A happy last day of the year!

These past few years, I’ve used Twitter to keep in touch with you throughout the week and throughout the year, and you can, as always, follow me here: @cenedella.

But this year, if you’re ready to move, the best source for job search tips, tidbits, and little reminders to get your act together, is my colleague @JobSearchAmanda.

Every day in your Twitter feed, you get little reminders to not goof:

Or make it more likely you’ll get a return call:

Calm the butterflies in your stomach:

Make a difficult job transition easier:

Stay smart and up-to-date:

Or make the right choice:

If you’re seriously thinking about switching jobs next year, you really ought to be following @JobSearchAmanda.

She’s rooting for you!

A merry Christmas Eve to you.

While I’ll encourage you to make the most of August, get the jump on the other guy in December, and use the summer slowdown to your advantage, there are times when even fervent job geeks like me will advise you to take a load off and skip the job hunt.

This week is one of them.

Whatever your denomination, this week is for family, festivities, philosophy and fresh thinking for a fresh new year.

So I thought the most ecumenical of approaches would be to share this video of Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing a lovely, peaceful, percussive ditty together:

Because nothing says “the holidays” like a traditionalist from the Greatest Generation and an androgynous glam rocker sharing a piano and a song at the most wonderful time of the year.

Have a wonderful week, Readers!

I’m taking the week off, but will be rooting for you again next week!

“Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations?” is the provocative question posed by a recent study. What’s your experience?

Me? I’m a skeptic about much research published in the careers area, but I found this study very well-constructed and the conclusions well-supported by the evidence.

The authors want to answer the questions: do men and women negotiate differently? What if the job is a sports-related job? What if you mention explicitly that salaries are negotiable?

All very interesting and clever.

Here’s what they found:
1. Men are more likely to negotiate pay, BUT,
2. When they explicitly mentioned the possibility that wages are negotiable, women are (slightly) more likely to negotiate.
3. Men’s propensity to negotiate is less pronounced when negotiating is done impersonally (i.e., over the internet) versus face-to-face.
4. Men preferred applying for jobs where the ‘rules of wage determination’ were ambiguous.

All of this led to lively, interesting discussions here, here, and here. And as one wag on the internet commented, perhaps the right question should be “do men ask too much?”

I was curious, so I reached out to the authors, economists Andreas Leibbrandt, Monash Univ. and John List, U. of Chicago, to get further insights.

I asked them “Do you think men ask too much, or women ask too little?”:

“Our study suggests that women ask too little in ambiguous environments. For example, we find that women not only negotiate less for a higher wage, they even offer to work for a lower wage than advertised – something men rarely do.”

And I also asked what they’ve learned since publication:

“It was amazing to see how much attention our study received! We are under the impression that many people are hesitant to support laws, such as female quotas, that radically intervene in the labor market. Hopefully, our study signals that we are only at the beginning to understand that the gender gap in the labor market may be reduced with other measures. We are always looking for companies that are interested in working with us on this topic.”

It was awfully nice for Professors List and Leibbrandt to share their insights…

Anecdotally, in my own experience working with job seekers, I’d say that I’ve encountered among both genders an equal percentage of people with expectations that are unrealistically high and low. Looking for a job is a tremendously anxiety-producing endeavor and it tends to cause us to alter our self-evaluations in ways so that we can protect our feelings from the brutalities of the process.

I’d also observe that I’ve seen that men are more comfortable sharing their unrealistic expectations and self-evaluations with strangers and employers alike. Call it obliviousness, call it savvy… sometimes, you get what you ask for.

And perhaps the outcome is that all those people who think they deserve a better deal, actually achieve a better deal in the end. So while this may be provident from their point of view, for you, the important thing is to focus on your success in your job search, and, especially, your negotiations.

So rather than provide advice based on your gender, I can provide the following advice for anybody who feels uncomfortable asking for more:

1. Of course, it’s uncomfortable. Negotiating over the price for “you” can feel like putting a price on you as a person. And that’s awkward.

