerty, Megan, 81 homeostatic mechanisms, 81 Hong, James, 201, 203 HOT or NOT study, 201–5, 208 gender differences in, 209, 211 Meet Me feature and, 204–5, 208, 209 humor, sense of, 199, 200, 207, 208, 228 Hurricane Katrina, 250, 251 I ideas: attachment to, see Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias idiosyncratic fit and, 111–12 identifiable victim effect, 239–42, 248, 256 American Cancer Society and, 241–42 identity, connection between work and, 53–55, 79 idiosyncratic fit, ideas and, 111–12 ignoring workers, 74–76 IKEA, 83–84, 106 IKEA effect, 83–106 author’s creations in rehabilitation center and, 100–101 completion of project and, 101–4, 105 do-it-yourself furniture and, 83–84, 96, 106 effort expended and, 89, 90, 95–96, 105–6 four principles in, 104–5 and lack of awareness of overvaluation, 99 Legos experiment and, 96, 97 Local Motors cars and, 88, 89 Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias and, 109–10, 121 origami experiments and, 91–94, 97, 98–99, 102–4 parents’ overvaluation of their children and, 97–98 practical implications of, 121–22 relaxation notion and, 105–6 removal of individual customization and, 96 semi-preprepared food and, 85–88 shoe design and, 95, 96 immediate gratification, 5 Inconvenient Truth, An, 252 initiation into social groups, 89 injuries: association of pain with getting better after, 166–67 author’s dating prospects and, 191–96, 210–11 author’s decisions about his medical care and, 284–88 author’s personal history related to, 1–4, 13, 107, 160–62, 166–67, 181–84, 189, 191–96, 210–11, 281–88 battlefield vs. civilian, 167 foreseeing future after, 160 life-altering, adaptation to, 160, 171–72, 174 pain thresholds and tolerance related to severity of, 161–65 Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 126–27 insurance products, 233–34 interruptions: in pleasant vs. painful experiences, 177–81 TV commercials and, 181n see also phone call interruption experiments intuitions: bonuses and, 36–37 received medical wisdom and, 289–92 romantic, 172–73 testing of, 10n, 288–95 inverse-U relationship, defined, 19 iPods and iPhones, battery replacement in, 141–42 irrationality: summary of findings on, 288 upside as well as downside of, 11–12, 294 irreversible decisions, 285, 286 IT infrastructure, division and meaning of labor and, 77, 79–80 J Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie, 170 Jensen, Glen, 60–62, 63 Jensen, Keith, 127 Jewish tradition, 254–55 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, 152 Joyless Economy, The (Scitovsky), 188 justice, see fairness, sense of K Kahneman, Danny, 32n, 175–76 Kamenica, Emir, 66, 301 Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 154 Kemmler, William, 119 kinship, empathy and, 243 Krishnamurti, Tamar, 172–73 Krzyzewski, Mike, 39 L labor: connection between identity and, 53–55, 79 contrafreeloading and, 60–63 economic model of, 55, 62–63, 105 financial incentives and, see bonuses meaning of, see meaning of labor overvaluation resulting from, see IKEA effect on projects without meaning, 56–57, 63–72 Labyrinth game, 23 Lee, Leonard, 132, 134, 197, 201–2, 301–2 Lee, Sandra, 87–88 leeches, medicinal use of, 290–91 Legos experiments: on IKEA effect, 96, 97 on reducing meaningfulness of work, 66–74, 77, 80 letter-pairs experiment, 74–76, 80 life-altering events, hedonic adaptation and, 170 Life as a House, ultimatum game and, 268, 269, 270, 272, 276 light, adaptation to changes in, 159 Local Motors, Inc., 88, 89 Loewenstein, George, 21, 44, 80–81, 172–73, 197, 201–2, 239–41, 246–48, 302 long-term objectives, short-term enjoyments vs., 4–5 loss aversion, 32–33, 285, 286 lottery winners, hedonic adaptation of, 170, 171 “Love the One You’re With,” 197, 211–12 M malaria, 250, 251 Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl), 45 marketing, adaptation and, 158 market mechanisms, 215–16 dating and, 213–15, 216–17, 220–21, 230–32, 233–35 Marx, Karl, 79 massages, extending pleasure of, 179–80 matchmakers (yentas), 213 Mazar, Nina, 21, 30, 44, 302 McClure, Jessica (Baby Jessica), 237–38 meals, see cooking meaning of labor, 53–82 in acknowledged, ignored, and shredded conditions, 74–76 animals’ preference for working for food and, 59–63 blogging and, 65 division of labor and, 77–80 draining work of meaning and, 55–57, 63–77 financial incentives and, 72–73, 76 joy derived from activity and, 71–72 labor-identity connection and, 53–55, 79 Legos experiment and, 66–74, 76, 80 lessons for workplace on, 80–82 letter-pairs experiment and, 74–76, 80 “meaning” vs.

…

mismatching of money and need and, 250–51 motivating people to take action and, 252–56 Chat Circles, 225 cheating, 76 childbirth, pain of, 168, 169n children: in growing and preparing of food, 121 parents’ overvaluation of, 97–98 chimpanzees, sense of fairness in, 127 chores, taking breaks in, 177–79, 180 civil liberties, erosion of, 158 Clark, Andrew, 169 climate change, 251–52 closeness, empathy and, 243, 245, 254 clutch abilities, 39–41 CNN, 238 Coates, Dan, 170 cockroaches, social pressure in, 45–46 commercial breaks, enjoyment of television and, 181n comparisons, hedonic adaptation and, 189 compensation, 47 changes in, job satisfaction and, 169–70 see also bonuses completion: employees’ sense of, 77, 79–80 Loewenstein’s analysis of mountaineering and, 80–81 computers, 233 consumer purchases, 185–88 happiness derived from transient experiences vs., 187–88 hedonic treadmill and, 175 placing limits on, 186–87 reducing, 185–86 spacing of, 185, 186 contrafreeloading, 60–63 Jensen’s study of, 60–62, 63 standard economic view at odds with, 62–63 Converse, 95 cooking: children’s involvement in, 121 enjoyment factor and, 62n, 105–6 semi-preprepared food and, 85–88 CO2 emissions, 251–52 counting strategies, 282–83 Count of Monte Cristo, The (Dumas), 123 creation, pride of: ideas and, see Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias self-made goods and, see IKEA effect creativity, bonuses and improvements in, 47–48 Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály, 49 cultures, organizational: acronyms and, 120 Not-Invented-Here bias and, 119–21 customer revenge, 131–51 against airlines, 142–43 apologies and, 149–51, 152 author’s experience with Audi customer service and, 131–36, 137, 147–49, 153–54 distinction between agents and principals and, 144–47 Farmer and Shane’s “Yours Is a Very Bad Hotel” and, 140–41, 146 fictional case study for Harvard Business Review on, 147–49 increase in, 143 Neistat brothers’ video on Apple’s customer service and, 141–42 passage of time and, 151 phone call interruption experiments on, 135–39, 145–46, 150–51 customization, 94–96 of cars, 88, 89, 94 effort expended in, 89, 95–96 overvaluation despite removing possibility of, 96 of shoes, 95, 96 D Dallaire, Roméo, 255 Darfur, 238, 253 Dart Ball game, 23, 34 Darwin, Charles, 157 dating, 191–235 market failures in, 213–15, 216–17, 220–21, 230–32, 233–35 playing hard to get and, 104 standard practice of, 224–25, 227–28 yentas (matchmakers) and, 213 see also assortative mating; online dating; speed dating decision making: author’s medical care and, 284–88 cooling off before, 257, 279 emotions and, 261–77 gender differences and, 274–76 irreversible decisions and, 285, 286 rationalization of choices in, 287 from rational perspective, 5–6 short-term, long-term decisions affected by, 264–65, 270–74, 276–77 stability of strategies for, 261–65; see also self-herding ultimatum game and, 265–70, 275–76 dentistry, adaptation to pain and, 161–62 design, taking people’s physical limitations into account in, 230–32 destroying work in front of workers, 74–76 Dichter, Ernest, 86 disease: adaptation to pain and, 165, 167 preventative health care and, 251, 256 “survivor” rhetoric and, 241–42 Disney, 154 distraction, performance-based incentives and, 30, 36 division of labor, 77–80 IT infrastructure and, 77, 79–80 Marx’s alienation notion and, 79 Smith’s observations on, 77–78 divorce, foreseeing outcome of, 173 Dodson, John, 18–20, 22, 31, 47 do-it-yourself projects, see IKEA effect Donath, Judith, 225 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 157 Doubletree Club, Houston, 140–41, 146 dreams, author’s self-image in, 182–83 DreamWorks SKG, 154 driving: momentary anger during, 261 safety precautions and, 6–7 texting during, 6, 7, 8 see also cars drop-in-the-bucket effect, 244–45, 252, 254–55 Dumas, Alexandre, 123 E Eastwick, Paul, 172–73 Edison, Thomas, 117–19, 122 effort: increase in value related to, 89, 90, 95–96, 105–6; see also IKEA effect joy derived from activity and, 71–72 meaningful work conditions and, 72 ownership of ideas and, 114–16 see also labor egg theory, 86–88 Eisner, Michael, 154 electric chair, 119 electricity, alternating current (AC) vs. direct current (DC), 117–19 emotional cascades, 265–78 gender differences and, 274–76 romantic relationships and, 277–78 ultimatum game and, 265–76 emotional priming: empathy for plight of others and, 246–48 ultimatum game and, 268–70 emotions, 43, 237–79 appeals to, willingness to help others and, 240–42, 248–50, 253–54, 256 decision making and, 261–77; see also decision making in past, humans’ poor memory of, 264 transience of, 257, 261, 270 see also empathy; negative feelings, acting on empathy: animals’ suffering and, 249, 252 apathy toward statistical victims and, 238–41, 242, 246, 247–49, 252–53 Baby Jessica saga and, 237–38 calculating vs. emotional priming and, 246–48 clear moral principles and, 255 closeness and, 243, 245, 254 drop-in-the-bucket effect and, 244–45, 252, 254–55 emotional appeals and, 240���42, 248–50, 253–54, 256 global warming and, 251–52 identifiable victim effect and, 239–42, 248, 256 overcoming barriers to, 252–56 rules to guide our behavior and, 254–55 thought experiment of drowning girl and, 242–43, 245 toward one person vs. many in need, 237–56 vividness and, 24, 243n, 244, 245 endowment effect, 285, 286 Enron, 216 evolution, mismatch between speed of technological development and, 8–9 experiments, 10–11, 288–95 business or public policy and, 292–94, 295 of Gideon, 288–89 medical practice and, 289–92 rational economists’ criticisms of, 49–51 see also specific topics Exxon Valdez oil spill, 249 F fairness, sense of: in chimpanzees, 127 decision making and, 266–67; see also ultimatum game gender differences and, 275–76 Fallows, James, 158 Farmer, Tom, 140–41, 146, 148–49 FedEx, 108–9 feedback, about work, 74–76 Feeks, John, 118–19 Fehr, Ernst, 125–26 financial incentives: meaning of labor and, 72–73, 76 see also bonuses financial markets, safety measures for, 7 financial meltdown of 2008, 7, 21, 216 chronology of events in, 129–30 desire for revenge in wake of, 128–31 lack of experimental approach to, 293 outraged public reaction to bailout in, 128–29, 130 Finkel, Eli, 172–73 First Knight, 50 fixation, pride in creation and ownership and, 89, 122 food: animals’ preference for working for, 59–63 semi-preprepared, 85–88 shortages of, identifiable victim effect and, 239–41 see also cooking Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 292 Ford, Henry, 78–79, 94 Forgea (white terrier), 249 Fox, Michael J., 254 “Fox and the Grapes, The” (Aesop), 198–99 Frank, Barney, 41 Frankl, Viktor, 45 free food, animals’ preference for working for food vs., 60–62 Frenk, Hanan, 161–65, 300 Friends, ultimatum game and, 269, 270–71, 272 frog experiment, 157–58 Frost, Jeana, 219–20, 229, 300 Fryer, Bronwyn, 148 furniture, do-it-yourself, 83–84, 96, 105, 106 future, foreseeing adaptation to changes in, 160, 171–74 G gardening: children growing food and, 121 enjoyment factor and, 105–6 gender differences: assortative mating and, 209, 211 decision making and, 274–76 pain threshold and tolerance and, 168–69 Gideon, 288–89 global warming, 158, 251–52 Gneezy, Ayelet, 135, 144–45, 150, 300–301 Gneezy, Uri, 21, 44, 301 Gore, Al, 158, 252 government policies, experimental approach to, 292–94, 295 H happiness: comparisons to other people and, 189 consumer purchases and, 175, 185–88 inaccurate predictions about, 170–71 return to baseline of, 170 transient vs. constant experiences and, 187–88 Harvard Business Review (HBR), 147–49 health care, see medical care hedonic adaptation, 160–84 to annoying experiences, 177–79, 180 author’s personal history and, 181–84, 189 blindness and, 172–74 breaking up experiences and, 177–81 changes in workers’ pay and, 169–70 comparisons to other people and, 189 consumer purchases and, 175, 185–88 extending pleasurable experiences and, 176–78, 179–81, 185, 186 in future, foreseeing of, 160, 171–74 happiness baseline and, 170 life-altering injuries and, 171–72, 174 moving to California and, 176 new houses and, 168–69 pain and, 160–67 romantic breakups and, 172–73 to transient vs. constant experiences, 187–88 using our understanding of, 176–81, 184–90 hedonic disruptions, 177–81 hedonic treadmill, 175 Heingartner, Alexander, 45–46 Henry, O., 98 herding, 262 see also self-herding Herman, Edward, 45–46 Hippocrates, 82 Hogerty, Megan, 81 homeostatic mechanisms, 81 Hong, James, 201, 203 HOT or NOT study, 201–5, 208 gender differences in, 209, 211 Meet Me feature and, 204–5, 208, 209 humor, sense of, 199, 200, 207, 208, 228 Hurricane Katrina, 250, 251 I ideas: attachment to, see Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias idiosyncratic fit and, 111–12 identifiable victim effect, 239–42, 248, 256 American Cancer Society and, 241–42 identity, connection between work and, 53–55, 79 idiosyncratic fit, ideas and, 111–12 ignoring workers, 74–76 IKEA, 83–84, 106 IKEA effect, 83–106 author’s creations in rehabilitation center and, 100–101 completion of project and, 101–4, 105 do-it-yourself furniture and, 83–84, 96, 106 effort expended and, 89, 90, 95–96, 105–6 four principles in, 104–5 and lack of awareness of overvaluation, 99 Legos experiment and, 96, 97 Local Motors cars and, 88, 89 Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias and, 109–10, 121 origami experiments and, 91–94, 97, 98–99, 102–4 parents’ overvaluation of their children and, 97–98 practical implications of, 121–22 relaxation notion and, 105–6 removal of individual customization and, 96 semi-preprepared food and, 85–88 shoe design and, 95, 96 immediate gratification, 5 Inconvenient Truth, An, 252 initiation into social groups, 89 injuries: association of pain with getting better after, 166–67 author’s dating prospects and, 191–96, 210–11 author’s decisions about his medical care and, 284–88 author’s personal history related to, 1–4, 13, 107, 160–62, 166–67, 181–84, 189, 191–96, 210–11, 281–88 battlefield vs. civilian, 167 foreseeing future after, 160 life-altering, adaptation to, 160, 171–72, 174 pain thresholds and tolerance related to severity of, 161–65 Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 126–27 insurance products, 233–34 interruptions: in pleasant vs. painful experiences, 177–81 TV commercials and, 181n see also phone call interruption experiments intuitions: bonuses and, 36–37 received medical wisdom and, 289–92 romantic, 172–73 testing of, 10n, 288–95 inverse-U relationship, defined, 19 iPods and iPhones, battery replacement in, 141–42 irrationality: summary of findings on, 288 upside as well as downside of, 11–12, 294 irreversible decisions, 285, 286 IT infrastructure, division and meaning of labor and, 77, 79–80 J Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie, 170 Jensen, Glen, 60–62, 63 Jensen, Keith, 127 Jewish tradition, 254–55 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, 152 Joyless Economy, The (Scitovsky), 188 justice, see fairness, sense of K Kahneman, Danny, 32n, 175–76 Kamenica, Emir, 66, 301 Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 154 Kemmler, William, 119 kinship, empathy and, 243 Krishnamurti, Tamar, 172–73 Krzyzewski, Mike, 39 L labor: connection between identity and, 53–55, 79 contrafreeloading and, 60–63 economic model of, 55, 62–63, 105 financial incentives and, see bonuses meaning of, see meaning of labor overvaluation resulting from, see IKEA effect on projects without meaning, 56–57, 63–72 Labyrinth game, 23 Lee, Leonard, 132, 134, 197, 201–2, 301–2 Lee, Sandra, 87–88 leeches, medicinal use of, 290–91 Legos experiments: on IKEA effect, 96, 97 on reducing meaningfulness of work, 66–74, 77, 80 letter-pairs experiment, 74–76, 80 life-altering events, hedonic adaptation and, 170 Life as a House, ultimatum game and, 268, 269, 270, 272, 276 light, adaptation to changes in, 159 Local Motors, Inc., 88, 89 Loewenstein, George, 21, 44, 80–81, 172–73, 197, 201–2, 239–41, 246–48, 302 long-term objectives, short-term enjoyments vs., 4–5 loss aversion, 32–33, 285, 286 lottery winners, hedonic adaptation of, 170, 171 “Love the One You’re With,” 197, 211–12 M malaria, 250, 251 Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl), 45 marketing, adaptation and, 158 market mechanisms, 215–16 dating and, 213–15, 216–17, 220–21, 230–32, 233–35 Marx, Karl, 79 massages, extending pleasure of, 179–80 matchmakers (yentas), 213 Mazar, Nina, 21, 30, 44, 302 McClure, Jessica (Baby Jessica), 237–38 meals, see cooking meaning of labor, 53–82 in acknowledged, ignored, and shredded conditions, 74–76 animals’ preference for working for food and, 59–63 blogging and, 65 division of labor and, 77–80 draining work of meaning and, 55–57, 63–77 financial incentives and, 72–73, 76 joy derived from activity and, 71–72 labor-identity connection and, 53–55, 79 Legos experiment and, 66–74, 76, 80 lessons for workplace on, 80–82 letter-pairs experiment and, 74–76, 80 “meaning” vs.

Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook by Michael Lopp

do what you love, finite state, game design, job satisfaction, John Gruber, knowledge worker, reality distortion field, remote working, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, sorting algorithm, systems thinking, web application

There's a litany of good reasons to be angry with your boss, your company, or your team, but you don't want to start a job change being pissed off. Nothing taints common sense more than being pissed off. Early Warning Signs of Doom Choosing to subject yourself to a recruiting cold call is just one sign that cracks are forming in your job satisfaction. There are others... Engagement How engaged are you in your work? I know you love working on that new feature in the product—you'll always love doing new things—but how about the busy work? How engaged are you in the work that is necessary but tedious? Remember when you joined the company and everyone was bright and you had no clue the boring work was, well, boring?

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It's an early sign that the core satisfaction in my job has begun to erode when I'm unable to charge through the work I hate. Wanderlust How much are you thinking about your job when you're not working? When you go to sleep? My question is: how much are you thinking about your job when you don't have to? There's a larger job satisfaction analysis going on inside of wanderlust. In hi-tech, 9 to 5 jobs are dead. I'm a fervent supporter of maintaining a work-life balance that allows you to explore as much of the planet Earth as possible, but I'm also the guy who thinks if you're going to do this job, you should be absolutely fucking crazy about it.

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I don't really build anything, I...do stuff." This made the first engineering gig a revelation. "You. We are building a database application and you own this specific part. It is entirely yours. Don't fuck it up." Delicious, delicious structure. Sweet, sweet definition. These basic and essential elements of job satisfaction are at the root of why many engineers make horrible managers. They are trained as and love to be control freaks. The New Gig Now you have a new job. You have an office and you have a door. On your desk, there's a timer that tracks the number of seconds that it's just you alone in your office.

Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, call centre, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, demand response, Donald Trump, emotional labour, fake news, financial independence, Firefox, gamification, gig economy, Google Chrome, helicopter parent, impulse control, Jean Tirole, job automation, job satisfaction, Lyft, meta-analysis, Minecraft, New Journalism, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, social distancing, strikebreaker, TaskRabbit, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, uber lyft, working poor

These tips are designed to focus on the choices you have control over as an employee, a freelancer, or a hustling victim of the gig economy. They have everything to do with how you schedule your day, how you set goals, and what your mindset about work is. Advocate for Your Autonomy One of the greatest predictors of both job satisfaction and employee motivation is how much freedom a person has.66 Contrary to every micromanager’s worst fears, it’s not the case that an unwatched, unbothered employee is a nonproductive one.67 Most people thrive when given a little autonomy to set their own priorities and work at their own pace.68 One person I spoke to about this was Markus Nini, a manager and mechanical engineer whose business operates out of Germany.

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In the psychological literature, this is sometimes called the “overjustification effect.”70 Basically, if you take a job that a person naturally likes doing and then start tying that pleasant activity to rewards or punishment, such as their level of pay or whether they get reprimanded, you’ll actually make the task less pleasant for them.71 Suddenly, they’re not doing their job because they like it but because they have to. That creates a tendency toward overwork, stress, and misery. Annette Towler also brought up the importance of autonomy. She says, “When people feel autonomy, when they feel like they’re accomplishing something, that gives them a sense of control over their work, and it leads to higher job satisfaction. And generally, what’s good for an employee’s well-being is good for the quality of their output and productivity.” On a more personal level, this research means that we don’t have to push and pressure ourselves to overcome our “lazy” side. Our motivation will come naturally, so long as we avoid pushing ourselves past a healthy work-life balance.

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Eva Blix, Aleksander Perski, Hans Berglund, and Ivanka Savic, “Long-Term Occupational Stress Is Associated with Regional Reductions in Brain Tissue Volumes,” PLoS One 8, no. 6 (2013): e64065, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0064065. 65. Kaitlin Smith, “Some Thoughts on Lifestyle Design for Wild Minds,” Wild Mind Collective, August 30, 2017, https://www.wildmindcollective.com/483-2/. 66. Elnar M. Skaalvik and Sidsel Skaalvik, “Teacher Self-Efficacy and Perceived Autonomy: Relations with Teacher Engagement, Job Satisfaction, and Emotional Exhaustion,” Psychological Reports 114, no. 1 (February 2014): 68–77. 67. Anders Dysvik and Bård Kuvaas, “Intrinsic Motivation as a Moderator on the Relationship between Perceived Job Autonomy and Work Performance,” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 20, no. 3 (June 2011): 367–87. 68.

Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment by Lucas Chancel

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Anthropocene, behavioural economics, biodiversity loss, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, COVID-19, disinformation, Donald Trump, energy security, energy transition, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Gini coefficient, green new deal, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, job satisfaction, low skilled workers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, urban planning, very high income, Washington Consensus

From this it may be concluded that inequalities can cause productivity losses among disfavored workers that outweigh the gains produced among workers who are favored by these inequalities. Very comparable results have been obtained by a similar experiment in India, suggesting that this aversion to inequality extends across cultures.34 Another study of the same type was made by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, showing that job satisfaction is partly determined by relative wages (rather than the level of pay).35 They too found that earning more than the baseline wage for a given job does not increase workers’ satisfaction, whereas earning less has a negative effect, prompting underpaid workers to change employers. We are therefore far from Okun’s hypothetical world in which inequality stimulates innovation and encourages workers to work harder.

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abstract_id=1778894. 34. Emily Breza, Supreet Kaur, and Yogita Shamdasani, “The Morale Effects of Pay Inequality” (working paper no. 22491, National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2016), https://www.nber.org/papers/w22491. 35. David Card et al., “Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction,” American Economic Review 102, no. 6 (2012): 2981–3003. 36. Cingano, “Trends in Income Inequality and Its Impact on Economic Growth.” The implications of a study of this kind are nonetheless limited to the data it relies on. Cingano does not carefully measure income inequality at the summit of the pyramid, which is not really due to educational disadvantages. 37.

