The iPhone/Apple Watch payment system is already easy to use. But it won't become a daily habit until it's available everywhere.
Apple Pay is nearing its second birthday, and mobile payments are far from ubiquitous. The credit-card replacement, which lets you use an iPhone or Apple Watch to pay at retail stores, only touts a user base numbering in the "tens of millions," according to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Meanwhile, a survey from 2015 indicates that among a pool of 500 Americans, 42% prefer to pay for in-store purchases with a debit card; another 38% are more likely to reach for a credit card. Extrapolated out, that means some 256 million Americans were using plastic at the register last year. Meanwhile, Nilson reports there were 9.49 billion credit, debit, and pre-paid cards in circulation globally in 2014.
Apple has focused on partnering with banks and big-name merchants in an effort to make Apple Pay accepted in a wide spectrum of locations. Storefronts include Crate & Barrel, Whole Foods, Macy's, Walgreens, and scads of other places that represent regular shopping choices for average Americans. In total, Apple Pay is accepted at three million locations in the U.S.—a big jump from just 200,000 locations at launch in 2014.
But while payment services like Apple Pay, Android Pay, and PayPal provide a good user experience, none of them are universally accepted. Given the current environment, what would it take for people to ditch plastic for mobile?
The key to getting mobile payments to take off in the U.S. may be a matter of focusing on two daily activities: eating and going places.
Right now, while a growing number of retail outlets large and small accept mobile payment methods, mobile payments for restaurants are still in their infancy. That's not to say there isn't interesting activity going on. Quick-service joints like Chipotle, Starbucks, McDonald's, and Burger King have created their own mobile apps geared toward rewarding repeat customers with payments built in. This same approach has been so successful for healthy salad shop Sweetgreen that the company is currently beta-testing cashless stores. Quite a few of these apps allow customers to hook up their Apple Pay account to the app, rather than having to input credit card information.
But Apple Pay is also forging ahead in quick-service restaurants as a payment method in its own right. It lists McDonald's, Panera, Dunkin Donuts, Subway, and Peet's Coffee among stores that accept Apple Pay. Others like Johnny Rockets, Au Bon Pain, Baskin Robbins, and Chick-fil-A are said to be coming soon. This a good start, but in order for people to stop reaching for their wallets, Apple Pay really needs to be accepted broadly in all restaurants. That's difficult, because restaurants that want to push their own loyalty apps may not be keen to accept Apple Pay.
However, people aren't going to download an app for every restaurant they dine at. That's why startups like Velocity, PaidEasy, and TabbedOut have created mobile apps that let diners pay for dinner with their phone at a variety of restaurants. But with a plethora of payment apps knocking at their doors, restaurant owners might be feeling the onset of fatigue around mobile payments. And a restaurant-specific payments app is another app that no one wants to download, especially because none of these apps has access to all restaurants.
This is why much of Apple's recent focus is on its partnership with OpenTable, the reservation-making app with 37,000 restaurants on its platform. The company began testing mobile payments in 2014. However, so far, it hasn't made much headway. Earlier this year, the company told me that roughly 450 restaurants are hooked into its payment method, 100 of which are in New York.
Meanwhile, getting customers set up with OpenTable payments isn't exactly easy. Users have to navigate into their profile, and then their settings, to open payment settings and turn on Apple Pay. Once that's configured, there's no way to tell which restaurants allow OpenTable as a payment method.
So while partnering with apps might seem promising, it's not necessarily the best way to work mobile payments into restaurants. In other parts of the world where mobile payments are more common, restaurants have changed their point-of-sale technology to accommodate digital payments. Restaurants in Europe have been bringing cordless payments terminals tableside for decades, while those in the U.S. have largely skipped out on this movement.
That could in part be because Europe long ago switched over to using chip-based credit cards requiring a PIN number (no one is about to hand over both their credit card and their PIN to a server). The U.S. has been slower to adopt this technology. In the last year, credit card companies pushed merchants to accept chip cards by refusing to accept liability for fraudulent purchases made on point of sale systems that didn't accept them.
This change to chip cards could have ushered in a new era where restaurants accept credit cards or mobile phones at the table, rather than forcing servers to scurry off to some dark corner to process the bill. But alas, chip cards in the U.S. only require a signature, not a PIN code, which means there's no impetus for investing in wireless terminals that might also accept Apple Pay. People can still sign for their bill at the table.
Another factor that would help mobile payments take off is if you could use them to pay for more modes of travel. Already in London, iPhone owners can use Apple Pay to purchase fares on the tube. This functionality hasn't yet come to the U.S., though the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is planning to allow customers to start buying tickets with Apple Pay in September, according to Boston Business Journal. New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority also released a bid for proposals to incorporate mobile payments into the subway system this year, though the contract allows for a 69-month long implementation. Even if everything runs according to schedule—unlikely given the MTA's track record with construction—payments won't hit turnstiles for at least six years.
In the meantime, Apple is looking at other modes of transportation where digital payments can make headway. Ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft already accept Apple Pay, but there's still room to grow in the field of car travel. In March, Exxon Mobil integrated Apple Pay into its Speedpass+ app, so iPhone users could pay for gas and car washes with Apple Pay at 6,100 locations.
While refueling is something all drivers must do, it's not a daily activity (I hope not, for your sake anyway). A more likely daily expense is parking. To that end, there are apps that connect drivers with parking garage spots, including SpotHero and Parking Panda. PaybyPhone, an app that lets people pay for metered parking, also accepts Apple Pay.
But again, more is more when it comes to mobile payments. That means that every gas station a driver pulls up to has to accept mobile payments in order for people to make the behavioral jump. The same goes for parking or any other daily purchase. If a consumer has to think about using Apple Pay versus plastic, mobile payments will never break into the public consciousness.
How long could all this take? A very long time—even with the given pace of innovation. Legacy systems have a way of lingering, and new systems for restaurants, public transit systems, and gas stations are likely to roll out slowly.
In the meantime, the next big step for Apple Pay becoming more widely accepted will be building it into Apple's own browser. The company's new versions of iOS and macOS, available soon, will let online merchants accept the payment system inside Safari. So even if Apple Pay is nowhere near being available at every store and restaurant, it will soon span multiple platforms: at brick-and-mortar establishments, in apps, and on the web.
Eight Days A Week offers a fresh take on the band's touring years—thanks to fan treasures and a meticulous restoration process.
Listening to Ron Howard talk about his latest film, you get the sense he's been wanting to make it since 1964, when he was 10 years old. He had watched The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show just weeks before his tenth birthday, when he opened a box containing the only gift he truly wanted: a Beatles wig. As Beatlemania proceeded to sweep America—and then the world—Howard reacted the same way millions of kids did—fanatically. He's a lifelong fan, so you can hardly blame him for sounding giddy when he talks about directing The Beatles Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years, a documentary that lands in U.S. theaters on September 16 and on Hulu the next day.
"I immediately thought, this would be a great way to meet Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr," Howard says. Interviewing the two surviving Beatles was a vital part of the process, but it was only one piece of the complex puzzle. "I thought, no, there's a real responsibility involved here! I need to delve into the story and really understand it."
Ron Howard
Fortunately for the Oscar-winning director, by the time he signed on to direct the film in 2012, he had access to an enormous trove of raw material. That's because a globe-spanning team of archival researchers had already spent more than a decade digging through obscure collections and tracking down long lost footage shot by fans. With the backing of The Beatles' Apple Corps and the production help of Nigel Sinclair and White Horse Pictures, the mission to find—and then painstakingly restore—countless hours of video and audio from the concerts was ramped up.
"All this additional footage fleshes out the personal moments and concert moments," says Howard. "I knew that that was a great building block. It was up to me to find the story in it."
The finished product is a 100-minute examination of five chaotic and uniquely formative years in pop culture history. From the first time The Beatles played Liverpool's tiny Cavern Club in 1961, through their last-ever concert at Candlestick Park stadium in San Francisco in 1966, we see them evolve from a musically proficient rock 'n' roll band to full-blown pop stars immersed in a nonstop global whirlwind that tested the limits of concert halls, technology, police forces, and the foursome's own physical selves. On the surface, the tale of Beatlemania sounds like a well-worn one, but this version zooms in and offers fans a more intimate, detailed look.
"I thought that their idea of focusing on the touring years was really ingenious," Howard says. "As a movie director, I immediately identified it as sort of an adventure story. I felt like it was almost an ensemble survival story for these guys. They launched themselves into this, and the world reacted in a way that nobody could have predicted."
By highlighting The Beatles' origin as a live band, the filmmakers manage to pull at a few unique, often overlooked threads in the story of one of the most revered, thoroughly documented bands in history. In addition to the personal and artistic bonds that held them together through an unprecedented type of stardom, we also see how their popularity helped invent the stadium concert before such arenas were equipped with the appropriate sound systems. Then there are broader, more historical details: From the group's famous dust-up with the Christian South (courtesy of John Lennon's infamous "more popular than Jesus" comment) to their role in helping integrate a Florida stadium by refusing to play to a racially segregated audience.
Even the act of watching the early Beatles perform live is an unusual opportunity. Typically, clips of the foursome's concerts are used to illustrate the chaos of Beatlemania, complete with a thick and persistent sonic layer of thousands of young women screaming their heads off. Even for people who paid good money to see the band play, the performance itself was almost an afterthought, secondary to the thrill of seeing the guys in person. In Eight Days a Week, thanks in large part to newly remastered audio, fans are finally able to observe—and hear—an impressively tight and often pitch-perfect live band.
"For people who know the music and think they know the story, there's so much more there," Howard says. Even, he promises, for diehard fans like him.
Matthew White was working at National Geographic in 2003 when he accidentally stumbled across a small treasure. Buried in the organization's extensive media archives was a clip of The Beatles getting off of a plane in Anchorage, Alaska, in June 1966. The band's flight to Tokyo had been redirected because of a typhoon. For a brief, unexpected moment, their world tour put them in a remote corner of the world where they did not play shows and could press pause on their frantic schedule. They happened to be in the vicinity of National Geographic filmmakers, who shot what White calls "beautiful" footage. It was an innocuous clip, except for one thing: Nobody had ever seen it.
"I realized that anywhere The Beatles were, if there were cameras, people shot video," White says. Much of that footage sat in odd places—not just in the basements of media organizations like National Geographic, but also in police archives, 8mm film transfer houses, and in the attics of fans, many of whom were buying their first handheld home video cameras in the early 1960s. And as somebody who had worked in visual archives since the mid-1980s, White knew that this analog material was threatened by the passage of time and the natural deterioration of film, not to mention fires and natural disasters.
It got White thinking: All of this "funky, offbeat media" as he calls it—the amateur footage shot at concerts and other public appearances—might be copious enough to form the backbone of a documentary film. So he went to Apple Corps, whose London headquarters was conveniently down the block from his office, and pitched the idea to then-CEO and onetime Beatles tour manager Neil Aspinall. Apple was intrigued, but not yet ready to commit. The band's story had just been told in documentary form in the mid-'90s via the eight-part Beatles Anthology series. But perhaps if there was enough never-before-seen material floating around in the world, Apple could be convinced.
"I didn't go in and say, 'I want to make a film about Beatlemania,'" White says. "I'm sure they've gotten that pitch thousands of times. I went and said, 'Let's see what we can find.'"
White continued digging, his hunt for long-lost footage turning into a passion project. Eventually, a formal business endeavor emerged with the launch of One Voice One World (OVOW), the LLC he founded with two partners in 2007. White and his team slowly built out a network of Beatles historians and collectors around the world. The project introduced them to people like Erik Taros, a fan who missed an opportunity to see The Beatles live as a kid and who has spent several decades collecting live footage of the band.
"A lot of the best material in archives is never used by filmmakers because they come to the archives with a story and the footage doesn't fit the story," White explains. "So we flipped the model. We started this enormous research project globally. The Beatles were a big enough phenomenon that it would support that."
By 2012, Apple Corps was ready get on board. They commissioned OVOW to do additional research, widening the group's efforts with new resources and sometimes guiding their hunt. From a research space at the University of Maryland, White and his team helped oversee an army of more than 30 researchers around the world, using the institution's facilities and technologies to keep track of a growing mountain of material.
Around this time, Apple also enlisted the help of White Horse Pictures, the Hollywood film production firm founded by Nigel Sinclair (who produced Living in the Material World, Martin Scorcese's 2011 Emmy-winning documentary about George Harrison). Leaning on OVOW and Apple for archival material, White Horse set out to help Howard develop the narrative by tracking down and interviewing witnesses who lived through the era, from concert attendees and roadies to, of course, the surviving Beatles themselves.
"We interviewed Paul and Ringo twice," says Sinclair. "Each of their interviews were very forthcoming and extraordinarily fresh, considering that this is a story that they've had to tell many times." They also spoke to Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison (the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison, respectively) and, although they don't appear on camera, both provided what Howard calls "a tremendous amount of knowledge" about the early period.
In Eight Days A Week, fans acquainted with the band's history will see familiar scenes: police desperately trying to contain crowds of tens of thousands of teenagers, teenage girls seeming to have a collective mental breakdown at Shea Stadium in 1966, as they did in 90 different cities as the band traveled the globe. In interviewing Starr and McCartney, Howard and his producers sought to get a better understanding of what this unusual period was like for the band members on a personal level.
"Now we live in a celebrity culture," says Sinclair. "There was no celebrity culture in 1963. Nobody would even know what the word meant. What was it like managing that experience?"
The film depicts a protective and brotherly bond between what are ultimately four young friends caught in the eye of an unparalleled cultural storm—a phenomenon that McCartney and Starr attest could be frightening at times. Indeed, the physical demands and risks of touring the world famously led the band to stop playing live all together, a process that unfolds in the film with a new level of personal detail and intensity.
"It was great to get Paul and Ringo at this point in their lives," says Howard. "They've been so active and productive. And yet I think maybe they're reaching a point where they have a perspective of wisdom and another level of appreciation of what that experience was, which I think our film benefits from."
As important as the band members' own voices are in telling the story (modern-day McCartney and Starr are aided by retrospective details from audio interviews with Lennon and Harrison recorded before their deaths), they obviously weren't the only ones there. The film's producers went to great lengths to track down other witnesses, like fans who attended Beatles concerts, members of their road crew, and people like Larry Kane, a journalist who traveled with the band in 1964 and has written extensively about them.
One of these other voices is that of Kitty Oliver, a historian who saw The Beatles perform at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1964 under what turned out to be historic circumstances. At the time, concert venues throughout the Southern United States were, like so many public spaces, segregated by race. As a young African- American, Oliver faced the prospect of watching her favorite band while seated separately from from her white peers. But the band, for whom racial segregation was a foreign—and as McCartney puts it in the film, "stupid"—concept, refused to play the show unless the audience was integrated. Rather than face the inevitable wrath of tens of thousands of outraged teenagers, the Gator Bowl held its first integrated concert. This became Oliver's first experience of interacting with white people in public. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had just been signed into law, so the band might not have had to contend with future incidents like this. But just in case, they added an anti-segregation clause to the contract they used to book live shows in the U.S.
"There are so many aspects of the Beatles story that have this coming together of multiple aspects of culture and society and art at the same time," says Nick Ferrall, one of the film's producers. "Somebody like Kitty Oliver is such an incredible witness to that."
