Uh oh, we've got ourselves a true-blue corporate
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Showing posts with label At Work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label At Work. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
SAP admits to corporate espionage against Oracle
Uh oh, we've got ourselves a true-blue corporate
Monday, June 11, 2007
Email Bankruptcy
by Pnina Baumgarten
One way to get through that excess of emails waiting for you at the beginning, middle and end of every day is to file for "email bankruptcy":
"Last month, venture capitalist Fred Wilson drew a lot of attention on the Internet when he declared a 21st century kind of bankruptcy. In a posting on his blog about technology, Wilson announced he was giving up on responding to all the e-mail piled up in his inbox.Link: E-Mail Reply to All: 'Leave Me Alone' - washingtonpost.com
"'I am so far behind on e-mail that I am declaring bankruptcy,' he wrote. 'If you've sent me an e-mail (and you aren't my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again. I am starting over.'
"The term 'e-mail bankruptcy' may have been coined as early as 1999..."
Monday, April 23, 2007
Oracle Closes Acquisition of Hyperion
Oracle Friday announced that it has completed its tender offer for Hyperion Solutions Corporation...
Read more...
Friday, April 13, 2007
Oracle $3.3B Hyperion Deal Cleared
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. — Software company Oracle Corp. on Wednesday said it received regulatory clearance to acquire Hyperion Solutions Corp. for $3.3 billion.
The all-cash transaction was first announced in March.
The purchase of Santa Clara-based Hyperion is the company's largest since buying Siebel Systems Inc. in late 2005 for $6.1 billion.
Hyperion Solutions shares fell 5 cents at $51.85 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, and Oracle shares ended down 26 cents at $18.59 on the Nasdaq.
The Elements of E-Mail Style
It's easy — maybe too easy — to click 'Send,' but that little button contains a world of pitfalls. Ever fire off an angry all-caps e-mail? Or use a devious little BCC, to your later chagrin? Authors David Shipley and Will Schwalbe offer a guide to e-mailing in the modern world.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Oracle Announces Expiration of HSR Review
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.,
Friday, March 23, 2007
How to Turn Around a Bad Day at Work
How to Turn Around a Bad Day at Work - WikiHow: "Bad days happen to the best of us. Those are the days where you just wake up in a really bad mood, where something (or nothing) has made you angry, sad, frustrated, disappointed, whatever. You still have to get up and go to work, but before you even get there, you’re already seething inside. You try to do your job but somehow all the angry, dissatisfied clients have conspired to call you and complain on the same day - though you have no idea how they coordinated that little feat. Everything your co-workers say to you sounds incredibly stupid. Everyone seems out to annoy you. Not much fun, huh? Luckily, you can do something about it."
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Americans work more, seem to accomplish less
Thu Feb 23, 2006 9:10 AM ET
By Ellen Wulfhorst
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Most U.S. workers say they feel rushed on the job, but they are getting less accomplished than a decade ago, according to newly released research.
Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products.
The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say.
"Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically," said John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.
"We never concentrate on one task anymore. You take a little chip out of it, and then you're on to the next thing," Challenger said on Wednesday. "It's harder to feel like you're accomplishing something."
Unlike a decade ago, U.S. workers are bombarded with e-mail, computer messages, cell phone calls, voice mails and the like, research showed.
The average time spent on a computer at work was almost 16 hours a week last year, compared with 9.5 hours a decade ago, according to the Day-Timer research released this week.
Workers typically get 46 e-mails a day, nearly half of which are unsolicited, it said.
Sixty percent of workers say they always or frequently feel rushed, but those who feel extremely or very productive dropped to 51 percent from 83 percent in 1994, the research showed.
Put another way, in 1994, 82 percent said they accomplished at least half their daily planned work but that number fell to 50 percent last year. A decade ago, 40 percent of workers called themselves very or extremely successful, but that number fell to just 28 percent.
"We think we're faster, smarter, better with all this technology at our side and in the end, we still feel rushed and our feeling of productivity is down," said Maria Woytek, marketing communications manager for Day-Timers, a unit of ACCO Brands Corp.
The latest study was conducted among a random sample of about 1,000 people who work at least part time. The earlier study surveyed some 1,300 workers.
Expectations that technology would save time and money largely haven't been borne out in the workplace, said Ronald Downey, professor of psychology who specializes in industrial organization at Kansas State University.
"It just increases the expectations that people have for your production," Downey said.
Even if productivity increases, it's constantly outpaced by those expectations, said Don Grimme of GHR Training Solutions, a workplace training company based in Coral Springs, Florida.
"The irony is the very expectation of getting more done is getting in the way of getting more done," he said. "People are stressed out."
Companies that are flexible with workers' time and give workers the most control over their tasks tend to fare better against the sea of rising expectations, experts said.
Businesses that have moved to 24-hour operations, bosses who micro-manage and longer commutes all add to the problem, they said, while downsizing leaves fewer workers doing the work of those who left.
Finally, there's a trend among companies to measure job performance like never before, said Challenger.
"There's a sense that no matter how much I do, it's never enough," he said.
By Ellen Wulfhorst
Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products.
The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say.
"Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically," said John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.
"We never concentrate on one task anymore. You take a little chip out of it, and then you're on to the next thing," Challenger said on Wednesday. "It's harder to feel like you're accomplishing something."
Unlike a decade ago, U.S. workers are bombarded with e-mail, computer messages, cell phone calls, voice mails and the like, research showed.