The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics by David Goodhart

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, assortative mating, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, central bank independence, centre right, coherent worldview, corporate governance, credit crunch, Crossrail, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, Etonian, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, gender pay gap, gig economy, glass ceiling, global supply chain, global village, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, low skilled workers, market friction, mass immigration, meritocracy, mittelstand, Neil Kinnock, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, obamacare, old-boy network, open borders, open immigration, Peter Singer: altruism, post-industrial society, post-materialism, postnationalism / post nation state, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, shareholder value, Skype, Sloane Ranger, stem cell, the long tail, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, World Values Survey

Notwithstanding all these depressing statistics about ‘bad jobs’ it is also worth noting that 71 per cent of workers think they have a good job, according to that 2015 British Social Attitudes survey.46 And Andrew Oswald of Warwick University has found no correlation at all between levels of education and job satisfaction.47 Quite a few people in low-skill jobs have high satisfaction and some people with advanced degrees who are paid £200,000 have low satisfaction. The disappearing middle income/middle status jobs must also be kept in perspective. Even allowing for 40 per cent of high-skill jobs and 30 per cent of low-skill jobs that still leaves 30 per cent for middling ones, and although the ‘hollowing out’ of skill levels is well established there seems to have been much less hollowing out of incomes, with no significant reduction in the number of people in the middle income deciles.

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See Figure 1 in Katie Schmuecker, ‘Future of the UK Labour Market’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, February 2014, https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/future-uk-labour-market 4.http://www.centreforcities.org/press/nearly-a-million-new-jobs-created-in-british-cities-since-2010-but-average-salary-drops-by-1300-per-city-resident/ 5.See Theodore Dalrymple’s observation about the erosion of the distinction between service to others and servitude to others: Theodore Dalrymple, ‘Why Britain (and Europe) depends on migrants’, The Spectator, 26 March 2016, http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/03/why-britain-and-europe-depends-on-migrants/ 6.A YouGov poll found 37 per cent of workers, around 11.5 million people, felt their job is not making a meaningful contribution to society. Tom W. Smith, ‘Job satisfaction in the United States’, University of Chicago, 17 April 2007, www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/07/pdf/070417.jobs.pdf and ‘Work’, British Social Attitudes 33, 2016, http://bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39061/bsa33_work.pdf 7.Sammy Rashid and Greg Brooks, ‘The levels of attainment in literacy and numeracy of 13- to 19-year-olds in England, 1948–2009’, University of Sheffield, 2010. 8.Brendan Cole, ‘Young people in England have “lowest literacy levels” in developed world says OECD’, International Business Times, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/young-people-england-have-lowest-literacy-levels-developed-world-says-oecd-1540711 9.See the work of behavioural geneticists such as Robert Plomin and Rosalind Arden. 10.

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., ‘The UK’s self-employment phenomenon: why the labour market isn’t so strong after all’, Morgan Stanley Research, 2014. 46.‘Work’, British Social Attitudes 33, 2016, http://bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39061/bsa33_work.pdf 47.Jonathan Gardner and Andrew Oswald, ‘How does education affect mental well-being and job satisfaction?’, Warwick University, June 2002, www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/ajoswald/reveducationgardneroswaldjune2002.pdf 48.Julie Froud et al, ‘Rebalanching the Economy (Or Buyer’s Remorse’, CRESC Working Paper Series, No. 87, January, 2011, https://www.searchlock.com/search?q=cresc+rebalancing+the+economy 49.Alex Brummer, Britain For Sale: British Companies in Foreign Hands, The Hidden Threat to Our Economy, London: Random House, 2013. 50.Julie Froud et al, ‘Rebalanching the Economy (Or Buyer’s Remorse’, CRESC Working Paper Series, No. 87, January, 2011, https://www.searchlock.com/search?

The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z. Muller

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, Chelsea Manning, collapse of Lehman Brothers, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, deskilling, Edward Snowden, Erik Brynjolfsson, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, Goodhart's law, Hyman Minsky, intangible asset, Jean Tirole, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Minsky moment, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, performance metric, price mechanism, RAND corporation, Salesforce, school choice, scientific management, Second Machine Age, selection bias, Steven Levy, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, WikiLeaks

There are indeed circumstances when pay for measured performance fulfills that promise: when the work to be done is repetitive, uncreative, and involves the production or sale of standardized commodities or services; when there is little possibility of exercising choice over what one does; when there is little intrinsic satisfaction in it; when performance is based almost exclusively on individual effort, rather than that of a team; and when aiding, encouraging, and mentoring others is not an important part of the job. For sales forces,1 or for routinized, individualized, highly focused jobs involving standardized outputs and without broader responsibilities, rewarding measured performance may well pay off. In short, as one sociologist has put it, “Extrinsic rewards become an important determinant of job satisfaction only among workers for whom intrinsic rewards are relatively unavailable.”2 These are the sort of tasks for which Taylorism (see chapter 3) was designed. There are many such jobs in any society, including a modern, technologically advanced one. But in our time, as the technologies of robotics and artificial intelligence advance, such jobs are becoming fewer and far between.3 But the salient fact is that most private-sector jobs do not match these criteria.

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., Assessing Locally Focused Stability Operations (Rand Corporation, 2014), p. 9. 9. Connable, Embracing the Fog of War, p. 29. CHAPTER 12. BUSINESS AND FINANCE 1. http://www.simon.rochester.edu/fac/misra/mkt_salesforce.pdf. 2. Barry Gruenberg, “The Happy Worker: An Analysis of Educational and Occupational Differences in Determinants of Job Satisfaction,” American Journal of Sociology 86 (1980), pp. 247–71, esp. pp. 267–68, quoted in Kohn, Punishment by Rewards, p. 131. 3. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York, 2014). 4. Dan Cable and Freck Vermeulen, “Why CEO Pay Should Be 100% Fixed,” Harvard Business Review (February 23, 2016). 5.

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Christensen, Clayton M., Dillon, Karen, Allworth, James

air freight, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Clayton Christensen, disruptive innovation, hiring and firing, invisible hand, Iridium satellite, job satisfaction, late fees, Mahatma Gandhi, Nick Leeson, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, working poor, young professional

Frederick Herzberg, probably one of the most incisive writers on the topic of motivation theory, published a breakthrough article in the Harvard Business Review, focusing on exactly this. He was writing for a business audience, but what he discovered about motivation applies equally to us all. Herzberg notes the common assumption that job satisfaction is one big continuous spectrum—starting with very happy on one end and reaching all the way down to absolutely miserable on the other—is not actually the way the mind works. Instead, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are separate, independent measures. This means, for example, that it’s possible to love your job and hate it at the same time.

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But all you can aspire to is that employees will not be mad at each other and the company because of compensation. This is an important insight from Herzberg’s research: if you instantly improve the hygiene factors of your job, you’re not going to suddenly love it. At best, you just won’t hate it anymore. The opposite of job dissatisfaction isn’t job satisfaction, but rather an absence of job dissatisfaction. They’re not the same thing at all. It is important to address hygiene factors such as a safe and comfortable working environment, relationship with managers and colleagues, enough money to look after your family—if you don’t have these things, you’ll experience dissatisfaction with your work.

Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All by Costas Lapavitsas

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, borderless world, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, conceptual framework, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, false flag, financial deregulation, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, Flash crash, full employment, general purpose technology, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, global village, High speed trading, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal capitalism, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, market bubble, means of production, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, oil shock, open economy, pensions crisis, post-Fordism, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, savings glut, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Simon Kuznets, special drawing rights, Thales of Miletus, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transaction costs, union organizing, value at risk, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

See Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, New York: Basic Books, 1992. 9 Francis Green, Demanding Work: The Paradox of Job Quality in the Affluent Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006; Francis Green and Nicholas Tsitsianis, ‘Can the Changing Nature of Jobs Account for National Trends in Job Satisfaction?’, Studies in Economics no. 0406, Department of Economics, University of Kent, 2004; and Francis Green and Nicholas Tsitsianis, ‘An Investigation of National Trends in Job Satisfaction’, British Journal of Industrial Relations 43:3, 2005. 10 This statement refers more accurately to Japan and Germany which have had high rates of growth of productivity historically, rather than to the UK which has generally been a laggard.

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Green, Francis, Demanding Work: The Paradox of Job Quality in the Affluent Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Green, Francis, and Nicholas Tsitsianis, ‘Can the Changing Nature of Jobs Account for National Trends in Job Satisfaction?’, Studies in Economics No. 0406, Department of Economics, University of Kent, 2004. Green, Francis, and Nicholas Tsitsianis, ‘An Investigation of National Trends in Job Satisfaction’, British Journal of Industrial Relations 43:3, 2005, pp. 401–29. Greenspan, Alan, ‘Currency Reserves and Debt’, Remarks Before the World Bank Conference on Recent Trends in Reserves Management, Washington, DC, 29 April 1999.

The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth by Robin Hanson

8-hour work day, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blockchain, brain emulation, business cycle, business process, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, deep learning, demographic transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental subject, fault tolerance, financial intermediation, Flynn Effect, Future Shock, Herman Kahn, hindsight bias, information asymmetry, job automation, job satisfaction, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, lone genius, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, market design, megaproject, meta-analysis, Nash equilibrium, new economy, Nick Bostrom, pneumatic tube, power law, prediction markets, quantum cryptography, rent control, rent-seeking, reversible computing, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Vernor Vinge, William MacAskill

For example, today as they get older people tend to be less neurotic, and more agreeable, conscientiousness, and open to experience (Soto et al. 2011), although these trends reverse after the age of 65 (Kandler et al. 2015). Older people have weaker differences between genders in their roles and attitudes (Hofstede et al. 2010), they are more trusting (Robinson and Jackson 2001), they have less regret about missed life opportunities (Brassen et al. 2012), and they have more job satisfaction and less stress and negative emotions (Tay et al. 2014). Older people (and males) are more influential in social networks, and influential people are more clustered in their associations, and less susceptible to social influence by others (Aral and Walker 2012). For older people, happiness tends to increase with age, controlling for health, and older people tend to associate happiness more with peacefulness, as opposed to excitement, in part because they focus more on the present as opposed to the future (Mogilner et al. 2011).

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Iannaccone, Laurence. 1994. “Why Strict Churches Are Strong.” American Journal of Sociology 99(5): 1180–1211. Ichniowski, Casey, and Anne Preston. 2014. “Do Star Performers Produce More Stars? Peer Effects and Learning in Elite Teams.” NBER Working Paper No. 20478, September. Idson, Todd. 1990. “Establishment Size, Job Satisfaction and the Structure of Work.” Applied Economics 22(8): 1007–1018. Inglehart, Ronald, and Christian Welzel. 2010. “Changing Mass Priorities: The Link Between Modernization and Democracy.” Perspectives on Politics 8(2): 554. 2012. “International Labour Organization Global Estimate of Forced Labour 2012: Results and Methodology.”

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November. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf. Navarrete, C. David, Robert Kurzban, Daniel Fessler, and Lee Kirkpatrick 2004. “Anxiety and Intergroup Bias: Terror Management or Coalitional Psychology?” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 7(4): 370–397. Nguyen, Anh Ngoc, Jim Taylor, and Steve Bradley. 2003. “Job Autonomy and Job Satisfaction: New Evidence.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Lancaster, Lancaster. Niederle, Muriel. 2014. “Gender.” NBER Working Paper No. 20788, December. Nitsch, Volker. 2005. “Zipf Zipped.” Journal of Urban Economics 57(1): 86–100. Nordhaus, William. 2015. “Are We Approaching an Economic Singularity?

The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want by Diane Mulcahy

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, basic income, Clayton Christensen, cognitive bias, collective bargaining, creative destruction, David Brooks, deliberate practice, digital nomad, diversification, diversified portfolio, fear of failure, financial independence, future of work, gig economy, helicopter parent, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, independent contractor, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, loss aversion, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, mass immigration, mental accounting, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage tax deduction, negative equity, passive income, Paul Graham, remote working, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social contagion, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, the strength of weak ties, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, wage slave, WeWork, Y Combinator, Zipcar

Gould, Elise, Economic Policy Institute, “2014 continues a 35-year trend of broad-base wage stagnation,” February 19, 2015. www.epi.org/publication/stagnant-wages-in-2014/ 3. Adkins, Amy, “Majority of U.S. Employees Not Engaged Despite Gains in 2014,” Gallup, January 28, 2015, www.gallup.com/poll/181289/majority-employees-not-engaged-despite-gains-2014.aspx 4. The Conference Board, “Surge in Hiring Lifts Outlook for Workers But Overall Job Satisfaction Remains Below 50%,” September 8, 2015. www.conference-board.org/press/pressdetail.cfm?pressid=5545 5. Freelancers Union, Freelancing in America: 2015, An independent study commissioned by the Freelancers Union and Upwork. Also, Rasch, Rena, “Your Best Workers May Not Be Your Employees: A Global Study of Independent Workers,” IBM Smarter Work-force Institute, October 2014. public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/lo/en/lol14027usen/LOL14027USEN.PDF?

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University of Pennsylvania, Knowledge@Wharton, “Underfunded Pensions: Tackling an ‘Invisible’ Crisis,” January 26,2015. knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/underfunded-pensions-tackling-an-invisible-crisis/ 12. Glassdoor, Q3 2015 US Employment Confidence Survey. press-content.glassdoor.com/app/uploads/sites/2/2015/10/ECS-Q32015-Supplement.pdf 13. “Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement,” SHRM, Society for Human Resource Management, 2015. www.shrm.org/Research/SurveyFindings/Documents/14-0028%20JobSatEngage_Report_FULL_FNL.pdf 14. www.coursera.org, www.edcast.com, www.edx.com, www.novoed.com, www.udemy.com 15. Clark, Dorie, “Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future,” Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, April 9, 2013. 16.

The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise by Nathan L. Ensmenger

barriers to entry, business process, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer age, deskilling, Donald Knuth, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, functional programming, future of work, Grace Hopper, informal economy, information retrieval, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, job satisfaction, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, loose coupling, machine readable, new economy, no silver bullet, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, post-industrial society, Productivity paradox, RAND corporation, Robert Gordon, scientific management, Shoshana Zuboff, sorting algorithm, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, the market place, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, Turing machine, Von Neumann architecture, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K

By the 1960s, more than fifty statistically significant collections of preferences (“keys”) had been developed for such occupations as artist, mathematician, police officer, and airplane pilot. Perry and Cannon were attempting to develop a similar interest key for programmer. They hoped to use this key to correlate a unique programmer personality profile with self-reported levels of job satisfaction. In the absence of direct measures of job performance, such as supervisors’ evaluations, it was assumed that satisfaction tracked closely with performance. The larger assumption behind the use of the SVIB profiles was that candidates who had interests in common with those individuals who were successful in a given occupation were themselves also likely to achieve similar success.

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,” Monthly Review 50, no. 8 (1999). 31. Wanda Orlikowski, “The DP Occupation: Professionalization or Proletarianization?” Research in the Sociology of Work 4 (1988): 95–124. 32. Brian Rothery, Installing and Managing a Computer (London: Business Books, 1968), 152. 33. Kraft, Programmers and Managers, 26. 34. Enid Mumford, Job Satisfaction: A Study of Computer Specialists (London: Longman Group Limited, 1972), 175. 35. Robert Head, “Controlling Programming Costs,” Datamation 13, no. 7 (1967): 141. 36. Andrew Friedman and Dominic Cornford, Computer Systems Development: History, Organization, and Implementation (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 1989); M.

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Software Engineering Notes 17 (4) (1992): 19–21. Moore, Gordon. “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits.” Electronics 38 (8) (1965): 114–117. Morgan, H. L., and J. V. Soden. “Understanding MIS Failures.” Database 5 (2) (1973): 157–171. Morrison, David. “Software Crisis.” Defense 21 (2) (1989): 72. Mumford, Enid. Job Satisfaction: A Study of Computer Specialists. London: Longman Group Limited, 1972. Mumford, Enid, and Thomas Ward. Computers: Planning for People. London: B. T. Batsford, 1968. Murray, Fergus, and David Knights. “Inter-managerial Competition and Capital Accumulation: IT Specialists, Accountants, and Executive Control.”

Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, From Atoms to Economies by Cesar Hidalgo

Ada Lovelace, Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, assortative mating, business cycle, Claude Shannon: information theory, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Douglas Hofstadter, Everything should be made as simple as possible, Ford Model T, frictionless, frictionless market, George Akerlof, Gödel, Escher, Bach, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, information asymmetry, invention of the telegraph, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, New Economic Geography, Norbert Wiener, p-value, Paul Samuelson, phenotype, price mechanism, Richard Florida, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Rubik’s Cube, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, tacit knowledge, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, transaction costs, working-age population

For instance, he found that people who got their jobs through personal contacts had better-paying jobs than those who got them through direct applications or professional recruiting agencies. Also, people who found their jobs through personal contacts were more likely to have a new job cut out for them and they reported higher levels of job satisfaction.4 In short, he found not only that social networks were the main determinant of information about job availability, which is crucial for job seekers, but also that these networks were correlated with important job characteristics such as wages and job satisfaction. The allocation of the best jobs, just like that of the best apartments, tends to piggyback social networks. Granovetter’s findings, which applied to white-collar workers, showed that personal contacts were the main way these workers found jobs.

Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code by Jeff Atwood

AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, cloud computing, endowment effect, fail fast, Firefox, fizzbuzz, Ford Model T, future of work, game design, gamification, Google Chrome, gravity well, Hacker News, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Merlin Mann, Minecraft, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, price anchoring, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, science of happiness, Skype, social software, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, web application, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Are there any people on your team you’d “vote off the island” if you could? It may sound trivial to focus on the people you work with over more tangible things like, say, the actual work, or the particular technology you’re using to do that work. But it isn’t. The people you choose to work with are the most accurate predictor of job satisfaction I’ve ever found. And job satisfaction, based on my work experience to date, correlates perfectly with success. I have never seen a happy, healthy, gelled, socially functional software development team fail. It’s a shame such teams are so rare. As Weinberg said, it’s always a people problem. If you aren’t working with people you like, people you respect, people that challenge and inspire you — then why not?

Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres by Jamie Woodcock

always be closing, anti-work, antiwork, call centre, capitalist realism, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, David Graeber, emotional labour, gamification, invention of the telephone, job satisfaction, late capitalism, means of production, millennium bug, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, post-Fordism, post-industrial society, post-work, precariat, profit motive, scientific management, social intelligence, stakhanovite, technological determinism, women in the workforce

Taylor and Bain, ‘“An Assembly Line in the Head”’ (1999), p. 103. 18. The Call Centre (2013). 19. Franco Berardi, The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009) p. 21. 20. Ibid., p. 84. 21. Ibid., p. 85. 22. Kerry A. Lewig and Maureen F. Dollard, ‘Emotional Dissonance, Emotional Exhaustion and Job Satisfaction in Call Centre Workers’, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 12, No. 4 (2003), pp. 366–92. 23. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1844), Marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm 24. Marx, Capital ([1867] 1976), p. 614. 171 Working the Phones 25.

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Lebowitz, M. (2009) Following Marx: Method, Critique and Crisis, Boston: Brill. Lefort, C. (1952) ‘Proletarian Experience’, Socialisme ou Barbarie, No. 11. trans. Viewpoint Magazine, available at: http://viewpointmag. com/2013/09/26/proletarian-experience Lewig, K. A. and Dollard, M. F. (2003) ‘Emotional Dissonance, Emotional Exhaustion and Job Satisfaction in Call Centre Workers’, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 366–92. Lewis, J. S. (1948) Partnership for All: A Thirty Four Year Old Experiment in Industrial Democracy, London: Kerr-Cross Publishing. Linhart, R. (1981) The Assembly Line, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas A. Christakis

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Atul Gawande, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, classic study, clean water, Columbian Exchange, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, death of newspapers, disinformation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, helicopter parent, Henri Poincaré, high-speed rail, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, job satisfaction, lockdown, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, meta-analysis, New Journalism, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, school choice, security theater, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, trade route, Upton Sinclair, zoonotic diseases

We can’t go back in part because some organizations have offered to let people work remotely permanently.”81 Indeed, early studies revealed that the transition was unexpectedly smooth. Office workers’ job satisfaction and engagement fell dramatically in the first two weeks of working from home in the United States when the lockdowns were initiated, one study found, but once people adjusted, eight weeks into the experience, their job satisfaction recovered rapidly. One employee observed, “I think it’s weird how normal everything has become—the virtual meetings, the emails, everyone looking grungy.” And a CEO noted that he felt this experience “put an end to the ‘fly across the country for a one-hour meeting’ expectation forever.”82 Because of the positive experience, many of the changes are likely to be permanent.

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One of the longest-lasting economic effects concerns the cohort of students graduating from college into a recession. They are unlikely to catch up economically; they are predicted to endure lower wages for at least twenty years.87 Ironically, however, such people in prior recessions have reported more job satisfaction, even fifteen years later and even after accounting for occupation, income, and industry. When people begin their jobs during a recession, they appear to feel more fortunate about having a job in the first place.88 Psychologist Adam Grant has argued that the ripple effects of the pandemic may even include more ethical leadership of our major corporations.

Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America by Tamara Draut

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, always be closing, American ideology, antiwork, battle of ideas, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, collective bargaining, creative destruction, David Brooks, declining real wages, deindustrialization, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, ending welfare as we know it, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, full employment, gentrification, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, machine readable, mass incarceration, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, obamacare, occupational segregation, payday loans, pink-collar, plutocrats, Powell Memorandum, profit motive, public intellectual, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, shared worldview, stock buybacks, TED Talk, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trickle-down economics, union organizing, upwardly mobile, War on Poverty, white flight, women in the workforce, young professional

Arlene, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago at the age of seventeen, today works in a job where she compares the way she’s treated to our nation’s greatest moral stain. Arlene isn’t alone in her dissatisfaction. Various surveys find that jobs in retail and food service rank very low in terms of job satisfaction.12 The Blue-Collar Jobs In the top-ten list of occupations providing the largest number of jobs in our country, two of the ten (laborers/material movers and janitors) could be described as traditional blue-collar work, that is, physical labor done overwhelmingly by men. But unlike four decades ago, these jobs aren’t on the assembly line or factory floor.

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Janelle Jones and John Schmitt, “Slow Progress for Fast-Food Workers,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, August 6, 2013, at http://www.​cepr.​net/​index.​php/​blogs/​cepr-​blog/​slow-​progress-​for-​fast-​food-​workers. 10. Ibid. 11. “The Demographics of the Retail Work Force,” Demos, November, 18, 2012, at http://www.​demos.​org/​sites/​default/​files/​data_​bytes/​demographics.​png. 12. Tom W. Smith, “Job Satisfaction in America,” NORC/University of Chicago, April 17, 2007 at http://www-news.​uchicago.​edu/​releases/​07/​pdf/​070417.​jobs.​pdf; CareerBliss survey available online at http://www.​careerbliss.​com/​facts-​and-​figures/​careerbliss-​happiest-​and-​unhappiest-​jobs-​in-​america-​2015/. 13. U.S.

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom Demarco, Timothy Lister

A Pattern Language, An Inconvenient Truth, cognitive dissonance, DeepMind, interchangeable parts, job satisfaction, knowledge worker, lateral thinking, Parkinson's law, performance metric, skunkworks, supply-chain management, women in the workforce

In such an environment, the argument that more time or money is needed to produce a high-quality product is generally not heard. The result is that developers know they are part of a culture that delivers quality beyond what the marketplace requires. Their sense of quality identification works for increased job satisfaction and some of the lowest turnover figures seen anywhere in the industry. Power of Veto In some Japanese companies, notably Hitachi Software and parts of Fujitsu, the project team has an effective power of veto over delivery of what they believe to be a not-yet-ready product. No matter that the client would be willing to accept even a substandard product, the team can insist that delivery wait until its own standards are achieved.

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If you don’t know it, you can’t begin to do something about it. Only the market will understand. It will take steps of its own to rectify the situation, steps that do not bode well for you. Measuring with Your Eyes Closed Work measurement can be a useful tool for method improvement, motivation, and enhanced job satisfaction, but it is almost never used for these purposes. Measurement schemes tend to become threatening and burdensome. In order to make the concept deliver on its potential, management has to be perceptive and secure enough to cut itself out of the loop. That means the data on individuals is not passed up to management, and everybody in the organization knows it.