The Gator Bowl is one detail in the film that will be new to casual fans, just as it surprised Howard. Yet to the band, it didn't seem like a big deal at the time. "They just took that segregation stand as an obvious choice," he says. "To this day, they don't really recognize what a courageous stance it was."
While it would have been possible to make a documentary on this topic 20 or 30 years ago, the end result would not have been quite as thorough as Eight Days A Week. That's because the film's research and production benefited from modern technology in a variety of ways. It's not just that things have evolved since 1966. This film would have been difficult to make even a decade ago.
"Things really changed in the world that we all live in between 2002 and 2014, in terms of social media access to fans, ready dissemination of things that interest people," says Sinclair. "We were able to take the whole archival collection to another level."
OVOW and the film's research team had already begun using social media to track down potential sources. Software that monitors Twitter and other social platforms for chatter about various topics—in this case, specific Beatles concerts—helped them find people who might have stories or footage to share. And now, with Apple Corps' backing, the project was able to cast an even wider net. The filmmakers put out a public call—including to tens of millions of Beatles fans on Facebook—for footage, artifacts, and stories from the group's public appearances.
"We just got completely flooded," says Sinclair. Several hundred people reached out with footage and anecdotes; a few of them offered up what Sinclair calls "treasures"—the sort of unique, higher-quality material that might find its way into the film.
One scene that benefited from the crowdsourcing effort was the 1996 concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, their final live show. Other than a low-quality audio recording, very little documentation of that performance exists. But when word spread that The Beatles were looking for vintage footage, a woman came forward who had shot super 8 footage of that day and had been storing it under her bed for decades.
"We were the first people to see it," says Ferrall. "It was a pretty haunting experience to watch that come up for the first time. It was something that you realize that no one had ever seen—and it's The Beatles."
The decision to halt touring would come later, so nobody realized at the time that Candlestick Park would be the band's last concert. "That turns out to be one of our most important scenes. And that footage really means a lot," Howard says.
Another way that recent advances in technology made a 50-year-old story easier to tell was by allowing editors to restore the visual and audio quality of the decades-old, often lo-fi footage. This is a challenge with any historical documentary, but it's especially important for a movie about music—and even more so for a band as particular about its legacy as The Beatles.
That's why Apple Corps keeps Giles Martin around. The son of the late Sir George Martin—the "fifth Beatle" who produced every original album and helped shape the band's sound—has led the charge in remixing and remastering their music for various projects over the last decade. This has included Cirque de Soleil's Love show, The Beatles Rock Band video game, and reissues of the their albums, such as the 2009 remastered catalog and the more recent greatest hits collection, entitled 1, which included a DVD of music videos remixed in 5.1 surround sound.
By now, Martin knows his way around every layer and sonic nuance of just about every song The Beatles ever recorded and released. But even that level of expertise couldn't fully prepare him for the work that went into fine-tuning the sound for Eight Days A Week.
"Imagine going to a concert today, recording something on your phone, and then intending to play it in a movie theater," Martin says. "That would be better than what I was given."
The Beatles played stadiums in the mid-'60s not because they were ideal-sounding venues, but because they were the only manmade structures that could reasonably fit the hordes of frantic teenagers clamoring to see them in person (and who would otherwise congregate outside of smaller venues in crowds not easily contained by police). In most cases, the band's set was projected to the crowd using the same public address system used to narrate the plays in a baseball game. Not that concertgoers seemed to mind the awful acoustics: They were too busy screaming and crying, adding yet another strata of noise to the air. As a result, any recordings made of the shows were typically one track (as opposed to several, separated by instrument, as recording studios are accustomed to) and fairly low quality.
To combat the noise, Martin and his team used de-noising software to dial back the screams so they could hone in on the actual music, which allowed them to equalize and balance the audio (such as boosting the bass), tweak the details (like adding extra crack to the snare drum), and improve the overall fidelity of the recordings any way they could without blasphemously introducing foreign artifacts like samples. "What you're hearing is the band playing," says Martin.
Once finished, they layered the screaming back on top, reducing its volume whenever they could do so without affecting the song itself.
"It's like having a cake and then going back and deciding how many eggs you want to put in it and then putting it back together again," Martin says. "We try and push the technology as much as possible."
The quality of the recordings varied from show to show. The band's concerts at The Hollywood Bowl, for instance, were unusually well recorded and easier to work with (a remastered collection of songs from these shows is being released on CD later this month). But many others, like a clip of the song "Roll Over Beethoven" played at a concert in Stockholm, were much less forgiving.
"The challenge in this is you have to make sure that you do justice to the band," says Martin. "The Beatles worked at a time when there weren't any tricks."
By contrast, Martin has an arsenal of new tools at his disposal today. "I'm big into technology and I try to continue the legacy of my dad and the Beatles by trying to push new boundaries in what we're trying to do," he says. "A lot of work had to go into this."
You weren't planning to have to look for a job, but now you're unexpectedly out of work. Here's what to do.
You liked your job. Or at least, you were comfortable in it. It didn't feel like time yet to start looking around—but fate intervened anyway: You got fired. Your job was cut in a sudden round of layoffs. Maybe your partner or spouse landed a new gig you'll both need to move for. Or maybe you were dissatisfied already and just hit a breaking point that you hadn't yesterday. Whatever the case, now's the time to kick your job search into high gear.
But you're starting from zero, and the pressure is on. Here's what it takes to launch a focused, effective, firing-on-all-cylinders job search in a pinch.
Getting it right starts with sidestepping possibly the most common pitfall of the quick-start job search: playing it like a "numbers games." Blindly applying to tens or even hundreds of jobs online may seem like the fastest way to start landing interviews when the pressure is on, but that's actually horribly inefficient and might even slow you down.
Remember that only very few job applicants ever get called for an interview—by design. That's because the applicant tracking systems (ATS) companies use are designed to weed out the majority of candidates before recruiters review the chosen few. So you're much better off taking a proactive, targeted approach to meeting people at companies you admire.
Not only can that speed up your progress, but it'll be a much less fatiguing experience than the constant string of rejections you'll inevitably get through a "spray-and-pray" approach—not something you need while you're under pressure to find a new job.
The same principle holds true when it comes to geography. Casting a wide net may seem like a great idea, but more often than not it spreads you too thin. If you've just suddenly left a job, you may feel like the world's your oyster—you're newly unmoored and ready to live anywhere. But whether that's the case or you've still got a lease in your home city that you don't want to break, you still have the same two questions to answer:
Where do you want to live, not just work?
And how far you are willing to commute?
This will help you determine a zip code (or two) that you should target. Which leads to the next step . . .
Rather than wasting time and getting blurry-eyed scrolling through random job postings, take a more deliberate approach to finding your next employer. Find a minimum of 10 companies in the location you want to commute to—companies you actually like. That's right: you should be able to explain why you like their products and services in detail. You should also be able to identify with the reason they're in business. This way you'll have an instant connection with anyone you meet who works there because you'll be able to talk intelligently about why the company is so impressive.
You might be thinking, "But the list will only include companies I know about. What about all the great companies in my area I don't know about?" That's true, but keep in mind that your goal is to expedite the search. Tapping into companies you already feel a connection with helps speed up your process. Setting a high bar in terms of prospective-employer criteria can actually help you, since it puts your existing passions and knowledge base to work for you.
However, if you struggle to come up with a list of 10, then the solution is to research the companies in your area—just think local. You can even go analog: Take a drive around town and jot down the names of all the company signs on commercial buildings, then look them up online. Or visit your local chamber of commerce, grab a list of their members, and do the same thing. This may feel old school, but rolling up your sleeves and hunting down what's in your own backyard can help you add some good prospects to your list.
While you may believe you're a Jack- or Jill-of-all-trades, employers generally prefer to hire specialists. Think of it this way: Companies hire people to solve problems and alleviate pain. So you need to know what skills you use to help them.
Understanding your specialty shows employers you've got what it takes to do the job right. Start by taking a look at the LinkedIn profiles of people who have jobs you admire. You can see what skills they're promoting and which ones they're getting the most endorsements for. You should also pay attention to market and industry trends. Are there methodologies or technologies that are popular in your space right now? These could be the skills you need to showcase. It will also make it easier for you to update your resume and craft better cover letters.
Once you know what skills you want to use in your next role, it's time to perfect how you explain your value and experience to people. This doesn't need to be a sweeping, Tolstoyan affair; your professional narrative can be summed up by answering three questions:
What problem do you love to solve for employers?
What's your methodology for doing a good job?
How are you looking to use your skills next to help a new employer?
The point is to make hiring managers' jobs easier. By explaining this compellingly, you'll help them understand the value you can bring to the organization. Which leads to the final step . . .
No, these are not a waste of time when the clock is ticking for you to land a new gig. It's not all about landing job interviews right off the bat, even though that's the ultimate goal. Instead (or simultaneously, anyway), you need to tap into your professional network and see who you know who can introduce you to people who work at the companies on your interview bucket list.
Use common tools like LinkedIn to help you identify who's connected to whom. By targeting your outreach, you can get introduced to people faster. The research is pretty clear that most jobs are filled via referral. So that means meeting and having informal conversations with likeminded professionals—the ones you know as well as the the people they know.
One of the easiest ways to accomplishing this is through the "let's get coffee" approach to networking. A meaningful conversation in a laid-back atmosphere can help uncover hidden opportunities in the job market—right when you need them the most.
J.T. O'Donnell is the CEO of Work It Daily, a site designed to help you be more confident, connected, branded, in-the-know, and most importantly, employable. Follow her on Twitter at @jtodonnell.
Most resumes are reverse-chronological. They lay out your career trajectory backwards, from your current gig down to your past work. Scan the page through the "Experience" section (or whatever heading you use), get to the bottom, and you'll see that first job (or at least an early one) listed there, right? In most cases, you'll be looking at yourself in your mid-20s in an entry- or associate-level position, possibly with a job title like "production assistant," "junior account executive," or "sales associate."
And probably, when you're talking about your work life—whether you're interviewing for a new job or just chatting with your friends—you start the narrative off with this early gig. You might say, "My first job out of college was . . . " or "I waited tables for a while but then I got a real job."
But you can look at your career arc in a very different way. In fact, you may have actually started your career way before any employer ever direct-deposited a check into your bank account. If you ask me, your career began when you fell in love with doing something—a "something" that remains a vital, core passion to this day.
Why is this change of perspective important? It isn't just about finding "purpose" and "meaning" in what you do (though that's important, too)—it's a much more material concern. I see dozens of coaching clients a year who are in danger of missing out on earning what they're worth because they think a career is something that starts around age 26 and ends when their Social Security benefits kick in.
For me, a passionate career starts very early and ends in death. Personally, I want to work with people who are so in love with what they do that they can't imagine ever stopping. And I want to see them get paid accordingly.
The love of craft starts with a feeling. So I spoke with some top-level creative professionals to find out which ones.
Love. Fashion designer and founder of Swan Bridesmaid, Samantha Sleeper, remembers looking through her beloved mother's magazines. "I was 8 or 9, flipping through the pages of Vogue and tucking my own sketches between the pages of the magazine as if those were additional editorial pages."
But a lot of passionate careers begin from darker places, too.
Trauma. Doug Fast, who designed the Starbucks logo and its revisions over the years, remembers being sent away to live with his aunt when his mother couldn't support him. He was in the first grade and still remembers drawing a volcano erupting dramatically. "I used red and yellow crayons," Fast recalls. "It was the fire that I made that got the most comment from the teacher and the class."
Escape. I was in foster homes and found myself poring over a Currier and Ives book about sailing ships, imagining the power of those great sails to carry me away. It was during that time that my teacher praised a drawing I made of Christopher Columbus's ships.
Loneliness.Little Men director Ira Sachs, whose work was recently given a rare midlife retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, remembers a profoundly lonely three-month stretch when all he did was go to movies—197 of them. He was a student in Paris, he recalls, and "it was there—more than any other moment, job, or opportunity—that I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I felt both comfort and inspiration watching movies, and when I face challenges today, I find that nothing gets me out of them quicker than going to see a good movie."
These experiences are sometimes painful, but all are memorable. And for many, they're the starting point for some kind of activity—done passionately and for its own sake—that later congeal into a skill or talent or driving force, something that propels an entire career. If you're having trouble finding the source of your delight in your work, consider these prompts:
Beginning in the present, what do you love most about what you do right now?
Even if you're waiting tables, what's the highlight of your day? I've known a number of stellar salespeople who loved waiting tables for the customer interaction and the satisfying feedback-loop of tips (also known as "sales commissions").
When do you first remember learning that the activity you now love was something you could get paid to do?
A successful copywriter I've coached remembers the jolt he got as a small child when he realized that a person had written the words that filled his beloved books—and that he could be a person who did so as well.
Is there something sensory that your passion is centered around? If so, what are your earliest sense memories?
Sleeper, the designer, remembers the first time she touched charmeuse.
The dimensions of a resume are sadly inadequate for expressing your childhood delight at touching charmeuse. You have to think of your resume like a better-than-average skeleton key, filed to unlock a variety of doors.
But you should still reserve some space to express how your devotion to your chosen craft began. Rocket Fuel CEO Randy Wooten says, "I look right away at the 'personal' section of the resume and then ask them what their passion has been throughout their lives. I want to hear about how this passion has motivated them and shown up in the choices they've made."
Most employers worth working for do something similar. They try to see beyond the skills and qualifications to understand what drives a candidate. It takes real, devoted energy to build a great company, and that takes driven, passionate builders who know how they got that way.
Ted Leonhardt is a designer and illustrator, and former global creative director of FITCH Worldwide. His specialized approach to negotiation helps creative workers build on their strengths and own their value in the marketplace. Follow Ted on Twitter at @tedleonhardt.
Unless the company has managed to keep something wholly unexpected under wraps—which would be great!—the key news will involve new iPhones and the second-generation version of the Apple Watch. But to me, Apple's events are usually at least as interesting for what they tell us about the company's overall ambitions and strategies as they are for the straightforward details on the features, prices, and availability dates of new products.
Along with my colleague Mark Sullivan, I'll be at the event to cover it live for FastCoNews. As I get ready to head to the Bill Graham Auditorium next week, these are some of the questions I'm contemplating:
Over the past few months, I feel like I've spent about 40% of my waking hours reading hot takes about the new iPhones reportedly ditching their headphone jacks in favor of earphones that connect wirelessly or via the Lightning port. And you know what? I don't think I've seen a single piece that fiercely argued that it would be a great move. The prospect has inspired many a rant, and even Six Colors' Jason Snell, who calmly tried to figure out why Apple would do it, ended his post by saying he hoped it wouldn't.
Even if you assume the no-headphone rumor is true—as all evidence seems to suggest it is—it's impossible to form a definitive opinion about its upshot until we know what Apple is giving us instead—whether it involves wired Lightning earphones or wireless "AirPods," and what comes inside the box when you buy a new iPhone. With wireless earphones in particular, factors like audio quality, battery life, and general usability could make all the difference.
But the transition away from the conventional headphone jack is also a test of Apple's powers of persuasion. There's a time-honored tradition of the company doing away with stuff and generating fury that quickly dissipates. (When the company retired the old-style iPhone connector in 2012, Farhad Manjoo, then of Slate, went from calling it "bogus" to dismissing it as "a small problem" that shouldn't discourage anyone from buying an iPhone 5 in less than a month.) Will this techno-kabuki play out in the same way again this time? Maybe. But it's more likely to be swift and painless if Apple makes a coherent case onstage for what it's doing.