But you need to realize that wages are an economic price for your economic output. And your economic output has nothing at all to do with your value as a human being — we are all equal in the eyes of whatever Providence created us.

2. The market price is the market price (and you deserve a little more). There is a market price for people like you — that is, there are a number of similar transactions where an employer has “purchased” the work output of another person. So it’s completely reasonable for that market price to be the beginning of where you start discussing this economic transaction.

Further, you may be aware that you’re a very special person. And I, for one, think you deserve a little bit more than the average, ${firstname}. Whether it’s because of your experience, or background, or learning, or success, you deserve a little bit more than the middle of the pack.

3. It’s unfair for you to withhold. Ultimately, you’re going to decide to take or keep this job based on a host of factors, but a large part will be because of the price your new employer is willing to pay. As it will make a significant difference in your decisions, now and in the future, it really is only fair, and almost your duty, to share with your future employer your pay requirements. Otherwise, you’re not allowing them to understand the whole picture about what they’ll need to do to get you, and keep you.

In fact, you are doing them a favor by giving them accurate information. Anything less is just a bit impolite.

4. Give them a reason. In negotiations in general, it’s always best if you give a reason (for far more on this, see Robert Cialdini’s excellent, timeless “Influence”). That reason could be anything: because I’ll need to have my spouse stay at home if I take this job, or, alternatively, because I’ll need to hire childcare. Because I’ll be travelling more, or, alternatively, because I’ll be travelling less. Whatever it is, it just has to be true.

My favorite reason in this regard is “because I’d been expecting to earn more at my next position / promotion”. Believe me, even something as simple as your own expectations is sufficient.

6. You’ve got my permission. The study mentions that women were less likely to negotiate in cases where it’s not explicitly mentioned that the pay is negotiable.

So, whatever your gender, let me say this: I give you permission to always negotiate salary and compensation. Pay is always negotiable. The negotiation may not end with a change, although, frankly, that’s fairly rare in my experience, but pay is always and everywhere negotiable by everybody. And that means you. You have my permission, my blessing, and my fingers crossed on your behalf.

So I am looking forward to the discussion in the comments on my blog post: “Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations?” Trolls will be banished with dispatch!

And I will wish great success to you during these holidays and the New Year!

I’m always rooting for you!

Marc Cenedella, Founder

 You should follow me on Twitter here: @cenedella

P.S. Speaking of research, my colleague Archana Agrawal has just published her first research from our studies into making your job search more effective. Please check out, “Navigating the Black Hole” published in Personnel Psychology.

So I’m going to continue my theme from last week and cover more ground about how you should go about interviewing your future boss & company.

There’s nothing that makes us sadder here at TheLadders than an (unnecessary) repeat customer — the folks who discover that their dream job is a bad dream, the kind you need to wake up from right away — so we want you to make sure it’s a good match before accepting.

Last week I shared with you the twenty questions to ask your interviewers to learn more about the job and the opportunity.

Well, there’s more to understanding an opportunity than what people say, of course.

You also need to do a “Visual Interview” of your prospective employer’s office environment. Now, this little bit of recon doesn’t mean you should connect with your inner James Bond and pull a snoop worthy of Skyfall. But it does mean that you should observe and assess the office layout, kitchens, bathrooms and meeting rooms. Or, as I like to call them:

Seats, sips, “powder”, and pow-wows.

The reason this is important is that your physical environment has a great impact on your productivity and happiness. And how much your future employer values, or devalues, these areas, is oftentimes a good predictor of how they feel about their employees in general, and thereby, you.

Seats

What is the office layout? How are desks arranged? How much space, light, and quiet is each employee given?

Importantly: how does that work with your style?

I’m flummoxed at the number of times people overlook this.