The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 by Jonathan Rauch

behavioural economics, endowment effect, experimental subject, Google bus, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, income per capita, job satisfaction, longitudinal study, loss aversion, public intellectual, Richard Thaler, science of happiness, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TED Talk, upwardly mobile, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

A 1994 paper by Oswald and Andrew Clark (published in the Royal Economic Society’s Economic Journal), on whether unemployment causes unhappiness (answer: yes, and powerfully), contained the sentence: “There is a U shape in mental wellbeing with respect to age.” In a 1996 paper (in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology), Oswald, Clark, and a psychologist named Peter Warr found that job satisfaction is “U-shaped in age.” At that point, the result seemed an intriguing oddity. There was no particularly good theory to explain it and not much by way of confirmation, and so the researchers did not pay much attention to it. “We did what people do, which is just proceed,” Oswald told me. “You’re in the fog of research.

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Herodotus Hirsch, Jerry HIV Holmes, Jamie homosexuality Hong Kong iconography, midlife crisis impostor syndrome “In Defense of the Practical Politician” (Winter) income comparing others’ growth relative study on life satisfaction and growth of national incomes, of others Individual Purpose Accounts inequality, visibility of infancy, Cole on ingratitude Institute on Aging internal critics International Journal of Psychoanalysis The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud) interviews and interviewees career change to philanthropy on disappointment on expectations gap on job switch letter from first on moving abroad neighbor Nora (ninety-four-year-old) now what question and resignation feeling sixties and seventies scores on social connection and sharing trust and wisdom implied in intuition “Is Wellbeing U-Shaped over the Life Cycle?” (Blanchflower/Oswald) Isaacowitz, Derek M. Japan Jaques, Elliott Jefferson, Thomas Jeste, Dilip positive psychiatry and wisdom studied by job satisfaction, U curve in age and job switch, during midlife crisis Jobs, Steve Jones, Dan L. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology Journal of Public Economics journalism award Kahneman, Daniel Kenya Kilgallon, Anne Marie King, James Kipling, Rudyard Knetsch, Jack Kojola, Erik Kunzmann, Ute Lacey, Heather P.

Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs by Lauren A. Rivera

affirmative action, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, classic study, Donald Trump, emotional labour, fundamental attribution error, glass ceiling, income inequality, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, meritocracy, messenger bag, meta-analysis, new economy, performance metric, profit maximization, profit motive, school choice, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, tacit knowledge, tech worker, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wisdom of Crowds, unpaid internship, women in the workforce, young professional

“Part of being successful,” asserted Parker, a crisply dressed Eastmore student who was interviewing simultaneously for banking and consulting, “is being well compensated.” Indeed, research shows that elite college graduates tend to place greater stress on material rewards in jobs than do students from other types of schools and rate high salaries as being more important to their overall job satisfaction.7 For other students, a focus on money was driven by necessity. Undergraduate college tuition has exploded.8 As of 2014, at many elite colleges it approached $60,000 annually, including room, board, and fees.9 Although the most elite core campuses offer substantial financial aid to many students, not all who need it qualify.10 Many still emerge with significant debt.

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High levels of attrition, although costly in the short run, could benefit firms in the long term by increasing the range of their future client base. Having large numbers of former employees in a wide variety of organizations and industries might assist firms in acquiring new business. Furthermore, selecting new hires based on cultural similarity could enhance cohesion and job satisfaction among employees. Creating a group of close-knit coworkers who have the potential to become instant friends and playmates could foster motivation and organizational commitment among junior employees; this might compensate for the grueling hours and mundane tasks required of these workers. As my study participants also made clear, having a strong social network of like-minded others is a critical marketing tool that firms use to attract new applicants year after year despite the difficult lifestyle associated with these jobs.

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Strategic Management Journal 18:187–206. Ostrander, Susan. 1993. “Surely You’re Not in This Just to Be Helpful: Access, Rapport, and Interviews in Three Studies of Elites.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 22:7–27. Owens, Jayanti, and Lauren Rivera. 2012. “Recasting the Value of an Elite Education: Institutional Prestige, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover.” Presentation at Academy of Management annual meeting, Boston, August. Pager, Devah. 2003. “The Mark of Criminal Record.” American Journal of Sociology 108:937–75. Pager, Devah, and Diana Karafin. 2009. “Bayesian Bigot? Statistical Discrimination, Stereotypes, and Employer Decision-Making.”

The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel J. Levitin

Abraham Maslow, airport security, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anton Chekhov, autism spectrum disorder, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, big-box store, business process, call centre, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, complexity theory, computer vision, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Eratosthenes, Exxon Valdez, framing effect, friendly fire, fundamental attribution error, Golden Gate Park, Google Glasses, GPS: selective availability, haute cuisine, How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?, human-factors engineering, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, impulse control, index card, indoor plumbing, information retrieval, information security, invention of writing, iterative process, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, language acquisition, Lewis Mumford, life extension, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, more computing power than Apollo, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, optical character recognition, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, phenotype, placebo effect, pre–internet, profit motive, randomized controlled trial, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, shared worldview, Sheryl Sandberg, Skype, Snapchat, social intelligence, statistical model, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, traumatic brain injury, Turing test, Twitter Arab Spring, ultimatum game, Wayback Machine, zero-sum game

Some of these are obvious and well known, such as setting clear goals and providing high-quality, immediate feedback. Expectations need to be reasonable or employees feel overwhelmed, and if they fall behind, they feel they can never catch up. Employee productivity is directly related to job satisfaction, and job satisfaction in turn is related to whether employees experience that they are doing a good job in terms of both quality and quantity of output. There’s a part of the brain called Area 47 in the lateral prefrontal cortex that my colleague Vinod Menon and I have been closely studying for the last fifteen years.

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Army have justly identified as components to finding one’s work meaningful and satisfying. If some but not too many aspects of the job are surprising in interesting ways, this can lead to a sense of discovery and self-growth. Finding the right balance to keep Area 47 happy is tricky, but the most job satisfaction comes from a combination of these two: We function best when we are under some constraints and are allowed to exercise individual creativity within those constraints. In fact, this is posited to be the driving force in many forms of creativity, including literary and musical. Musicians work under the very tight constraints of a tonal system—Western music uses only twelve different notes—and yet within that system, there is great flexibility.

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Again, this may seem counterintuitive, but a business has a greater degree of structural organization if its org chart can be described in a simple rule containing few words, and there are no exceptions to the rule. Whether the degree of structure of a company predicts efficiency, profitability, or job satisfaction remains an empirical question, one that has not been investigated. On the one hand, individuals clearly differ in their ability to supervise others, and so, naturally, some bosses will have more employees simply because they are adept at handling more. Individuals also differ widely in their skills, and a nimble and efficient organization should allow employees to use their strengths for the good of the company.

This Chair Rocks: A Manifiesto Against Ageism by Ashton Applewhite

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Atul Gawande, Buckminster Fuller, clean water, cognitive dissonance, crowdsourcing, Day of the Dead, desegregation, Downton Abbey, fixed income, follow your passion, ghettoisation, Google Hangouts, hiring and firing, income inequality, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, life extension, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Naomi Klein, obamacare, old age dependency ratio, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, sensible shoes, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, stem cell, the built environment, urban decay, urban planning, white picket fence, women in the workforce

Atul Gawande points out in his book Being Mortal, “requires each of us to contemplate the unfixables in our life, the decline we will unavoidably face, in order to make the small changes necessary to reshape it. When the prevailing fantasy is that we can be ageless, the geriatrician’s uncomfortable demand is that we accept we are not.”19 Medical students also assume, wrongly, that practicing geriatrics will be depressing. Guess what kind of doctors report the highest job satisfaction, over and over? Geriatricians. And the happiest geriatricians have lots of patients over seventy-five and accept Medicare.20 To what did the authors of a UC Davis study of more than 6,500 physicians attribute this? “In addition to the steady hours, encounters with inspirational seniors, and enduring relationships, this specialty is enjoying increasing demand as baby boomers retire.”

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“In addition to the steady hours, encounters with inspirational seniors, and enduring relationships, this specialty is enjoying increasing demand as baby boomers retire.” They then note, without irony, that “relatively poor Medicare reimbursements have led to shortages of geriatricians nationwide.”21 How about improving those Medicare reimbursement rates? How about using those job satisfaction numbers to address the image problem? How about debt forgiveness for geriatricians in training? We’re not just living longer, we’re staying healthy longer Sixty isn’t the new sixty, but it is a new sixty. More active lifestyles, healthier diets, hip and hormone replacements, all forestall or prevent the loss of function that was once an inescapable aspect of making it past middle age.

Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization by Scott Barry Kaufman

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, classic study, dark triade / dark tetrad, David Brooks, desegregation, Donald Trump, fear of failure, Greta Thunberg, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, imposter syndrome, impulse control, job satisfaction, longitudinal study, Maslow's hierarchy, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, overview effect, Paradox of Choice, phenotype, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Rosa Parks, science of happiness, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social intelligence, Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury

Self-actualization scores were associated with multiple indicators of well-being, including greater life satisfaction, curiosity, self-acceptance, positive relationships, environmental mastery, personal growth, autonomy, and purpose in life. Self-actualization also predicted job performance, job satisfaction, and reports of greater talent, skill, and creative ability across a wide range of fields, from the arts and sciences to business and sports. The characteristics of self-actualization can conceptually be grouped into four categories, which will form the remainder of this book: exploration, love, purpose, and transcendence.

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Organizational psychologist Amy Wrzesniewski and her colleagues found that it’s easy for most people to assign themselves to one of these dimensions (in fact, the researchers were surprised just how easily people were able to do so!).29 They found that people who viewed their job as a calling reported greater levels of life satisfaction and job satisfaction and missed fewer days at work compared to those who viewed their job as just a job or as a career. The findings hold even when you control for income, education, and occupation, suggesting that satisfaction with life and with work may depend more on how you see your work than on income or occupational prestige.

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People aren’t interacting with others only to get something from them, but they truly admire others and care for their growth, development, and freedom. Finally, autonomy-supportive organizational cultures allow for a certain degree of job-crafting, whereby employees have some say in designing their job to allow growth, engagement, job satisfaction, resilience, purpose, and well-being.103 Job crafters can redesign how they perform tasks, increasing social connection while engaging in their task, and reframe their task as something more meaningful and beneficial to society. The restaurant chef can become an artist. The nurse can become a therapist.

Immigration and Ethnic Formation in a Deeply Divided Society: The Case of the 1990s Immigrants From the Former Soviet Union in Israel by Majid Al Haj

demographic transition, ghettoisation, job satisfaction, mass immigration, phenotype, profit motive, zero-sum game

However, there was a significant negative relationship between immigrants’ residential concentration, on the one hand, and their actual knowledge of Hebrew (r = –0.183) and satisfaction with their command of Hebrew (r = –.0163), on the other hand. In other words, living in an “immigrant” neighborhood is a voluntary act stemming from the immigrants’ free choice, which is facilitated by the very fact that immigrants form a sizable group in most urban communities in Israel. The positive relationship between demographic concentration and job satisfaction may be explained by the fact that living in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood puts one in contact with immigrant networks that facilitate finding an appropriate job. This issue was raised in our immigrant focus groups. When asked about the process of finding their first job in Israel, immigrants repeatedly said that immigrant networks (neighbors and friends) played an important role in their entry to the labor market, mainly in the initial stage after arrival.

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In a study of the occupational adjustment of FSU physicians who immigrated to Israel in the 1990s wave, Bernstein and Shuval concluded that only 25% of those who arrived in 1989–1993 found employment in the health-care system. They also found a strong relationship between occupational-status persistence, on the one hand, and job satisfaction and identification with the host society, on the other (Bernstein and Shuval 1995). In any event, most studies agree that despite the job mismatch experienced by many FSU immigrants in Israel, their economic integration can be considered a success story (see, for example, Beenstock and Menahem 1997; Raijman and Semyonov 1998).

How to Work Without Losing Your Mind by Cate Sevilla

Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, Desert Island Discs, Donald Trump, emotional labour, gender pay gap, Girl Boss, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, imposter syndrome, job satisfaction, lockdown, microaggression, period drama, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, remote working, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Skype, tech bro, TED Talk, women in the workforce, work culture

It’s up to us as individuals to define what ambition is, what it feels like for us personally, and to explore what we’re willing to pay for the achievements that this ambition is meant to propel us towards. Is success actually a job title or a pay raise? Or is it figuring out the sweet spot between job satisfaction, good-enough pay and the enrichment of your personal life? At the risk of sounding mega-corny, surely it is the quality of the journey, rather than the destination? Harvard psychologist Dr Tal Ben-Shahar actually coined a term for having false expectations about reaching a goal: ‘arrival fallacy’.

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All the signs were there, in big bold capital letters, but I was so desperate to be wanted by Google, and to get out of my current situation, that I ignored them all. I never asked myself what I wanted from my new role, I only ever thought about what I was ‘good enough’ for, whether I could technically be good in that role, and whether it was going to pay well. I never considered job satisfaction, or the importance of things like flexible working, or if my role would be creative or simply task based. I never thought about what I wanted, or what I needed. I was actually feeling rather broken at the time – and if Google said that they wanted me, then maybe I would finally be good enough.

You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall by Colin Ellard

A Pattern Language, call centre, car-free, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, classic study, congestion pricing, Frank Gehry, global village, Google Earth, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, job satisfaction, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, New Urbanism, peak oil, polynesian navigation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Snow Crash, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, traveling salesman, urban planning, urban sprawl

MAKING WORKSPACE WORK In addition to the time we spend in large buildings to shop, for entertainment, or perhaps to interact with government officials, most of us spend many hours in such larger inner spaces because of our occupations. The many ways in which the design and configuration of space can influence worker behavior, productivity, and job satisfaction are both fascinating and complex. At a basic level, the organization of space can be used to control access and regulate privacy within the workspace. One simple example can be found in many office buildings, where there is a correlation between the position of an executive in the power hierarchy and his or her spatial position in a building.

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The basic cubicle design is still often a mainstay, though the manner in which its enclosing walls encourage or inhibit interactivity, and the effects of cubicle organization on workflow management, are garnering more attention than in previous times. Yet there is much work to be done to understand how space can be utilized to maximize productivity, economy, and job satisfaction. Some offices have tried moving to completely open designs in which employees are not provided with dedicated workspaces at all but are left to organize their own spaces using open tables and mobile technologies, perhaps with a few specialized walled areas to enhance privacy for smaller face-to-face meetings.

The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters by Rose George

American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Anton Chekhov, Bob Geldof, Celtic Tiger, clean water, glass ceiling, indoor plumbing, informal economy, job satisfaction, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, land reform, low cost airline, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, Pepto Bismol, Potemkin village, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Steven Pinker, urban planning

I suspect they’d earn more cleaning toilets. More attractive are stability and benefits, crucial in a country where the only health care on offer has to be paid for. That’s what attracted Buckley, when he got off the plane from London in the 1970s and didn’t want to be “the stereotypical Irish navvy.” The only thing lacking for job satisfaction is a proper New York nickname. At a manhole in La Guardia Airport, Buckley is showing me another tide gate, shining light into the hole with a mirror and sunlight (“better than any flashlight”) when a Port Authority cop stops by. He asks what we’re doing, and when Buckley replies, “Looking for alligators,” nods with no apparent disbelief before moving in for a peer.

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See public toilets Public Toilet (Chan) public toilets in Bangkok in Beijing in Dewsbury as good economic management historical rise of illicit activities in innovation and invention in lawsuits over in Mumbai as a sign of civilization SPARC toilet blocks in the United States purity rituals Qi Furen Rakesh, Sanjay Kumar Rampton, Sheldon rape of Dalit women rats in sewers Razak, Sheikh Reilly, Maureen religion, hygiene and ringworm Rockefeller, Abby Romans, communal latrines of Roosevelt, Teddy Rose, Gregory Rubin, Alan Samiapalli sanitation as a central feature of cities in Dar es Salaam disease toll from lack of ecological economic savings from number of U.S. people without prioritization of water over school attendance and in South Africa spread of, in India in Tanzania sanitation marketing Sanjour, William SARS Satis Satou, Tomohiko Sattar, Rayeen Abdul Saywell, Darren Scheduled Castes. See Dalits schistosomiasis school attendance and sanitation Seabrook, Jeremy self-restraint separate sewer systems Severn Trent classroom sewage effluent, reuse of sewage sludge. See biosolids sewage treatment plants sewage treatment ponds sewer workers dangers for duties of job satisfaction of marginalization of salaries of sewers of ancient societies hazards in in India inspection of in Japan in London (see London sewers) in New York City rats in security issues with simplified systems sex in public facilities Shaanxi Mothers Environmental Protection Volunteer Association Shambahaji Nagar Shankar, Mr.

WEconomy: You Can Find Meaning, Make a Living, and Change the World by Craig Kielburger, Holly Branson, Marc Kielburger, Sir Richard Branson, Sheryl Sandberg

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, blood diamond, Boeing 747, business intelligence, business process, carbon footprint, clean tech, clean water, Colonization of Mars, content marketing, corporate social responsibility, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, energy transition, family office, food desert, future of work, global village, impact investing, inventory management, James Dyson, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, market design, meta-analysis, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, pre–internet, retail therapy, Salesforce, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Virgin Galactic, working poor, Y Combinator

Purpose must be factored into the economy to account for our changing attitudes and expectations of companies. What Does It All Add Up To? So we can afford to care more than ever, we want our voices to be heard more than ever, and we live in the most connected era in human history. How do we leverage this knowledge to improve our lives, improve our job satisfaction, get promoted, and make our businesses more profitable—all while contributing to the greater good? Those are the questions we're going to answer here, in Part Two. In the chapters ahead, we'll show you how world-leading companies have used purpose as a launch pad to build new products, differentiate in a competitive market, increase employee engagement, and secure more loyal brand ambassadors.

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Co-chaired by my dad and Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of Puma, this global group of 24 leaders are working together to accelerate Plan B. What Millennials Want3 Millennials want a purpose, they don't just work for a paycheck. Of course they want fair compensation but beyond that, they want to work for a company that has purpose baked into its culture. Millennials are pursuing development, they are not simply pursuing job satisfaction. They want to be involved in decision making. They want to learn what makes a business tick and not be treated as cogs in the wheel. Millennials want coaches, they don't want bosses.Without doubt, if you don't provide mentorship programs, you should. It's also worth exploring the idea of reverse mentoring: pair the CEO with a more junior employee, who will have much to teach about day-to-day work on the frontlines.

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--And How to Make It Work for You by Jeremy Heimans, Henry Timms

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, battle of ideas, benefit corporation, Benjamin Mako Hill, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, British Empire, Chris Wanstrath, Columbine, Corn Laws, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, death from overwork, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, future of work, game design, gig economy, hiring and firing, holacracy, hustle culture, IKEA effect, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, job satisfaction, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Jony Ive, Kevin Roose, Kibera, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Minecraft, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, Occupy movement, post-truth, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical decentralization, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, sharing economy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Snapchat, social web, subscription business, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, TED Talk, the scientific method, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

We’ll consider how TED grew from an exclusive conference into one of the biggest ideas communities in the world. We’ll look at how Pope Francis is trying to shift the nature of his church by empowering his flock. We’ll introduce some lesser-known examples, too: nurses banding together to cut down on bureaucracy and improve patients’ lives (and their own job satisfaction); a car company that turns to its customers to design its vehicles; a successful media company built, funded, and shaped by its readers. Whether you are a historian yearning to share your knowledge in a post-truth world, a determined parent running for your local school board, or a creator wanting to get a new product off the ground, there are a range of distinctive new capabilities that people and businesses need to discover.

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Every member of the team can freely view its budget and billable hours (with help from Buurtzorg’s own “nurse-friendly” software, which makes this transparent across the whole network). No one can question the motives of the boss, because management in each team is a shared responsibility. The teams are deliberately small enough that consensus-based decision-making is workable. The deep sense of ownership and collegiality Madelon feels produces the kind of job satisfaction that even the fanciest all-you-can-eat Google cafeteria lunch spread cannot buy. It also provides a foundation, based in trust, transparency, and mutual accountability, that enables her to focus on outcomes, rather than just manage workplace politics or hit corporate targets imposed from the top down.

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price

Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, basic income, Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, David Graeber, defund the police, Donald Trump, emotional labour, George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, impulse control, independent contractor, job satisfaction, meta-analysis, multilevel marketing, neurotypical, phenotype, QAnon, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Rubik’s Cube, seminal paper, theory of mind, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, universal basic income

Of course, industrial-organizational research suggests that actually very few people thrive in a rigidly structured eight-hour work environment, regardless of disability status. Most workers are only capable of truly focusing and being “productive” for about four hours per day.[15] Long workdays and long commutes erode a person’s life satisfaction,[16] job satisfaction,[17] and their physical and mental health.[18] In addition, many of the features of the neurotypical workplace are distracting and anxiety-provoking for allistics as well as Autistics. Allistics just tend to be better positioned to push through the discomfort of bright fluorescent lights or a coworker’s pungent cologne.

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., Gärling, T., Ettema, D., Friman, M., & Fujii, S. (2013). Happiness and satisfaction with work commute. Social Indicators Research, 111(1), 255–263. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16 Su, J. (2019). Working Hard and Work Outcomes: The Relationship of Workaholism and Work Engagement with Job Satisfaction, Burnout, and Work Hours. Normal: Illinois State University. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17 Sato, K., Kuroda, S., & Owan, H. (2020). Mental health effects of long work hours, night and weekend work, and short rest periods. Social Science & Medicine, 246, 112774. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18 https://www.instagram.com/​_steviewrites/​?

Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson

Broken windows theory, David Heinemeier Hansson, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, Google Hangouts, job satisfaction, Kevin Kelly, remote working, Richard Florida, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Skype, The future is already here

We’ll draw on this rich experience to show how remote work has opened the door to a new era of freedom and luxury. A brave new world beyond the industrial-age belief in The Office. A world where we leave behind the dusty old notion of outsourcing as a way to increase work output at the lowest cost and replace it with a new ideal—one in which remote work increases both quality of work and job satisfaction. “Office not required” isn’t just the future—it’s the present. Now is your chance to catch up. CHAPTER THE TIME IS RIGHT FOR REMOTE WORK Why work doesn’t happen at work If you ask people where they go when they really need to get work done, very few will respond “the office.” If they do say the office, they’ll include a qualifier such as “super early in the morning before anyone gets in” or “I stay late at night after everyone’s left” or “I sneak in on the weekend.”

Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking by Richard E. Nisbett

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, big-box store, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive dissonance, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, cosmological constant, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, do well by doing good, Edward Jenner, endowment effect, experimental subject, feminist movement, fixed income, fundamental attribution error, Garrett Hardin, glass ceiling, Henri Poincaré, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, libertarian paternalism, longitudinal study, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, quantitative easing, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, Shai Danziger, Socratic dialogue, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, William of Occam, Yitang Zhang, Zipcar

There are three problems with this kind of analysis. First, a limited number of variables will have been measured, and if one or more have been poorly measured, or if there are other variables not examined by investigators that are correlated both with generosity of parental leave policy and job satisfaction, it may be those associations that account for job satisfaction, not leave policy. Second, it really makes no sense to pull parental leave policy out of the total picture of the employee’s experience with a company. Generosity of the company in that respect is likely to be bound up with all kinds of other positive qualities of the company.

The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling by Arlie Russell Hochschild

affirmative action, airline deregulation, Boeing 747, call centre, cognitive dissonance, deskilling, emotional labour, Frederick Winslow Taylor, job satisfaction, late capitalism, longitudinal study, new economy, planned obsolescence, post-industrial society, profit motive, randomized controlled trial, telemarketer

They promise on-time service, even though planes are late from 10 to 50 percent of the time, industrywide. Their pictures of half-empty planes promise space and leisurely service, which are seldom available (and certainly not desired by the company). They promise service from happy workers, even though the industry speedup has reduced job satisfaction. By creating a discrepancy between promise and fact, they force workers in all capacities to cope with the disappointed expectations of customers. The ads promise service that is "human" and personal. The omnipresent smile suggests, first of all, that the flight attendant is friendly, helpful, and open to requests.

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Pierce,Jennifer L. 1995 Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999 "Emotional Labor Among Paralegals," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science V561:127-142. Pugliesi, K "The Consequences of Emotional Labor: Effects 1999 on Work Stress, Job Satisfaction, and Well-Being," Motivation and Emotion V23 (N2): 125-154. Rafaeli, Anat 1989 "When Cashiers Meet Customers: An Analysis of the Role of Supermarket Cashiers," Academy of Management Journal 32 (2) :245-73. 284 Bibliography to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition Rafaeli, Anat and Robert Sutton 1987 "Expression of Emotion as Part of the Work Role," Academy of Management Review 12 (1) :23-37. 1989 "The Expression of Emotion in Organizational Life," in Barry M.