For now, we can entertain ourselves with highly suspect images of alleged AirPods:
When Apple introduced the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in 2014, they were very nearly the same phone in two screen sizes. (Other than its big-boy display, the 6 Plus's only advantages over the 6 were its camera's optical stabilization—nice, but not that huge a deal—and longer battery life.) The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have stuck to exactly the same formula.
I don't expect the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, or whatever they're called, to be radically different devices. But if the 7 Plus has a dual-lens camera and its smaller sibling doesn't, it might reposition both phones in a subtle fashion. The 7 Plus could end up looking like the best iPhone, not just the one with the larger display. We'll learn at the event whether Apple intends to promote it as such. If it does, it could leave the smaller phone—currently the most iconic flavor of iPhone—standing in the big one's shadow.
If the new big-screen iPhone has a dual-lens camera, it won't be the first of its kind. (For instance, I recently reviewed the two-lens Honor 8, and found that it had a really good camera for a $400 phone.) But maybe what Apple has done with the concept goes beyond earlier attempts. Last year, it acquired an Israeli company that created technology that uses multiple lenses to produce images that supposedly rival those shot by a big, bulky SLR camera. An iPhone that fulfilled that promise would offer something that even the best current smartphones do not.
Camera modules from LinX, a company acquired by Apple
After almost a decade's worth of iPhones, Apple's philosophy when it comes to smartphone evolution is clear: It likes to make 'em thinner, faster, and better at taking photographs, and to do a sweeping industrial-design makeover every other year.
With the Apple Watch, however, we've only got the first-generation version to go by. The most obviously dramatic change Apple could make in an updated watch would be a built-in LTE connection—an addition that would free the wearable gadget from having to rely on an iPhone for internet connectivity, but also appears to be a generation or two away. GPS and a barometer are more plausible 2016 upgrades. But I'm also curious to see if Apple will feel obligated to make the new watch look meaningfully different than last year's incarnation.
Even if the new Apple Watch is a lot like the old one from a design and specs standard, it will benefit from Apple's new watchOS 3—a really significant update that will allow for more powerful, easy-to-use apps. What really matters, though, is what developers will do with the new platform.
Apple often invites third-party companies onstage at its events to show off new apps that show off its hardware to its best advantage. I'm hoping that might happen this time, and that we'll see software that answers the question "Why would anyone want an Apple Watch?" in a way that makes intuitive sense to more people.
iOS 10 on the iPad and iPhone, and watchOS 3 on the Apple Watch
Chances are that this event will be relatively quiet when it comes to news involving Apple's tablets. The current wisdom is that the company won't be announcing any new iPads this year, and iOS 10, though dense with new features, skews toward stuff that seems designed more with the iPhone in mind than the iPad. (For 2017, Apple is reportedly working on more iPad-centric updates to iOS, including building more support for the Pencil stylus into the operating system so that any app can take advantage of it.)
Apple is likely to have so much news to discuss at its event that it won't devote meaningful time to the iPad unless it has something important to say. But as an iPad Pro fanatic, I hope it has a tidbit or two to tide us over until 2017.
The most logical scenario involves such a service happening, but not just yet. That leaves a great big hole in the promise of the Apple TV. I'm curious what Apple will do to keep the box interesting and evolving in the interim. (Me, I still think it could make for a powerful beachhead for the company's smart-home efforts, such as HomeKit.)
Back in June at its developer conference, Apple previewed upgrades to iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS—four new operating systems with a vast number of new features between them. In theory, we already pretty much know what they offer. But Apple has been known to hold back some news—especially involving features tied into new hardware, such as the "Live Photos" that debuted with the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. With any luck, there will be a surprise or two along those lines on the 7th.
I could go on. (Maybe I will, on Twitter.) I'll be happy if I come out of the auditorium feeling smarter about any of these subjects—and happier still if it turns out we knew less about what Apple had in store for the event than we thought we did.
Related Video: The history of Apple in under 3 minutes
Being the new hire with tons of "great ideas" won't always endear you to your team. Here's a better way to have an influence early on.
You'd probably be lying to yourself if you said you've never gone into a new job and resolved to outperform your team's expectations. You have plenty of good ideas and want everyone to know that you're a genius of sorts.
Most of the time, that mind-set's great for your career—it pushes you to be your best day in and day out. But the problem is that some people think that motivating themselves this way gives them permission to push their teammates around.
While your company hired you because you bring something unique to the table, that doesn't give you license to be condescending about it. So if you want to convince your coworkers that you perform above your pay grade, here are a few mind-sets you should adopt ASAP.
Whether you're new or have been on your team for a while, it's perfectly fine to come out and say that you're eager to pitch in on initiatives that are outside your realm of responsibilities.
However, even if you have a few thoughts about how things could be done differently (or even better), it's important to take a step back and ask the stakeholders involved to walk you through how they got things done in the past. I'm confident that you can help your (new) teammates do their jobs better, but if you don't have context for the processes that have worked in the past, you'll have no clue what elements need optimizing before you dive in.
Here's where you should feel free to jump on an opportunity to go above and beyond. How many times have you come across a project that nobody on the team is interested in taking? And how many times have those projects gone undone for extended periods of time, only for the company to figure out that it's crucial to everyone's success?
As annoying as this might sound, those irritating little projects are the perfect combination of a personal opportunity for you, and a win for the entire team. Plus, volunteering to take these bothersome tasks on is an excellent way to build trust with your team—without rubbing anyone the wrong way.
And as a bonus, once you've taken care of the less desirable tasks, you can move on to making an even bigger impact through the projects that you were excited about doing when you accepted the job.
In my experience, it takes a lot of confidence for someone on a team to openly ask how people prefer to collaborate—especially when he or she is looking for a way to communicate their ideas to optimize things. It's never easy in any circumstance to admit that you don't know something, and it's particularly tough for someone who wants to go above and beyond to start a conversation with that.
However, take these instances as opportunities to show your entire team that you have some ideas to make their lives easier, but that you also want to take the time to learn whether or not those ideas make sense. It's great that you have a few thoughts about how everyone around you can get things done more efficiently, but before you do that, make sure you have a good understanding of how they've done them before.
Hey, I get it. Nobody wants to take a job and just phone it in for the sake of a paycheck (and if you have gotten to that point, it's probably time to start looking for a new job).
However, this motivation can severely damage your working relationships before you have a chance to make a significant impact on the entire team. While you might want to come in and just blow everything up, take a deep breath and remember that the team was operating fairly well before you arrived.
You were brought in because you have some great ideas, but unless you replaced a former CEO, the odds are that the company didn't hire you because everything sucked and you need to save everyone from themselves. So keep these mind-sets in, well, your mind, and you'll be sure to impress people at your new job without upsetting anyone.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.
To-do lists get a lot of flack, but the simple act of planning has some psychological and productivity benefits all by itself.
For a long time, I resisted to-do lists. I wanted the flexibility. I felt that if I kept a list, it would tie me down to a particular set of tasks. Gradually, though, I came around. The busier my work life became, the more crucial it was to have some sort of running agenda on hand. Before long, I even started adding some of those items onto my weekly calendar. In other words, I'd reluctantly become a planner.
Looking back, it shouldn't have been so difficult. In fact, there are at least three psychological benefits to the simple act of drawing up a list of top-priority tasks—whether or not you actually accomplish them.
Keeping a list of tasks you need to perform is like taking notes when you're reading a book or listening to a lecture. When you take notes, you need to filter external information, summarize it in your head, and then write it down. Many studies have shown that note taking helps us distill the information we hear and remember it better than we would if we'd just heard or read it.
Writing a to-do list is a similar mental experience. Even if you first spend some time thinking about the tasks you have to do, the act of drawing up a list and prioritizing the items on it forces you to do a little extra work.
This matters. Your brain decides which pieces of information to hang onto for later, partly as a result of how much work you do to them up front—so the more you mentally manipulate a piece of information, the better you'll remember it. That's why it's sometimes surprisingly easy to remember what's on your to-do list even when you aren't looking at it.
For most people, the challenge at work isn't keeping busy hour by hour or day to day, it's making sure we get the big-picture projects done that make work fulfilling. These are often broad, abstract goals that you hope to achieve over a period of weeks or months. The problem, though, is that they're hard to achieve without breaking them into a coherent set of concrete actions you can take on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
Suppose you're trying to write a book. You can't do that without taking the time to do research first, then put in the hours writing, and finally spending time editing what you've written. All that takes time, and keeping an agenda of all the little "sub-goals" that will take you toward the larger, more abstract one can help you actually get you to a finished manuscript you're proud of.
As you think through these smaller tasks, other steps will often occur to you—some that you hadn't originally envisioned needing to take when you first set your overarching goal. They weren't obvious until you actually thought about everything it would take to reach it. So even if your agenda changes in practice as you work toward your objective, the process of thinking ahead about the steps involved can help prime you to do the work ahead.
To-do lists go unfinished for lots of reasons. Workplaces are distracting and full of unforeseen events. The daily flow of email and team messaging tools regularly threaten to drown out other activities—and that's not to mention the meetings you're constantly getting pulled into.
But once you write down the tasks you need to perform, you then have to clear space in your day to put some of those tasks onto your calendar. This calendar maintenance is itself a useful exercise for fighting the tide of interruptions you're always facing. It pulls your brain out of a reactive mode and forces you to think about the long term. Plan your to-do activities a few weeks ahead when your calendar still has some blank spaces in it. Add in time for the tasks that are crucial for achieving those long-term goals.
You may also find you don't have enough space in the calendar to make that happen—and that's okay, too. When that happens, it's a good sign that you've been loaded down with other, less-important jobs that are crowding out your most important work. And chances are it was difficult to see that before sitting down to manage your calendar.
If you have control over your own schedule, it may mean it's time to reprioritize the major elements of your workday. If your schedule is driven by someone else's requirements, then use it as Exhibit A in a meeting with your supervisor, and try and press for some changes. Lay out the key goals you want to achieve and point out how little time there is in your schedule to make those happen. Maybe you can delegate some things to free you up.
But the point here, anyway, is that you can't do any of this without first jotting down a to-do list. So even if it isn't that well organized and some of the items on it fall through, you'll still have managed to step out of the normal flow of things in order to look ahead to uncover whatever might be getting in your way that you couldn't see. That may be more important, in the long run, than crossing an individual task off your to-do list in the short term.
Slumped in exhaustion on the floor of a phone room, Jenny Blake realized her five-year career at Google had hit a plateau.
I was midway into my five-year tenure at Google when I found myself curled up on the floor of a small phone room, unable to muster the strength to reach my arm up to the top of the desk, pick up the phone, and cancel my next back-to-back meeting. I felt light-headed and nauseous.
This moment was a byproduct of my success. I had ascended to the ranks of people management at 24 years old, which now placed meetings, strategy decks, and performance reviews within my purview. Although this had been my dream, I had suddenly reached a professional plateau and was stumbling quickly toward burnout. My body had gone into protest. "The way you are working isn't working," it said—yelled—to me.
In hindsight, it wasn't just the way I was working. It was what I was working on. The "Peter principle," a tongue-in-cheek management concept that asserts people are promoted to their level of incompetence—can also apply to how fulfilled we feel at work, especially if we're following a path marked by "shoulds." Many people feel stifled by the pressure (and outdated assumption) that the only route to career satisfaction is to ascend higher and higher until they've reached the top of the pyramid.
Although I wasn't struggling in my role, I was struggling to see how this job, and the role of manager more specifically, fit into my strengths and career goals. I'd hit a point in my career where I realized the corporate path I was on wasn't going to get me where I ultimately wanted to go, which was to become a full-time author and speaker. The challenge, first, was to pick myself off the floor of Google's phone room. And the second was to figure out what to do next.
For many, it's the experience of continually picking up new things and meeting fresh challenges that keeps us going, making the inevitable plateau of success uncomfortable. But that plateau isn't wrong or bad—it's not an indication that you've failed. It's a sign that you've succeeded, and now have to sort out what comes next.
The sigmoid function (or "S-curve") is a mathematical model that tech researchers often draw upon. It maps progress over time, and it also applies to learning and change. When drawn on a graph, the curve resembles an S tilted forward. Many natural processes follow this pattern: a slow start, an accelerated middle, and leveling progress toward the end. In terms of career advancement or company growth, once you push past the plateau, you begin a new S-curve—one that builds upon the last.
Plateaus, in other words, are a natural part of the change cycle. To reject them, and punish ourselves for feeling bored or stagnant or unhappy, is to reject new information entering our awareness.
Dismissing periods of career deceleration at the top of the curve would be to prevent the race car driver from refueling, changing tires, and taking a drink of cool water at a pit stop. Just as we prune trees to stimulate growth, or start controlled fires so new flora and fauna can flourish, plateaus are natural recharging mechanisms we can use in order to build—intentionally—toward something new.
In my case, that meant making the difficult decision to leave Google. I'd spent five and a half years at the company by the time my first book came out, in 2011, and was ready to pursue a more uncertain path but one that felt like a better day-to-day fit for my strengths and interests. My burnout and career plateau were signals that it was time for me to take some measured risks. I was already involved in coaching and career development at Google, so pivoting to launch my own business around the same functions felt like the natural next step to take.
Some people optimize their careers to get rich. When they do, we call them "high net worth" individuals. But people who we can think of as high net growth (and, ultimately, high net impact) often aren't willing to stay stalled for long—at least not if they have the economic ability to choose otherwise. For me, anyway, I was finally ready to accept failure if I quit Google and failed to make it on my own, because I knew I would always regret not trying.
Even though I've had many ups and downs since as a solopreneur, I'm now celebrating over five years in business for myself. I loved my time at Google—it was the best five-year MBA I could ask for—but I haven't once regretted leaving, no matter how low my bank account balance has dipped at times.
Here's how I've learned to pivot out of a career plateau in order to move toward something new and more challenging.
1. Double down on what's already working. The biggest mistake most people make is looking too far outside themselves for answers. You know the plateau means that one or more areas of your work feels stalled. But what's working? And how can you do more of it? Ask yourself: What are your biggest strengths? Within your current role, what projects make you lose track of time? Once you've identified the elements that you want to keep, you can put a pin in your desired destination: What does success look and feel like one year from now?
2. Next, look for ways to close the gap between where you are now and where you want to end up. You don't need to have every step mapped out ahead of time—but you need to do some legwork to know which foothold to step toward next. It can be simple: Meet with people who are doing things you want to do and ask them how they got there. Identify the next set of skills and expertise you'll need to develop. But don't just think tactically. What are you curious about? Who do you admire? What next steps are most exciting to you? What would you love to become the go-to expert for one year from now?
3. Run small pilot experiments. Now you need to test your hypothesis about what's going to be a good move for you next. A good pilot should test three criteria:
Enjoyment: Do you actually like this new area?
Expertise: Can you become an expert at it, and do you want to take the time and trouble to master it?
Expansion: Is there market opportunity for you to do more of this?
Every small pilot will inform the next experiment after that. And keeping your experiments small can take the pressure off of "solving" all the reasons why you plateaued in one fell swoop, and instead help you build incrementally toward your destination.
In his book Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets, and Philosophers, Leonard Koren writes, "While the universe destructs it also constructs. New things emerge out of nothingness." The plateaus in our lives, the moments we feel confused, stuck and uncertain, can also be our most instructive. The empty feeling of not knowing what's next is as valuable as what eventually fills it.
