Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Growth is no longer the enemy of the planet; In tech, Asians are left out at the top; Why Gen Y finds it tough to be hired

1 Growth is no more the enemy of the planet (Chris Huhne in The Guardian) Until now the story of human prosperity has been all about cheap, abundant energy. However, something big has been happening. For the first time in history, we are growing richer while using less energy. That is unalloyed good news for budgets, incomes and the planet. We have reached a technological tipping point.

From the middle ages, living standards just edged up at a snail’s pace, and we did little damage to the planet, because growing forests absorbed carbon from wood burning. The population was small. We led lives that were, in Hobbes’ phrase, “nasty, brutish and short”. Then we started burning coal on a large scale in the 18th century, and the industrial revolution made the graph look like a hockey stick: suddenly incomes were doubling in decades, following centuries of stability.

After allowing for inflation, real GDP in England and Wales doubled from 1830 to 1864, again by 1898, and again by 1951, despite two world wars. This unprecedented prosperity and welfare was inextricably linked to the burning of fossil fuels, and therefore to the beginning of carbon emissions and global warming. And we are paying with the steady rise in carbon and temperatures compared with pre-industrial levels.

The good news is that we can increasingly see a future where technology does most of the change for us. Readers of the Digest of United Kingdom energy statistics will find an extraordinary table in the new edition: the two-century link between growth and energy has broken. The UK economy has doubled in real terms since 1985, but total energy consumption is exactly the same as it was in that year. Indeed, energy consumption has fallen since 1970 while the economy has nearly trebled in size.


2 In tech, Asians are left out at the top (Kristen V Brown in San Francisco Chronicle) When Buck Gee was a vice president at Cisco Systems, he one day looked around his desk and noticed that he stood out in one key way: Gee was the only Chinese American executive in Cisco's US product development group. In fact, there were very few Asian American executives at all.

Since then, Gee, who retired from Cisco in 2008, has been a man on a mission. Asians are generally well-represented in technology companies among the rank and file, but few ascend the corporate ladder to the top. Gee wants to change that. The recent release of data on the diversity of employees by more than a dozen tech companies has lent new vigor to Gee's campaign to shatter what he calls the "bamboo ceiling."

He points to Yahoo, where Asians hold 17 percent of leadership positions while making up 39 percent of its US workforce. That pattern persists across most tech companies. "A long time ago, Asians were considered the model minority," Gee said. "But certainly, at least in business, we're now the missing minority."

In a paper Gee published this year, he noted that factors preventing more Asian Americans from moving up the ranks include a traditional deference to authority, ineffective communication skills and an aversion to risk taking. Many Asians, he said, are brought up with an emphasis on acquiring skills and achievements, but not on the "soft skills" necessary for managing people at a high level. But the biggest problem may be that no one seems interested in talking about the lack of Asians at the top.


3 Why Gen Y finds it hard to be hired (Sylvia Pennington in Sydney Morning Herald) While over-50s say the odds are stacked against them when it comes to getting a job, the going is equally tough for those at the other end of the age spectrum - school leavers and young people with minimal work experience.

Older Aussies believe ageism and a risk-averse labour market are some of the reasons they're out of favour with employers. But why are Australian businesses also saying no to the notion of taking on and training up a young 'un? Too expensive and too much aggro, says the founder of the MiniMovers removalist chain, Mike O'Hagan, who used to pride himself on giving a couple of school leavers a go each year.

“When you have a downturn in the market . . . hiring young people is going to be one of the first things you stop,” he says. The lacklustre work ethic and entitlement mentality of the latest Me Generation have also soured his attitude in recent years. Many youngsters have had their sights set too high, both at school and at home, and view a good job as their right, regardless of their ability, O'Hagan says.

Latest jobless figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggest plenty of employers share O'Hagan's views, given the growing number of youngsters languishing in the job queue. The national youth unemployment rate for 15 to 24 year olds looking for work has risen to a 12 year high of 13.1 per cent, more than double the general unemployment rate of 5.8 per cent.

Kids who've seen their parents on Struggle Street are often the best bet, agrees Peter Coronica, the former long-time owner of Melbourne's CafĂ© Florentine. “If they're from too affluent a family, you know they won't work hard,” he says. “They think they're too good to be a waiter. They treat work like a game of hopscotch . . . they're often searching for something that doesn't exist.”



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