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell

Airbus A320, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, Black Swan, Boeing 747, butterfly effect, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Chelsea Manning, clockwork universe, crew resource management, crowdsourcing, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Flash crash, Frederick Winslow Taylor, global supply chain, Henri Poincaré, high batting average, Ida Tarbell, information security, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, job automation, job satisfaction, John Nash: game theory, knowledge economy, Mark Zuckerberg, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nate Silver, Neil Armstrong, Pierre-Simon Laplace, pneumatic tube, radical decentralization, RAND corporation, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, systems thinking, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, urban sprawl, US Airways Flight 1549, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

Velthouse, “Cognitive Elements of Empowerment: An ‘Interpretive’ Model of Intrinsic Task Motivation,” Academy of Management Review 15, no. 4 (October 1990): 666. nursing in China . . . S. Ning, H. Zhong, W. Libo, and L. Qiujie, “The Impact of Nurse Empowerment on Job Satisfaction,” Journal of Advanced Nursing 65, issue 12 (December 2009), http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19941547. five-star hotels in Turkey . . . Elbeyi Pelit, Yüksel Öztürk, and Yalçın Arslantürk, “The Effects of Employee Empowerment on Employee Job Satisfaction: A Study on Hotels in Turkey,” International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 23, no. 6 (2011), http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1944210.

The Skeptical Economist: Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics by Jonathan Aldred

airport security, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, carbon credits, carbon footprint, citizen journalism, clean water, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, correlation does not imply causation, Diane Coyle, endogenous growth, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, framing effect, Goodhart's law, GPS: selective availability, greed is good, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, labour market flexibility, laissez-faire capitalism, libertarian paternalism, longitudinal study, new economy, Paradox of Choice, Pareto efficiency, pension reform, positional goods, precautionary principle, price elasticity of demand, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, school choice, social discount rate, spectrum auction, Thomas Bayes, trade liberalization, ultimatum game, When a measure becomes a target

But if people are regularly unselfish, then these policies will backfire, having the opposite effect to that intended, as we will see below. And there are many other examples of government policies which are inefficient: they lead to an unnecessary waste of resources because of the presumption that everyone is selfish. For example: setting income tax rates without allowing for intrinsic job satisfaction excessive enforcement of fare-paying on public transport heavy use of targets and audits in the management of schools, hospitals and universities. With this much at stake, how can we convince the economists that we are not always selfish? The story of the lost wallets seems a good place to start.

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Life is probably more complicated than in Aristotle’s time; certainly the citizens of modern developed nations hold a much wider range of views about the good life than the citizens of ancient Greece. My objective list might not suit you. To take just one example, consider the difficult choices almost all of us face in dividing time between our working and private lives. If Ann seeks a promotion, this may bring increased job satisfaction and greater financial security, but it reduces the time Ann has available for friends and family, and she may be more tired and stressed during these periods. Ann decides not to pursue the promotion, because the quality and depth of her personal relationships is central to her idea of a good life.

The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services, Volume 2 by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Strata R. Chalup, Christina J. Hogan

active measures, Amazon Web Services, anti-pattern, barriers to entry, business process, cloud computing, commoditize, continuous integration, correlation coefficient, database schema, Debian, defense in depth, delayed gratification, DevOps, domain-specific language, en.wikipedia.org, fault tolerance, finite state, Firefox, functional programming, Google Glasses, information asymmetry, Infrastructure as a Service, intermodal, Internet of things, job automation, job satisfaction, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, level 1 cache, load shedding, longitudinal study, loose coupling, machine readable, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, Marc Andreessen, place-making, platform as a service, premature optimization, recommendation engine, revision control, risk tolerance, Salesforce, scientific management, seminal paper, side project, Silicon Valley, software as a service, sorting algorithm, standardized shipping container, statistical model, Steven Levy, supply-chain management, systems thinking, The future is already here, Toyota Production System, vertical integration, web application, Yogi Berra

With metrics we can make data-driven improvements. For a process to be continuously improved, we not only need the right technology but also need a culture that embraces change. • Improved Job Satisfaction: It is exciting and highly motivating to see our changes rapidly put into production. When the interval between doing work and receiving the reward is small enough, we associate the two. Our job satisfaction improves because we get instant gratification from the work we do. Rather than focusing purely on cycle time, a team should have metrics that balance the velocity of individual aspects of the software delivery platform.

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continuous delivery, 190, 223 DevOps Cafe Podcast, 188, 200 HVMs (hardware virtual machines), 58 Hybrid load balancing strategy, 75 Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) load balancing, 75 overview, 69 IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), 51–54 IAPs (Incident Action Plans), 326–327 Ideals for KPIs, 390 Image method of OS installation, 219–220 Impact focus for feature requests, 46 Implementation of disaster preparedness, 318–320 Import controls, 41–42 Improvement levels in operational excellence, 412–413 Improving models in design for operations, 48–49 In-house service provider factor in service platform selection, 67 Incident Action Plans (IAPs), 326–327 “Incident Command for IT: What We Can Learn from the Fire Department” talk, 323 Incident Command System, 323–324 best practices, 327–328 example use, 328–329 Incident Action Plan, 326–327 IT operations arena, 326 public safety arena, 325 Incident Commanders, 324–325, 328 Index lookup speed, 28 Individual training for disaster preparedness, 311–312 Informal review workflows, 280 Infrastructure automation strategies, 217–220 DevOps, 185 service platform selection, 67 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), 51–54 Infrastructure as code, 221–222 Inhibiting alert messages, 356–357 Initial level in CMM, 405 Innovating, 148 Input/output (I/O) overload, 13 virtual environments, 58–59 Installation in deployment phase, 212–213 OS and services, 219–220 Integration in DevOps, 182 Intel OKR system, 389 Intentional delays in continuous deployment, 238 Intermodal shipping, 62 Internal backbones in cloud-scale service, 83–85 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses deployment phase, 222 load balancers, 72–73 restrictions on, 40 Introducing new features, flag flips for, 232 Introspection, 10 Invalidation of cache entry, 108 Involvement in DevOps, 183 IP (Internet Protocol) addresses deployment phase, 222 load balancers, 72–73 restrictions on, 40 Isolation in ACID term, 24 ISPs for cloud-scale service, 83 Issues naming standards, 264 tracking systems, 263–265 IT operations arena in Incident Command System, 326 ITIL recommended reading, 488 j-SOX requirements, 43 Jacob, Adam, 173 Jails containers, 60 processes, 55 Java counters, 350 JCS (joint cognitive system), 248 Jenkins CI tool, 205 Job satisfaction in service delivery, 201 Joint cognitive system (JCS), 248 JSON transmitted over HTTP, 351 Kamp, P.-H., 478–479 Kartar, J., 183 Keeven, T., 99 Kejariwal, A., 371 Kernighan, B., 11 Key indicators in capacity planning, 380–381 Key performance indicators (KPIs), 387–388 creating, 389–390 Error Budget case study, 396–399 evaluating, 396 exercises, 399–400 machine allocation example, 393–396 monitoring example, 336–337 overview, 388–389 summary, 399 Keywords in alerts, 304 Kim, Gene, 171–172 Klau, Rick, 389 Kotler, Philip, 365 KPIs.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Albert Einstein, Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Black Swan, book value, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, classic study, cognitive bias, cognitive load, complexity theory, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, demand response, endowment effect, experimental economics, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, feminist movement, framing effect, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, index card, information asymmetry, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, libertarian paternalism, Linda problem, loss aversion, medical residency, mental accounting, meta-analysis, nudge unit, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, peak-end rule, precautionary principle, pre–internet, price anchoring, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Shai Danziger, sunk-cost fallacy, Supply of New York City Cabdrivers, systematic bias, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, transaction costs, union organizing, Walter Mischel, Yom Kippur War

An individual’s mood at any moment depends on her temperament and overall happiness, but emotional well-being also fluctuates considerably over the day and the week. The mood of the moment depends primarily on the current situation. Mood at work, for example, is largely unaffected by the factors that influence general job satisfaction, including benefits and status. More important are situational factors such as an opportunity to socialize with coworkers, exposure to loud noise, time pressure (a significant source of negative affect), and the immediate presence of a boss (in our first study, the only thing that was worse than being alone).

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Sometimes scientific progress leaves us more puzzled than we were before. Speaking of Thinking About Life “She thought that buying a fancy car would make her happier, but it turned out to be an error of affective forecasting.” “His car broke down on the way to work this morning and he’s in a foul mood. This is not a good day to ask him about his job satisfaction!” “She looks quite cheerful most of the time, but when she is asked she says she is very unhappy. The question must make her think of her recent divorce.” “Buying a larger house may not make us happier in the long term. We could be suffering from a focusing illusion.” “He has chosen to split his time between two cities.

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Martin, and Norbert Schwarz, “Priming and Communication: Social Determinants of Information Use in Judgments of Life Satisfaction,” European Journal of Social Psychology 18 (1988): 429–42. correlations between psychological measures: The correlation was .66. dominates happiness reports: Other substitution topics include marital satisfaction, job satisfaction, and leisure time satisfaction: Norbert Schwarz, Fritz Strack, and Hans-Peter Mai, “Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Part-Whole Question Sequences: A Conversational Logic Analysis,” Public Opinion Quarterly 55 (1991): 3–23. evaluate their happiness: A telephone survey conducted in Germany included a question about general happiness.

Personal Kanban: Mapping Work, Navigating Life by Jim Benson, Tonianne Demaria Barry

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Asperger Syndrome, Bluma Zeigarnik, corporate governance, Howard Rheingold, intangible asset, job satisfaction, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, Ken Thompson, pattern recognition, performance metric, The Wisdom of Crowds, urban planning, Yogi Berra

Case in point, this new “Lean” workforce was permitted to “stop the line.” If line-workers detected a critical error, they could halt production and bring together a team to immediately correct the problem. Increased access to information coupled with the ability to improve the company’s processes led to marked increases in productivity, effectiveness, and job satisfaction. As a result, Toyota was able to reap significant benefits by respecting the line workers they had historically undervalued. Intrinsic to Ohno’s success was the kanban. While Toyota’s organizational kanban doesn’t quite resemble Personal Kanban, it has the same fundamental features: it visualizes work and tracks its flow, it allows line-workers to pull work when they have the capacity for it, and it highlights areas where improvements are needed.

The Global Citizen: A Guide to Creating an International Life and Career by Elizabeth Kruempelmann

Berlin Wall, business climate, corporate governance, different worldview, Fall of the Berlin Wall, follow your passion, global village, job satisfaction, Menlo Park, money market fund, Nelson Mandela, young professional

Well, I am perhaps the only student in the history of Duke Law School who smuggled a book on Portuguese history (in Portuguese) to class to escape the grinding boredom of criminal law. I gave my parents’ goals more than a fair shot, and the effort ended up displacing all of my other interests in life. Now that I have decided to leave law, I am reevaluating whether or not to pick up where I left off before law school. I decided that for me, job satisfaction would be found with a job that connects to my own interests and talents, but first I had to reconnect with those interests and talents— they had remained unused and unexamined for about five years. I went through my belongings and discarded about one-third of all my stuff. Organizing photos was very instructive.

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It all comes down to having realistic expectations, maintaining a positive attitude, and learning to make the most out of your experiences. K E E P Y O U R E X P E C TA T I O N S R E A L I S T I C One of the most common first mistakes I see job hunters make is to expect a fulltime job overseas that is comparable in salary, benefits, and job satisfaction to similar jobs at home. Although it is possible to be sent abroad with a fabulous relocation package full of perks (and you’ll know if you qualify for this), the number of international job seekers out there far outweighs the number of cushy expat opportunities overseas. Having said that, if you do get an offer (or even multiple offers) to work overseas, you might encounter salaries that are substantially higher or lower than what you are used to.

Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again by Eric Topol

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Apollo 11, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Big Tech, bioinformatics, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, cognitive bias, Colonization of Mars, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital twin, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, fault tolerance, gamification, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Santayana, Google Glasses, ImageNet competition, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, Joi Ito, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, meta-analysis, microbiome, move 37, natural language processing, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, nudge unit, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, performance metric, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, post-truth, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, techlash, TED Talk, text mining, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, War on Poverty, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population

That is completely counter to the productivity push in healthcare, where clinicians are squeezed to see more patients in less time. Of course, saving that money takes the doctor’s time. One study, called the Healthy Work Place, of 168 clinicians in thirty-four clinics, demonstrated that pace of work was one of the most important determinants of job satisfaction.9 A fascinating 2017 paper by psychologist Ashley Whillans and her colleagues, titled “Buying Time Promotes Happiness,” showed that time saving resulted in greater life satisfaction. The people studied were diverse, drawn from representative populations of the United States, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands, as well as a separate group of more than eight hundred Dutch millionaires.

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The increased happiness derived from purchasing time was across the board, independent of income or socioeconomic status, defying the old adage that money can’t buy happiness.10 The ongoing Time Bank project at Stanford University’s medical school shows how this works. The Time Bank is set up to reward doctors for their time spent on underappreciated work like mentoring, serving on committees, and covering for colleagues. In return, doctors get vouchers for time-saving services like housecleaning or meal delivery, leading to better job satisfaction, work-life balance, and retention rates.11 Like my classmates back in 1975, most people who have gone into the medical profession are motivated by, and feel privileged to have, the ability to care for patients. To a large degree, the rampant disenchantment is the result of not being able to execute our charge in a humanistic way.

On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane by Emily Guendelsberger

Adam Curtis, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Picking Challenge, autism spectrum disorder, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cognitive dissonance, company town, David Attenborough, death from overwork, deskilling, do what you love, Donald Trump, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, hive mind, housing crisis, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Jon Ronson, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, Lean Startup, market design, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, McJob, Minecraft, Nicholas Carr, Nomadland, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, precariat, Richard Thaler, San Francisco homelessness, scientific management, Second Machine Age, security theater, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, speech recognition, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, Travis Kalanick, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, Upton Sinclair, wage slave, working poor

All these oh-please-my-job-is-way-worse Stockholm syndrome posts are surprisingly common for a society where work has only been getting better and better. And more than anecdotal evidence suggests that, though American jobs have gotten safer, people’s experience of them is at an all-time low. We’re less likely to get killed or maimed at work than ever before, true. But we’re also at record lows for job satisfaction, job security, free time, and feeling in control of our lives. For just one example, a recent study by the Harvard Business Review and the Energy Project surveyed twenty thousand workers across twenty-five industries and found that American workers have never felt unhappier or less secure at work, with only 37 percent satisfied with their jobs.

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We role-play some ways that won’t make Sarah feel like a bad person. Finally, I check the clock. It’s 4:45 p.m. “Okay, Ash—it’s my last day of work, and my shift’s over in fifteen minutes. Let’s settle your overages before I have to go.” When Ash finally hangs up ten minutes later, I’m aglow with job satisfaction. I helped, I think, though I know it’s dumb. I don’t feel like Russian rouletting whether one last call will take five minutes or ninety, so I log out of my phone. I type cx very enthusiastic about Pokémon Go, cutting ties with Sarah for a while into Ash’s notations, save and quit, clock out in e-start, close the sedimentary layer of windows covering my desktop, shut down my computer, and exit the building for the last time.

What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . And What Other Countries Got Right by George R. Tyler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 8-hour work day, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Black Swan, blood diamond, blue-collar work, Bolshevik threat, bonus culture, British Empire, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, company town, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lake wobegon effect, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, Money creation, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, pension reform, performance metric, Pershing Square Capital Management, pirate software, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

In 2007, for example, a survey of employee retention programs by the US staffing firm Spherion found that workers predictably prioritized issues like growth and earning potential, higher salaries, and better health insurance. Yet American managers didn’t even rank wages among their top five retention tools; instead, they prioritize ephemeral steps such as enriched “supervisor relationships” and improved “workplace culture.”15Similar findings are noted in the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2007 Job Satisfaction Survey Report.16 The American judiciary has added to the downward spiral of wages, indifferent to enforcing employee protections or the right to organize and refusing even to establish guidelines on burgeoning issues including independent contractors. Among others, Nissan and SuperShuttle exploit the resulting gray area to routinely misclassify employees as contractors or franchisees.

…

The reality is that too many American firms have simply been indifferent to the issue even though US economists readily parsed the collaborative Japanese and family capitalism models and determined why they produce superior worksite outcomes. Bradley Staats, Francesca Gino, and Gary Pisano, for example, documented in 2010 that job satisfaction and respect from supervisors willing to accept criticism are vital for firms hoping to maximize employee contributions to productivity. The psychological security associated with genuine team spirit and a two-way information flow causes employees to be more willing to introduce their own ideas and spar with colleagues and supervisors, elements simply indispensable in maximizing productivity.50 One way that collaboration enhances productivity is by incentivizing work effort.

…

500 Sign Up, 1 Wins a Job,” New York Times, October 21, 2009. 13 Associated Press, “Union drive at IKEA plant in US takes aim at Swedish furniture giant’s worker-friendly rep,” Washington Post, July 23, 2011. 14 Bernard Simon and Matt Kennard, “Two-tier system divides US carmaker workers,” Financial Times, December 14, 2011. 15 Vickie Elmer, “Show them the money,” Washington Post, October 24, 2007. 16 “2007 Job Satisfaction: A survey report by the Society for Human Resource Management,” Society for Human Resource Management, June 2007, http://www.workplacesolutionspros.com/resources/Job%20Satisfaction%20Survey%20Report.pdf. 17 Emma Schwartz, “How a good job hit a dead end,” Washington Post, April 22, 2012. 18 Woodall, Klayman, and Schwartz, “U.A.W. takes aim at foreign automakers.” 19 Vlasic and Bunkley, “U.A.W.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, circular economy, clean water, collaborative consumption, commoditize, conceptual framework, continuous integration, CRISPR, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, digital divide, digital twin, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, future of work, global value chain, Google Glasses, hype cycle, income inequality, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, life extension, Lyft, Marc Benioff, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, Narrative Science, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, nuclear taboo, OpenAI, personalized medicine, precariat, precision agriculture, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, reshoring, RFID, rising living standards, Sam Altman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social contagion, software as a service, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Future of Employment, The Spirit Level, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y Combinator, Zipcar

And because they’re not employees you don’t have to deal with employment hassles and regulations.”28 For the people who are in the cloud, the main advantages reside in the freedom (to work or not) and the unrivalled mobility that they enjoy by belonging to a global virtual network. Some independent workers see this as offering the ideal combination of a lot of freedom, less stress and greater job satisfaction. Although the human cloud is in its infancy, there is already substantial anecdotal evidence that it entails silent offshoring (silent because human cloud platforms are not listed and do not have to disclose their data). Is this the beginning of a new and flexible work revolution that will empower any individual who has an internet connection and that will eliminate the shortage of skills?

Powerful: Teams, Leaders and the Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord

call centre, data science, future of work, job satisfaction, late fees, Silicon Valley, Skype, subscription business, the scientific method, women in the workforce

Compelling but misguided ideas about “best practices” prevail: bonuses and pay tied to annual performance reviews; big HR initiatives like the recent craze for lifelong learning programs; celebrations to build camaraderie and make sure people have some fun; and, for employees who are struggling, performance improvement plans. These foster empowerment, and with that comes engagement, which leads to job satisfaction and employee happiness, and that leads to high performance, or so the thinking goes. I used to believe this too. I started my career in HR at Sun Microsystems and then Borland Software, implementing the whole gamut of conventional practices. I negotiated all kinds of tantalizing bonuses. I dutifully rallied my teams for the dreaded performance review season and coached managers through the performance improvement process.

In the Company of Heroes by Michael J. Durant, Steven Hartov

Adam Curtis, back-to-the-land, friendly fire, job satisfaction, no-fly zone, placebo effect, Saturday Night Live, trade route, urban sprawl

But you very rarely shut a helicopter down on a medevac, because starting it up again takes time and always has inherent dangers, system failures and the like. Their buddies loaded them onto litters in the back of our chopper and we flew them down to Yong San and the hospital at Seoul. The impact of my job satisfaction really hit me that first night. After we shut it down, debriefed, wrote up our reports, and turned in, I kept thinking about those injured soldiers who’d ridden in the back of our chopper and I couldn’t sleep, wondering about how they were. The next morning, I called the hospital and found out they were all going to make it just fine.

…

Chapter 6 JUNGLES AND DESERTS August 1988 To an army helicopter pilot, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) was the top of the food chain. Now, there was nothing wrong with being a medevac pilot. I had been doing it for quite a while and I enjoyed it. There was great job satisfaction, and if you got hooked on being a first responder, you could serve out your twenty years in units like the 377th Med and retire after a fine career. There were plenty of other good slots for army pilots as well. If you liked multiple-ship missions, ferrying infantry or flying gunship support for massive armor formations, then the 101st Airborne was also a fine place to be.

River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins

Boeing 747, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Ford Model T, job satisfaction, Louis Pasteur, Menlo Park, out of africa, phenotype

Utilitarians strive to maximize "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" (a phrase that sounds more intelligent than it is, by the way). Under this umbrella, the utilitarian may give long-term stability more or less priority at the expense of short-term happiness, and utilitarians differ over whether they measure "happiness" by monetary wealth, job satisfaction, cultural fulfillment or personal relationships. Others avowedly maximize their own happiness at the expense of the common welfare, and they may dignify their egoism by a philosophy that states that general happiness will be maximized if one takes care of oneself. By watching the behavior of individuals throughout their lives, you should be able to reverseengineer their utility functions.

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug

collective bargaining, game design, Garrett Hardin, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Tragedy of the Commons

Being a consultant, I get to work on interesting projects with a lot of nice, smart people. I get to work at home most of the time and I don’t have to sit in mind-numbing meetings every day or deal with office politics. I get to say what I think, and people usually appreciate it. And I get paid well. On top of all that, I get a lot of job satisfaction, because when we’re finished, the things they’re building are almost always much better than when we started.1 1 Almost always. Even when people know about usability problems, they can’t always fix them completely, as I’ll explain in Chapter 9. The bad news: You probably don’t have a usability professional Almost every development team could use somebody like me to help them build usability into their products.

Living Well on the Spectrum by Valerie L. Gaus

always be closing, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, financial independence, job satisfaction, neurotypical, science of happiness, social intelligence, theory of mind, Y2K

Unfortunately, too many adults on the autism spectrum are unemployed or “underemployed,” which means working at jobs that don’t take advantage of their training, experience, or talent in a given field or specialty. Research in the science of happiness (subjective well-being) has repeatedly shown a strong correlation between job satisfaction and overall life satisfaction; that is, the higher one’s job satisfaction, the higher the overall satisfaction with life is likely to be and vice versa. So problems in this area of life are likely to be associated with poor quality of life in other areas as well. Henry, for example, is having problems at home, in terms of personal contentment and also his relationship with his father, that can be traced to his being unemployed.

The Rules of Work, Expanded Edition: A Definitive Code for Personal Success (The Rules by Richard Templar) by Richard Templar

double entry bookkeeping, hiring and firing, job satisfaction, supply-chain management

The right attitude is being good but quick, kind but observant, considerate but successful. YO U W I L L TA K E T H E MORAL HIGH GROUND AND B E B L A M E L E SS . W A L K Y O U R TA L K 23 RULE 11 Be Passionate but Don’t Kill Yourself I hope you’re very passionate about your job. Whether your job satisfaction comes from the people you work with, the sense of achievement, a deep belief in what you’re doing, the recognition you get, the money you earn, or anything else—I hope you get enough out of the job to feel very passionate about doing it. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that if you’re passionate you have to work long hours and jump through countless hoops to prove it.

The Art of Corporate Success: The Story of Schlumberger by Ken Auletta

Albert Einstein, Bretton Woods, data science, George Gilder, job satisfaction, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Ronald Reagan, the scientific method, union organizing

Asked in a subsequent interview what he thought of his job, Blake said that when he graduated from Clarkson College two years ago he had never heard of “Schlumberger,” as he first called it. Now this native of Hudson Falls, New York, was earning $50,000 a year, not including a bonus, traveling all over the world on vacations, and getting job satisfaction that money alone can’t buy: “It really feels good that they put so much faith in you. I’ve been thinking of writing out a résumé if I ever wanted to leave the company, and there is no way I could make the same money. And no way I could put down on a résumé that I was responsible for the company making two to three million last year.