Hitting career plateaus and the experience of burning out—and our laid-out-on-the-floor-of-the-phone-room moments—are waiting for us to stop judging them, and start transforming them instead.
Jenny Blake is a career and business strategist and international speaker who helps people build sustainable, dynamic careers they love. She is the author of Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One. Learn more about the book at PivotMethod.com. Listen and subscribe to the Pivot Podcast, and follow Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_Blake.
Related video: Do you know the warning signs of burnout?
Authentic personal branding is one thing. "Identity labor" is another.
Most of us "perform" our happiness for others, to a certain extent, anyway—carefully curating our Instagram photos and tweets to paint a picture of our life that reflects our experiences—just not all of them.
This is pretty normal and probably predates social media. It's human nature to want to make a good impression on others. But personal branding can take this inclination to a new level—especially when you work for yourself. Independent workers don't craft online personas to make us feel good or to make others jealous, we do it so we can make a living.
A well-curated personal brand is an essential part of any solopreneur's marketing strategy. There's a danger, though, of your personal brand becoming "identity labor," which writer and media critic Ivana McConnell defines as "performing an identity for others to consume, rather than exploring and expressing the one that reflects our beliefs and experiences."
So while there's already some pressure involved in keeping up your image, it can increase even further when your personal life diverges from your curated persona. The bigger the gap, the more you'll feel the burden of performing the identity labor. Having to maintain a prescribed identity—even one you've crafted all by yourself—can lead to anxiety, for instance, when you're hit with challenges like a chronic-illness diagnosis or when you go through a divorce. We worry, often reasonably, that disclosing these hurdles will hurt our reputations or turn away clients.
Make no mistake: Your curated personal brand is smart business. But when it shades into identity labor, the strain can become isolating, make you feel like a phony, and lead to self-doubt. Here's how to stay vigilant and watch out for those warning signs.
Your work feels hollow, like you're spouting platitudes. You think if people really knew you, they'd never ask you for advice. This type of self-doubt is sometimes called "imposter syndrome." But you can feel like a phony in a variety of ways—for instance, if most of your ideas come from competitors. Worried about how you measure up, you spend too much time focused on the competition rather than on taking the risk to just be yourself.
You become like a stone in a riverbed, so rounded out that you're indistinguishable from the others. You don't know who you are anymore. For one thing, that's bad branding. But for another—and much more important—thing, feeling like you have to put on an act is a sign that something's amiss.
You start isolating yourself and stop sharing what's happening in your personal life. If you do talk about your challenges, you tell only close confidantes, swearing them to secrecy. You speak in whispers, looking over your shoulder to see who's listening.
More than a decade into my independent career, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness. I wasn't sure how it would impact my brand. It was the first time I felt a disconnect between my business brand and my personal life. I wrestled with how much to share publicly. It felt like a secret I had to guard, with the stress building the longer I guarded it.
Caring about your image is natural; obsessing about it is a sign something's gone awry with your branding efforts. As a marketing consultant, Erin Blakemore told me she hit a point where she began to feel like the only way to succeed was by hiding her true self. She grew uncomfortable with her business persona, feeling like she had to project a perfect image.
"I ended up spending too much on things like shoes and makeup in a bid to make myself feel more confident and relevant," she recalls. "I also found myself policing my expertise—the thing people hired me for—for the sake of a client-pleasing 'nice girl' image." Keeping up her curated public image no longer served her personal values—it had become a difficult chore.
The source of this discomfort is the cognitive dissonance that occurs when your beliefs and actions aren't in harmony. In this case, you feel like the "real" you and your professional brand are incongruous. To be sure, they don't have to be the same, but lessening that dissonance can help reduce your anxiety.
To do that, though, you need to change certain behaviors. Blakemore eventually left marketing for journalism, an industry that she felt turned the focus more on the products of her work than on the way she looks or how much success she projects. "Now my brand is a lot closer to who I really am," she tells me. "There will always be differences between the 'persona' and the person. I will always have a filter online, both as a way to protect myself and as a way to monitor what people see or consume about me. But I've let go of a lot of the identity performance via social media."
You may be able to take the reverse approach, though. Rather than keep them separate, Jenni Prokopy aligned her brand with her personality. After starting her business writing for the construction industry, she started her passion project, ChronicBabe, to help other women like her who live with chronic illness.
Now her full-time business, the ChronicBabe brand is built on transparency and acceptance of imperfection. Prokopy struggled at times, like while facing a big chronic illness flare-up and during her divorce, occasionally fearing she was portraying a too-curated picture of herself. Ironically, it was when she got more vulnerable that she found her audience respected and trusted her more.
While you can resolve this type of inner conflict by doubling down on a core identity like Prokopy or by changing industries like Blakemore, you don't have to pivot your business altogether. The dissonance you feel isn't just about the gap—it's about the perceived gap. While you have a personal brand, you are not a brand. They aren't the same thing.
This is an important distinction that many self-employed people miss, simply by assuming that they need to be one and the same. But that isn't true authenticity; you don't need to feel guilty or like a phony because you don't share everything.
In my case, I realized that I'm a business owner who happens to have chronic illness. I'd rather support independents to help them find autonomy and build strong businesses of their own, rather than talk about my illness. So I acknowledge my health without making it a central part of my brand. Setting this boundary—one that feels honest and comfortable to me—freed up any cognitive dissonance I'd felt between my private life and personal brand.
Whatever decision you make, maintaining your personal brand shouldn't feel like identity labor, or that you're putting on an act. This is your business. You get to choose what's part of your professional persona and what isn't. You don't have to follow someone else's path or the expectations social media tends to set for us. And clients—the right ones, anyway—won't judge you for your choices. They'll cheer you on and jump on board.
Grooms are joining brides for a costume change between ceremony and reception—and clothing-rental startups are taking note.
Chung Ng knew he wanted to wear something memorable for his wedding at the Plaza Hotel in New York, back in 2012. "They always say it's the bride's day, but at the end of the day, it's both of us getting married and I wanted to make a statement myself," he says. "The groom can shine a little."
For the ceremony, he chose a Ralph Lauren Purple Label peak lapel tuxedo, made to measure. "It was a little more classic, a little more regal," Ng says.
Chung Ng and his spouse on their wedding day[Photo: courtesy of Chung Ng]
Later, for the cocktail hour and reception, he changed into a Tom Ford tuxedo with a shawl collar. "It would have been too loose for a formal ceremony," but it was "perfect for dancing."
Style-conscious grooms like Ng are on the rise. Many use brightly colored details, like pocket squares, to make a statement. Others, taking a cue from the red carpet, wear suits and tuxedos in nontraditional colors or patterns. And at the bleeding edge, a few enterprising grooms are opting for two different outfits, one for the ceremony and one for the reception, as many brides have been doing for years (Ng's wife wore not just one or two but four dresses).
Andrew Blackmon, cofounder of the tuxedo rental startup the Black Tux, says a growing number of grooms are opting for the double rental. "It's happening naturally, and we see it happening on a level that surprises us," he says. "What we see a lot is more formal for the ceremony and less formal for the reception."
For Black Tux, it's a potential opportunity. "Some of the styles we're coming out with later this year, they'll be for the guy that wants something like that," he says.
[Photo: courtesy of Black Tux]
George Zimmer, founder of a rental startup called Generation Tux, says he's exploring the idea of wedding weekend packages that would include two different looks. "The generation getting married right now wants to do things their own way," says Zimmer, the long-time face of Men's Wearhouse (before his unceremonious ouster). "When my generation got married, the brides did about 90% of all the choosing. That's shifted now."
Grooms like Porter Allison embody that shift. Allison, a professional DJ who lives in Nashville, describes himself as a "T-shirt and jeans guy." But for his April wedding to musician Carley Chilton, he coordinated two separate looks, as did the bride: one for the church ceremony in rural Virginia, and the second for the Great Gatsby-themed reception.
"I just wanted to have fun with it," Allison says. To start, he donned a gray suit and brown shoes, with cufflinks that had been engraved as a wedding gift. "I looked the part of the dapper gentleman." Then, to embrace the Art Deco aesthetic, he changed into a velvet blazer with dark pants, a black tie, and suspenders. The crowning touch: gold sneakers with LEDs on the sole (his best man wore a matching pair).
"A lot of my groomsmen and some friends wanted to know where they could get a jacket like I had for the second look," says Allison, who rented from Black Tux. "I really wanted to keep it. I wanted to keep the suit, too."
Watch an episode of Say Yes to the Dress or scan the weddings on Vogue.com, and it's not hard to find examples of brides with two wedding dresses ("Later in the evening, Connie changed into a short cocktail dress by Reem Acra so she could move more easily on the dance floor," reads a typical Vogue post). As wedding budgets (and fashion extravagances) creep upward, it should come as no surprise that grooms are following suit (no pun intended). They are often older than newlyweds of generations past, and confident in their sense of style. Plus, they're increasingly footing the bill themselves—no small expense in a city like Chicago, for example, where the average wedding cost $61,265 last year. For that amount of money, brides and grooms want their wedding days to reflect who they are and how they like to have fun.
"Guys are really into these more fashion-forward items," says Blackmon, who in Black Tux's early days had trouble keeping a navy tuxedo in stock, to the team's surprise. "The things pushing the fashion spectrum are selling out. What our team notices is that on a macro level, guys are more interested in self-expression through style."
In an interview with Racked, fashion insider Brian Trunzo said, "The average guy looks better than five or 10 years ago. As a result, he's going to experiment more."
Fashion certainly plays a role in the trend toward doubling up on groom attire, but culture may be a factor as well, as couples seek to design celebrations that embrace the heritages of both their families. Four in 10 weddings in the U.S. are now interfaith, double the percentage from 50 years ago. At approximately one in 10 weddings, the newlyweds are of different races. And the children of Asian immigrants, who started arriving in larger numbers in the 1980s, are starting to tie the knot, introducing their friends to wedding traditions from China, India, and Korea.
For their 2014 wedding, Dan Na and his wife Eunice decided to combine American and Korean traditions. First, they had what Na describes as a "conventional American" religious ceremony at a Korean-American church. "We walked down the aisle, we did the candle thing, we exchanged vows," says the groom, who wore a charcoal suit, white shirt, and black tie. At the reception that followed, they entered as husband and wife to DJ Snake and Lil John's "Turn Down for What."
Then, outfit number two for each: pointed clogs and a royal blue floor-length robe called a hanbok, tied at the waist with a gold-embroidered red belt. The couple rented the traditional dress and hired a narrator, who guided them and their guests through the pyebaek (or paebaek) ceremony.
"It was really wild, but it was really cool," Na says. "I gave [Eunice] a piggyback ride around a table, then my parents threw chestnuts, and she had to catch them in her dress."
Afterward they took off their robes and cut the cake.
Despite the growing interest, head-to-toe groom outfit swaps remain relatively rare. Wedding blogs report that grooms are indeed changing up their looks after the formal portraits are complete, but often on the margins. "Once the vows have been said, we've seen grooms opt for a more playful tie or pocket square, or swap their dress shoes for a pair of Converse," says Stephanie Weers, managing editor of Style Me Pretty. "It's all about those subtle ways to infuse a groom's personal style without detracting attention from his beautiful bride."
Whether LED sneakers meet that requirement is between you and your future spouse.
Researchers have found that people who are prone to feelings of guilt prove to be the most ethical employees.
When companies screen job applicants, they aren't just looking for someone with the skills for the role. They're also looking for an upstanding person—someone who can be trusted and relied upon. But businesses aren't much better than ordinary people at judging character, something most people tend to think they excel at, even when they don't. In other words, that human challenge is also an organizational one, and the standard hiring process isn't always up to the task of meeting it.
The unstructured interview is one of the most common tools for hiring supposedly ethical employees. It's an informal meeting with free-flowing questions that tends to differ from candidate to candidate. The conversation usually takes a behavioral turn—questions are rarely job-related. Most interviewers, especially trained human resources professionals, consider themselves well-qualified to give unstructured interviews. And in one sense, they are; evolutionary psychologists believe humans have evolved in order to detect deception—an important survival tool among social creatures like us.
But we may overestimate our abilities. One comprehensive review of the data found that, on average, we're barely better lie detectors than sheer chance. The University of Chicago's Nick Epley (in full disclosure, a colleague of mine at Ethical Systems) writes in his book Mindwise that we're much worse at knowing who we can trust than we think (and this even includes people like presidential candidates, whose trustworthiness we scrutinize just about every day for years before casting a vote).
A second common hiring tactic are integrity tests—tools used to assess someone's personality, their beliefs about various unethical behaviors, and their self-reports of wrongdoing. But one recent review of the research found that the correlation between integrity tests and counterproductive work behavior was 0.3. That means if we're trying to predict misconduct, these tests reveal less than a tenth of the information they should. Integrity assessments have also been shown to be pretty easy to cheat on. Ironically enough, participants who tried to score higher to get chosen for a job did in fact earn higher scores.
And then there are character references. Intuition tells us this type of confirmation is useful. But they're flawed, too—as hiring managers are well aware, a candidate's references are motivated to be positive; you only approach someone as a reference if you know they'll endorse you. What's more, they may unintentionally enable gender bias. Research shows that women are more often described (including by their references) as more communal and less assertive, which can hurt their chances of being hired.
Applicants are drawn to organizations when there's a match on values. So companies need to develop a strong ethical reputation in order to attract the right types of employees. That means laying the groundwork for recruiting ethical employees well before the hiring process begins. Adam Grant, author of Give and Take and Originals, suggests making it clear to applicants that they'll be evaluated in part on whether they positively influence others in the organization.
Usually when people think of hiring for character, they focus on eliminating unethical applicants. But it's just as important to pursue the good that new employees bring. For example, recent research shows that positive energizers—those who lift others up and invigorate them through social interaction—help the workforce become more engaged and higher performing. If new hires can influence existing staff negatively, they can also have the reverse effect.
Additionally, research shows that humility can contribute to both individual and organizational performance. That's why it's one of the key characteristics Google actively looks for in candidates.
Carnegie Mellon professor Taya Cohen is an expert on hiring ethical employees. One of her most consistent and compelling research findings is that people who are prone to feeling guilty tend to be more ethical and prove to be better team players. As Cohen has written, "The guilt-prone employee doesn't need to be policed. She will act ethically because of her character." Other studies likewise show this type of employee is more likely to stay committed to the organization.
Unstructured interviews may not be particularly useful, but structured interviews—which are job-related and have a scoring key that's based on subject-matter expertise—can be helpful. Interview questions should reflect the specific, desirable characteristics that make somebody thrive in a given role, organization, or industry. In other words, look for the behavioral and temperamental stuff that matters—just know why it matters.
We know that ethical people have developed habits, rituals, routines, practices, and mantras to enhance their moral awareness—just as they do with any other of their abilities. So it's important to ask questions that can help you find out whether ethics is a skill they've habituated.
As organizational guru Ben Schneider has noted, "The people make the place." Creating an ethical culture is all about bringing in high-character employees. And you can do that just as systematically and rigorously as you test somebody's coding or accounting chops.
Qualcomm technology and AT&T's network could provide better connectivity for drones, opening the door to delivery possibilities.
The days of drone-delivered pizza are getting a little closer.