For instance, here at TheLadders, we’re an open floor plan — everybody, CEO to college intern, has the same cheap desk from IKEA, an Aeron chair, two, three, or more, monitors, and sits out in the open. We like it that way and it promotes the open, collaborative environment that we think is important for our success.

We had one senior person, who’d come to our office multiple times for multiple interviews, show up on the first day asking “Where’s my office?” And it turned out that open seating was deeply dissatisfying to him and helped shorten his tenure here.

Take notice: how comfortable you are with the seating arrangements, and the environment around your workspace, is important to your future success.

Sips

When they ask if you’d like a coffee or water, say “sure, but I don’t want to make you carry it — I’ll come with you.” And check out the kitchen / pantry / snack room / break room.

Is it messy? Teeny-tiny? Are they scrimping on the Sweet ‘N’ Low and stingy with the stirrers?

Or is it a Google-esque cornucopia of Cheetos, siggi’s, and starfruit?

Napoleon quipped that “an army marches on its stomach.” Does your future employer agree?

“Powder”

I’ve been watching too much 40′s and 50′s period drama on TV recently. (Got into “Foyle’s War” from the UK on my Netflix — brilliant!) So I’ll use that old euphemism “powder room” for the john.

One investor claims that a trip to the bathroom is the best way to figure out how a company feels about its employees.

Investments in fixing the “powder room” are always discretionary. So how discretionary is employee happiness, when nature calls, in the mind of your prospective employer?

Is it dingy, dim-lit, dungeon-like and depressing? Have the walls been painted since… the 50s?

Or is it clean, well-stocked and well-maintained?

Where does this employee priority fit into management’s priorities?

Pow-wows

You’ll likely walk past a number of conference and meeting rooms during your visit to a company’s offices. What do those rooms tell you about working at the company?

Are there schedules on the doors? Are those schedules completely filled back-to-back? Or is most work done by individuals at their desks?

Are the conference rooms packed? Are more people in them or out of them?

Do the meeting rooms seem to be places to get work done? Are they filled with whiteboards and creativity?

Or is there one lonely lightbulb swaying in the emptiness?

How much and how well you’ll be expected to work with others is important for you to know.

——

All of these cues and clues can help give you a fuller picture of life at the new company.

You can read too much into them, and no one place is a nirvana constructed solely for your advantage. But it does behoove you to ensure that your new environment is acceptable to you and will enable you to perform your best.

So on your interviews, in addition to asking, make sure you take some time for looking and doing the visual interview.

I’ll be rooting for you!

What’s an interview about? It sure feels like it’s about you, but it’s really not.

An interview is actually about how you can help your future boss and future employer succeed. It’s about finding out what their requirements and hopes are and matching up your background and experience with what they need.

Overlooking these basic facts about the interview is all too easy. There’s so much else going on in your work, your life, and in your job search, that you can forget to look at the interview from the interviewer’s point of view. And that’s a shame, because, after all, you need the interviewer to walk away from the interview thoroughly impressed.

With that in mind, I’ve done my twice-a-year update to my collection of “twenty best interview questions” below. My aim here is to arm you with easy-to-ask, revealing-to-answer questions for you to take with you into an interview.

When I ran these questions previously, commenter LBRZ wrote in and said:

And that’s exactly the point, Readers. By asking these questions, which focus on the needs, traits, and preferences of your future boss and future employer, you’re demonstrating that you are somebody who is genuinely interested in their well-being. And the more interest we show in others, the more commitment they show to aiding our cause.

And with that, here are my twenty best questions to ask your interviewer:

1. What’s the biggest change your group has gone through in the last year? Does your group feel like the recession is over and things are getting better, or are things still pretty bleak? What’s the plan to handle either scenario?

2. If I get the job, how do I earn a “gold star” on my performance review? What are the key accomplishments you’d like to see in this role over the next year?

3. What’s your (or my future boss’) leadership style?

4. About which competitor are you most worried?

5. How does sales / operations / technology / marketing / finance work around here? (I.e., groups other than the one you’re interviewing for.)