Economic Dignity by Gene Sperling

active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, antiwork, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, company town, corporate governance, cotton gin, David Brooks, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, disinformation, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, driverless car, Elon Musk, employer provided health coverage, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ferguson, Missouri, fulfillment center, full employment, gender pay gap, ghettoisation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, green new deal, guest worker program, Gunnar Myrdal, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, job automation, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, late fees, liberal world order, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, mental accounting, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, obamacare, offshore financial centre, open immigration, payday loans, Phillips curve, price discrimination, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, speech recognition, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, tech worker, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Toyota Production System, traffic fines, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, working poor, young professional, zero-sum game

When home care workers were integrated into the health-care delivery team for patients, the results were impressive: one cohort saw a 41 percent decline in the average rate of repeat ER visits and a 43 percent decline in the average rate of rehospitalizations by the second year after the training.64 According to the authors of the study, the savings from reduced repeat ER visits and rehospitalizations could be as high as $12,000 per patient.65 In New York City, a pilot demonstration created an opportunity for home care workers to obtain an advanced role in their profession, termed a Care Connections Senior Aide (CCSA), creating precisely the kind of professional, valued job that could be scaled. With an advanced title in the field, CCSAs received two hundred hours of training and coaching, were integrated into the health-care delivery team, and earned a salary 60 percent higher than the average for entry-level home care workers.66 The result: improved job satisfaction, improved relations with clients and communication with clinical managers, plus a decline in emergency department visits.67 I distinctly remember an on-the-ball caregiver who stayed overnight for my father, who was dealing with congestive heart failure. This person, still in college, had the training to spot a pattern in my father’s breathing that led her to wake him up and alert a nurse.

…

She and her coauthors interviewed twenty-eight janitorial staff at a hospital and found striking differences in how they defined the tasks and overall mission of their work. Some described their work as pure cleaning, involving few skills, and thus found their job unsatisfying. Yet others defined the range of their tasks and goals in ways that went far beyond the technical description and added higher meaning, skills, and job satisfaction. This latter group performed tasks outside their job description that created more meaning in their work. One janitor changed the paintings in the rooms of comatose patients, hoping that the change in visual stimulation might help the patients’ healing. Another worker took care to clean anything on the ceiling, where many patients lying in bed would look but the average healthy person would not.20 These workers saw themselves as part of the broader service mission of the organization itself, saying, “I’m an ambassador for the hospital,” and “I’m a healer.

The Network Imperative: How to Survive and Grow in the Age of Digital Business Models by Barry Libert, Megan Beck

active measures, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, asset allocation, asset light, autonomous vehicles, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, business intelligence, call centre, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, disintermediation, diversification, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, future of work, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, independent contractor, Infrastructure as a Service, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of writing, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, late fees, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Oculus Rift, pirate software, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, software as a service, software patent, Steve Jobs, subscription business, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, Wall-E, women in the workforce, Zipcar

Obviously that’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but a recent study by IBM on independent workers, including contractors, freelancers, and consultants, found that these nonemployees were significantly more engaged than average workers, and nearly at the level of companies’ highest performers. On the dimensions of job satisfaction and pride, independent workers actually gave consistently higher ratings than high performers.3 In short, the relationship between organizations and their workers is changing. Increasingly, leaders see the benefit of what has been called the Hollywood model of employment. Taken from the way teams of specialized individuals come together to work on movie productions, the Hollywood model of employment is short-term, project-based work, where each individual is brought on with targeted expertise to fulfill a specific role.

Playing With FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early): How Far Would You Go for Financial Freedom? by Scott Rieckens, Mr. Money Mustache

Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, cryptocurrency, do what you love, effective altruism, financial independence, index fund, job satisfaction, lifestyle creep, low interest rates, McMansion, Mr. Money Mustache, passive income, remote working, sunk-cost fallacy, The 4% rule, Vanguard fund

See Above the Clouds FIRE retreat (Ibarra, Ecuador) income level: FIRE and, 6–7, 102–3; increasing, 189; keeping expenses less than, 126–29; “lifestyle creep” and, 9 Inconvenient Truth, An (documentary film; 2006), 78 index funds, 3, 19, 111–15, 128, 148, 189 inflation, 22, 41, 149 intention, 67, 70, 108, 121, 169 interest, compound, 115–16, 145 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 129 internet, 50, 52, 119–20 Inventing to Nowhere (documentary film; 2014), 78 investments, 3, 99; author’s experience, 16; compound interest on, 115–16, 145; DCA for, 128; drawdown strategies for, 173; FIRE-approved, 111–16, 128; FIRE community literature on, 110–11; importance of, 127–29; market timing and, 128; retirement calculator using, 39–41; savings vs., 126; stock market crashes and, 41–42, 149; withdrawing income from, 21–22 Iowa. See Bellevue (IA) IRAs, 102, 129 Jacobsen, Jeremy, 25–26 Jared (author’s cousin), 137–38 Jensen, Carl, 125 job opportunities, 95 job satisfaction, 3 Joe (author’s friend), 29–30 Kitces, Michael, 163 “Latte Factor Calculator,” 56 leases, 82 lifestyle: FIRE as choice of, 125; homeownership and, 131; inflated, 103; paycheck-topaycheck, 127 “lifestyle creep,” 9 Longmont (CO), 106–8 lost-wages flaw, 149–50 “lottery mentality,” 13 low-cost living, 110 lunches, 56–57 Mad Fientist (blog), 25, 34, 109, 125; author’s attempts to persuade spouse using, 31; Kitces interview on, 163; Playing with FIRE documentary and, 78; popularity of, 26.

Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City by Brad Feld

barriers to entry, clean tech, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, deal flow, fail fast, G4S, Grace Hopper, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Marc Benioff, minimum viable product, Network effects, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, place-making, pre–internet, Richard Florida, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, SoftBank, software as a service, Steve Jobs, text mining, vertical integration, Y Combinator, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Many large companies are standoffish to the startup community. They worry that if they engage, the startups they interact with will recruit their employees. Although this can happen, having the opportunity to interact with startups enhances the quality of the employee’s job. This often increases job satisfaction and long-term employee retention. THE IMPORTANCE OF BOTH LEADERS AND FEEDERS Startup communities need both leaders and feeders. The problem comes when the feeders try to lead or when there is an absence of leaders. If the startup community has a culture of inclusiveness, it will constantly have entrepreneurs step up into leadership positions.

Willful: How We Choose What We Do by Richard Robb

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alvin Roth, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Brexit referendum, capital asset pricing model, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, delayed gratification, diversification, diversified portfolio, effective altruism, endowment effect, Eratosthenes, experimental subject, family office, George Akerlof, index fund, information asymmetry, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, lake wobegon effect, loss aversion, market bubble, market clearing, money market fund, Paradox of Choice, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Peter Singer: altruism, Philippa Foot, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, Richard Thaler, search costs, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, survivorship bias, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, trolley problem, ultimatum game

See also mercy ambiguity effect, 24 American Work-Sports (Zarnowski), 191 Anaximander, 190 anchoring, 168 angel investors, 212–213n1 “animal spirits,” 169 Antipater of Tarsus, 134–135, 137 “anxious vigilance,” 73, 82 arbitrage, 70, 78 Aristotle, 200, 220n24 Asian financial crisis (1997–1998), 13 asset-backed securities, 93–95 asset classes, 75 astrology, 67 asymmetric information, 96, 210n2 authenticity, 32–37, 114 of challenges, 176–179 autism, 58, 59 auto safety, 139 Bank of New York Mellon, 61 Battle of Waterloo, 71, 205 Bear Stearns, 85 Becker, Gary, 33, 108–109 behavioral economics, 4, 10, 198–199 assumptions underlying, 24 insights of, 24–25 rational choice complemented by, 6 Belgium, 191 beliefs: attachment to, 51 defined, 50 evidence inconsistent with, 54, 57–58 formation of, 53, 92 persistence of, 26–28, 54 transmissibility of, 92–93, 95–96 Bentham, Jeremy, 127, 197–198 “black swans,” 62–64 blame aversion, 57, 72 brain hemispheres, 161 Brexit, 181–185 “bull markets,” 78 capital asset pricing model, 64 care altruism, 38, 104, 108–114, 115, 120, 135, 201 Casablanca (film), 120, 125 The Cask of Amontillado (Poe), 126–127 challenges, 202–203 authenticity of, 176–179 staying in the game linked to, 179–181 changes of mind, 147–164 charity, 40, 45–46, 119, 128 choice: abundance of, 172–174 intertemporal, 149–158, 166 purposeful vs. rational, 22–23 Christofferson, Johan, 83, 86, 87, 88 Cicero, 133–134 Clark, John Bates, 167 cognitive bias, 6, 23, 51, 147–148, 167, 198–199 confirmation bias, 200 experimental evidence of, 10–11, 24 for-itself behavior disguised as, 200–201 gain-loss asymmetry, 10–11 hostile attribution bias, 59 hyperbolic discounting as, 158 lawn-mowing paradox and, 33–34 obstinacy linked to, 57 omission bias, 200 rational choice disguised as, 10–11, 33–34, 199–200 salience and, 29, 147 survivor bias, 180 zero risk bias, 24 Colbert, Claudette, 7 Columbia University, 17 commitment devices, 149–151 commodities, 80, 86, 89 commuting, 26, 38–39 competitiveness, 11, 31, 41, 149, 189 complementary skills, 71–72 compound interest, 79 confirmation bias, 57, 200 conspicuous consumption, 31 consumption planning, 151–159 contrarian strategy, 78 cooperation, 104, 105 coordination, 216n15 corner solutions, 214n8 cost-benefit analysis: disregard of, in military campaigns, 117 of human life, 138–143 credit risk, 11 crime, 208 Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank (DKB), 12–14, 15, 17, 87, 192–193 Darwin, Charles, 62–63 depression, psychological, 62 de Waal, Frans, 118 Diogenes of Seleucia, 134–135, 137 discounting of the future, 10, 162–164 hyperbolic, 158, 201 disjunction effect, 174–176 diversification, 64–65 divestment, 65–66 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 18 drowning husband problem, 6–7, 110, 116, 123–125 effective altruism, 110–112, 126, 130, 135–136 efficient market hypothesis, 69–74, 81–82, 96 Empire State Building, 211–212n12 endowment effect, 4 endowments, of universities, 74 entrepreneurism, 27, 90, 91–92 Eratosthenes, 190 ethics, 6, 104, 106–108, 116, 125 European Union, 181–182 experiential knowledge, 59–61 expert opinion, 27–28, 53, 54, 56–57 extreme unexpected events, 61–64 fairness, 108, 179 family offices, 94 Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard), 53–54 “felicific calculus,” 197–198 financial crisis of 2007–2009, 61, 76, 85, 93–94, 95 firemen’s muster, 191 flow, and well-being, 201–202 Foot, Philippa, 133–134, 135 for-itself behavior, 6–7, 19, 21, 27, 36, 116, 133–134, 204–205, 207–208 acting in character as, 51–53, 55–56, 94–95, 203 acting out of character as, 69, 72 analyzing, 20 authenticity and, 33–35 charity as, 39–40, 45–46 comparison and ranking lacking from, 19, 24, 181 consequences of, 55–64 constituents of, 26–31 defined, 23–24 difficulty of modeling, 204 expert opinion and, 57 extreme unexpected events and, 63–64 flow of time and, 30 free choice linked to, 169–172 in groups, 91–100 incommensurability of, 140–143 in individual investing, 77–78 in institutional investing, 76 intertemporal choice and, 168, 175, 176 job satisfaction as, 189 mercy as, 114 misclassification of, 42, 44, 200–201 out-of-character trading as, 68–69 purposeful choice commingled with, 40–43, 129, 171 rationalizations for, 194–195 in trolley problem, 137 unemployment and, 186 France, 191 Fuji Bank, 14 futures, 80–81 gain-loss asymmetry, 10–11 Galperti, Simone, 217n1 gambler’s fallacy, 199 gamifying, 177 Garber, Peter, 212n1 Germany, 191 global equity, 75 Good Samaritan (biblical figure), 103, 129–130, 206 governance, of institutional investors, 74 Great Britain, 191 Great Depression, 94 Greek antiquity, 190 guilt, 127 habituation, 201 happiness research (positive psychology), 25–26, 201–202 Hayek, Friedrich, 61, 70 hedge funds, 15–17, 65, 75, 78–79, 93, 95 herd mentality, 96 heroism, 6–7, 19–20 hindsight effect, 199 holding, of investments, 79–80 home country bias, 64–65 Homer, 149 Homo ludens, 167–168 hostile attribution bias, 59 housing market, 94 Huizinga, Johan, 167–168 human life, valuation of, 138–143 Hume, David, 62, 209n5 hyperbolic discounting, 158, 201 illiquid markets, 74, 94 index funds, 75 individual investing, 76–82 Industrial Bank of Japan, 14 information asymmetry, 96, 210n2 innovation, 190 institutional investing, 74–76, 82, 93–95, 205 intergenerational transfers, 217n1, 218n4 interlocking utility, 108 intertemporal choice, 149–159, 166 investing: personal beliefs and, 52–53 in start-ups, 27 Joseph (biblical figure), 97–99 Kahneman, Daniel, 168 Kantianism, 135–136 Keynes, John Maynard, 12, 58, 167, 169, 188–189 Kierkegaard, Søren, 30, 53, 65, 88 Knight, Frank, 145, 187 Kranton, Rachel E., 210–211n2 labor supply, 185–189 Lake Wobegon effect, 4 lawn-mowing paradox, 33–34, 206 Lehman Brothers, 61, 86, 89, 184 leisure, 14, 17, 41, 154, 187 Libet, Benjamin, 161 life, valuation of, 138–143 Life of Alexander (Plutarch), 180–181 Locher, Roger, 117, 124 long-term vs. short-term planning, 148–149 loss aversion, 70, 199 lottery: as rational choice, 199–200 Winner’s Curse, 34–36 love altruism, 104, 116, 123–125, 126, 203 lying, vs. omitting, 134 Macbeth (Shakespeare), 63 MacFarquhar, Larissa, 214n6 Madoff, Bernard, 170 malevolence, 125–127 Malthus, Thomas, 212n2 manners, in social interactions, 104, 106, 107, 116, 125 market equilibrium, 33 Markowitz, Harry, 65 Marshall, Alfred, 41, 167 Mass Flourishing (Phelps), 189–191 materialism, 5 merchant’s choice, 133–134, 137–138 mercy, 104, 114–116, 203 examples of, 116–120 inexplicable, 45–46, 120–122 uniqueness of, 119, 129 mergers and acquisitions, 192 “money pump,” 159 monks’ parable, 114, 124 Montaigne, Michel de, 114, 118 mortgage-backed securities, 93 Nagel, Thomas, 161 Napoleon I, emperor of the French, 71 neoclassical economics, 8, 10, 11, 22, 33 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 21, 43, 209n5 norms, 104, 106–108, 123 Norway, 66 Nozick, Robert, 162 observed care altruism, 108–112 Odyssey (Homer), 149–150 omission bias, 200 On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Schopenhauer), 209n5 “on the spot” knowledge, 61, 70, 80, 94, 205 Orico, 13 overconfidence, 57, 200 “overearning,” 44–45 The Palm Beach Story (film), 7 The Paradox of Choice (Schwartz), 172 parenting, 108, 141, 170–171 Pareto efficiency, 132–133, 136, 139–140 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 53–54, 67, 94 pension funds, 66, 74–75, 93, 95 permanent income hypothesis, 179 Pharaoh (biblical figure), 97–99 Phelps, Edmund, 17, 189–191 Philip II, king of Macedonia, 181 planning, 149–151 for consumption, 154–157 long-term vs. short-term, 148–149 rational choice applied to, 152–158, 162 play, 44–45, 167, 202 pleasure-pain principle, 18 Plutarch, 180–181 Poe, Edgar Allan, 126 pollution, 132–133 Popeye the Sailor Man, 19 portfolio theory, 64–65 positive psychology (happiness research), 25–26, 201–202 preferences, 18–19, 198 aggregating, 38–39, 132, 164 altruism and, 28, 38, 45, 104, 110, 111, 116 in behavioral economics, 24, 168 beliefs’ feedback into, 51, 55 defined, 23 intransitive, 158–159 in purposeful behavior, 25, 36 risk aversion and, 51 stability of, 33, 115, 147, 207, 208 “time-inconsistent,” 158, 159, 166, 203 present value, 7, 139 principal-agent problem, 72 Principles of Economics (Marshall), 41 prisoner’s dilemma, 105 private equity, 75 procrastination, 3, 4, 19, 177–178 prospect theory, 168 protectionism, 185–187 Prussia, 191 public equities, 75 punishment, 109 purposeful choice, 22–26, 27, 34, 36, 56, 133–134, 204–205 altruism compatible with, 104, 113–114, 115–116 commensurability and, 153–154 as default rule, 43–46 expert opinion and, 57 extreme unexpected events and, 62–63 flow of time and, 30 for-itself behavior commingled with, 40–43, 129, 171 mechanistic quality of, 68 in merchant’s choice, 135, 137–138 Pareto efficiency linked to, 132 rational choice distinguished from, 22–23 regret linked to, 128 social relations linked to, 28 stable preferences linked to, 33 in trolley problem, 135–136 vaccination and, 58–59 wage increases and, 187.

Austerity Britain: 1945-51 by David Kynaston

Alistair Cooke, anti-communist, Arthur Marwick, British Empire, Chelsea Manning, collective bargaining, continuous integration, deindustrialization, deskilling, Etonian, full employment, garden city movement, hiring and firing, industrial cluster, invisible hand, job satisfaction, labour mobility, Lewis Mumford, light touch regulation, mass immigration, moral panic, Neil Kinnock, occupational segregation, price mechanism, public intellectual, rent control, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, shared worldview, stakhanovite, strikebreaker, the market place, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, very high income, wage slave, washing machines reduced drudgery, wealth creators, women in the workforce, young professional

A worker who complained about a monotonous job was usually unhappy in his home life; most male jobs were not monotonous; and even if up to a third of the male working-class population did ‘dull, repetitive, and uninteresting jobs’, that did not mean that they were all bored stiff with them, given the twin observed facts of the sociability of the workplace and that ‘machines are often very interesting and many people like handling them.’ Yet as Zweig fully conceded, the question of job satisfaction depended on a range of variables, even within the same grade of the same industry in the same region: Cleanliness, the right temperature, good air, light, private lockers, good washing facilities, good canteens, the good repute of a firm, a genial atmosphere, friendly relations on the floor, fairness in dealing with the worker, a good foreman, and a good boss, may turn even a distasteful job into an attractive one.

…

An important shift, it can only be understood against the background of full employment and rising real wages. Even so, for the workforce as a whole, it did not alter the dominant priorities identified by Zweig. Early in 1953, Research Services Ltd, the organisation run by Mark Abrams, interviewed 1,079 people who worked for a living across the country. They were shown a list of ten possible job satisfactions – nearness to your home; friendly people to work with; good wages or earnings; security of employment; opportunity to use your own ideas; good holidays; opportunities to get on; adequate pension; good training facilities; reasonably short hours – and asked to name which three they considered most important.

…

But it just didn’t work out like that, because you felt you were working and sweating hard enough as it was . . . Over the years, observers of the industrial scene (such as Graham Turner) tended to find the factory and its environs a sullen, dispiriting sort of place. The work itself was so intensely narrow and repetitive that the concept of any intrinsic job satisfaction was unimaginable; a high proportion of the workforce, going back to the 1930s, were incomers to the area attracted solely by the material rewards of the work – men characterised by Turner as often ‘at odds with their particular situation or with society in general, the misfits, the dissatisfied and the restless’.

The Irrational Bundle by Dan Ariely

accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Albert Einstein, Alvin Roth, An Inconvenient Truth, assortative mating, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, business process, cashless society, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, compensation consultant, computer vision, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, Donald Trump, end world poverty, endowment effect, Exxon Valdez, fake it until you make it, financial engineering, first-price auction, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fudge factor, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, IKEA effect, Jean Tirole, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lake wobegon effect, late fees, loss aversion, Murray Gell-Mann, name-letter effect, new economy, operational security, Pepsi Challenge, Peter Singer: altruism, placebo effect, price anchoring, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Saturday Night Live, Schrödinger's Cat, search costs, second-price auction, Shai Danziger, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Skype, social contagion, software as a service, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, sunk-cost fallacy, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tragedy of the Commons, ultimatum game, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, young professional

A few months later we aren’t as annoyed by the color of the cabinets, but at the same time, we don’t derive as much pleasure from the handsome floors. This type of emotional leveling out—when initial positive and negative perceptions fade—is a process we call hedonic adaptation. Just as our eyes adjust to changes in light and environment, we can adapt to changes in expectation and experience. For example, Andrew Clark showed that job satisfaction among British workers was strongly correlated with changes in workers’ pay rather than the level of pay itself. In other words, people generally grow accustomed to their current pay level, however low or high. A raise is great and a pay cut is very upsetting, regardless of the actual amount of the base salary.