Qualcomm announced today that it is partnering with AT&T to test drones out on the carrier's LTE network. The network would ideally provide a stable connection between a drone and its on-the-ground pilot during flight, enabling the unmanned vehicle to do something such as drop a hot pepperoni on your doorstep, without worrying about any potential connectivity issues between it and your favorite neighborhood pizzeria.
"LTE connectivity has the potential to deliver optimal flight plans, transmit flight clearances, track drone location, and adjust flight routes in near real-time," said Chris Penrose, senior vice president of IoT Solutions at AT&T, in a statement. "Solving for the connectivity challenges of complex flight operations is an essential first step to enabling how drones will work in the future."
Using AT&T's network could potentially give drones a longer range, as well as help them navigate more easily through city streets. Cellular networks could also potentially be used to create an air-traffic control system of sorts that would help drones communicate and avoid each other (and nasty collisions) while in the air.
Testing will happen at Qualcomm's San Diego campus, where the chipmaker has built an FAA-authorized flight center. The center has a number of simulated "real world" scenarios for the drones to fly over, such as residential and commercial areas, as well as FAA-controlled airspace. Testing in a closed environment allows the two companies to try things out without impacting AT&T customers nearby.
With the trials, Qualcomm and AT&T will attempt to determine how drones can operate both safely and securely on AT&T's current 4G LTE network (the same network your smartphone uses to surf Facebook right now), as well as future networks like 5G. They'll monitor signal, strength, coverage, and mobility moving between different network cells, and how those charges effect a drone during flight. The idea would be to work out some of the kinks before taking the drones out for a spin in a real city.
The tests are based on the Snapdragon Flight development platform, which Qualcomm created in an attempt to expand beyond its success as a maker of smartphone chips into drones. Unveiled last September, Snapdragon Flight helps determine a drone's exact location and helps a drone visually navigate a location. The technology is already used in some commercial drones, and drone-giant Yuneec is one of the company's customers.
As for when the technology might actually be used to deliver that pizza, only time will tell.
Google and Apple have more potential auto brand appeal than many realize.
Automakers may have a good reason to fear competition from tech companies.
Though some have scoffed at the idea that tech companies like Apple and Google could cause any real concern, a new survey suggests that the existential threat of tech entrants into the auto market should be taken seriously.
TECHnalysis Research recently surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers who both own a car and are planning to purchase a new one within the next two years. They were asked a wide range of questions regarding car brands, features, technologies, and much more. One of the questions specifically focused on the potential interest that consumers would have in purchasing a car sold by Apple, Google, or another major tech company.
To be clear, the question was a hypothetical one because none of these companies have formally committed to manufacturing and selling a car. Plus, it's very possible they never will manufacture one under their own brand. But if they do, consumers may buy in.
In fact, half of the respondents in our survey said they would give at least moderate consideration to purchasing a car from a tech company. In the case of Apple- and Google-branded cars, about one third would give serious consideration to a purchase, and just over 10% said they would definitely purchase a car from one of those companies.
Of course, without real cars, real prices, and real capabilities to consider, that intent is somewhat hypothetical and general, but the surprisingly high level of potential intent should give traditional carmakers pause.
Another fascinating insight from the survey responses is the preference between companies. Despite all the speculation and press about the possibility of an Apple car, more consumers said they were interested in a potential Google car than were interested in an Apple one.
In sum, 59% said they were at least moderately interested in a Google car versus 52% for an Apple car, and 33% said they were at least seriously interested in a Google car versus 28% for an Apple car.
Even when looking at the data by age and gender categories, the Google preference is higher in every group except 18- to 24-year-old and 55- to 64-year-old females.
The chart below illustrates the top-level responses to the question about potential tech brand car purchases.
It's difficult to discern exactly why consumers might prefer a Google car over an Apple one, but the fact that Google has a real autonomous car now being tested out on the roadways is probably a factor. Meanwhile, a fully functioning prototype of an Apple car may well not exist yet, and if it does, it's certainly far from public view.
The preference for a Google car may also have something to do with price expectations. People might simply expect an Apple car to cost more than a Google car. On average, our survey respondents said they were expecting to spend $31,173 on their next car purchase. That's about half of survey respondents' average household income, and close to the average U.S. auto purchase price.
Apple did, however, slightly edge out Google in the percentage of those who said they would definitely plan to purchase a car from a particular tech vendor—12% said they would do that for an Apple car vs. 11% for a Google car. This likely reflects the Apple fanboy and fangirl base—people who are extremely loyal to the company and would purchase nearly anything with an Apple logo on it.
Another point that becomes clear when analyzing the data is that interest in potential tech-branded cars is fairly divisive, particularly a potential Apple car. Almost a quarter of respondents (24%) said they had absolutely no interest in an Apple-branded car. Meanwhile, 18% said they had no interest in a Google-branded car.
Not surprisingly, people who own iPhones are more interested in an Apple-branded car (69% expressed at least moderate consideration), while people who own Android-based phones have a lower interest than the average at 45%.
But in a fascinating twist, iPhone owners have more interest in potentially owning a Google-branded car than even Android device users. Sixty-three percent of iPhone owners said they'd give at least moderate consideration to buying a Google car, versus only 60% of Android device users.
This may be due in part to the higher average income for iOS device users, who in this survey reported an average income of $71,899 versus an average income of $57,728 for Android device users. Having a higher income may make one more apt to consider what's perceived to be more expensive semi-automated or fully automated cars. It could also be that iPhone owners are generally more inclined toward tech-centric products.
The bottom line is that consumer interest in purchasing (or at least seriously considering) cars from tech companies is very real. If Apple, Google, and other tech companies do enter the market with branded cars, the pent-up demand could end up having a sizable impact on the auto industry as we currently know it.
Bob O'Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, a market research firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on Twitter @bobodtech.
19-year-old Connor Krukosky has been collecting computers for years. His latest relic helped land him a job.
The IBM z890 Mainframe computer weighs 1,500 pounds and stands over five feet tall. When it was first unveiled in 2004, it cost over $300,000. At that time, the z890 was a cutting-edge solution that helped midsized enterprises run their businesses. A 2004 ComputerWorld article described it as small, but by today's standards it's a big honking computer, and it's for anything but personal use.
That didn't stop 19-year-old Connor Krukosky from buying one last year. He always had an interest in the behemoth machines, and this slowly but surely turned into a passion that led to installing a computer the size of a small person in his parents' basement.
In an age when enterprising young people are landing jobs via Snapchat or Twitter, Krukosky's antiquated computer would be responsible for earning him a gig at IBM before he was even enrolled in college.
Let's back up a bit to understand the full story. Krukosky's parents have always encouraged their son's interest. They gave him his first computer—an IBM Aptiva—when he was 18 months old. Of course, it's unclear how he actually found use of a computer then, but I guess his point was that his family introduced him to computers at an early age.
Besides just using them, Krukosky also enjoys taking computers apart. For years he did just this: Tinker with old machines and peek into their insides to try and figure out what precisely they did. Eventually, deconstructing these computers wasn't enough. Krukosky began to fix them too, learning about old operating systems like DOS along the way.
In his early teen years, he said he became "more curious about [those] little chips inside." This morphed into a fascination with how computer wiring evolved over time as he learned about the ways they were originally built. Doing this, he came across an online community of people who collect antiquated machines.
After collecting more than a few older machines, he began to research mainframes. "I thought it was interesting," he told me. "I knew about mainframes and the history of IBMs." He never really considered the prospect of actually buying one, until one day (when he was 18) he came across a listing for one. Usually, he explained, these listings are in California. But this one happened to be for sale two hours from his home in Maryland.
Connor Krukosky[Photo: John Davis Photography via IBM Systems Magazine]
Krukosky and his father drove to Rutgers University in New Jersey, where the mainframe was being auctioned off. They paid $237 for the beast.
Because it was more than a decade old, no longer owned by IBM, and therefore, no longer under warranty, Krukosky and his father were able to deconstruct the machine to transport it. Rutgers employees watched them slowly put it piece by piece in a car.
If it had been protected by a warranty, transporting the mainframe would have been a difficult task, since IBM does not allow for these machines to be taken apart. Instead, working mainframes must be transported in one piece via large and expensive vehicles.
The two were able to haul the nearly-one-ton machine and put it in the family basement. Krukosky reassembled the machine there and slowly tried to figure out what to do with it. The first problem was actually getting the machine to turn on. "I didn't know how to effectively boot the machine," he told me. "It's a long and tedious process . . . it's not just flipping a switch." He consulted with his friends online and, after a series of trial and error, finally figured out the proper way to get the mainframe to light up.
Once it was working, he tinkered with the platform. The machine was running Linux and Krukosky used it, as he said, "to move data." That is, a mainframe's purpose is to run an entire internal network so that people—usually in businesses—can share information with each other. It's a necessary function that a lot of computer users take for granted.
Doing this gave Krukosky the chance to see exactly how machines provide the connectivity we all expect in our daily lives. A lot of what he did with the z890 allowed him to learn how to run such a network. He spent hours in his basement looking at the screen connected to the mainframe, inputting code to build his own internal network and running the machine continuously for 30 days.
I asked him what he did every day for a month, and he said "exploring it, playing around with it." He and his old computer friends played around with some applications that were on the platform, and even made an FTP server that put some data on the internet. "It wasn't anything serious," he said.
What was serious, though, was the energy bill. Running a bulky computing-heavy machine is not cheap—especially one that is designed to never turn off. After only a month of computer fun, Krukosky's family saw an energy-bill increase of over $200. His parents paid to power the expensive setup in order to encourage their son's love of machines.
Krukosky decided to turn the machine off after first the month was up. During that time of experimenting and connecting with fellow mainframe enthusiasts, Krukosky continually posted inquiries online. One was on an IBM-specific email list where people discuss their technical experiences with mainframes. Said Krukosky, he emailed the people on this list just to "see what their reactions were."
Some were impressed by the then 18-year-old and gave him some helpful information about the machine. One person even invited him to speak at a conference in San Antonio. Krukosky's presentation: "I Just Bought an IBM z890—Now What?" was given to a group of enterprise computer pros, introducing him to a whole new network. This initial interaction led to a "formal" connection when "some people from IBM came to me and said hi," Krukosky recalls.
After some discussion, the company invited Krukosky to visit its offices in Poughkeepsie, New York. The meeting was just a tour of the company's grounds, however, it also got him talking with the company about employment. Though he was taking some community college classes, he wasn't fully enrolled in a university. IBM thought this was a perfect time to work with the young mind.
Since last summer, Krukosky has been working for the company and learning about a variety of IBM's backend projects. "It's not really an internship," he told me, as he's being paid to work for the entire year, is not enrolled in school, and is helping out at numerous departments. Right now he's working in the memory lab researching "how the current mainframe supports terabytes worth of memory."
Krukosky told me his future plans aren't set. He still needs to go to college, most likely Marist College in Poughkeepsie, so he can continue to live and work near IBM. The plan right now is to work part-time at IBM while enrolled, and then figure it out from there. He added that he'll probably get a dual major (possibly engineering and another computer-focused subject), but sees himself focusing on computer science down the line. (Neither IBM nor Krukosky went into detail about formal plans after college.)
Krukosky also wants the ability to show off his collection of computers, and perhaps even open a museum. He rattled off a list of all the old IBM machines he owns—starting with one of the old punch-card computer systems—which roughly translates into a timeline of computer evolution.
He wants to have a space where people can "play with things," he said, because that's really what he likes to do: Play with computers. And I'm guessing that playfulness is going to continue to steer his career.
Risk management, perspective, and creativity are career skills these execs learned while chasing storms, sculpting ice, and playing soccer.
All work and no play can make life pretty dull. But for some, play is more than a weekend game of golf or a night out at the movies. It's a project that fuels a passion. From chasing storms to teaching soccer, these six business leaders make the most of their nonworking hours.
Steve Conine is CEO of the Boston-based online home furnishings store Wayfair, but when it's time to chill out on a Sunday afternoon he takes the concept literally. Conine started ice sculpting in college, and continues the unusual hobby today in his own lakefront backyard. With the help of his wife and children who move around chunks of ice, Conine uses his chainsaw to craft things like a living room furniture set or ice animals.
"I've always gravitated toward projects that require handiwork," he says. "Seeing the final product of something I created with my own two hands is different from my role at Wayfair, where I primarily work with software."
Conine says ice sculpting is not only enjoyable on a personal, creative level; it also translates to better performance at work. "It helps me prioritize and take calculated risks," he says. "When I'm carving slippery ice, my ability to manage risk is critical."
By day Zarina Mak is managing partner at PS260, a New York-based film editing company that has worked on commercials for Powerade and Ray-Ban. Nights and weekends, however, she manages the New Jersey-based nonprofit dog rescue See Spot Rescued.
"I started See Spot Rescued accidentally," Mak admits. After adopting two dogs, Mak learned there was an unlimited supply of dogs looking for families and homes. Many never make it out of the shelter and are euthanized. So she decided to rescue a few.
"To me, I was just helping out a couple of dogs by providing them with much needed vet care and a promise that I was going to find them their perfect families," she says.
Six years later, she's saved, vetted, and rehomed over 1,500 dogs, including a few that have gone to celebrities like TV personality Andy Cohen, director Spike Jonze, and designer Todd Oldham.
Mak drew upon her professional life to make her passion a success. "I found that my skills and experience in my everyday job of running a film editing company and, prior to that, as an ad agency producer, easily translated to rescuing pups," she says. "You need to make it happen no matter what, and that is what I am used to doing."
While the work is hard, Mak finds it rewarding. "Every single time we place even just one dog in a home, we are rewarded with pure, genuine joy," she says. "And I'm addicted to this pure, genuine joy."
As president of Adecco Staffing, Joyce Russell helps people find jobs. On her off time, though, she shares her passion for reading by organizing a book club at the University of Florida (UF).
Russell got the idea after staying in touch with an intern who attended UF, offering book recommendations as part of their correspondence. She decided to expand her reach by leading a group of 10 female students who read a book and gather to discuss it.
"I believe that leaders leave their legacy through the people they develop and support," says Russell. "By providing opportunities that expand these young women's network and education, I can help improve their ability to impact the future for themselves and other women around them."
Russell also learns from them, and she takes that knowledge into her workplace. "I am always trying to keep our business relevant through changes in technology and the staffing industry, and working with these women helps me do that," she says. "Spending time with them challenges me in ways that helps shift my mind-set and improve my ability to think beyond how things are always done."
Steve Gray, co-owner and partner at Dallas-based B2B marketing firm Spire Agency, has a passion for weather—bad weather. He started chasing storms nearly 20 years ago, and each spring he takes time away from the office to track violent super cells and tornados in Northern Texas and Southern Oklahoma.
"I consider myself incredibly lucky to live in tornado alley," he says. "Having an opportunity to intercept and witness firsthand some of the most powerful and beautiful acts of nature is a 'mental reset' for me from my professional life."
While thrilling, Gray's hobby is also helpful. In rural areas, there aren't as many people to serve as the "eyes" for what the National Weather Service (NWS) sees on radar. "Having the opportunity to visually verify for the NWS dangerous storms that may be heading toward rural cities is an incredibly important service that storm chasers like me provide," he says. "This often helps emergency management provide a more accurate warning for small towns in advance of being hit by the storm."