The average time spent on a computer at work was almost 16 hours a week last year, compared with 9.5 hours a decade ago, according to the Day-Timer research released this week.
Workers typically get 46 e-mails a day, nearly half of which are unsolicited, it said.
Sixty percent of workers say they always or frequently feel rushed, but those who feel extremely or very productive dropped to 51 percent from 83 percent in 1994, the research showed.
Put another way, in 1994, 82 percent said they accomplished at least half their daily planned work but that number fell to 50 percent last year. A decade ago, 40 percent of workers called themselves very or extremely successful, but that number fell to just 28 percent.
"We think we're faster, smarter, better with all this technology at our side and in the end, we still feel rushed and our feeling of productivity is down," said Maria Woytek, marketing communications manager for Day-Timers, a unit of ACCO Brands Corp.
The latest study was conducted among a random sample of about 1,000 people who work at least part time. The earlier study surveyed some 1,300 workers.
Expectations that technology would save time and money largely haven't been borne out in the workplace, said Ronald Downey, professor of psychology who specializes in industrial organization at Kansas State University.
"It just increases the expectations that people have for your production," Downey said.
Even if productivity increases, it's constantly outpaced by those expectations, said Don Grimme of GHR Training Solutions, a workplace training company based in Coral Springs, Florida.
"The irony is the very expectation of getting more done is getting in the way of getting more done," he said. "People are stressed out."
Companies that are flexible with workers' time and give workers the most control over their tasks tend to fare better against the sea of rising expectations, experts said.
Businesses that have moved to 24-hour operations, bosses who micro-manage and longer commutes all add to the problem, they said, while downsizing leaves fewer workers doing the work of those who left.
Finally, there's a trend among companies to measure job performance like never before, said Challenger.
"There's a sense that no matter how much I do, it's never enough," he said.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The 12 steps to cure e-mail addiction
The 12 steps to cure e-mail addiction - CNN.com: "Alcoholics have one, and so do drug abusers. Now people addicted to e-mail also have a 12-step program designed to tackle their obsession."
Friday, January 19, 2007
Office Vocabulary
Blamestorming - Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.
Seagull Manager - A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, messes up everything, and then leaves.
Blowing Your Buffer - Losing your train of thought.
Chainsaw Consultant - An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee headcount, leaving the brass with clean hands.
CLM (Career-Limiting Move) - Used among microserfs to describe ill-advised activity, e.g., trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM.
Depotphobia - Fear associated with entering a Costco or Kmart because of how much money one might spend. Electronics geeks experience Shackophobia, Tandyagonia, or Circuit Cityatosis.
Adminisphere - The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the Adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
Dilberted - To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-a-cubicle comic strip character. "I've been dilberted again. The old man revised the specs for the fourth time this week."
Flight Risk - Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave the company or department soon.
404 - Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located. "Don't bother asking him -- he's 404, man."
Generica - Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, or housing development subdivisions. Used as in "We were so lost in Generica that I forgot what city we were in."
GOOD ("Get-Out-Of-Debt") Job - A well-paying job people will take to pay off their debts, which they will quit as soon as they are solvent again.
Keyboard Plaque - The disgusting buildup of dirt and crud found on computer keyboards.
Ohnosecond - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.
Percussive Maintenance - The fine art of whacking the daylights out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
Prairie Dogging - When someone yells or drops something loudly in a "cube farm" (an office full of cubicles) and all the co-workers' heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
Telephone Number Salary - A salary (or project budget) that has seven digits.
Umfriend - A relationship of dubious standing or a concealed intimate relationship, as in "This is Dale, my...um...friend."
Yuppie Food Stamps - The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATMs everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after a meal: "We owe $8 each, but all anybody's got are yuppie food stamps."
Seagull Manager - A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, messes up everything, and then leaves.
Blowing Your Buffer - Losing your train of thought.
Chainsaw Consultant - An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee headcount, leaving the brass with clean hands.
CLM (Career-Limiting Move) - Used among microserfs to describe ill-advised activity, e.g., trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM.
Depotphobia - Fear associated with entering a Costco or Kmart because of how much money one might spend. Electronics geeks experience Shackophobia, Tandyagonia, or Circuit Cityatosis.
Adminisphere - The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the Adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
Dilberted - To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-a-cubicle comic strip character. "I've been dilberted again. The old man revised the specs for the fourth time this week."
Flight Risk - Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave the company or department soon.
404 - Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located. "Don't bother asking him -- he's 404, man."
Generica - Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, or housing development subdivisions. Used as in "We were so lost in Generica that I forgot what city we were in."
GOOD ("Get-Out-Of-Debt") Job - A well-paying job people will take to pay off their debts, which they will quit as soon as they are solvent again.
Keyboard Plaque - The disgusting buildup of dirt and crud found on computer keyboards.
Ohnosecond - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.
Percussive Maintenance - The fine art of whacking the daylights out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
Prairie Dogging - When someone yells or drops something loudly in a "cube farm" (an office full of cubicles) and all the co-workers' heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
Telephone Number Salary - A salary (or project budget) that has seven digits.
Umfriend - A relationship of dubious standing or a concealed intimate relationship, as in "This is Dale, my...um...friend."
Yuppie Food Stamps - The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATMs everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after a meal: "We owe $8 each, but all anybody's got are yuppie food stamps."
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