…

A Accessory Transit Company, 154 acknowledging workers, 74–76, 80 acronyms, 120 adaptation, 157–90 assortative mating and, 191–212; see also assortative mating focusing attention on changes and, 159–60 hedonic, 160–84; see also hedonic adaptation nineteenth-century experiments on, 157–58 to pain, 160–67 physical, 157–60, 161n sensory perception and, 158–60 Aesop, 198–99 agriculture, obesity and technological developments in, 8 AIDS, 250, 251 airlines, customer service problems of, 142–43 alienation of labor, 79–80 American Cancer Society (ACS), 241–42, 249–50, 254 Andrade, Eduardo, 262, 265, 267–68, 299 anger, acting on, 257 author’s anecdote of, 258–61 driving and, 261 ultimatum game and, 268, 269–70, 273, 274, 276 animals: empathy for suffering of, 249 generalizing about human behavior from studies on, 63 working for food preferred by, 59–63 annoying experiences: breaking up, 177–79, 180 decisions far into future affected by, 262–64 annuities, 234 anterior insula, 266–67 anticipatory anxiety, 45 Anzio, Italy, battle of (1944), 167 apathy toward large tragedies, 238–39 drop-in-the-bucket effect and, 244–45, 252, 254–55 statistical condition and, 238–41, 242, 246, 247–49, 252–53 apologies, 149–51 for medical errors, 152 Apple, 120n battery replacement issue and, 141–42 art, homemade, 89–90 Asian tsunami, 250, 251 assembly line, 78–79 assortative mating, 191–212 altering aesthetic perception and (sour grapes theory), 198–99, 200, 201, 203 author’s injuries and, 191–96, 210–11 dinner party game and, 198 failure to adapt and, 200–201, 203–5 gender differences and, 209, 211 HOT or NOT study and, 201–5, 208, 211 reconsidering rank of attributes and, 199–200, 201, 205–10 speed-dating experiment and, 205–10 Atchison, Shane, 140–41, 146 attachment: to one’s own ideas, see Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias to self-made goods, see IKEA effect attractiveness, assortative mating and, 191–212 see also assortative mating auctions, first-price vs. second-price, 98–99 Audi customer service, author’s experience with, 131–36, 137, 149, 153–54 experimental situation analogous to, 135–39 fictional case study for Harvard Business Review based on, 147–49 B bailout, public outrage felt in response to, 128–31 baking mixes, instant, 85–87 bankers: author’s presentation of research findings to, 107–9, 121 bonus experiments and, 38–41, 51 Frank’s address to, 41 public outrage in response to bailout and, 128–31 bankruptcy, 129, 130 Barkan, Racheli, 39, 109–10, 299 basketball, clutch players in, 39–41 beauty: assortative mating and, 196–212; see also assortative mating general agreement on standard of, 203 Becker-DeGroot-Marschak procedure, 91 Beecher, Henry, 167 behavioral economics: goal of, 9–10 human rationality not assumed in, 6–7 revenge as metaphor for, 124n Betty Crocker, 87 Bible, Gideon’s conversation with God in, 288–89 blindness, adaptation to, 172–74 blogging, 65 Blunder (Shore), 117 boiling-frog experiment, 157–58 bonuses, 17–52 bank executives’ responses to research on, 37–39 clutch abilities and, 39–41 for cognitive vs. mechanical tasks, 33–36, 40–41 creativity improvements and, 47–48 experiments testing effectiveness of, 21–36, 44–46 Frank’s remarks on, 41 intuitions about, 36–37 inverse-U relationship between performance and, 20–21, 47 loss aversion and, 32–33 optimizing efficacy of, 51–52 public rage over, 21 rational economists’ view of, 36–37 social pressure and, 44–46 surgery situation and, 48–49 viewed as standard part of compensation, 33 in wake of financial meltdown of 2008, 131 brain: judgments about experiences and, 228–29 punishment and, 126 breaks, in pleasant vs. painful experiences, 177–81 Brickman, Philip, 170 business, experimental approach to, 292–93 C cake mixes, instant, 85–87 California, moving to, 176 Call, Josep, 127 cancer, American Cancer Society fundraising and, 241–42, 249–50, 254 canoeing, romantic relationships and, 278–79 cars, 215–16 designing one’s own, 88, 89 division of labor in manufacture of, 78–79 in early days of automotive industry, 94 hedonic treadmill and, 175 see also driving cell phones, 7 in experiments on customer revenge, 135–39, 145–46, 150–51 see also texting CEOs, very high salaries and bonuses paid to, 21 Chance, Zoë, 220, 300 changes: ability to focus attention on, 159–60 decisions about life’s path and, 287 in future, foreseeing adaptation to, 160, 171–74 status quo bias and, 285, 286 in workers’ pay, job satisfaction and, 169–70 charities: American Cancer Society (ACS), 241–42, 249–50, 254 calculating vs. emotional priming and, 246–48 emotional appeals and, 240–42, 248–50, 253–54, 256 identifiable victim effect and, 239–42, 248, 256 charities (cont.) mismatching of money and need and, 250–51 motivating people to take action and, 252–56 Chat Circles, 225 cheating, 76 childbirth, pain of, 168, 169n children: in growing and preparing of food, 121 parents’ overvaluation of, 97–98 chimpanzees, sense of fairness in, 127 chores, taking breaks in, 177–79, 180 civil liberties, erosion of, 158 Clark, Andrew, 169 climate change, 251–52 closeness, empathy and, 243, 245, 254 clutch abilities, 39–41 CNN, 238 Coates, Dan, 170 cockroaches, social pressure in, 45–46 commercial breaks, enjoyment of television and, 181n comparisons, hedonic adaptation and, 189 compensation, 47 changes in, job satisfaction and, 169–70 see also bonuses completion: employees’ sense of, 77, 79–80 Loewenstein’s analysis of mountaineering and, 80–81 computers, 233 consumer purchases, 185–88 happiness derived from transient experiences vs., 187–88 hedonic treadmill and, 175 placing limits on, 186–87 reducing, 185–86 spacing of, 185, 186 contrafreeloading, 60–63 Jensen’s study of, 60–62, 63 standard economic view at odds with, 62–63 Converse, 95 cooking: children’s involvement in, 121 enjoyment factor and, 62n, 105–6 semi-preprepared food and, 85–88 CO2 emissions, 251–52 counting strategies, 282–83 Count of Monte Cristo, The (Dumas), 123 creation, pride of: ideas and, see Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias self-made goods and, see IKEA effect creativity, bonuses and improvements in, 47–48 Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály, 49 cultures, organizational: acronyms and, 120 Not-Invented-Here bias and, 119–21 customer revenge, 131–51 against airlines, 142–43 apologies and, 149–51, 152 author’s experience with Audi customer service and, 131–36, 137, 147–49, 153–54 distinction between agents and principals and, 144–47 Farmer and Shane’s “Yours Is a Very Bad Hotel” and, 140–41, 146 fictional case study for Harvard Business Review on, 147–49 increase in, 143 Neistat brothers’ video on Apple’s customer service and, 141–42 passage of time and, 151 phone call interruption experiments on, 135–39, 145–46, 150–51 customization, 94–96 of cars, 88, 89, 94 effort expended in, 89, 95–96 overvaluation despite removing possibility of, 96 of shoes, 95, 96 D Dallaire, Roméo, 255 Darfur, 238, 253 Dart Ball game, 23, 34 Darwin, Charles, 157 dating, 191–235 market failures in, 213–15, 216–17, 220–21, 230–32, 233–35 playing hard to get and, 104 standard practice of, 224–25, 227–28 yentas (matchmakers) and, 213 see also assortative mating; online dating; speed dating decision making: author’s medical care and, 284–88 cooling off before, 257, 279 emotions and, 261–77 gender differences and, 274–76 irreversible decisions and, 285, 286 rationalization of choices in, 287 from rational perspective, 5–6 short-term, long-term decisions affected by, 264–65, 270–74, 276–77 stability of strategies for, 261–65; see also self-herding ultimatum game and, 265–70, 275–76 dentistry, adaptation to pain and, 161–62 design, taking people’s physical limitations into account in, 230–32 destroying work in front of workers, 74–76 Dichter, Ernest, 86 disease: adaptation to pain and, 165, 167 preventative health care and, 251, 256 “survivor” rhetoric and, 241–42 Disney, 154 distraction, performance-based incentives and, 30, 36 division of labor, 77–80 IT infrastructure and, 77, 79–80 Marx’s alienation notion and, 79 Smith’s observations on, 77–78 divorce, foreseeing outcome of, 173 Dodson, John, 18–20, 22, 31, 47 do-it-yourself projects, see IKEA effect Donath, Judith, 225 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 157 Doubletree Club, Houston, 140–41, 146 dreams, author’s self-image in, 182–83 DreamWorks SKG, 154 driving: momentary anger during, 261 safety precautions and, 6–7 texting during, 6, 7, 8 see also cars drop-in-the-bucket effect, 244–45, 252, 254–55 Dumas, Alexandre, 123 E Eastwick, Paul, 172–73 Edison, Thomas, 117–19, 122 effort: increase in value related to, 89, 90, 95–96, 105–6; see also IKEA effect joy derived from activity and, 71–72 meaningful work conditions and, 72 ownership of ideas and, 114–16 see also labor egg theory, 86–88 Eisner, Michael, 154 electric chair, 119 electricity, alternating current (AC) vs. direct current (DC), 117–19 emotional cascades, 265–78 gender differences and, 274–76 romantic relationships and, 277–78 ultimatum game and, 265–76 emotional priming: empathy for plight of others and, 246–48 ultimatum game and, 268–70 emotions, 43, 237–79 appeals to, willingness to help others and, 240–42, 248–50, 253–54, 256 decision making and, 261–77; see also decision making in past, humans’ poor memory of, 264 transience of, 257, 261, 270 see also empathy; negative feelings, acting on empathy: animals’ suffering and, 249, 252 apathy toward statistical victims and, 238–41, 242, 246, 247–49, 252–53 Baby Jessica saga and, 237–38 calculating vs. emotional priming and, 246–48 clear moral principles and, 255 closeness and, 243, 245, 254 drop-in-the-bucket effect and, 244–45, 252, 254–55 emotional appeals and, 240–42, 248–50, 253–54, 256 global warming and, 251–52 identifiable victim effect and, 239–42, 248, 256 overcoming barriers to, 252–56 rules to guide our behavior and, 254–55 thought experiment of drowning girl and, 242–43, 245 toward one person vs. many in need, 237–56 vividness and, 24, 243n, 244, 245 endowment effect, 285, 286 Enron, 216 evolution, mismatch between speed of technological development and, 8–9 experiments, 10–11, 288–95 business or public policy and, 292–94, 295 of Gideon, 288–89 medical practice and, 289–92 rational economists’ criticisms of, 49–51 see also specific topics Exxon Valdez oil spill, 249 F fairness, sense of: in chimpanzees, 127 decision making and, 266–67; see also ultimatum game gender differences and, 275–76 Fallows, James, 158 Farmer, Tom, 140–41, 146, 148–49 FedEx, 108–9 feedback, about work, 74–76 Feeks, John, 118–19 Fehr, Ernst, 125–26 financial incentives: meaning of labor and, 72–73, 76 see also bonuses financial markets, safety measures for, 7 financial meltdown of 2008, 7, 21, 216 chronology of events in, 129–30 desire for revenge in wake of, 128–31 lack of experimental approach to, 293 outraged public reaction to bailout in, 128–29, 130 Finkel, Eli, 172–73 First Knight, 50 fixation, pride in creation and ownership and, 89, 122 food: animals’ preference for working for, 59–63 semi-preprepared, 85–88 shortages of, identifiable victim effect and, 239–41 see also cooking Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 292 Ford, Henry, 78–79, 94 Forgea (white terrier), 249 Fox, Michael J., 254 “Fox and the Grapes, The” (Aesop), 198–99 Frank, Barney, 41 Frankl, Viktor, 45 free food, animals’ preference for working for food vs., 60–62 Frenk, Hanan, 161–65, 300 Friends, ultimatum game and, 269, 270–71, 272 frog experiment, 157–58 Frost, Jeana, 219–20, 229, 300 Fryer, Bronwyn, 148 furniture, do-it-yourself, 83–84, 96, 105, 106 future, foreseeing adaptation to changes in, 160, 171–74 G gardening: children growing food and, 121 enjoyment factor and, 105–6 gender differences: assortative mating and, 209, 211 decision making and, 274–76 pain threshold and tolerance and, 168–69 Gideon, 288–89 global warming, 158, 251–52 Gneezy, Ayelet, 135, 144–45, 150, 300–301 Gneezy, Uri, 21, 44, 301 Gore, Al, 158, 252 government policies, experimental approach to, 292–94, 295 H happiness: comparisons to other people and, 189 consumer purchases and, 175, 185–88 inaccurate predictions about, 170–71 return to baseline of, 170 transient vs. constant experiences and, 187–88 Harvard Business Review (HBR), 147–49 health care, see medical care hedonic adaptation, 160–84 to annoying experiences, 177–79, 180 author’s personal history and, 181–84, 189 blindness and, 172–74 breaking up experiences and, 177–81 changes in workers’ pay and, 169–70 comparisons to other people and, 189 consumer purchases and, 175, 185–88 extending pleasurable experiences and, 176–78, 179–81, 185, 186 in future, foreseeing of, 160, 171–74 happiness baseline and, 170 life-altering injuries and, 171–72, 174 moving to California and, 176 new houses and, 168–69 pain and, 160–67 romantic breakups and, 172–73 to transient vs. constant experiences, 187–88 using our understanding of, 176–81, 184–90 hedonic disruptions, 177–81 hedonic treadmill, 175 Heingartner, Alexander, 45–46 Henry, O., 98 herding, 262 see also self-herding Herman, Edward, 45–46 Hippocrates, 82 Hogerty, Megan, 81 homeostatic mechanisms, 81 Hong, James, 201, 203 HOT or NOT study, 201–5, 208 gender differences in, 209, 211 Meet Me feature and, 204–5, 208, 209 humor, sense of, 199, 200, 207, 208, 228 Hurricane Katrina, 250, 251 I ideas: attachment to, see Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias idiosyncratic fit and, 111–12 identifiable victim effect, 239–42, 248, 256 American Cancer Society and, 241–42 identity, connection between work and, 53–55, 79 idiosyncratic fit, ideas and, 111–12 ignoring workers, 74–76 IKEA, 83–84, 106 IKEA effect, 83–106 author’s creations in rehabilitation center and, 100–101 completion of project and, 101–4, 105 do-it-yourself furniture and, 83–84, 96, 106 effort expended and, 89, 90, 95–96, 105–6 four principles in, 104–5 and lack of awareness of overvaluation, 99 Legos experiment and, 96, 97 Local Motors cars and, 88, 89 Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias and, 109–10, 121 origami experiments and, 91–94, 97, 98–99, 102–4 parents’ overvaluation of their children and, 97–98 practical implications of, 121–22 relaxation notion and, 105–6 removal of individual customization and, 96 semi-preprepared food and, 85–88 shoe design and, 95, 96 immediate gratification, 5 Inconvenient Truth, An, 252 initiation into social groups, 89 injuries: association of pain with getting better after, 166–67 author’s dating prospects and, 191–96, 210–11 author’s decisions about his medical care and, 284–88 author’s personal history related to, 1–4, 13, 107, 160–62, 166–67, 181–84, 189, 191–96, 210–11, 281–88 battlefield vs. civilian, 167 foreseeing future after, 160 life-altering, adaptation to, 160, 171–72, 174 pain thresholds and tolerance related to severity of, 161–65 Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 126–27 insurance products, 233–34 interruptions: in pleasant vs. painful experiences, 177–81 TV commercials and, 181n see also phone call interruption experiments intuitions: bonuses and, 36–37 received medical wisdom and, 289–92 romantic, 172–73 testing of, 10n, 288–95 inverse-U relationship, defined, 19 iPods and iPhones, battery replacement in, 141–42 irrationality: summary of findings on, 288 upside as well as downside of, 11–12, 294 irreversible decisions, 285, 286 IT infrastructure, division and meaning of labor and, 77, 79–80 J Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie, 170 Jensen, Glen, 60–62, 63 Jensen, Keith, 127 Jewish tradition, 254–55 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, 152 Joyless Economy, The (Scitovsky), 188 justice, see fairness, sense of K Kahneman, Danny, 32n, 175–76 Kamenica, Emir, 66, 301 Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 154 Kemmler, William, 119 kinship, empathy and, 243 Krishnamurti, Tamar, 172–73 Krzyzewski, Mike, 39 L labor: connection between identity and, 53–55, 79 contrafreeloading and, 60–63 economic model of, 55, 62–63, 105 financial incentives and, see bonuses meaning of, see meaning of labor overvaluation resulting from, see IKEA effect on projects without meaning, 56–57, 63–72 Labyrinth game, 23 Lee, Leonard, 132, 134, 197, 201–2, 301–2 Lee, Sandra, 87–88 leeches, medicinal use of, 290–91 Legos experiments: on IKEA effect, 96, 97 on reducing meaningfulness of work, 66–74, 77, 80 letter-pairs experiment, 74–76, 80 life-altering events, hedonic adaptation and, 170 Life as a House, ultimatum game and, 268, 269, 270, 272, 276 light, adaptation to changes in, 159 Local Motors, Inc., 88, 89 Loewenstein, George, 21, 44, 80–81, 172–73, 197, 201–2, 239–41, 246–48, 302 long-term objectives, short-term enjoyments vs., 4–5 loss aversion, 32–33, 285, 286 lottery winners, hedonic adaptation of, 170, 171 “Love the One You’re With,” 197, 211–12 M malaria, 250, 251 Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl), 45 marketing, adaptation and, 158 market mechanisms, 215–16 dating and, 213–15, 216–17, 220–21, 230–32, 233–35 Marx, Karl, 79 massages, extending pleasure of, 179–80 matchmakers (yentas), 213 Mazar, Nina, 21, 30, 44, 302 McClure, Jessica (Baby Jessica), 237–38 meals, see cooking meaning of labor, 53–82 in acknowledged, ignored, and shredded conditions, 74–76 animals’ preference for working for food and, 59–63 blogging and, 65 division of labor and, 77–80 draining work of meaning and, 55–57, 63–77 financial incentives and, 72–73, 76 joy derived from activity and, 71–72 labor-identity connection and, 53–55, 79 Legos experiment and, 66–74, 76, 80 lessons for workplace on, 80–82 letter-pairs experiment and, 74–76, 80 “meaning” vs.

…

mismatching of money and need and, 250–51 motivating people to take action and, 252–56 Chat Circles, 225 cheating, 76 childbirth, pain of, 168, 169n children: in growing and preparing of food, 121 parents’ overvaluation of, 97–98 chimpanzees, sense of fairness in, 127 chores, taking breaks in, 177–79, 180 civil liberties, erosion of, 158 Clark, Andrew, 169 climate change, 251–52 closeness, empathy and, 243, 245, 254 clutch abilities, 39–41 CNN, 238 Coates, Dan, 170 cockroaches, social pressure in, 45–46 commercial breaks, enjoyment of television and, 181n comparisons, hedonic adaptation and, 189 compensation, 47 changes in, job satisfaction and, 169–70 see also bonuses completion: employees’ sense of, 77, 79–80 Loewenstein’s analysis of mountaineering and, 80–81 computers, 233 consumer purchases, 185–88 happiness derived from transient experiences vs., 187–88 hedonic treadmill and, 175 placing limits on, 186–87 reducing, 185–86 spacing of, 185, 186 contrafreeloading, 60–63 Jensen’s study of, 60–62, 63 standard economic view at odds with, 62–63 Converse, 95 cooking: children’s involvement in, 121 enjoyment factor and, 62n, 105–6 semi-preprepared food and, 85–88 CO2 emissions, 251–52 counting strategies, 282–83 Count of Monte Cristo, The (Dumas), 123 creation, pride of: ideas and, see Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias self-made goods and, see IKEA effect creativity, bonuses and improvements in, 47–48 Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály, 49 cultures, organizational: acronyms and, 120 Not-Invented-Here bias and, 119–21 customer revenge, 131–51 against airlines, 142–43 apologies and, 149–51, 152 author’s experience with Audi customer service and, 131–36, 137, 147–49, 153–54 distinction between agents and principals and, 144–47 Farmer and Shane’s “Yours Is a Very Bad Hotel” and, 140–41, 146 fictional case study for Harvard Business Review on, 147–49 increase in, 143 Neistat brothers’ video on Apple’s customer service and, 141–42 passage of time and, 151 phone call interruption experiments on, 135–39, 145–46, 150–51 customization, 94–96 of cars, 88, 89, 94 effort expended in, 89, 95–96 overvaluation despite removing possibility of, 96 of shoes, 95, 96 D Dallaire, Roméo, 255 Darfur, 238, 253 Dart Ball game, 23, 34 Darwin, Charles, 157 dating, 191–235 market failures in, 213–15, 216–17, 220–21, 230–32, 233–35 playing hard to get and, 104 standard practice of, 224–25, 227–28 yentas (matchmakers) and, 213 see also assortative mating; online dating; speed dating decision making: author’s medical care and, 284–88 cooling off before, 257, 279 emotions and, 261–77 gender differences and, 274–76 irreversible decisions and, 285, 286 rationalization of choices in, 287 from rational perspective, 5–6 short-term, long-term decisions affected by, 264–65, 270–74, 276–77 stability of strategies for, 261–65; see also self-herding ultimatum game and, 265–70, 275–76 dentistry, adaptation to pain and, 161–62 design, taking people’s physical limitations into account in, 230–32 destroying work in front of workers, 74–76 Dichter, Ernest, 86 disease: adaptation to pain and, 165, 167 preventative health care and, 251, 256 “survivor” rhetoric and, 241–42 Disney, 154 distraction, performance-based incentives and, 30, 36 division of labor, 77–80 IT infrastructure and, 77, 79–80 Marx’s alienation notion and, 79 Smith’s observations on, 77–78 divorce, foreseeing outcome of, 173 Dodson, John, 18–20, 22, 31, 47 do-it-yourself projects, see IKEA effect Donath, Judith, 225 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 157 Doubletree Club, Houston, 140–41, 146 dreams, author’s self-image in, 182–83 DreamWorks SKG, 154 driving: momentary anger during, 261 safety precautions and, 6–7 texting during, 6, 7, 8 see also cars drop-in-the-bucket effect, 244–45, 252, 254–55 Dumas, Alexandre, 123 E Eastwick, Paul, 172–73 Edison, Thomas, 117–19, 122 effort: increase in value related to, 89, 90, 95–96, 105–6; see also IKEA effect joy derived from activity and, 71–72 meaningful work conditions and, 72 ownership of ideas and, 114–16 see also labor egg theory, 86–88 Eisner, Michael, 154 electric chair, 119 electricity, alternating current (AC) vs. direct current (DC), 117–19 emotional cascades, 265–78 gender differences and, 274–76 romantic relationships and, 277–78 ultimatum game and, 265–76 emotional priming: empathy for plight of others and, 246–48 ultimatum game and, 268–70 emotions, 43, 237–79 appeals to, willingness to help others and, 240–42, 248–50, 253–54, 256 decision making and, 261–77; see also decision making in past, humans’ poor memory of, 264 transience of, 257, 261, 270 see also empathy; negative feelings, acting on empathy: animals’ suffering and, 249, 252 apathy toward statistical victims and, 238–41, 242, 246, 247–49, 252–53 Baby Jessica saga and, 237–38 calculating vs. emotional priming and, 246–48 clear moral principles and, 255 closeness and, 243, 245, 254 drop-in-the-bucket effect and, 244–45, 252, 254–55 emotional appeals and, 240–42, 248–50, 253–54, 256 global warming and, 251–52 identifiable victim effect and, 239–42, 248, 256 overcoming barriers to, 252–56 rules to guide our behavior and, 254–55 thought experiment of drowning girl and, 242–43, 245 toward one person vs. many in need, 237–56 vividness and, 24, 243n, 244, 245 endowment effect, 285, 286 Enron, 216 evolution, mismatch between speed of technological development and, 8–9 experiments, 10–11, 288–95 business or public policy and, 292–94, 295 of Gideon, 288–89 medical practice and, 289–92 rational economists’ criticisms of, 49–51 see also specific topics Exxon Valdez oil spill, 249 F fairness, sense of: in chimpanzees, 127 decision making and, 266–67; see also ultimatum game gender differences and, 275–76 Fallows, James, 158 Farmer, Tom, 140–41, 146, 148–49 FedEx, 108–9 feedback, about work, 74–76 Feeks, John, 118–19 Fehr, Ernst, 125–26 financial incentives: meaning of labor and, 72–73, 76 see also bonuses financial markets, safety measures for, 7 financial meltdown of 2008, 7, 21, 216 chronology of events in, 129–30 desire for revenge in wake of, 128–31 lack of experimental approach to, 293 outraged public reaction to bailout in, 128–29, 130 Finkel, Eli, 172–73 First Knight, 50 fixation, pride in creation and ownership and, 89, 122 food: animals’ preference for working for, 59–63 semi-preprepared, 85–88 shortages of, identifiable victim effect and, 239–41 see also cooking Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 292 Ford, Henry, 78–79, 94 Forgea (white terrier), 249 Fox, Michael J., 254 “Fox and the Grapes, The” (Aesop), 198–99 Frank, Barney, 41 Frankl, Viktor, 45 free food, animals’ preference for working for food vs., 60–62 Frenk, Hanan, 161–65, 300 Friends, ultimatum game and, 269, 270–71, 272 frog experiment, 157–58 Frost, Jeana, 219–20, 229, 300 Fryer, Bronwyn, 148 furniture, do-it-yourself, 83–84, 96, 105, 106 future, foreseeing adaptation to changes in, 160, 171–74 G gardening: children growing food and, 121 enjoyment factor and, 105–6 gender differences: assortative mating and, 209, 211 decision making and, 274–76 pain threshold and tolerance and, 168–69 Gideon, 288–89 global warming, 158, 251–52 Gneezy, Ayelet, 135, 144–45, 150, 300–301 Gneezy, Uri, 21, 44, 301 Gore, Al, 158, 252 government policies, experimental approach to, 292–94, 295 H happiness: comparisons to other people and, 189 consumer purchases and, 175, 185–88 inaccurate predictions about, 170–71 return to baseline of, 170 transient vs. constant experiences and, 187–88 Harvard Business Review (HBR), 147–49 health care, see medical care hedonic adaptation, 160–84 to annoying experiences, 177–79, 180 author’s personal history and, 181–84, 189 blindness and, 172–74 breaking up experiences and, 177–81 changes in workers’ pay and, 169–70 comparisons to other people and, 189 consumer purchases and, 175, 185–88 extending pleasurable experiences and, 176–78, 179–81, 185, 186 in future, foreseeing of, 160, 171–74 happiness baseline and, 170 life-altering injuries and, 171–72, 174 moving to California and, 176 new houses and, 168–69 pain and, 160–67 romantic breakups and, 172–73 to transient vs. constant experiences, 187–88 using our understanding of, 176–81, 184–90 hedonic disruptions, 177–81 hedonic treadmill, 175 Heingartner, Alexander, 45–46 Henry, O., 98 herding, 262 see also self-herding Herman, Edward, 45–46 Hippocrates, 82 Hogerty, Megan, 81 homeostatic mechanisms, 81 Hong, James, 201, 203 HOT or NOT study, 201–5, 208 gender differences in, 209, 211 Meet Me feature and, 204–5, 208, 209 humor, sense of, 199, 200, 207, 208, 228 Hurricane Katrina, 250, 251 I ideas: attachment to, see Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias idiosyncratic fit and, 111–12 identifiable victim effect, 239–42, 248, 256 American Cancer Society and, 241–42 identity, connection between work and, 53–55, 79 idiosyncratic fit, ideas and, 111–12 ignoring workers, 74–76 IKEA, 83–84, 106 IKEA effect, 83–106 author’s creations in rehabilitation center and, 100–101 completion of project and, 101–4, 105 do-it-yourself furniture and, 83–84, 96, 106 effort expended and, 89, 90, 95–96, 105–6 four principles in, 104–5 and lack of awareness of overvaluation, 99 Legos experiment and, 96, 97 Local Motors cars and, 88, 89 Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias and, 109–10, 121 origami experiments and, 91–94, 97, 98–99, 102–4 parents’ overvaluation of their children and, 97–98 practical implications of, 121–22 relaxation notion and, 105–6 removal of individual customization and, 96 semi-preprepared food and, 85–88 shoe design and, 95, 96 immediate gratification, 5 Inconvenient Truth, An, 252 initiation into social groups, 89 injuries: association of pain with getting better after, 166–67 author’s dating prospects and, 191–96, 210–11 author’s decisions about his medical care and, 284–88 author’s personal history related to, 1–4, 13, 107, 160–62, 166–67, 181–84, 189, 191–96, 210–11, 281–88 battlefield vs. civilian, 167 foreseeing future after, 160 life-altering, adaptation to, 160, 171–72, 174 pain thresholds and tolerance related to severity of, 161–65 Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 126–27 insurance products, 233–34 interruptions: in pleasant vs. painful experiences, 177–81 TV commercials and, 181n see also phone call interruption experiments intuitions: bonuses and, 36–37 received medical wisdom and, 289–92 romantic, 172–73 testing of, 10n, 288–95 inverse-U relationship, defined, 19 iPods and iPhones, battery replacement in, 141–42 irrationality: summary of findings on, 288 upside as well as downside of, 11–12, 294 irreversible decisions, 285, 286 IT infrastructure, division and meaning of labor and, 77, 79–80 J Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie, 170 Jensen, Glen, 60–62, 63 Jensen, Keith, 127 Jewish tradition, 254–55 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, 152 Joyless Economy, The (Scitovsky), 188 justice, see fairness, sense of K Kahneman, Danny, 32n, 175–76 Kamenica, Emir, 66, 301 Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 154 Kemmler, William, 119 kinship, empathy and, 243 Krishnamurti, Tamar, 172–73 Krzyzewski, Mike, 39 L labor: connection between identity and, 53–55, 79 contrafreeloading and, 60–63 economic model of, 55, 62–63, 105 financial incentives and, see bonuses meaning of, see meaning of labor overvaluation resulting from, see IKEA effect on projects without meaning, 56–57, 63–72 Labyrinth game, 23 Lee, Leonard, 132, 134, 197, 201–2, 301–2 Lee, Sandra, 87–88 leeches, medicinal use of, 290–91 Legos experiments: on IKEA effect, 96, 97 on reducing meaningfulness of work, 66–74, 77, 80 letter-pairs experiment, 74–76, 80 life-altering events, hedonic adaptation and, 170 Life as a House, ultimatum game and, 268, 269, 270, 272, 276 light, adaptation to changes in, 159 Local Motors, Inc., 88, 89 Loewenstein, George, 21, 44, 80–81, 172–73, 197, 201–2, 239–41, 246–48, 302 long-term objectives, short-term enjoyments vs., 4–5 loss aversion, 32–33, 285, 286 lottery winners, hedonic adaptation of, 170, 171 “Love the One You’re With,” 197, 211–12 M malaria, 250, 251 Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl), 45 marketing, adaptation and, 158 market mechanisms, 215–16 dating and, 213–15, 216–17, 220–21, 230–32, 233–35 Marx, Karl, 79 massages, extending pleasure of, 179–80 matchmakers (yentas), 213 Mazar, Nina, 21, 30, 44, 302 McClure, Jessica (Baby Jessica), 237–38 meals, see cooking meaning of labor, 53–82 in acknowledged, ignored, and shredded conditions, 74–76 animals’ preference for working for food and, 59–63 blogging and, 65 division of labor and, 77–80 draining work of meaning and, 55–57, 63–77 financial incentives and, 72–73, 76 joy derived from activity and, 71–72 labor-identity connection and, 53–55, 79 Legos experiment and, 66–74, 76, 80 lessons for workplace on, 80–82 letter-pairs experiment and, 74–76, 80 “meaning” vs.