Gray has also had a chance to be a first responder. "Being out on the plains during the storms puts me in a position to quickly react and assist if one of the small towns or farms is hit by a destructive storm or tornado," he says. "Being in a place where I can assist people who need immediate help means a lot to me."
Ironically, the experience has taught him a lot about business: "Like running a company, this is not a hobby to pursue without considerable training and experience," he says. "Being able to analyze models and forecasts in advance of an event as well as confidently make the right decision to stay near a storm while at a safe distance are all critical requirements."
During the day, Dotan Bar Noy helps protect companies as CEO of the New York-based cybersecurity firm ReSec Technologies. When he gets home, Bar Noy and his two mixed-breed rescue dogs, Mika and Fredi, volunteer at an animal therapy program for elderly residents of an assisted living center.
"The volunteering started when my wife saw an article about the petting program," he explains. Bar Noy's wife thought that would be a great opportunity to do something good for others, as well as an exciting new thing to do with their dogs, he says.
Bringing pets to the living center gives residents a break in the day, and the dogs become a bridge for conversation, says Bar Noy. "People talk about the dogs they used to have," he says. "It puts them at ease and leads to talking about their past experience and their life in general."
Bar Noy used to visit a man named Sam, who recently died at the age of 93. "Sam had the most exciting life, living through two world wars," he recalls. "Every visit, we were lucky to hear more stories that could have easily turned into a Hollywood movie," Bar Noy adds. An escape from their regular routine, Bar Noy says the visits provided "a small window into someone's else rich exiting experience and life."
Sam's stories have also given Bar Noy a much needed perspective on business. "Working in a startup, we are consistently running and making what we consider 'life or death' decisions," he says.
Akash Nigam started his passion project long before he launched the group-messaging platform Blend. When he was in high school, his father challenged him to give back to the community, so Nigam founded Kick, Lead and Dream (KLD), a Mountain View, California, soccer camp for at-risk kids.
"KLD combined two of my passions: soccer and helping those in need," he says. "I use soccer as a vehicle to help underprivileged kids who couldn't afford summer camps, helping them avoid potential violence, drugs, and gangs."
The camp was successful right away, growing from 20 kids in its first year to 300 in its third. Nine years later, Nigam continues to mentor participants, working one on one with some, and giving motivational speeches to encourage all campers to follow their dreams.
Running KLD helped prepare Nigam to become CEO of a company: "Managing over 375 people taught me that the only way to succeed as a business was to hire the right people and put everyone in the best positions possible," he says. "You have to devise systems and schedules every single day to remove distractions to assure everyone focuses on the tasks at hand."
KLD also taught Nigam about the user experience. "We wanted to make sure that all participants look at KLD as one of their best summer memories ever, and it's the same with Blend," he says. "We don't want it to be an app that people just download and delete," he says. "We want it to be a platform that users will forever cherish."
Job interviews can be especially hard if you're autistic. A Microsoft effort aimed at a wider spectrum of the workforce wants to solve that.
The day before Blake Adickman was scheduled to start interviewing at Microsoft last spring, he called his parents and kept them on the phone as he walked from his hotel to the building where his meetings were set to take place. His parents, back in Boca Raton, Florida, zoomed in on Redmond, Washington, on Google Maps and followed along. When he arrived at the building, he took a photo of its entrance and texted it to them. Then he turned around and retraced his steps to his hotel.
Adickman is autistic. He is 26 years old, with a full beard and a broad-shouldered build, but his affect—chatty, guileless, and eager to please—makes him seem younger than his age. One of the features of his autism is that he gets frazzled by unfamiliar experiences, and the practice walk to Microsoft was meant to try to diminish the newness of his surroundings. This was one of the most important moments of his life, and he didn't want to mess it up.
In the past, Adickman had never disclosed his autism when he applied for jobs. Once, a manager had berated him for making a list of tasks on his phone instead of in handwriting, and he'd wanted to explain why he preferred typing to writing: a quirk in fine motor skills, associated with autism, that made for messy penmanship. "I have hypermobility," he'd blurted. "I don't care what you have," his manager had replied. He would soon quit.
Adickman and millions of adults with autism often find themselves in a difficult bind. They struggle to get and keep jobs because of the disability, but if they disclose it so they can seek accommodations while applying or working—just as someone in a wheelchair, for instance, might request a ramp—they risk facing discrimination from managers or colleagues who mistakenly believe autism, because it affects the brain, must make them less able workers.
This time, though, was supposed to be different.
Normally, when someone applies for a job at Microsoft and gets through the early stages of consideration—the resume screening, the phone interview, maybe a homework assignment to assess their skills—they're brought on campus for a day of intense back-to-back interviews with managers, where they're quizzed about their experience and, if they're applying for a technical position, asked to work out problems on the fly. But Microsoft had brought Adickman and 16 others to join the third cohort in a year-old program crafted especially for autistic applicants.
The program, which began in May 2015, does away with the typical interview approach, instead inviting candidates to hang out on campus for two weeks and work on projects while being observed and casually meeting managers who might be interested in hiring them. Only at the end of this stage do more formal interviews take place.
The goal is to create a situation that is better suited to autistic people's styles of communicating and thinking. Microsoft isn't the first to attempt something like this: The German software firm SAP, among a handful of others, have similar programs—but Microsoft is the highest-profile company to have gone public with its efforts, and autistic adults are hoping it will spark a broader movement.
What's unorthodox about this, of course, isn't just its setup. It also represents a novel, and potentially fraught, expansion of the idea of diversity. The impulse to hire more autistic employees is based on the same premise as hiring, say, women and people of color: Doing so not only welcomes in a wider range of creative and analytical talent, but brings more varied perspectives into an organization, and makes for a workforce that better reflects the general population of customers.
And yet, being autistic is considered a brain disorder, and it affects the way people process and communicate information—skills that are at the core of many white-collar professions. Adickman and his cohort were, in a sense, subjects in the third iteration of an ambitious experiment. Could the third-largest corporation in the world make the case that hiring and employing autistic people, with all their social and intellectual quirks, was good, not bad, for business?
The new recruit: A recent Microsoft hire, Blake Adickman heard about the company's autism program from his alma mater's career services and disability office.[Photo: Ian C. Bates]
It has been almost two decades since an Australian sociology student, who was on the spectrum herself, coined the term "neurodiversity" to signify that brain variations are normal and should be respected, just like differences in gender and race. People with autism, according to this philosophy, aren't abnormal. It's just that they might need some extra support to live in a society built with "neurotypical" people in mind. While that concept has gotten some traction in schools, the corporate world has taken little notice. But that might have to change soon.
Blake Adickman as a child.
Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, a catch-all name that includes a range of symptoms from muteness to the milder social awkwardness of Asperger Syndrome, have become much more prevalent over the past couple of decades. One in 68 children were diagnosed with ADS in 2012, up from one in 10,000 in the 1980s. Many researchers believe this is largely because growing awareness of autism has meant more children are being correctly diagnosed.
Soon those children will be old enough to enter the workforce. About half of autistic children have average or above-average intellectual ability, according to the CDC. The unemployment rate among autistic adults, though, is extraordinarily high—up to 80%, by some estimates, according to the advocacy group Autism Speaks, though precise figures are hard to find.
"As a whole, people with autism—even those who are quite bright, and intellectually quite capable—are facing worse job prospects because of their social challenges," says Dave Kearon, the director of adult services at Autism Speaks. Kearon and other experts believe that companies' traditional hiring processes are biased against autistic candidates. Someone who looks at his lap instead of at his interviewer, for example, might come across as awkward or even rude. "They can't get a job that's commensurate with their abilities," says Kearon. "You're really setting them up to fail."
I first met Adickman during his visit to Microsoft. The company had allowed me an exclusive look inside the autism program and, for three days, I sat in a conference room as Adickman and the 16 other candidates listened to classical music and worked in small groups to build simple devices out of Legos. Two men sat at the front of the room, observing them and taking notes that they'd share with managers. Later, managers themselves would stop by.
When Adickman and I stepped out of the room to talk for a couple of minutes, he stared off to the side instead of at me—a typical trait among autistic people—but this quirk didn't reflect a general reticence. If anything, Adickman was more talkative and forthcoming than people usually are upon meeting a journalist for the first time. "I've been basically jumping from contract job to contract job," he admitted. "When I got invited out here, I was like, 'Are you sure?'"
He was maybe the most self-deprecating of the candidates I met, but he was also among the most articulate in describing how autistic people can have significant job strengths, in addition to impairments. "They can have a drive toward something to the point of obsession. You don't have to tell someone not to go home early. They'll just stay."
It became apparent that Adickman was describing one of his own traits. One evening, I met him for dinner, and he told me he'd been watching Curb Your Enthusiasm and My Little Pony. He spent most of the two-hour meal deconstructing the programs.
People might think of them as different from each other, he said, the first cynical and the latter idealistic, but they both deal with how confusing human behavior can be: "They're about conflicts that come with difficulties socializing." At one point, I tried to steer the conversation toward Microsoft, but Adickman said he couldn't switch topics right then. Part of his brain had lit up when we'd started talking about his favorite shows, he said, and he wasn't done.
Adickman sometimes imagined his own interactions as TV plot points, which helped him figure out resolutions, he said. He most related to one character on My Little Pony—a young dragon named Spike who is bullied and misunderstood. "I'm definitely him," he said. "He's a guy who wants to help others, and he's treated like shit, even though he's really quite competent."
Problem solver: "The [autism] unemployment rate is chronic," says Microsoft's Jenny Lay-Flurrie. "It's not a reflection of the talent pool."[Photo: Ian C. Bates]
Now that autism diagnoses are on the rise, the state of the autistic workforce is attracting the attention of people who are in the position to change it: high-level corporate executives who happen to have autistic children and understand that, given the right setting, autistic people can not only thrive but can show off skills and traits that non-autistic people are less likely to have.
Early last year, two such Microsoft employees began laying the groundwork for a new hiring program, inspired by CEO Satya Nadella's mission to transform the company's culture to be more open and fast-moving. (Nadella has personal experience with the challenges of disabilities: Two of his children have special needs.)
Mary Ellen Smith, corporate vice president of worldwide operations, and Jenny Lay-Flurrie, now Microsoft's chief accessibility officer, believed that hiring more autistic employees would be well aligned with Microsoft's broader goals. They'd also seen firsthand, through their children, that many autistic people are not only perfectly capable of meeting serious intellectual demands—they also can have qualities that are suited for tech jobs, such as being detail-oriented and methodical. Perhaps by adjusting the hiring process, Lay-Flurrie thought, Microsoft could discover great candidates other companies were overlooking.
"The unemployment rate is chronic," she says, "which is not a reflection of the talent pool, it's just a reflection of these people not getting through the door."
In early 2015, Smith and Lay-Flurrie sketched out a small pilot program with the help of Neil Barnett, Microsoft's director of inclusive hiring and accessibility. The plan was to identify, through an open application process, a small number of candidates who seemed both to have the appropriate skills and, crucially, to be ready and willing to work in a professional setting at Microsoft's headquarters.
Those candidates would be invited to spend several weeks on campus working on projects and meeting managers who have committed to considering people from the program. The goal: Make as many good matches as possible, though it would be up to managers to decide whether to extend an offer.
Adickman had tried his best, leading up to his visit to Microsoft, to minimize surprises. But on the third day of the program, one of the four members of Adickman's group, a kid from upstate New York, disappeared. Soon after, one of the men from the front of the room crouched by the table where Adickman's group had been working on their Lego project. The New Yorker had been unsettled by how different Redmond was from home, the man explained, and had decided to go home. With only three people left in their group, Adickman and his teammates each had to take on more responsibilities. On another occasion, a different group member, a woman with a non-technical background, started crying and ran out of the room. It turned out that, because she didn't know how to code, she'd felt left out of her teammates' conversations.
Adickman tried to focus on what he could control. Some evenings, he brought homework assignments back to his hotel room. He'd be exhausted, but he'd make sure to meet all the deadlines. Over the course of the two weeks, the meetings with managers became more formal. Adickman couldn't help but be forthcoming about his worries. In one conversation with a manager named Jeff Ting, he admitted, "I'm nervous."
Adickman didn't know it, but Ting had a son on the autism spectrum. Yes, Adickman was uncommonly honest, and, yes, he made intermittent eye contact, but Ting, knowing that he was autistic, didn't hold that against him. Adickman rambled a bit in answering one question, but when Ting gave him time, he arrived at a good answer.
"He was a very sharp individual—I mean, he knew his stuff when it came to systems engineering," Ting recalls. "The thing that he had difficulty with was actually expressing it. I have enough background in autism that I kind of knew that I had to give him a little bit of time and space."
At the end of the interview, Ting asked Adickman why he'd been anxious. He'd done great.
There's a stereotype that autistic people don't care about others. But Adickman told me it wasn't like that for him. He wanted to be close to people. It was just that he'd never been much good at it. Growing up, his parents and older sisters were warm and talkative, prone to hugging and processing their feelings out loud. But when his mother, Ilene, tried to touch her son, he froze up, almost as if he was repulsed.
Blake was obviously intelligent, though. When he was a toddler, Ilene might be pushing him in the cart at Home Depot, and he'd start reading aloud: "American Standard . . . Kohler . . . " Around the same time, Blake's father, Ross, bought him a computer game. Before long, Ross noticed that the Excel program had disappeared from his computer. Blake had deleted it to make room for the computer game to run.
His parents initially rejected an early diagnosis of Asperger syndrome, but by the time he was a teenager, they had come to accept it. Blake could be stiff and had a hard time maintaining eye contact. When someone got him on a topic he loved—gaming, Japanese animation, computers—he wouldn't stop talking; when he was bored, he could hardly get through a conversation. His parents weren't the only ones who noticed his quirks; in middle school, he'd been bullied constantly.
A lot of the time, Blake felt like he wasn't good at much of anything. But every once in awhile, he'd get this feeling—one that, like all feelings, was hard for him to explain—that he was really intelligent but that his autism kept others from realizing it. He tried his own workarounds. He knew he needed to take a lot of breaks from homework, or else he'd burn out, but he also found it impossible to keep track of time. So he set the microwave timer to go off every 15 minutes. His parents and sisters also tried to help: When he returned from school frustrated that he couldn't understand the emotional nuances of the novels he was supposed to be reading, Ilene would read the same book and help Blake deconstruct the characters' feelings. This is what love looks like. This is grief.
Blake still didn't like to be touched. But he was Ilene's son, and sometimes she wanted to be close to him. Beyond that, she thought hugging was a skill he should have. So Blake would stand there in front of her, his shoulders up, his arms pressed to his sides, his eyes fastened to the floor. And she'd look at him and say, "Sucks to be you. I'm coming in for a hug. Incoming!"
When it came time to go to college, Adickman and his parents chose the Rochester Institute of Technology. It had an excellent program in information technology—a good fit for someone passionate about computers. Though the Adickmans had made a calculation not to disclose Blake's autism in his college application, worried that it would hurt his chances of acceptance, Ilene had looked into the university's resources for students like Blake and had been impressed by a special spectrum-support program for autistic people; once Blake arrived, he joined that program. He did poorly in the classes he found boring, but when he graduated in 2012, Amazon was impressed enough to fly him out to Seattle to interview for a position.
It was not his finest moment. Though Adickman was interviewing for a job in IT—a position that usually involves managing a company's back-end technology, rather than writing code for Web sites or apps—his interviewers, as he recalls, badgered him about his programming skills. "They kept me in a room and had all these different people ask me coding questions," he remembered later.