6. What type of people are successful here? What type of people are not?

7. What’s one thing that’s key to this company’s success that somebody from outside the company wouldn’t know about?

8. How did you get your start in this industry? Why do you stay?

9. What are your group’s best and worst working relationships with other groups in the company?

10. What keeps you up at night? What’s your biggest worry these days?

11. What’s the timeline for making a decision on this position? When should I get back in touch with you?

12. These are tough economic times, and every position is precious when it comes to the budget. Why did you decide to hire somebody for this position instead of the many other roles / jobs you could have hired for? What about this position made you prioritize it over others?

13. What is your reward system? Is it a star system / team-oriented / equity-based / bonus-based / “attaboy!”-based? Why is that your reward system? What do you guys hope to get out of it, and what actually happens when you put it into practice? What are the positives and the negatives of your reward system? If you could change any one thing, what would it be?

14. What information is shared with the employees (revenues, costs, operating metrics)? Is this an “open book” shop, or do you play it closer to the vest? How is information shared? How do I get access to the information I need to be successful in this job?

15. If we are going to have a very successful the year after next in 2014, what will that look like? What will we have done over the next 12 months to make it successful? How does this position help achieve those goals?

16. How does the company / my future boss do performance reviews? How do I make the most of the performance review process to ensure that I’m doing the best I can for the company?

17. What is the rhythm to the work around here? Is there a time of year that it’s “all hands on deck” and we’re pulling all-nighters, or is it pretty consistent throughout the year? How about during the week / month? Is it pretty evenly spread throughout the week / month, or are there crunch days?

18. What type of industry / functional / skills-based experience and background are you looking for in the person who will fill this position? What would the “perfect” candidate look like? How do you assess my experience in comparison? What gaps do you see?

19. In my career, I’ve primarily enjoyed working with big / small / growing / independent / private / public / family-run companies. If that’s the case, how successful will I be at your firm?

20. Who are the heroes at your company? What characteristics do the people who are most celebrated have in common with each other? Conversely, what are the characteristics that are common to the promising people you hired, but who then flamed out and failed or left? As I’m considering whether or not I’d be successful here, how should I think about the experiences of the heroes and of the flame-outs?

I hope you find these questions useful in your interviews, Readers!

A final note. Previously, another commenter, “Lenore”, asked:

To which I replied:

OK, Readers, have a great week in the job search!

I’m rooting for you!

Thousands of your fellow subscribers here at TheLadders are giving thanks this Monday for jobs they’ve found over the past month.

While we don’t have the space to share all of them, here are fifty of the positions filled at TheLadders over the last thirty days. In keeping with the Turkey Day theme, we’ll do it family style — can you match the correct title in Column A with the pay in Column B and the location in Column C?

I hope you’ve had a restful Thanksgiving weekend, and here’s wishing you a great finish to your job hunt and to your year!

I’m rooting for you.

It’s time to talk turkey.

If you’ve played football, women’s basketball, or, >gasp<, what they call "football" over in Europe, you know that half-time is your time to get better.

Time to re-think your choices, remind yourself of the fundamentals and set any needed course corrections.

Any player that comes out of the locker room with the same plan he had going in… well, he just wasn’t paying attention, was he?

So this week, with Thanksgiving providing a needed half-time break in your job search, it’s time to ask “what can I change to make my search better starting next week?”

Let’s look at some common situations that people find themselves in at “half-time”:

Are you trying to change too many things at once with this job search?

You can change your city OR you can change your industry OR you can change your field / specialty. But if you’re trying to leave your Oil Services Marketing job in Dallas to break into Software Sales in Minnesota, you’re in for a heap of trouble.

Companies, employers, and hiring managers like to reduce their chances of making a hiring mistake. It’ll come as no surprise to you that hiring somebody who has already done exactly the same job previously is, all things considered, more likely to be a success, and more likely to stick with the job, than somebody making one, two, or three big jumps for this new position.

Make it easy on yourself. Changing one of these attributes at a time — your city, your industry, or your field — is tough enough. Don’t try to do two or three.

A simpler, easier job search is a happier, shorter one.

Daydreaming vs. being realistic

Sometimes you really want to get to the next level. Or get a foot in the door at the hot new company. Or just get out of a bad, declining situation… fast.

But perhaps you’ve set your goals high and reality isn’t cooperating.

How long do you wait before realizing it?

A week is certainly not enough time to worry. A month is just getting started. A quarter… and perhaps you ought to think about things. And if it’s been a year, the market is giving you a clear message: it’s time to get your head out of the clouds and come up with a more realistic plan.

That’s why it’s called a stepping stone

Perhaps you’re focused on the right job for the long run, but not the right sequence of steps to get there.

While it’s admirable to hope that you’ll leapfrog the competition to get ahead fast, you may need to take the time to build the right skill set, and the right set of experiences, before others will think you’re ready for the bigger role.

What changes could you consider making?

Might you need to take a lower title to get into the company that you’re dying to work for?

Are you ready to admit that your pay grade got ahead of your position, and that you might need to accept something lower in order to move?

Is it time to consider a lateral move, or even a temporary step back in order to do what you want to do?

With the passage of time — three months, six months, a year — the urgency with which you should reconsider your plans increases.

How far along are you this Thanksgiving week, and is it time that you should be worried about your progress?

Is your passion dying?

I’ll say it once again — you’ll do better and get further ahead if you follow your passion in life. Because our passion is what helps get us through the tough times and the disagreeable parts of any job, your being naturally, helplessly, authentically excited by your field or profession is the best boost you can give to your career.

But what happens if your passion is dying?

Well, if your passion was printing newspapers, trading stocks on the floor of an exchange, selling typewriters, promoting arena football, building toasters or microwaves in the USA, or any of the thousands of others of jobs that are destroyed by the inevitable march of capitalism each year, you’ve got a problem.

Joseph Schumpeter called it “creative destruction”.

To you, it feels like your passion is gone.

It’s a “Who Moved My Cheese?” moment, and as the pace of innovation accelerates, it’ll happen more and more frequently.

And that means half-time is the time for you to think about doubling down or walking away.

Doubling down means finding the modern equivalent of what you loved doing, and learning the new skills required to thrive.

So daily newspaper journalists become bloggers. Toaster-builders become toaster designers & marketers. Typewriter salespeople become document and printing salespeople.

Ecclesiastes says “there is nothing new under the sun”.

Every past passion has its modern equivalent, and there’s always a path — sometimes challenging, sometimes difficult — to the new one.

Or it might be that walking away makes more sense. If you really loved managing drive-in movie theaters, or growing hogs on the family farm, or distributing print magazines, and the newfangled equivalent leaves you cold and empty, it might be the wisest thing for you, at half-time, to quit. To pick up and move on. To find a new field for the new you.

While only you can answer, I can urge you to ask: “is my passion gone?”

Not enough focus

If you ever answer: “I like a lot of things… I’m good at a lot of things… I could do a number of jobs…”

…when somebody asks you what you’re looking for, or what job you’d like, you’re not focused enough and you’re hurting your chances of winning.

You’ve only got one set of eyes, and they can’t be pointed in multiple directions at once.

You see, while you’re telling people you can do operations AND sales AND finance, somebody else is telling the same employer that all they want to do is finance. They eat finance, they dream finance, they sleep finance. And they love finance.

If you were hiring for a finance role, which candidate would you favor?

You need to have a clear message about what your brand is and what you stand for. Trying to be the three-in-one microwave-radio-fax-machine is great for 80s RONCO nostalgia, but bad for finding your next gig.

Well, I hope this is useful for you as you think about your half-time during Turkey Week, folks.

Have a great break, and I’ll see you next Monday!

We’ve added a new feature that I think you’re going to like: Hiring Alerts.