The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs Over Self-Interest by Yochai Benkler

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, behavioural economics, business process, California gold rush, citizen journalism, classic study, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, do well by doing good, East Village, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental economics, experimental subject, framing effect, Garrett Hardin, informal economy, invisible hand, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, loss aversion, Murray Gell-Mann, Nicholas Carr, peer-to-peer, prediction markets, Richard Stallman, scientific management, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, social contagion, Steven Pinker, telemarketer, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, twin studies, ultimatum game, Washington Consensus, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game, Zipcar

The workforce was largely unchanged: 99 percent of the assembly line workers in the new workforce, and three quarters of the skilled workers, were UAW members who had worked at the original Fremont plant. Yet within two years the new plant had far surpassed any other GM plant in productivity and had the highest quality ratings of any automobile plant in the United States. Confidential employee surveys show that job satisfaction levels rose from 60 percent when the plant reopened in 1985 to more than 90 percent by the 1990s. The effects were lasting. Despite Toyota’s recent woes, for more than twenty-five years NUMMI continued to be one of the top plants in the United States in terms of productivity and product quality.

97 Things Every Programmer Should Know by Kevlin Henney

A Pattern Language, active measures, Apollo 11, business intelligence, business logic, commoditize, continuous integration, crowdsourcing, database schema, deliberate practice, domain-specific language, don't repeat yourself, Donald Knuth, fixed income, functional programming, general-purpose programming language, Grace Hopper, index card, inventory management, job satisfaction, level 1 cache, loose coupling, machine readable, Silicon Valley, sorting algorithm, The Wisdom of Crowds

Two Heads Are Often Better Than One Adrian Wible PROGRAMMING REQUIRES DEEP THOUGHT, and deep thought requires solitude. So goes the programmer stereotype. This "lone wolf" approach to programming has been giving way to a more collaborative approach, which, I would argue, improves quality, productivity, and job satisfaction for programmers. This approach has developers working more closely with one another and also with nondevelopers—business and systems analysts, quality assurance professionals, and users. What does this mean for developers? Being the expert technologist is no longer sufficient. You must become effective at working with others.

The Prison Doctor by Dr Amanda Brown

job satisfaction

I had over a year to help Trudy wean herself off methadone and, combined with the counselling, there was every chance she could leave Bronzefield with no drugs in her system, and no desire to go back on them when she returned to society. It was my goal to make her dream become a reality. It was at that moment, that very second, that I realised I had reached my happy place. I had never had so much job satisfaction in all of my life. My journey to get there had been colourful, but I couldn’t have been more fulfilled. I felt and hoped that I was making a difference to these women’s lives, which gave me joy and a sense of purpose. And as long as I was needed, and I was making a difference, I would carry on working as doctor, as a counsellor and also, hopefully, as a friend to these women.

Having and Being Had by Eula Biss

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, David Graeber, Donald Trump, Garrett Hardin, glass ceiling, Haight Ashbury, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, job satisfaction, Landlord’s Game, means of production, moral hazard, new economy, Norman Mailer, Occupy movement, precariat, Robert Shiller, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, wage slave, wages for housework

Among the people Terkel interviews, the farmer and the flight attendant and the prostitute and the stockbroker, there are some who take deep pleasure in their work—the stonemason, the piano tuner, the bookbinder, the carpenter who is also a poet. The janitor doesn’t mind being a janitor. He doesn’t want to be called a building engineer. “You can call me a janitor,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with a janitor.” But he does mind the pain in his back when he shovels snow and when he uses a mop. A study of job satisfaction among hospital janitors found that the janitors who reported the greatest satisfaction were the ones who thought of their work as caring for the sick, though their job description was a list of duties like “collect and dispose of soiled linens” and “stock restroom supplies.” When these janitors described their work, they talked of visiting the patients who had the least visitors, joking with patients to cheer them up, writing letters to patients who had gone home and might be lonely, and carefully cleaning the rooms of the patients who were most vulnerable to infection.

Trust: The Social Virtue and the Creation of Prosperity by Francis Fukuyama

Alvin Toffler, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, classic study, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, double entry bookkeeping, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Gunnar Myrdal, hiring and firing, industrial robot, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kanban, Kenneth Arrow, land reform, liberal capitalism, liberation theology, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, mittelstand, price mechanism, profit maximization, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, transfer pricing, traveling salesman, union organizing, vertical integration, W. E. B. Du Bois

In this view, the Italian family firm combines unalienating small size, craft skills, and respect for family traditions with efficiency, technological sophistication, and other benefits usually associated with large scale. Robert Putnam portrays economic activity in these regions as the epitome of civic-minded cooperativeness, where business networks dovetail with local government to provide job satisfaction and prosperity for everyone.33 But is this network organization of small-scale firms the wave of the future, a New Age form of industrial organization that combines economies of scale with the intimacy of small workplaces and the reunion of ownership and management?34 It is certainly not the case that Italy has had to pay an economic price for the relatively small scale of its businesses.

…

One study that surveyed the views of workers in four countries found that skilled workers were concerned with having jobs that were intrinsically interesting or fulfilling, while unskilled workers were more interested in income. Many new entrants and low-skill workers, moreover, believed that having a factory job in the first place conferred significant social status. William H. Form, “Auto Workers and Their Machines: A Study of Work, Factory, and Job Satisfaction in Four Countries,” Social Forces 52 (1973): 1-15. 27On the Hawthorne experiments, see Hirszowicz (1982), pp. 52-54. 28See Elton Mayo, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1933), and The Social Problems of an Industrialized Civilization (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962). 29Ian Jamieson, “Some Observations on Socio-Cultural Explanations of Economic Behavior,” Sociological Review 26 (1978): 777-805.

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation by Carl Benedikt Frey

3D printing, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Charles Babbage, Clayton Christensen, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, data science, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, demographic transition, desegregation, deskilling, Donald Trump, driverless car, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, factory automation, Fairchild Semiconductor, falling living standards, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, full employment, future of work, game design, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial cluster, industrial robot, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invention of the wheel, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, labour mobility, Lewis Mumford, Loebner Prize, low skilled workers, machine translation, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, minimum wage unemployment, natural language processing, new economy, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nowcasting, oil shock, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, pink-collar, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, Renaissance Technologies, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, safety bicycle, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social intelligence, sparse data, speech recognition, spinning jenny, Stephen Hawking, tacit knowledge, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, trade route, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Turing test, union organizing, universal basic income, warehouse automation, washing machines reduced drudgery, wealth creators, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

In a study of an automated steel mill, Charles Walker found that job satisfaction varied significantly throughout the process of adjustment: “The same job characteristics, all stemming from the automatic or semiautomatic operations of the mill which had at first been feared and hated, were later the source of satisfaction.”42 Once the new became the familiar, attitudes shifted. Thus, in a review of the literature, Faunce and coauthors aptly summarize the matter as follows: Field research suggests that the impact of office automation upon job satisfaction varies depending on … whether the employees are in electronic data-processing departments which gain work tasks or in other affected departments that lose tasks, whether the computer is of large or medium size, and on several other circumstances.

Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities by Alain Bertaud

autonomous vehicles, call centre, colonial rule, congestion charging, congestion pricing, creative destruction, cross-subsidies, Deng Xiaoping, discounted cash flows, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, extreme commuting, garden city movement, gentrification, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land tenure, manufacturing employment, market design, market fragmentation, megacity, microapartment, new economy, New Urbanism, openstreetmap, Pearl River Delta, price mechanism, rent control, Right to Buy, Ronald Coase, self-driving car, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, the built environment, trade route, transaction costs, transit-oriented development, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban sprawl, zero-sum game

A firm that would be satisfied to restrict the selection of its employees to the vicinity of its factory or office would not need to locate in a large metropolis where rents and salaries are higher. This firm could locate in a small town where the unspecialized workers it seeks could be recruited for a lower salary. In the same way, a worker living in a large city and looking for a new job would try to maximize job satisfaction measured in part through salary, level of interest in the work and its compatibility with skillset, attractiveness of the work environment, and so forth. The time spent commuting might certainly be a consideration in seeking a job, but if the commuting time were less than 1 hour, it would likely not be a determining factor.

…

Cities thrive on changes, possibilities, and innovations. Therefore, an urban transport system that would solely minimize travel time between home and current jobs for all workers would result in poor mobility, as in the future, workers might not be able to reach many alternative jobs that would improve their job satisfaction or salary. Mobility and Recent Immigrants During a recent visit to the Tenement Museum in New York, a docent told us that in the 1850s, immigrants who were “fresh off the boat” would typically stay only a few months in a tenement; they would then keep moving as their employment and financial circumstances changed.

The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance by Jim Whitehurst

Airbnb, behavioural economics, cloud computing, content marketing, crowdsourcing, digital capitalism, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, Google Hangouts, Infrastructure as a Service, job satisfaction, Kaizen: continuous improvement, market design, meritocracy, Network effects, new economy, place-making, platform as a service, post-materialism, profit motive, risk tolerance, Salesforce, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, subscription business, TED Talk, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tony Hsieh

The leadership team and I must ensure that happens. Many executives with whom I speak also confuse engagement with happiness or employee morale. Engagement isn’t about being happy. Happy people may or may not be engaged in the business. According to Sue Moynihan, a director on the People team at Red Hat, companies tend to confuse “job satisfaction” levels among their associates with engagement. So rather than ask associates about how they feel about their compensation or benefits package—which are more closely tied to satisfaction—Moynihan’s team measures associate engagement levels by tracking how many people react affirmatively to statements such as: The people I work with are passionate about Red Hat’s mission.

Cartesian Linguistics by Noam Chomsky

job satisfaction, language acquisition, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, theory of mind, Turing test

Assuming, furthermore, the empirical principle that organisms thrive (get satisfaction) when they fulfill their natures and the moral/ethical principle that they should be given opportunities to do so, it is reasonable to assume that a form of social organization giving them these opportunities is better than one that does not. There is plenty of evidence that people thrive when they exercise their freedom and autonomy – for instance, job satisfaction is a good predictor of longer life, and correlates strongly with exercise of autonomy and self-expression. The moral principle seems to be as obvious as any can be. It might justifiably be overridden in certain cases – for example, where there is genuine reason to think that survival is at stake – but no one except for moral monsters will simply deny the principle.

The Cheapskate Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means by Jeff Yeager

An Inconvenient Truth, asset allocation, Boeing 747, carbon footprint, delayed gratification, do what you love, dumpster diving, index card, job satisfaction, late fees, mortgage debt, new economy, payday loans, Skype, upwardly mobile, Zipcar

,” more than two-thirds of the cheapskates polled responded with seven or higher. At the same time, nearly 40 percent of all respondents said that they are dissatisfied with the amount of money they currently earn, although they frequently commented that their dissatisfaction with a lower salary was more than compensated for by increased job satisfaction. These cheapskates often have careers in the nonprofit sector or are “selfishly employed.” I defined “selfish employment” in my first book as “having the financial security to pursue your interests and passions as employment without undue risk or concern over income.” As a selfishly employed individual myself, when people ask me what I do for a living, I usually reply, “I just do my own thing, and sometimes somebody pays me money because of it.”

Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning by Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne G. Harris

always be closing, Apollo 13, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, business intelligence, business logic, business process, call centre, commoditize, data acquisition, digital map, en.wikipedia.org, fulfillment center, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, if you build it, they will come, intangible asset, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, knapsack problem, late fees, linear programming, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Netflix Prize, new economy, performance metric, personalized medicine, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, recommendation engine, RFID, search inside the book, shareholder value, six sigma, statistical model, supply-chain management, text mining, The future is already here, the long tail, the scientific method, traveling salesman, yield management

As a company becomes more serious about enterprise-wide analytics, it often draws together the most advanced analysts into a single group to focus on strategic issues. This provides the organization with a critical mass of analysts to focus on the most strategic issues, and provides the analysts with greater job satisfaction and opportunity to develop their skills. Once an organization has an outstanding analytical capability combined with strategically differentiating analytics embedded into its most critical business processes and has achieved major improvements to its business performance and competitiveness, it has reached the final stage.

Critical: Science and Stories From the Brink of Human Life by Matt Morgan

agricultural Revolution, Atul Gawande, biofilm, Black Swan, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive dissonance, crew resource management, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Strachan, discovery of penicillin, en.wikipedia.org, hygiene hypothesis, job satisfaction, John Snow's cholera map, meta-analysis, personalized medicine, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, traumatic brain injury

If you take part in a clinical trial, you are more likely to survive even if you only receive the placebo. If you are treated in a hospital that does research, you too are more likely to live than to die. The environments that nurture good research are also more likely to have good communication between staff, fewer vacancies and higher job satisfaction. Bringing the heads of different hospital experts together in a collaborative way can stop them from banging together in conflict. Washing hands and teaching others form core parts of working in a hospital. So too should research. It is the scaffolding onto which we can safely climb to search for better ways to help patients.

Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape From Corporate America by Dan Conway

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, bank run, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, buy and hold, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, double entry bookkeeping, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fault tolerance, financial independence, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, Haight Ashbury, high net worth, holacracy, imposter syndrome, independent contractor, initial coin offering, job satisfaction, litecoin, Marc Andreessen, Mitch Kapor, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, rent control, reserve currency, Ronald Coase, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, smart contracts, Steve Jobs, supercomputer in your pocket, tech billionaire, tech bro, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing complete, Uber for X, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, Vitalik Buterin

But the stats show that for many of us, it is. According to a 2016 Society for Human Resource Management study, fewer than one-third of employees are very satisfied with the teamwork at their companies. We’ve become so used to the misery of modern work that we accept it like a sliver deep in our heel. Despite low levels of job satisfaction, most economists would say the firm remains the best way to organize humans for work. Which reminds me of what Winston Churchill said about modern government: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the others.” The same could have been said of the modern firm. Until it wasn’t.

McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality by Ronald Purser

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, British Empire, capitalist realism, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, fake news, Frederick Winslow Taylor, friendly fire, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, housing crisis, Howard Zinn, impulse control, job satisfaction, liberation theology, Lyft, Marc Benioff, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Nelson Mandela, neoliberal agenda, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, placebo effect, precariat, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, publication bias, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, science of happiness, scientific management, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, source of truth, stealth mode startup, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, Torches of Freedom, trickle-down economics, uber lyft, work culture

When pitching programs, consultants actually downplay the benefits to individual workers, focusing instead on “work-related outcomes,” such as better productivity, task performance, and decision-making. “Results-focused mindfulness training for your company,” is the tag line for Whil, a market-savvy online provider of “on demand” corporate mindfulness programs.4 Their website vows to “increase job satisfaction and productivity while decreasing stress.” Would it be possible for mindfulness to thrive in companies if the practice dented profits? There seems little danger of that if it is pitched as performance enhancement. Even if accompanied by some woolly implications about change scaling up to make companies mindful, the exclusion of structural critiques of corporate policies undermines this.

Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought by Andrew W. Lo

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic trading, Andrei Shleifer, Arthur Eddington, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, backtesting, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bob Litterman, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, break the buck, Brexit referendum, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized trading, confounding variable, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, democratizing finance, Diane Coyle, diversification, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, double helix, easy for humans, difficult for computers, equity risk premium, Ernest Rutherford, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Fractional reserve banking, framing effect, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hans Rosling, Henri Poincaré, high net worth, housing crisis, incomplete markets, index fund, information security, interest rate derivative, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Hawkins, Jim Simons, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Meriwether, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, language acquisition, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, martingale, megaproject, merger arbitrage, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Neil Armstrong, Nick Leeson, old-boy network, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, p-value, PalmPilot, paper trading, passive investing, Paul Lévy, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, predatory finance, prediction markets, price discovery process, profit maximization, profit motive, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, RAND corporation, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, Shai Danziger, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, statistical arbitrage, Steven Pinker, stochastic process, stocks for the long run, subprime mortgage crisis, survivorship bias, systematic bias, Thales and the olive presses, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, too big to fail, transaction costs, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, ultimatum game, uptick rule, Upton Sinclair, US Airways Flight 1549, Walter Mischel, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Without reasonably accurate numbers, behavioral risk management is more aspirational than operational. Financial risk management has an enormous analytic base, up to and including million-dollar software platforms and real-time data vendors. There’s nothing comparable to support behavioral risk managers … yet. Psychological profiles, social network maps, and job satisfaction surveys are currently assigned to human resources departments, not risk committees or corporate boards. Nevertheless, the starting point for any scientific endeavor is always measurement. While quantitative behavioral risk models are under construction, the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis suggests one thing we can do in the meantime: develop an integrated view of the corporate ecosystem.

…

These changes seem to be having an impact. The SEC’s score on the Office of Personnel Management’s Global Satisfaction Index—based on the same survey cited in the GAO’s quoted report—improved from 59 in 2012 to 65 in 2014 (Office of Personnel Management, 2014). For comparison, in 2014 the agency with the highest job satisfaction rating was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (an index value of 74), the agency with the lowest rating was the Department of Homeland Security (an index value of 48), and the governmentwide index value was 59. 40. Cohn, Fehr, and Maréchal (2014). 41. Ibid., 86. 42. Gibson, Tanner, and Wagner (2016). 43.

Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas A.Limoncelli

8-hour work day, Albert Einstein, Big Tech, business cycle, Debian, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Mahatma Gandhi, PalmPilot, Steve Jobs

Management is a relationship, and you share influence in how the relationship evolves. It is difficult to get anything done, or to have a satisfying career, if you do not have a good relationship with your manager. Alternatively, with a good relationship you can get more done, have increased job satisfaction, and accelerate your career. If you do a web search for "manage your boss," you will find many excellent articles. This is a sign that many people feel the need to have a better relationship with their boss. Schedule some time to read a few of them. I think the three most important keys to managing your boss are to use him to help advance your career, to know when to use upward delegation , and to understand and contribute to his goals.

After the New Economy: The Binge . . . And the Hangover That Won't Go Away by Doug Henwood

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, book value, borderless world, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California energy crisis, capital controls, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, deskilling, digital divide, electricity market, emotional labour, ending welfare as we know it, feminist movement, fulfillment center, full employment, gender pay gap, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, government statistician, greed is good, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Internet Archive, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Mary Meeker, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, Naomi Klein, new economy, occupational segregation, PalmPilot, pets.com, post-work, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rewilding, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, statistical model, stock buybacks, structural adjustment programs, tech worker, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, union organizing, War on Poverty, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

BoysWill Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence,and Common Stock Investment," Quarterly Journal of Economics, October, pp. 261-292 (also at <faculty.gsm.ucdavis.edu/ ~bmbarber/BoysWillBeBoys.pdf>). Barko, Naomi (2000). "The Other Gender Gap," The American Prospect, June 19-July 3, pp. 61-63 <www.prospect.oi^/archives/Vl l-15/barko-n.html>. Barrington, Linda (2000). Does a Rising Tide Lift All Boats? (New York: The Conference Board). Bateman, Thomas S., and Dennis W. Organ (1983). "Job Satisfaction and the Good Soldier: The Rebtionship Between Affect and Employee 'Citizenship,"Mai</emy of Management Journal 26, pp. 587-95. Baudrillard,Jean (1993). The Tranparency of Evil, translated by James Benedict (New York and London: Verso). Bayard, Kimberly, Judith Hellentein, David Neumark, and Kenneth Troske (1999).

What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine by Danielle Ofri

affirmative action, classic study, delayed gratification, facts on the ground, job satisfaction, lateral thinking, longitudinal study, medical malpractice, medical residency, Multics, RAND corporation

Some have wondered whether these quality measures actually reduce motivation to improve.19 Selecting out narrow data points to measure may work well for assembly-line type work, but it can be counterproductive for complex tasks that involve deliberation, decision-making, judgment, communication, and creativity.20 Focusing on the minutiae—even if those are individually important measurements—can undermine a person’s desire and ability to improve. (Offering more control over one’s work environment and improving overall job satisfaction seems to do a better job.) My own experience in being evaluated for “quality” left me with that same horrible feeling about being judged. Our hospital had undertaken a laudable and Herculean effort to improve the care of patients with diabetes. There was no disagreement that diabetes was one of the most complicated diseases we faced and that these patients would benefit from the best medical care possible.

Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future by Scott D. Anthony, Mark W. Johnson

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Apollo 13, asset light, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, blockchain, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, driverless car, Internet of things, invention of hypertext, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, long term incentive plan, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Minecraft, obamacare, Parag Khanna, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, pez dispenser, recommendation engine, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skype, software as a service, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, subscription business, the long tail, the market place, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, transfer pricing, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator, Zipcar

Typically, pharmacists focused on behind-the-scenes tasks of processing paperwork, dealing with insurance, and dispensing drugs. With the help of Innosight and IDEO, a leading design company, Walgreens removed barriers between pharmacists and patients by creating semiprivate spaces to facilitate direct discussion. Patients received better treatment, leading to a higher number of repeat visits, and the pharmacists’ job satisfaction went up. Transformation B involved transforming Walgreens stores into the front line of defense for the beleaguered US health care industry. What does Walgreens have that few other companies have? More than eight thousand stores, where people come to fill prescriptions and buy other sundry items.

The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations by David Pilling

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Branko Milanovic, call centre, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial intermediation, financial repression, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, Mahatma Gandhi, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mortgage debt, off grid, old-boy network, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, peak oil, performance metric, pez dispenser, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, science of happiness, shareholder value, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality, W. W. Norton & Company, 2012, p. xii. 7. Sarah F. Brosnan and Frans B. M. de Waal, “Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay,” Nature, Vol. 425, September 2003. 8. David Card, Alexandre Mas, Enrico Moretti, and Emmanuel Saez, “Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction,” November 2011: www.princeton.edu. 9. “The Cost of Living in Jane Austen’s England”: www.janeausten.co.uk. 10. Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up, The New Press, 2010, p. ix. 11. Walter Berglund, the lawyer and environmentalist in Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom, expresses similar ideas. 12.

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World With OKRs by John Doerr

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Big Tech, Bob Noyce, cloud computing, collaborative editing, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google X / Alphabet X, Haight Ashbury, hockey-stick growth, intentional community, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, knowledge worker, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, Ray Kurzweil, risk tolerance, Salesforce, scientific management, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, web application, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

According to Deloitte, the management and leadership consulting firm, issues of “ retention and engagement have risen to No. 2 in the minds of business leaders, second only to the challenge of building global leadership.” But exactly how do you build engagement? A two-year Deloitte study found that no single factor has more impact than “ clearly defined goals that are written down and shared freely. . . . Goals create alignment, clarity, and job satisfaction.” Goal setting isn’t bulletproof: “ When people have conflicting priorities or unclear, meaningless, or arbitrarily shifting goals, they become frustrated, cynical, and demotivated.” An effective goal management system—an OKR system—links goals to a team’s broader mission. It respects targets and deadlines while adapting to circumstances.

In Stitches by Nick Edwards

deskilling, job satisfaction, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, old-boy network

People then need to realise that what is important is how well the patient is being treated and not which particular specialty the doctor seeing them works for. I hope that these changes get brought in and that I can just get on with my job–looking after sick patients who have not had to endure long waits to see me. I don’t want to have to move to Australia to get job satisfaction. I want things to change over here. P.S. Mum, if you are reading this, don’t worry, I wouldn’t really move to Australia–I’ll stay here and just rant after work instead. Sad request for a MAP The computer showed that the next patient was ‘requesting MAP’. The medical student shadowing me believed me when I told him that as we were becoming a ‘foundation hospital’, one of our hospital’s money-making mechanisms was giving out directions to lost people.

Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success by Shane Snow

3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, attribution theory, augmented reality, barriers to entry, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, fail fast, Fellow of the Royal Society, Filter Bubble, Ford Model T, Google X / Alphabet X, hive mind, index card, index fund, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, popular electronics, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Ruby on Rails, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, seminal paper, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, social bookmarking, Steve Jobs, superconnector, vertical integration

In fact, one-on-one mentoring in which an organization formally matched people proved to be nearly as worthless as a person having not been mentored at all. However, when students and mentors came together on their own and formed personal relationships, the mentored did significantly better, as measured by future income, tenure, number of promotions, job satisfaction, work stress, and self-esteem. This is why Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook and the author of Lean In, dedicates a chapter in her book to this concept, arguing that asking someone to formally mentor you is like asking a celebrity for an autograph; it’s stiff, inorganic, and often doesn’t work out.

The Year Without Pants: Wordpress.com and the Future of Work by Scott Berkun

barriers to entry, Big Tech, blue-collar work, Broken windows theory, en.wikipedia.org, Firefox, future of work, Google Hangouts, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Kanban, Lean Startup, lolcat, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, post-work, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, Richard Stallman, Seaside, Florida, side project, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the map is not the territory, The Soul of a New Machine, Tony Hsieh, trade route, work culture , zero-sum game

See Team Social meet-up (Athens, Greece) Automattic: acquisition offer for; atmosphere of constant change at; attitude toward safeguards at; author hired at; board of directors meeting; continued growth and success of; creativity not infringed upon by support at; as data-influenced company; description of headquarters in San Francisco; distinction between WordPress, WordPress.com, and; employees split into teams; founding and early history of; hiring procedure; long-term view at; marketing by; minimal friction at; problem management at; promoted free expression; returning meaning to work; view of big projects at; work flow at; work location irrelevant to Automattic culture Automatticians: background and skills of; collaboration tools used by; commonly moving between projects; compensation of; defined; description of, at work; job satisfaction of; new, adjusting to working remotely; quality assurance responsibility of; self-sufficiency and passion of; turnover rate for; work location of B b2 Bachhuber, Daniel Bachiyski, Nikolay Baeta, Hugo: about; acclimated to Automattic way of working; joined Team Social; at Lisbon team meet-up; at Portland meet-up; reworked NASCAR feature Bar-Cohen, Raanan Basecamp Belfiore, Joe Berkun, Scott: about; arrival in Athens for team meet-up; assets and liabilities of, at Automattic; assigned to Team Post Postmodernism at Budapest company meeting; “Big Talk” to team by; e-mailed observations about company to Mullenweg; exit from Automattic; gave presentations on leading Team Social; hired at Automattic; lack of safety measures in India experienced by; on managing programmers without having programming skills; at Microsoft; monitoring of customer support work by; and P2s; in San Francisco headquarters for face-to-face interactions; at Seaside company meeting; training work in customer support; use of WordPress by; at work; work on Highlander; work on Hovercards project; on working remotely vs. face-to-face interactions Bernal, Jorge Bigelow, Sheri Bikeshed problem Black, Phillip Blacksmith Capital Blogger (software) Blogs: features to decrease abandonment of Bluehost Boren, Ryan Broken window theory Bubel, Anthony Budapest.

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

Berlin Wall, Black Swan, business process, call centre, correlation does not imply causation, Drosophila, full employment, illegal immigration, index card, information security, Isaac Newton, job automation, job satisfaction, junk bonds, McMansion, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, off-the-grid, PageRank, personalized medicine, recommendation engine, RFID, Silicon Valley, Skype, statistical model, surveillance capitalism, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, workplace surveillance

"That's what we call it," he says. "I think the term comes from sports." The question, of course, is how long IBM wants to have that high-priced talent sitting on the bench. If there isn't any work to justify his immense talents, shouldn't they put him on something else, just to keep him busy? Not necessarily, says Takriti. Job satisfaction is one of his system's constraints. If workers get angry or bored to tears, their productivity is bound to plummet. The automatic manager keeps this in mind (in a manner of speaking). As you might expect, it deals very gently with superstars. Since they make lots of money for the company during short bursts of activity, they get plenty of time on the bench.

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz

accounting loophole / creative accounting, attribution theory, Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, Cass Sunstein, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, endowment effect, framing effect, hedonic treadmill, income per capita, job satisfaction, loss aversion, medical residency, mental accounting, Own Your Own Home, PalmPilot, Paradox of Choice, Pareto efficiency, peak-end rule, positional goods, price anchoring, psychological pricing, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, science of happiness, search costs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

McCullough, “Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003, 84, 377–389. Chapter 9 Comparisons are R.E. Lane discusses the relative nature of evaluation in The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). Michalos found that A. Michalos, “Job Satisfaction, Marital Satisfaction, and the Quality of Life,” in F.M. Andrews (ed.), Research on the Quality of Life (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research, 1986), p. 75. What the theory claims The classic paper on framing is D. Kahneman and A. Tversky, “Choices, Values, and Frames,” American Psychologist, 1984, 39, 341–350.

Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim, Renée A. Mauborgne

Asian financial crisis, Blue Ocean Strategy, borderless world, call centre, classic study, cloud computing, commoditize, creative destruction, disruptive innovation, endogenous growth, Ford Model T, haute couture, index fund, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, machine translation, market fundamentalism, NetJets, Network effects, RAND corporation, Salesforce, Skype, telemarketer, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Vanguard fund, zero-sum game

He broke out of the red ocean with a blue ocean policing strategy that revolutionized US policing as it was then known. The organization won as “profits” jumped: felony crime fell 39 percent, murders 50 percent, and theft 35 percent. “Customers” won: Gallup polls reported that public confidence in the NYPD leaped from 37 percent to 73 percent. And employees won: internal surveys showed job satisfaction in the NYPD reaching an all-time high. As one patrolman put it, “We would have marched to hell and back for that guy.” Perhaps most impressively, the changes have outlasted its leader, with crime rates continuing to fall after the leader’s departure, implying a fundamental shift in the organizational culture and strategy of the NYPD.

Confessions of a Surgeon: The Good, the Bad, and the Complicated...Life Behind the O.R. Doors by Paul A. Ruggieri

fear of failure, job satisfaction, Libby Zion, medical malpractice, medical residency

I continued to methodically cut through scar tissue, untwisting intestine while thinking about breakfast. There is something erotic about eating two eggs over easy, sausage, home fries, and toast after staying up all night. The American College of Surgeons Committee on Physician Competency and Health surveyed close to eight thousand surgeons about their job satisfaction and mental state. The results revealed that 40 percent of those who answered the survey met the criteria for “burnout.” The publishers of the study attributed this burnout to increased working hours, being on call, and the job’s effect on home life. In addition, some studies have suggested burnout to be predictive of future mistakes made by surgeons.

User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn

A Pattern Language, c2.com, call centre, continuous integration, do well by doing good, Great Leap Forward, index card, iterative process, job automation, job satisfaction, phenotype, tacit knowledge, web application

While pair programming may sound tremendously inefficient, Alistair Cockburn and Laurie Williams (2001) have studied it and found that not to be the case. They found that for a 15% increase in total programming time, pair programming leads to: lower defect counts less code is written to solve the same problem problems being solved more quickly more people understand each piece of code an increase in developer job satisfaction Pair programming is important to XP because so many of the other XP practices require discipline. It requires a tremendous amount of discipline to refactor every time you notice poorly structured code or to always write tests before writing operational code. Without a pair it can be far too tempting to skip a refactoring or a test with the thought of “Just this once…” Sustainable Pace XP teams are encouraged to work at a sustainable pace.

Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior by Jonah Berger

Apollo 11, assortative mating, barriers to entry, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, double helix, driverless car, fixed-gear, flying shuttle, Google Glasses, job satisfaction, messenger bag, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, PalmPilot, Ronald Reagan, six sigma, spinning jenny, The Wisdom of Crowds, twin studies, white flight, Yogi Berra

Weisbenner (2008), “Neighbors Matter: Causal Community Effects and Stock Market Participation,” Journal of Finance 63, 1509–31; Gerber, Alan, and Todd Rogers (2009), “Descriptive Social Norms and Motivation to Vote: Everybody’s Voting and So Should You,” Journal of Politics 71, 1–14; Frey, Bruno, and Stephan Meier (2004), “Social Comparisons and Pro-Social Behavior: Testing ‘Conditional Cooperation’ in a Field Experiment,” American Economic Review 94, 1717–22; and Card, D., A. Mas, E. Moretti, and E. Saez (2012), “Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction,” American Economic Review 10, 2981–3003. 2. Pronin, Emily, Jonah Berger, and Sarah Molouki (2007), “Alone in a Crowd of Sheep: Asymmetric Perceptions of Conformity and Their Roots in an Introspection Illusion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92, 585–95. 3. To control for order effects, we randomized the order of the questions.

Marriage and Lasting Relationships With Asperger's Syndrome: Successful Strategies for Couples or Counselors by Eva A. Mendes

airport security, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, deliberate practice, index card, job satisfaction, Lao Tzu, neurotypical, theory of mind

id=538721, accessed April 15, 2015. Jekel, D. (2012) Personal communication, December 16. Khalsa, S. (2013) “Yoga for psychiatry and mental health: An ancient practice with modern relevance.” Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 55, 3, 334–336. Knerr, M. (n.d.) “An empirical analysis of the relationship between marital status and job satisfaction.” Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences. Available at www.kon.org/urc/v4/knerr.html, accessed September 10, 2014. Marc, D. and Olson, K. (2009) “Neuroimmunology of Autism Spectrum Disorder.” NeuroScience, Inc. Available at https://neurorelief.com/index.php?p=cms&cid=409&pid=149, accessed January 27, 2014.

The Enlightened Capitalists by James O'Toole

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bletchley Park, book value, British Empire, business cycle, business logic, business process, California gold rush, carbon footprint, City Beautiful movement, collective bargaining, company town, compensation consultant, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, desegregation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, end world poverty, equal pay for equal work, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, garden city movement, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, God and Mammon, greed is good, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, income inequality, indoor plumbing, inventory management, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, Marc Benioff, means of production, Menlo Park, North Sea oil, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Socratic dialogue, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Vanguard fund, white flight, women in the workforce, young professional

Indeed, most research about work and life satisfaction conducted over the last half century highlights the needs people have to achieve mastery at work, to exercise initiative and creativity, and to learn and develop not only as workers but as human beings.3 Phelps hypothesizes that the observed declines in productivity and job satisfaction in America are due to “a critical loss of indigenous innovation in the established industries like traditional manufacturing and services that was not nearly offset by the innovation that flowered in a few new industries—digital, media, and financial. In the vast heartland of America, the loss of dynamism is almost palpable.”4 But not all good jobs have been, or are being, lost.

…

Union Carbide, 173 United Airlines, 290–91, 411–12 United Auto Workers, 108 United Garment Workers of America (UGWA), 181 United Kingdom (UK) bathing habits and Lever, 51, 53 Bolton, 52, 56–57, 64 Brexit, 446 “British disease,” 215 changes to economic order proposed, xv chief executive salaries in, 469 child labor in, 22, 23 chocolate makers, 84 contingent workforces and virtual workplaces in, 474–75, 477 cooperative movement, 29, 415, 417, 418 corporate capitalism and profit primacy in, 438 effect of industrialization in, 4 eighteenth century working conditions, 8 exporting cloth, 4–5 finance and banking, public concern about misbehavior in, 467 Financial Reporting Council, 462 gender pay inequity and, 469 global warming concerns and enlightened business practices, 432 history of textile mills in, 3–4 John Lewis Partnership among largest retail chains, 120 labor unrest (1960s), 129 Manchester, 5, 6, 8–10, 11, 208 Marks & Spencer as dominant retailer, 211 middle class growth in, 432 no demand for socially responsible companies, 427 old-age pensions law, 59 social entrepreneurship and, 456 socialized medicine, 212 Stewardship Code, 462 tabloids, 61 welfare-state and, 129 See also Lewis, John Spedan; Lever, William; Owen, Robert; Roddick, Anita United States contingent workforces and virtual workplaces in, 473–75, 477 corporate capitalism and profit primacy in, 438 declines in productivity and job satisfaction, 476 Dodd-Frank legislation, 462 finance and banking, public concern about misbehavior in, 467 first stock exchanges, 47 Gilded Age, 31 global warming concerns and enlightened business practices, 432 large manufacturing facilities encouraged by Hamilton, 3–4 largest retail business, 41 middle class growth in, 432 new cooperatives in, 419 no demand for socially responsible companies, 427 public disclosure of top executive compensation required, 469 rioting in 1877 against capitalist practices, 31 social entrepreneurship and, 456 tax legislation prohibiting industrial foundations, 434–35 See also specific companies Universal Pictures, 473, 474 University of California Berkeley, 194 Hass School of Business, 182 Levi Strauss scholarships, 178, 182 “unmanagement,” 298–99, 304 UPS, 409–10 Up the Organization (Townsend), 279–80, 283, 285, 286, 287 US Steel, xxx, 249, 265 utilitarianism, 21, 27 utopian communities Google Alphabet’s Quayside, 450–51 Hershey and, 79 Owen’s New Harmony, 27–28, 44 Owen’s “villages of co-operation,” 26 Penney’s Penney Farms, 44–45 See also living conditions of workers Vagelos, Roy, 334–41, 427, 428, 436, 477 accomplishments, 341 background and personal life, 335 cure for river blindness and, 335–38, 339 decision to sell vaccine patent to China, 338 legacy of, 340–41 Merck and ethical business practices, 335–39 Merck retirement, 338–39 opposition to giving away Mectizan, 337 philanthropy of, 341 Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and, 341 Vanderbuilt, Cornelius, xxxiii Vandevelde, Luc, 221 Vanguard investment fund, xiv, 461 Victoria, Queen, 20 Vogel, David, 308, 429 “Two and a Half Cheers for Conscious Capitalism,” 454, 455–56 Volkswagen, 173, 429 Waddock, Sandra, 373–74 wages ACIPCO and, 138, 139 Avis and, 281 Ben & Jerry’s and, 384 British textile mills, 5 Carnegie’s philosophy on paying the minimum, xxxiii executive-employee wage gap, 469–72 Ford’s $5 a day, xxviii, 20, 113 Herman Miller and, 228–29, 232, 234 “iron law” of, 21 J&J and, 149–50, 157 labor costs vs. total labor costs and, 290–91 Levi Strauss and, 190 Lincoln Electric, 94–95, 98, 99–101 link between compensation and perception of fairness, 471 living wages, 85, 138, 139, 150, 154, 157, 401 Nucor, average yearly, 276 Owen’s philosophy and, 20, 21 Patagonia and, 401 proven methods of equitable compensation, 472 Scanlon plan, 228–29, 234, 472 SWA and, 290–91 well-paid workers and productivity, 157, 290–91 W.

Extreme Teams: Why Pixar, Netflix, AirBnB, and Other Cutting-Edge Companies Succeed Where Most Fail by Robert Bruce Shaw, James Foster, Brilliance Audio

Airbnb, augmented reality, benefit corporation, Blitzscaling, call centre, cloud computing, data science, deliberate practice, Elon Musk, emotional labour, financial engineering, future of work, holacracy, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Jony Ive, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, loose coupling, meta-analysis, nuclear winter, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, performance metric, Peter Thiel, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, Tony Fadell, Tony Hsieh, work culture

Also see Dick Richards, “At Zappos, Culture Pays,” Strategy and Business 60 (2010). 8As suggested in this chapter, fit is essential in sustaining a firm’s cultural attributes. That said, fit is also important in the satisfaction of those who work in a company or group. Research indicates an employee’s fit with a firm’s culture is a strong predictor of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and retention. See Amy L. Kristof-Brown and Erin C. Johnson, “Consequences of Individuals’ Fit at Work: A Meta-Analysis of Person-Job, Person-Organization, Person-Group and Person-Supervisor Fit,” Personnel Psychology 58 (2005), 281–342. 9Patagonia’s founder notes, “Not everyone wants to change the world, but we want a company to feel like home for those who do.

A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income by Guy Standing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-fragile, bank run, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, British Empire, carbon tax, centre right, collective bargaining, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, declining real wages, degrowth, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial intermediation, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gunnar Myrdal, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, independent contractor, intangible asset, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joi Ito, labour market flexibility, land value tax, libertarian paternalism, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, nudge theory, offshore financial centre, open economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, precariat, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rent control, rent-seeking, Salesforce, Sam Altman, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, The Future of Employment, universal basic income, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce, working poor, Y Combinator, Zipcar

And in a series of studies that asked people what they would do if they won the lottery, a clear majority said they would go on working but not necessarily in their present jobs.13 Whether they preferred to continue what they were doing depended, not surprisingly, on how much they liked their jobs independently of the money they were earning. People in the professions and the ‘salariat’ were far more likely to say they would continue in the same job or occupation than those lower down the social scale, who could be presumed to have more boring or unpleasant jobs and expressed lower job satisfaction. A poll ahead of the June 2016 referendum on basic income in Switzerland asked people if they would cease their economic activity if a basic income were in place.14 Only 2 per cent said they would, in the context of a suggested basic income of 2,500 Swiss francs per person – which most people would regard as ‘comfortable’.

Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice by Molly Scott Cato

Albert Einstein, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, Bretton Woods, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, carbon footprint, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, congestion charging, corporate social responsibility, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, deskilling, energy security, food miles, Food sovereignty, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, gender pay gap, green new deal, income inequality, informal economy, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job satisfaction, land bank, land reform, land value tax, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, Money creation, mortgage debt, Multi Fibre Arrangement, passive income, peak oil, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Rupert Read, seminal paper, the built environment, The Spirit Level, Tobin tax, tontine, University of East Anglia, wikimedia commons

Much of the work carried out today is souldestroying and wasteful of resources, creating gadgets than can be sold to make a profit for the corporation which controls the brand they are sold under, but offering little in terms of real satisfaction to the purchaser, and equally little in terms of job satisfaction to the producer. The use of resources and energy by workers in this sort of employment is indefensible within a green economy. Some green economists seek to make a distinction between ‘work’, which is useful, sustainable and a valid investment of resources, and ‘employment’, which is undertaken within a destructive economic system driven solely by profit.9 Green parties have engaged forthrightly in the debate about work.

The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties by Paul Collier

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, assortative mating, bank run, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bob Geldof, bonus culture, business cycle, call centre, central bank independence, centre right, commodity super cycle, computerized trading, corporate governance, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, delayed gratification, deskilling, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial deregulation, full employment, George Akerlof, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, greed is good, income inequality, industrial cluster, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Jean Tirole, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, late capitalism, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, negative equity, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, principal–agent problem, race to the bottom, rent control, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, sovereign wealth fund, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, too big to fail, trade liberalization, urban planning, web of trust, zero-sum game

Even in terms of their consequences for the company, their choices ended up being disastrous. But it is an insulting delusion of many people who, like me, have cushy jobs in the public sector to imagine that workers in the private sector are driven by greed and fear. The evidence suggests that job satisfaction is actually considerably higher in the private sector; for example, people are far less likely to use illness as a reason for not going to work. So, there is nothing intrinsically dirty about capitalism. Profit is the constraint that forces discipline on a firm, rather than defining its purpose.

Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity Into Prosperity by Bernard Lietaer, Jacqui Dunne

3D printing, 90 percent rule, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, clockwork universe, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, conceptual framework, credit crunch, different worldview, discounted cash flows, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, happiness index / gross national happiness, holacracy, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, liberation theology, low interest rates, Marshall McLuhan, microcredit, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, more computing power than Apollo, new economy, Occupy movement, price stability, reserve currency, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, urban decay, War on Poverty, working poor

Graduates in the United Kingdom, for example, can anticipate 70 applications for one job opening and have been told to flip burgers rather than counting on attaining positions commensurate with their educations, leaving them with no means of addressing their liabilities.14 Nobel laureate Paul Krugman writes: “In particular, these days, workers with a college degree, but no further degrees, are less likely to get workplace health coverage than workers with only a high school degree were in 1979.”15 These days, job satisfaction means having any gainful employment. Money is the most powerful secular force. Financial issues affect all economic classes, from the rich to the poor. Empathy for the plight of those who suffer from scarcity comes easier. The damage created by poverty and want is pervasive, devastating, and easy to understand.

Busy by Tony Crabbe

airport security, Bluma Zeigarnik, British Empire, business process, classic study, cognitive dissonance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, death from overwork, fear of failure, Frederick Winslow Taylor, gamification, haute cuisine, informal economy, inventory management, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, loss aversion, low cost airline, machine readable, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, Paradox of Choice, placebo effect, Richard Feynman, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, scientific management, Shai Danziger, Stuart Kauffman, TED Talk, the long tail, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple