Entry Level Jobs

Image by Esthr via Flickr

When I applied for the Union Square Ventures job, in my mind I was applying for a Junior VC position. Ends up the opening was for office staff.

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Not Union Square Ventures

Recently I applied for a job with MeetUp.com that I thought would be something that would lead to a Chief People Person position, on par with the Chief Technology Officer position. But then I was at the MeetUp CTO Greg Whalin run MeetUp Tuesday evening at the MeetUp offices in their third floor space, and Greg tells me it might be an "entry level position." What a bummer. (Community Specialist)

Job Search

And I was having thoughts of the butterfly effect, part two. There is all the coding, and all the tech. And the site gets people to show up at events in person. But once they show up, that is Chief People Person territory. How do you turn those events into the best possible experiences for those who show up? You, of course,  work through the Organizers. Create a five star system. People start out as one star Organizers. And the best Organizers - those who have earned the most points in a publicly displayed system - are five star. And every year you declare an Organizer Of The Year. Bring that person on an all expenses paid trip to NYC.

And the entire time you are trying to put in place a simple manual that tells people how to become the best Organizer they can possibly be. And you get to know as many of them as possible, one on one. Social media can come in handy here. Skype can come in handy.

And you treat NYC as the microcosm of the world, and you go attend as many MeetUps as humanly possible. That would apply to the entire People Person team. Go out there where the action is. The action is not in the office. Keep your smartphones handy. But otherwise be out there. Work unconventional hours. Create templates in NYC to take to the rest of the world. Iterate.

India Employment Agency
19 W 34th St, Ste 1221
New York, NY 10001

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Apple: Remarkable

Image via CrunchBase

Apple Passes Microsoft As World's Largest Tech Company Wired

This is a big deal. Wow. Fascinating. But then that is the Steve Jobs life story. His ups and downs and ups have been fascinating. His decade in the wilderness: he has more than made up for it. It was not a lost decade. He might have lost that decade (and a half) to Gates, but Gates had to play catch up after that all the way to his retirement, or rather a second career thinking for the bottom two billion people. Microsoft has been adding features to Windows when the new game in town is to take away as many features as possible from the operating system like Chrome OS promises to do.

Steve Jobs did the PC thing. He was not supposed to do the smartphone thing. A new generation Steve Jobs was supposed to show up. Steve Jobs did the smartphone thing. He was not supposed to do the tablet thing. A new person was supposed to show up. In that way the guy is like Fidel Castro. American presidents come and go, Castro stays on.

I have been angry about Jobs' ouster from Apple back in the days. That is what happens when dumb people get and exercise power. Like Mozart says in the movie Mozart, "Those people should not have that kind of power!" Apple finally got a PhD to come run the company until it finally gave up. Yeah, I read that PhD dude's Apple "memoir" a long time ago. It is a pathetic read.

Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are best friends. (Mideast Peace: Tech Industry Style) Ellison has wanted Oracle to surpass Microsoft's market cap forever. When it looked like his umpteenth attempt might fail, he went ahead and called Bill Gates a name: "William Henry Gates III." I was born in Chicago's Jewish ghetto, not in the Seattle suburbs. (Larry And The Cloud) Ellison, now that is another fascinating life story. After Ellison bought Sun, I threw a challenge his way: create data centers the size of servers.

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My love is for Google, not Apple. Apple pushes out BMWs, and I am a Third World guy fascinated by the Sam Walton (he launched Walmart when he was 42), Michael Dell type business models. The iPad passed me by; what I am waiting for is the Chrome OS Notebook. Make the screen big, yo. I want a cheap, light Chrome OS notebook to replace both the smartphone and the PC.

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But that does not affect my fascination with the Steve Jobs life story. He is an iCon. He is iLegend.

One does have to ask though, is the iPad Steve's final product?

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