Whenever a recruiter posts a job with us, we dig into our list of candidates in the database, including you, to find those who might be most appropriate for the job.

And then we send that job, via an e-mail hiring alert, to a select group of professionals like you.

How select?

Well, on average, about 700 of you, which results in 6 to 8 applications for each job.

We’ll send the job to fewer or more professionals depending on what the computer tells us, but the goal is to get about 6 to 8 of you who might not have seen the job, and might potentially be the right fit, to apply. That’s our target based on our conversations with recruiters about what makes the most sense for them.

Win-win.

So when you see something like this…

…in your e-mail, you’ll know that it’s a job hot off the presses, and that, if you decide to apply, the magic of modern computer science can let you feel comfortable that you’re one of just about a half-dozen professionals who feel equally excited about it.

The match, by the way, is based on the information you’ve given us, so the great thing is, the more info you give us, the better we can target you with jobs. Update your profile here to let us understand you better.

Have an easy week on the job search, Readers!

After being chased out of hearth and home, last week, Readers… We’re still out of hearth and home!

There remain over fifty of us here at TheLadders without essentials such as power, water, or internet (interesting to note that people now include ‘internet’ among the essentials; wasn’t true during 9/11).

Your notes to us last week in response to our Sandy-gram were… well, they were more than we could’ve expected. Your hundreds upon thousands of thanks and prayers and offers of help and whiskey were so very much appreciated. Especially the whiskey.

After losing power, my eight-months-pregnant wife and I hiked two miles north in Sandy’s rainy, messy aftermath to find a taxi, eventually landing in the welcoming arms of the in-laws. Northern Manhattan was, this past week, the oddest sort of refugee zone, and the Manhattan Bridge, weirdly half-dark and half-lit, represented a connection from this off-kilter, flooded world to our normal lives more aptly than words can say.

I have to tell you, though, that the spirit that made our country great is alive and well here in Manhattan. Knocked down by the storm, the Big Apple got back up with a can-do Yankee spirit, that is remarkable for being as old & traditional as it is young, urgent, and new.

Some of my colleagues in the tech world undertook the most amazing challenges.

Power out at your hosting company on Wall Street? How about creating a bucket brigade of software engineers to huff diesel up 18 flights of stairs to fuel a backup generator?

Website knocked out? How about re-coding the whole thing in a day so it works on the popular Tumblr service instead? And then selling ad space to State Farm insurance on the new site?

New York City’s evacuation map loading too slowly? How about getting a copy live on your site in a jiffy so that people have the information they need?

And while I’m most familiar with, and proud of, the people in my industry, across New York City this past week, from the taxis to the taco trucks to the telecomm stores, the power of entrepreneurs and businesses to make our lives better even in a pinch (or, in the case of a Sandy, a punch) reminds you of how great our diverse, determined country can be.

There is so little of the “woe is me” and so much of the “just do it”. It’s inspiring and it makes you realize that our problems are all problems we can solve.

Speaking of problems, you might be curious to know that our own challenges were the result of all of our contingency planning over the years working perfectly — except for that one little thing.

As you might expect for a company of our size, we’ve got backup systems for our backup systems. And we’ve tested and prodded and simulated emergencies to the nth degree.

But you know how these things go.

A subcomponent of a subsystem was housed in a data center in downtown Manhattan — which is in the same power sub-grid as the Fed and the New York Stock Exchange, and which has never been without power for a week in its history — and of course, that one sub-sub system is what enables us to chat and talk on the phone with you all.

It’s still down.

The fates laugh at us wryly, don’t they?

Well, the good news with all that is that we nonetheless have a record number of jobs onsite, and a record number of employers looking for you. The upside of being an Internet business is that the site is still live even when your office is closed.

So with that, we’re going to get back to cleaning up the office and working remotely and gathering up the jobs and recruiters you want to connect with. If there’s anything we can help you with, please drop us an email at help@theladders.com, which has been up and working since Wednesday. We’ll get back to you right away!