Adickman's habit of being honest and self-effacing, both common autistic traits, made for a lethal combination.
"I think my honesty gets the better of me sometimes," he later told me. Where another candidate, faced with Amazon's questioning, might fudge his answers and exaggerate his abilities, Adickman just kept answering, "I don't know. I don't know."
He didn't get the offer. He returned to Boca Raton to live with his parents and spent the next several years taking low-level I.T. jobs at small, no-name companies. Invariably, within a couple of months, he'd get laid off with little or no explanation. By February of this year, he was unemployed again. What have I done in life, he sometimes thought, to not be able to get a job in my own field?
One day, his mother came to him. A woman from the R.I.T. spectrum support program had called her. Microsoft had started a program to hire autistic people with technical skills, the woman had told her, but it wasn't getting enough great applications. What was Blake up to?
Lay-Flurrie and Barnett are now trying to scale the program, holding it four times a year. "It's great that we're hiring five or 10 or 15 people, but to really drive that inclusive culture, we've got to figure out how to get a lot of these things into the mainstream," Barnett says. To facilitate this, they've shortened the program, which used to last four weeks, to two weeks, and expanded the applicant pool, which was initially restricted to locals, to candidates from all over the country.
(As for costs, Microsoft does not "share actual dollars when it comes to hiring talent," Barnett said. The costs—"far less than we thought"—include spending associated with "ensuring a great cohort/hiring experience," he said, "but most of our investment is actually in the people" who work on the program.)
Barnet and his colleagues face some persistent difficulties. One serious challenge is that there's no well-established pipeline of autistic candidates for technical positions—the issue that the R.I.T. adviser had been trying to help address when she'd first called Adickman's mother. To hire engineers who are women or people of color, you can go to conferences or organizations for professionals from those backgrounds, but there's no analog among autistic programmers; what's more, some autistic people hesitate to advertise their condition to potential employers, as Adickman had done.
Microsoft is trying to address the pipeline problem by contacting more universities' disability offices, which are often aware of the autistic students on their campuses, and by getting the word out through autism organizations. Still, Barnett and his colleagues wonder if they're reaching even a fraction of the qualified candidates. Without a strong pipeline, Barnett can't present hiring managers with the most competitive candidates for their positions. At the April hiring session, although 13 were open, only five candidates met their high bar for employment.
Adickman was back home in Boca Raton by then. Microsoft had promised him and the other candidates that they'd hear an answer within two weeks. Adickman stopped searching for other jobs and just waited.
"It was," he said, "a very, very long two weeks." He had felt an unusual sense of ease when he'd visited Microsoft. He'd noted that because so many people smiled at him on campus, they must be happy with their jobs.
Then he got a call from a recruiter: He'd made it. Microsoft, impressed not only with his skills but with the way he'd navigated his group's social dynamics, was offering him a position as an engineer, working for Jeff Ting, at a salary so much higher than what he'd previously made that it seemed extraordinary to him.
In June, Adickman moved to Redmond, with his parents' help. When I emailed him to ask if we could talk again, he replied with three words: "Talk about what?"
It hadn't occurred to me to be more specific, but Adickman, like many autistic people, is literal-minded and wanted a clearer request. I explained that I hoped to learn how he was preparing for the new job. A couple of days later, I met Adickman and his parents for lunch at a Thai restaurant. Adickman's mother had stocked his place with the things he needed, like toilet paper, and was planning to send her son on a scavenger hunt to make sure he knew where to find everything.
Over pineapple fried rice, Adickman told me he was thrilled. But weighing on him was the concern that he wouldn't do enough to prove himself at work and would lose his job again. "I need to push myself," he said, almost as if to himself.
As part of the program's design, Adickman had been encouraged to seek any accommodations he needed and had been assigned mentors to help with issues as mundane as dealing with the movers and as complicated as having difficult conversations with a boss. His manager and colleagues had also gone through a special training session about autism. From the start, the organizers felt that it wasn't enough just to hire autistic employees. In order for those people to stay and thrive, they had to be supported.
So far, it appears to be working. Autistic employees told me they feel better at Microsoft than at past jobs, because they know they'll be assisted in asking for accommodations, they have people who can help them navigate social situations, and they don't have to hide their quirks. So far, all of those hired through the new program have performed at or above expectations. None have left Microsoft.
Still, this aspect of the program highlights just how different it is from other diversity initiatives. In theory, supporting autistic employees is no different from making sure employees in wheelchairs have access to a ramp. But in practice, it brings distinct challenges, because it involves interpersonal dynamics—what some people believe to be at the center of how colleagues interact with one another, and, in turn, crucial to a company's success.
Lay-Flurrie observes that autistic people's abilities and disabilities occupy a wide range. Some are intellectually disabled, a factor that "is going to impact the skills and the talents and what somebody is able to bring to the table." Those people, she said, might be better suited for a separate Microsoft program that brings on disabled people to provide services like serving meals. All of the promising applicants to the autism hiring program go through a phone screening, early on, which helps the company get a sense of their professional readiness. Still, there's no clear line that demarcates applicants who are appropriate for the program from those who aren't. And even among those who are highly intelligent and talented, a person's individual quirks might make him a great fit for one team but a poor match for another.
Even Ting couldn't help but wonder how Adickman's autism might manifest at the office. When he was deciding whether to make an offer, he told me, he asked the program's organizers explicit questions to gauge how Adickman would fit in with his team. Some people with autism are unsettled by sudden, loud noises and are themselves reserved. "My group's kind of loud and boisterous, so I was kind of like, 'Will Blake fit into that environment, or does he have noise sensitivity issues?' And they were like, 'No, he's one of the loud, outspoken ones,'" he recalls.
"But I had to ask, because the last thing we want to do is have someone who's not a good fit and they become uncomfortable. We'd have to think about what kind of accommodations we'd have to make, and then would it have an impact on the team's current culture and chemistry?" If Adickman had been sensitive to noise, Ting said, "It would have made the decision harder."
Starting his new job, Adickman felt gratified. An engineer at Microsoft—what would his old bullies think of that? He had his own office, where he set up a photo collage of his family and a lamp from Ikea. Ting was giving him plenty of time to learn at his own pace. And yet, he had a nagging sense that he didn't belong. He told his mentor from his team, Dana Brash, that he didn't feel qualified. "I feel like I cheated to get here," he admitted. "No," Brash said. "Microsoft doesn't hire people as charity cases. You belong here."
Brash and Ting both told me that Adickman had proven himself early on. One Friday, Brash had been out of the office, and Adickman had taken it upon himself to work on a project involving setting up a virtual machine. By Monday morning, he'd made significant progress. "That kind of turnaround is really impressive," Brash said. "I tell people, and they're like 'Wow.'"
Brash had noticed some of the features of Adickman's autism—the intermittent eye contact, the rapid speech, the conversational tangents—but instead of encouraging his colleague to behave more like neurotypical people, Brash encouraged Adickman to be himself. He wanted his new colleague to focus on the tasks at hand instead of on the appropriateness of his behavior. Beyond that, he felt that what made Adickman different from others was one of his assets. "If we want to talk about neurodiversity, why would I want to fit him into my box?" Brash said.
Blake Adickman at his desk
It was hard for Adickman to internalize that message. He badgered Brash with questions about what not to do. He worried, for example, about keeping Microsoft's secrets. He'd signed a form saying he wouldn't disclose anything confidential, but, being literal-minded, he wished for clearer instructions about what was secret and what wasn't. "My biggest nightmare is that I share something that I think is cool with one of my online buddies, and I get fired for it," he told me. If he told friends what he did for a living, for instance, would he be violating the rules?
"This is how my mind works," he said. "I don't mind following rules, but if the rules do not make enough sense, it's hard for me to follow them."
Adickman also felt lonelier than he'd expected. "I'm not used to spending this much time alone," he told me. He'd thought Microsoft would be sort of like college, where he used to wander around and find things to do, even on evenings and weekends. But, here, everyone seemed to be older than him, with spouses and children. On weekends, campus was abandoned. It didn't help matters that he'd dinged his Ford Focus on a post next to his parking spot in his apartment complex, and now he was terrified to drive anywhere.
He came up with what he thought was a good solution to his solitude: He referred some of his autistic friends to Microsoft. He wanted to share his good fortune, and if a friend was accepted, he'd have someone to hang out with. But when he told his mother what he'd done, she got nervous. Referring a friend for a job, she said, was sort of like setting someone up on a blind date. "When you fix someone up on a date, you're sort of vouching for them," she told him. If one of his friends got hired and didn't do well, it might reflect poorly on him. Oh, no, Adickman thought—had he made another faux pas?
Soon afterward, his mother returned home to Florida. It worried Adickman to be left alone, but he was also eager to challenge himself.
"I don't want her to think that I hate her, but it's good that I'm getting away," he confided. "I think I need to fail on my own, and she doesn't let me do that very often." Besides, he also had other mentors here. Brash reassured him that Microsoft wouldn't blame him if his referrals didn't work out.
One morning, Blake Konrady, another mentor, visited Adickman at his apartment. Konrady was an employment specialist at Provail, a local organization that matches disabled people with work opportunities. He stood in Adickman's kitchen, filling out his voter registration form for him: "I know you don't like your handwriting," he said.
Adickman admitted there was a lot that had confused him about registering to vote. For example—where could he buy a stamp to mail the form? Konrady suggested a Walgreen's down the street. Adickman called his mom to confirm: "This might sound embarrassing, Mom, but I don't send mail very often. Just to be sure, can you verify this? I can get postage stamps at Walgreen's, right?"
In his apartment, her influence was apparent. She had decorated the place with a potted plant and some framed photos. On the fridge was a schedule she'd written up: Monday—use Swiffer. Wednesday—shave, if needed. Friday—check plant.
Adickman also wanted Konrady's help figuring out how to park his car without crashing into that post again, so they went down into the garage and got into the Ford Focus. Adickman practiced easing into the spot with his mentor's guidance. "I need to try this two more times," Adickman said. "That's okay, we can do that," Konrady reassured him. After several more rounds of practice, Konrady said goodbye, and Adickman walked to campus by himself. The point, Adickman knew, was for Konrady to help him live on his own, not to do things for him. That morning, he felt better about the parking situation. But by that evening, he was afraid again.
The thing about his autism was the thing about anyone's autism. Even under the best circumstances, it doesn't go away: you just learn to live with it. Adickman's mom often pointed out that one of his sisters, who is five feet tall, would never be able to reach the high kitchen cabinets. She'd just have to use a stepstool. For Adickman, the challenging part, now that he was living alone and wouldn't have outside support forever, was to find his version of that stepstool.
That was Microsoft's long-term challenge with its program, too. The more autistic people you hire, the more stepstools you have to find. And though the first year of the program has gone well, employees' needs may evolve over time: If a successful autistic candidate is promoted into a management job, he'll likely need different kinds of support. Microsoft's bet is that dealing with all of this complexity is well worth the trouble, because of the benefits neurodiversity brings. People involved with the program also say that, for the most part, once autistic employees have settled in, their needs haven't been much different from that of their colleagues.
So maybe it would be a while before Adickman would get in the car again. And maybe it'd take some time to make friends. But work was going as well as could be expected. Ting had told him he was doing just fine. "In your first couple of weeks, all I expect is that you show up and learn," he'd said. And Adickman was showing up and he was learning.
In one recent episode of My Little Pony, Adickman's favorite character, Spike the Dragon, had, out of the blue, survived a bunch of death traps and saved someone's life. People were finally giving him some credit. Adickman didn't want to get his hopes up, but he suspected Spike's plotline was starting to get better.
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Current intelligence suggests that many big new features are being saved for a major refresh in the iPhone 8 next year.
Apple is set to launch two new iPhones this week—likely called the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus—and, if the leaks we've seen are correct, they'll set the stage for a more serious refresh in the iPhone 8 next year, the 10th anniversary of the iPhone.
True, the iPhone 7 has a couple of legitimately signficant new features (new to the iPhone, anyway), but, unless there's something big we don't know, the iPhone 7 will look to many consumers like an incremental upgrade to the iPhone 6s. Just like the iPhone 6s was an incremental upgrade to the iPhone 6.
But the new features that will reinvent the iPhone (in the way that the iPhone 6 did, and huge sales followed), according to numerous leaks and my own supply chain sources, appear to be coming next year.
From the outside, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus look very much like their predecessors, the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus. The new phones use the same iPhone 6 design, the same materials, and have the same general look and feel. The smaller iPhone 7's screen is 4.7 inches on the diagonal, while the Plus's screen is 5.5 inches.
The new iPhones will differ, visually, in a couple of subtle ways from their predecessors. The gray antenna insulation lines occupy a less conspicuous place at the top and bottom of the phones. Reliable reports say the space-gray color of the iPhone 6 line will be replaced by "dark black" and "piano black" in the iPhone 7.
According to several leaked photos, the back of the larger iPhone 7 Plus is an oval housing for a new dual-lens camera. Dual-lens cameras often use two lenses—one color and one monochrome—to divide the labor of capturing accurate color and clear, crisp lines and contrast. The resulting photos appear sharper, even when you zoom in. The two lenses also work together to create less fuzzy shots in low light. However, trusted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities said in a Saturday research note that one of the lenses on the iPhone 7 Plus is "wide angle" while the other is "telephoto." Both lenses are 12 megapixel, Kuo says.
The iPhone 7's processor will be faster. (No surprise there: Processor upgrades come with every new iPhone generation.) One leaked report says the iPhone 7 processor is about 25% faster than the iPhone 6s's already-very-fast A9 processor.
Kuo says in the research note that the iPhone 7 phones will come with storage capacities of 32, 128, and 256 gigabytes. The 16 GB and 64 GB sizes won't be offered. The iPhone 7 Plus will offer 3 GB of RAM.
[Photo: courtesy of Apple]
Apple is likely to push further with its 3D Touch technology, which allows users to convey different meanings to the phone based on how hard they push an object on the screen, or how hard they push down on the Home button. Don't be surprised if Apple announces new partners that have added support for 3D Touch in their apps, and existing developers that have expanded the role of the technology in their apps. The iPhone 7's Home button may let the user convey different pressure-based meanings to the interface, and (one report says) may replace the physical "click" with a haptic feedback buzz or tap-in response to a certain thumb pressure level.
The iPhone 7 may add a new waterproofing rating. It's unlikely the device will support wireless charging, but it may add some kind of accelerated charging technology.
The biggest difference—as you've surely heard—is that this new generation of iPhones will very likely come without a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the bottom, a development Fast Company confirmed in early January. The space created on the bottom of the phone may be used for an additional stereo speaker. The phone will deliver audio to headphones, earphones, and speakers through the Lightning port or via Bluetooth. Recent reports have said Apple intends to include a pair of wireless "AirPod" earphones with at least some versions of the new phones. Earlier reports said the company will throw in a Lightning to 3.5 mm jack adaptor for those who want to continue using their analog headphones.
There's been so much complaining about the headphone jack going away that the possible benefits of the move have been almost completely drowned out. Think about it like this. At some point the digital music files we play on our phones have to be converted to analog to be heard through a physical speaker. In phones with 3.5 mm headphone jacks, that conversion takes place inside the phone before being sent out the 3.5 mm jack and through the headphone wire. Sound quality degrades upstream, and the ability to digitally control the content is lost.
