As I begin to write this, it is early 2020 and the covid-19 virus is wreaking havoc. First it was just China, then as it spread the rest of the world started seeing cases. The information is still incomplete. We don’t know, at least now, exactly how many people are really infected. We don’t know what the actual death percentage is going to be. We do know that it is low, relatively speaking, and it mostly affects those at risk with compromised immune systems, or those who are generally susceptible to viruses such as the elderly.

What I can see…

I had a conversation today with a coworker. We were discussing the “Medicare for All” movement. She’s younger than me but has had very significant health care issues. She’s also lived for extended periods of her life in parts of the world where socialized medical care is simply an accepted reality of life. I was very curious how these experiences would have colored her perspectives. She was fairly even keel on the pros and cons of the differing health care options of a private approach versus a single payer government run system. …

At one point in my job, I started receiving reports that had important metrics for our organization listed along with all the other similar organizations in our state. The problem, at least as I perceived it, was that the reports were in alphabetical order and it was sent as a PDF. I couldn’t easily see where we rated against our sister organizations. I took the time to copy the data into an excel spreadsheet so I could manipulate it and sent it to my supervisor thinking she’d be delighted that I made sure that she could easily identify our standing…

When I first started to write my book, I did what I do with any of my projects. I started researching how to do it. I read all sorts of articles on topics from production to promotion. One of the recurring themes was that to be successful I needed to build my platform. For practical purposes, this meant that I had to start a blog, which for me, extended into a podcast. I created them and have been producing content for both for many years now. Overtime, I realized that I was challenged by the rule of 2.5. If you…

When I mostly worked remotely, I didn’t have office mates and didn’t know what I was missing out on. Yes, it’s a bit of a pain to have to travel to an office every day and you are definitely more productive when you work from home but like most things in life, working in an office has some benefits you can’t find elsewhere. Specifically, for me, the biggest benefit is listening to the office chatter and conversations about things I’m very unfamiliar with. One of the topics that comes up every now and again is the social sororities some of…

First a primer on the Purple Squirrel. Jobs have fragmented in our modern economy. The more complex our world gets, the more we need specialists to do the specialized tasks. As an example, there are now six major branches of engineering. They include: Mechanical, chemical, civil, electrical, management, and geothermal. In addition there are literally hundreds of different subcategories under each main category. Engineering isn’t the only knowledge area that has expanded. It’s across all spectrums of knowledge.

As an example it wasn’t that long ago that computer science engineering and environmental engineering didn’t exist in the same way that…

I have a guilty pleasure. I like hearing the stories of all of my single friends who are dating. I have been married for nearly two decades which means I can’t recall what it was like to date. Even if I could, today’s dating world is very different than when I was out there. So hearing the stories of my friends’ experiences in the world of being single and trying to find a partner is like listening to a soap opera. It seems the soap opera analogy is apt because like those daytime dramas of yore, it’s a never-ending existence…

Authors Note: This article was inspired by the fact that over the last month I have had three different interactions with people, from three different private equity buyouts, and every interaction was negative. As a result, I wound up writing this article which turned into a vent piece.

Full disclaimer: I’m prejudiced against private equity as I write this due to a personal experience that was similar to the stories that I heard over the last few weeks. …