And I’ll leave you with this video of the Boss singing “Sandy” at the Hammersmith in 1975. It is a poignant elegy for a place that is perhaps now gone from us forever. The sadness and the beauty and the Jersey-ness and the Boss-ness and the folk title of the song are just the right poetry to get you through the week. I know it’s gotten me through mine.

Have a great week, Readers!

It’s a uniquely American idea — right up there with road trips, tailgates, and girls’ day out at the spa — the idea that not only are we not stuck in our jobs for a lifetime, but also that we’re letting ourselves down when we stick with a bad deal for too long. From “Take This Job and Shove It” to “Office Space” to “Jerry Maguire”, we celebrate our freedom to tell off the boss and take on bigger, better adventures.

So how do you know when it’s time to “fire the boss” and find a better home?

When he blames you for his failures

You worked all weekend on the Peterson pitch, hoping your team lands the big new account. You put everything you had into it.

And yet, when the pitch failed, where was your boss? Shouldering the blame and healing wounds?

Nope, he was throwing you under the bus — for your slides or hand-out materials or earrings or handshake or some other nonsense — just like he always does.

What’s worse, if he had only been paying attention to body language and been a little nicer to Slow Joe, Mr. Peterson’s dim-witted nephew, instead of trying to prove him wrong in front of everybody else, perhaps you’d all be celebrating instead of commiserating.

When the boss blames you, time to fire the boss.

When he’s focused on his own success — to your detriment

When the boss’ success — his job, his awards, his glory — come first, second and third, you need to realize that he’s decided where his interests lie…

He’s looking out for El Número Uno. And no, that doesn’t translate to “my hard-working team”.

When the boss is placing all his bets on himself, and all the burden on you, it’s time to fire the boss.

When he’s got no new ideas

You’ve tried to get him to see the light, but he’s stuck doing the same old things. And they’re still not working.

If he’s in a rut, a rut, a rut, a rut, a rut — you get the idea — that means that your career trajectory is stuck right behind his. It’s time to get unstuck and get moving again. Fire the boss.

When things aren’t getting better

The easiest way to know when it’s time to fire your boss is when things haven’t improved, despite his promises. The big accounts aren’t coming through, the new products fizzle, the big hires that he trumpets end up being Jokers, not Aces in the hole.

Sometimes it’s just better to find a home where good stuff happens, instead of sticking around a place where there’s always an explanation for failure.

When the trendline isn’t going up, it’s time to fire the boss.

When he’s lost the confidence of others

Maybe you’re a sweetheart, a softie, a true believer in a human being’s ability to turn things around. But after a few years of missed budgets, too many quarters of failed promises, too many weekly staff meetings that depressed rather than inspired you, it might be time to look around and realize that your boss has lost the confidence of others beside you.

If his peers are turning on him, his team members have lost the faith, and customers feel they just can’t rely on him anymore, it’s time for you to quit being a suffering martyr to the cause. It’s time for you to fire the boss.

Why fire the boss? Because life is much more than a paycheck.

You see, you can always buy more things. More car. More house. More toys. More clothes. And if you live in Hollywood, more curves in alluring places.

But the one thing in life you can’t buy more of is time. Your time.

A company can always find somebody else to fill the job slot, warm the seat, take the pay, and punch the clock.

But you?

You’re trading the most precious thing you’ll ever have, these next few years of your life. You’re hoping the trade is a smart one. That in exchange for these fast-moving, fleeting years, you’ll get experience, insight, and wisdom in addition to your paycheck.

So when the boss doesn’t measure up; doesn’t honor your sacrifice, and treasure, and time; doesn’t live up to the standard that somebody getting your most precious gift ought to live up to…

There’s only one course an American can take.

Fire the boss. Free yourself. And find a better home for your talents.

Have a fiery week, Readers!

I’m rooting for you!