When the conversion to analog is delayed until further down the line at the playback device (i.e., wireless earphones, Lightning headset, Bluetooth speaker, etc.), the potential for retaining the sound quality through playback is increased. A digital connection allows the phone to send a larger digital file across to the headphones or headset at a faster bit rate, so the need to compress the music into smaller packets is much reduced. Some other nice features, like the ability to control playback (skipping songs, adjusting volume, etc.) by touching the headphones, or charging your headphones and listening to music through the same cable at the same time, may become possible. New noise cancellation technology could be enabled. Unfortunately, the ability of the music content owners to affix DRM (digital rights management) software to music files is also increased.
One third-party headphone maker, Bragi, announced its new wireless headphones, called, oddly, "The Headphone," at an event in Cupertino Saturday, just a few days before Apple's event.
One of the ways the new iPhone 7 may set the scene for next year's iPhone 8 will be by getting everybody used to the absence of the 3.5 mm headphone jack. As with other Apple technology phaseouts, consumers will go along, adapt, and eventually appreciate the move. I'm guessing that by the time the 2017 iPhone shows up, nobody will miss the old 3.5 mm headphone jack.
Next year's iPhone 8 (as it may or may not be called) will look and feel very different from the current design regime, which began two years ago with the smash hit iPhone 6. Our supply chain sources say the iPhone 8 will have an all-glass enclosure, with a new AMOLED display likely supplied by Samsung, the only supplier who can make the displays at scale today. That display (using Corning's Gorilla Glass) would likely curve at the edges, similar to the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Note 7.
Supply chain sources have told Fast Company that the Home button, as we know it, will be going away in the iPhone 8. It'll be hidden below the glass at the spot of the phone it occupies now. How the new Home button will support the 3D Touch pressure-sensitive functions is yet to be seen. (The invisible button might use sensors to measure how hard the user is pressing down.)
[Photo: courtesy of Samsung]
If you want to get a good idea of what Apple is at least considering doing in the iPhone 8, just look at this year's Samsung phones. Apart from the curved screen, some observers (KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, for one) are speculating that Apple could add the iris scanning biometric authentication method introduced in the Samsung Note 7.
Actually, some are speculating today that Apple might add a version of its Pencil stylus to a future iPhone. The discussion was started by some past comments alluding to the idea from Tim Cook. Apple has very likely been watching closely the consumer reaction to Samsung's Note devices, which have always had a small stylus that slides into the body of the phone. And before the recall of the device announced last week, the Note 7 had exceeded even the popular S7 device in preorders, even having to turn some customers away.
The iPhone 8 device might also add wireless charging, as Samsung did long ago, if Apple feels the technology is useful—which seems questionable—as well as reliable and stable.
So the big question for Apple is whether or not the iPhone 7 offers enough to get significant enough pre-iPhone 6 users to upgrade. But many might decide to hold out for the iPhone 8 next year.
Tim Cook has expressed optimism about sales of the iPhone 7, based on the growing number of people who buy smartphones and the high number of Apple users who still haven't upgraded past the iPhone 5 generation. I'm guessing that the sales of the iPhone 7 will follow closely the quarterly sales numbers seen for the iPhone 6s. That's a lot of phones sold, but it would be considered a disappointment at Apple, and among investors.
And you never know. All the features of the iPhone 7 may not have leaked. It might be a far cooler device than what we've heard. That would change the whole equation. When the device is unveiled Wednesday and we see what it can do, we might hear Jobs-era oohs and aahs from the crowd. We might . . . nah. This, after all, is the cool and calculated era of Tim Cook. Of gradual improvements and steady, workmanlike iteration.
At any rate, we'll be on hand to report all the action, and then talk about what it all means.
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The new Watch will probably look a lot like the old one—but it'll likely be faster, easier to navigate, and location-aware.
After Apple engineers spent countless hours reworking both the hardware and software for the Apple Watch, we're finally going to see the fruits of their labor. The company tomorrow will unveil the first look at the Apple Watch 2, running on the watchOS 3 operating system.
Some estimates say the first Apple Watch sold as many as 15 million units during its first year on the market—more than the first iPhone sold back in 2007. While that figure doesn't mean the device is on track to be a hit of iPhone proportions, it does indicate that consumers are open to the idea of an Apple smartwatch.
Apple, of course, is thinking long-term about what it might take to make the Watch a must-have, can't-leave-home-without gadget. But in this second major version of the device, it seems to be focusing mainly on fixing the problems in the first version.
By most accounts, the Apple Watch 2 will have a faster processor, a GPS radio (for tracking runs and enabling enhanced map functions), a barometer (to measure elevation climbed), and some kind of waterproofing rating (you may be able to swim with your Watch on).
The current Apple Watch comes in two sizes—42mm and 38mm—and it's pretty likely that the Apple Watch 2 will come in those same sizes, too.
Many first-generation Watch users have complained about having to charge the battery in the device every night. But those hoping for a lot more battery life might be disappointed. It's true that Apple will probably put a better (if not bigger) battery in the Watch 2, and that the Watch will probably become more power efficient overall, but the addition of the GPS radio, a power-sucker, might cancel out those gains.
The battery is perhaps the greatest limiting factor for smartwatches today. New features increase the amount of power required from the battery. And the bigger the power requirement, the larger the battery must be. This presents a serious design challenge to Apple, which loves to keep making products that are thinner and smaller.
Notably absent from the new Watch 2 is an cellular LTE radio, which would allow the device to stay connected to the internet virtually all the time. It would also make the Watch almost completely independent of the paired smartphone. But that's probably the vision for the Apple Watch 3, likely coming next year.
The Apple Watch 2 will also ship with a new brain. Apple announced watchOS 3 at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.
Perhaps the biggest change in the OS is that it can now let you launch several apps at once and keep them running in the background for when you need them next. In the current Watch you have to fire up apps one at a time, so moving between apps feels laborious. In watchOS 3 your open apps live in a little tray in the interface, and you simply grab the one you need next. It's a huge improvement and it makes the Watch feel more responsive to your immediate needs.
Apple has called the Watch the most personal of all its devices, and it makes good on that statement with the new Breath app for the Watch. The app takes you through some deep-breathing exercises and keeps you focused using gentle taps (from the haptic feedback engine) on your wrist. Your heart rate is measured by a heart-rate sensor in contact with your skin.
The OS also allows the Watch to act as your authentication device for your other Apple devices, such as a Mac. Using its sensors, the Watch can verify that the person wearing it is logged in. When that information is shared with a Mac, there's no reason that the user can't be securely logged into it, too. Apple is setting up the Watch to be a universal personal identifier. In the future, it may be used for many more things than just logging into a Mac.
The communications functions are much enhanced. You can send messages with custom backgrounds or with stickers attached. There's a Snapchat-like ephemeral messaging function with "invisible ink" for really personal messages. There's a new communication mode called Scribble that lets you trace letters on the Watch screen, which the OS turns into text. Once you've scribbled one letter, it fades away, giving you room to write the next one.
The new OS includes an upgrade to the Exercise app. You can use your exercise progress circles as your watch face, which should make wearers feel even more mindful (guilty) about their activity levels. The Watch can now use its sensors to know when you need to pause a workout in progress, such as when you're waiting at a stoplight or are just taking a breather. There's now a social aspect to the exercise app that lets you share your steps and workouts with friends. You can compete with friends on steps walked or miles run. Some canned messages, like "You're going down!" even let you talk a little trash with just a couple of touches on the screen.
The new OS also adds a personal safety tool with the new SOS feature. When you press and hold the side button (which had been previously reserved for calling up social contacts), the Watch puts out a call to emergency services no matter where you are, Apple says. It can also call a preselected set of emergency contacts.
While we're not expecting any great surprises in the Watch hardware we see at Apple's press event Wednesday, we may see some brand new watchOS features we don't know about yet. So stay tuned.
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Generation Z and millennial employees love technology in the workplace, but the digital natives still crave human interaction at work.
Though they were born and raised with cell phones, internet connectivity, and social media, both millennial and generation Z employees crave in-person communication in the workplace.
A recent survey conducted by Future Workplace and Randstad revealed that while the digital natives of the workplace have drastically different values than previous generations, 39% prefer in person communication over digital alternatives, such as email, social networking, and video conferencing.
The study of more than 4,000 full-time gen Z (22 years old or younger) and millennial (23- to 34-year-olds) employees in 10 countries including the U.S., U.K., and Canada also found that 41% of gen Z and 42% of millennial workers prefer working in a corporate office, as opposed to a coworking space, or working from home. Their preference could indicate an eventual shift away from remote work that more employees are doing than ever before.
While the need for in-person communication hasn't changed much from their parents' generation, little else remains consistent with traditional workplace values. For example, 19% of respondents chose work flexibility as their most preferred employee benefit, surpassing health care coverage and training and development.
Previous studies have also found that 50% of millennials would take a pay cut to find work that matches their values, and 90% want to use their skills for good.
"Despite the introduction and proliferation of new technologies at work, millennials and gen Z value the in-person communication that comes with a traditional corporate office, much like older generations do," wrote Dan Schawbel, the research director at Future Workplace, in a statement. "At the same time, they also seek flexible hours and telecommuting that two-thirds of companies still fail to offer," Schawbel stated.
Though younger employees still crave in-person communication, they also want their employers to incorporate technology into the workplace. Among survey respondents, 20% wanted to use robotics, 26% wanted virtual reality, and 27% wanted their employers to incorporate wearable technologies. Above all other technologies, 41% of millennial and generation Z employees wanted to use social media at work, though 46% admitted it was their biggest distraction from getting work done.
It should perhaps come as no surprise that technology was the most desirable sector for these two generations to work in, with 45% of respondents ranking it as their top pick.
Younger employees are widely known for much higher turnover rates than their parents. Only 15% of millennials believe they should stick around for more than five years, compared with 41% of boomers.
But in spite of higher turnover rates, the Future Workplace study found that 49% intend to work in their current industry for their entire career, even with multiple employers, compared to 31% who intend to switch fields.
Employers can better retain younger employees by satisfying their need for career diversity without forcing them to switch employers in order to find it. The Future Workplace study found that while 71% of respondents have only worked in one country thus far in their careers, 56% aspire to work in multiple locations.
Managing this cohort of employees requires different considerations than what was required in generations past. One major requirement is constant feedback, with a majority of respondents receiving feedback regularly compared with only 3% who received performance reviews on an annual basis. Companies are already cluing in to the benefits of continual evaluations, especially those that have ditched the annual performance review.
Furthermore, these employees despise corporate politics, naming it among the biggest obstacles to productivity, alongside stress and money. However, only 27% of respondents believe they are extremely prepared to work in a team environment or rate their personal skills as being "very good." This squares with findings from another Future Workplace study that revealed that hiring managers believed this year's college graduates were lacking soft skills necessary to work well with others, such as critical thinking and problem solving, communication, and writing.
There is one caveat on these, and other findings, that aim to examine generational differences. Social scientists tell us that they merely illuminate how one age group feels at that specific time. As Tomas Chamorro-Premuzik writes in Fast Company: "As a result, we're left with a surfeit of snapshots of how younger people differ from older people, but not of how younger people have changed as a result of time or culture." So stay tuned.
For the first time in the event's long run in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, you could count on a cell signal. Progress or a step backward?
Last Friday, as I finished gathering my things for a ride in my friends' Burning Man art car, I realized they had left camp without me.
At an event in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, one of the most remote areas in North America, this kind of situation usually entails figuring out a new plan, finding someone else to hang out with, or just going for a solo walk.
That's because Burning Man has always been a place where—despite all the technology being used in the many art installations that delight tens of thousands of attendees who make the trek to the playa, as the Black Rock Desert is known—there has been almost no way to communicate with each other when not together, especially over the internet. And at an event where people go to "unplug," that's always been a good thing, even for the highly tech-savvy people who make up the bulk of the 70,000 attendees.
[Photos: Daniel Terdiman]
To be sure, people have used things like walkie-talkies to organize, and some volunteers and staff members rely on more powerful Motorola radios for essential communications. But beyond that, trying to rendezvous on the playa, especially at night, has been all but impossible.
Until this year.
Over the last couple of years, mobile connectivity has been creeping onto the playa from cell towers located somewhere near the desert's edge. That has made it possible for people on-site early to send emails, browse Facebook, and check Twitter. But only before the event's gate officially opened. Once the masses flooded in, the networks were overwhelmed and communication was basically impossible.
This year, Burning Man—which concluded Monday—was bathed in mobile internet, at least for those on AT&T's network. Users of other carriers, such as Verizon, didn't have quite the same experience, but AT&T customers like myself found that the signal was pretty much always there, making it possible to check the Web, catch up on Facebook, read some election news, or whatever. The one exception seemed to be during the burning of the Man, the event's centerpiece, when most attendees were in the same place and, presumably, trying to upload pictures of the giant fire engulfing the effigy.
For me, being able to be online at all times was strange, but also useful. For example, I spent one day waiting for a message from a Burning Man spokesperson about the engineering problems that had led organizers to determine that the Man could not rotate as originally planned. For that, having connectivity was a necessity.
Yet I also found myself checking email or Twitter far more than I should have, given the plethora of things I could have been entertaining myself with.
I also often saw another friend, a hard-core Burning Man volunteer, frequently checking Facebook and a night or two before the event's end, I frequently heard the tell-tale sound of a Facebook Messenger message arriving on his phone. It was very strange.
As noted above, though Burning Man is very much an event that celebrates technology—I've been calling it an engineering festival over the last few years, instead of an arts festival—being out of contact with the outside world has long been something people there have taken as an article of faith: The world will wait.
That has advantages and disadvantages, one being that you're not always sure what people are telling you is true. For example, Princess Diana died during Burning Man 1997, and many attendees who heard the news assumed it was a hoax, given that it was the kind of thing that could easily have been a well-circulated rumor.
Another example was in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans just as Burning Man was getting underway. Though many attendees had seen the news that the hurricane was bearing down on the Big Easy before arriving on the playa, no one really knew how serious it was, and real information was scarce.
Those two situations could never happen now. The connectivity is there, and people can find out real news about the rest of the world. Similarly, people will now be able to talk to friends or loved ones back in the real world if something serious happens, like a death in the family. Is that a good thing for Burning Man and one of the chief philosophies—immediacy—that people like to count on there? I have no idea. Only time will tell.
I did hear a story the other day about someone riding away on bike from the Temple burn—a somber event unlike the celebration that is the Man burn—reading their phone. That made a number of people I was with snort with derision. But who knows? In a year or two that could be any one of us.
I was cautioned against writing this article because it might alert too many people to the fact that connectivity is now something to count on at Burning Man. But I figure people already knew. I don't think I talked to anyone on the playa this year who wasn't aware of the situation. To be sure, I would hate to think that people will come next year and simply stay in camp reading the Web. My feeling, though, is that Burning Man will always provide too much for people to do—art, music, conversation, visual stimulus, etc.—for anyone to be attracted by their phone for more than a few minutes a day.
I will probably be proven wrong, and that will be a bad day for Burning Man.
But last Friday night, as I wandered out from camp feeling bad that my friends had abandoned me, I got a text message saying they had realized it, and that they wanted to figure out how to come and get me. A few messages later, their lovely art car, lit by bright LEDs, appeared out of the darkness, and I hopped on.
