Another example of things that make the Internet great ...
Ever wonder why Yahoo! is called Yahoo!, or why SAAB is written all in caps? Or just curious about who, exactly, McDonald's and Kawasaki were named after? Well, wonder no more.
The Wikipedia -- a free, user-created encyclopedia -- includes a list of company name etymologies, running the gamut from ABN AMRO to Zeus. (Well, technically from 3M, since they start with numbers, but that doesn't sound as good.)
This review of a Willing Slaves, a book by Madeleine Bunting is the sort of thing that makes you wonder why we bother to work at all.
Hard work was supposed to bring wealth and satisfaction. Instead, argues Bunting, with an abundance of statistics and anecdotes to back her up, it has brought worry, illness, poverty and debt. Why do so many of us voluntarily submit ourselves to low, low wages, long, long hours and high stress? Why do we willingly enslave ourselves?
This is what's cool about the Internet. A Microsoft intern gets to have dinner (as part of a group) with Bill Gates — and through the intern's blog, everyone can get a peak at this once-in-a-lifetime sort of opportunity.
Jeff Maurone writes:
In ten minutes there was a donut or toroid of geekdom surrounding Bill that was three or four people deep, but after a few minutes I had worked my way to the front and got to spend about two hours standing with him, talking to him, and mostly listening to his responses to other people's questions.
(On a sidenote, and perhaps just because of my own geekery, I love the preciseness of "toroid" in that description.)
Working at a call center anywhere has always seemed like a tough job, but it the Indians who have recently taken charge of a large chunk of that market seem to be having a particularly hard time adjusting.
Now, to help the industry survive there -- and to cut down on employee turnover, which can top 100 percent -- the outsourcing call centers are trying to help Indians seem more American.
Reports the Los Angeles Times:
The Indians responded according to their own deepest natures: They were silent when they didn't understand, and they often committed to more than their employers could deliver. They would tell the Americans that someone would get back to them tomorrow to check on their problems, and no one would.Customer satisfaction plummeted. The U.S. clients grew alarmed. Some even returned their business to U.S. call centers.
Realizing that a new multibillion-dollar industry with 150,000 employees was at risk, Indian call centers have recently embarked on much more comprehensive training. New hires are taught how to express empathy, strategies to successfully open and close conversations, and above all how to be assertive, however unnatural it might feel.
Posted by tgibbons at 06:09 PM
Canadian blogger (and Tucows tech guru) AccordianGuy has some interesting thoughts on why breakup e-mails listing what's wrong with the break-up-ee (if that's a word) in bullet listsare becoming more common.
His guess: the effects that PowerPoint has wrought upon the culture.
I think that the "Dear Jane" emails that those people received were inspired by elements of office culture: PowerPoint, project post-mortems and annual performance reviews. Of the people who told me that they were dumped via email, all of their boyfriends worked white-collar jobs in which they either sat through or made PowerPoint presentations.
When I did a story on PowerPoint last year, I was amazed to find that there's widespread hatred of the program. Much of the opposition comes from people who believe that the way PowerPoint forces presenters into dumbed-down, overly simplistic presentations doesn't just make for boring meetings, but actually warps the way people think.