Max Nisen

It seems intuitive that engineers and computer scientists would prefer working from home, since tasks like writing complex computer code require intense, solitary focus. But a debate started on Y Combinator’s Hacker News, the popular forum for tech types, has raised the question of whether, despite the interruptions and agitations of office life, people who do collaborative work are better off working from one place.

Network Rail CEO Mark Carne declined his bonus today, taking accountability for a rail work fiasco that forced a shutdown of busy King’s Cross station in London on the Saturday after Christmas. Plum Creek Timber CEO Rick Holley was similarly contrite this month when he returned a stock award, as a show of solidarity with shareholders who’ve suffered this year from a decline in the value of their investment in the Seattle-based company.

Samsung Electronics is struggling to maintain and grow its lead in the most important technology market, and the South Korean company now thinks changing its traditionally rigid corporate culture is key to regaining momentum.

The invented corporate buzzword has been around for years, but the burger chain Shake Shack has taken things to a new level in its S-1 filing for an IPO.

Many young people will agree that voicemail—once essential in business and personal communications—has in just a few years become basically irrelevant and actually quite annoying. So Coca-Cola’s November memo announcing that it would disconnect landline voicemails at its headquarters comes as a vindication for those trying to convince the last holdouts among families, friends, and colleagues that voicemail is an exceedingly bad way to get in touch.

The word “startup” evokes an image of a bunch of highly-paid twenty-somethings, long on technology skills, and short on loyalty.

Overnight, after spinning off its research based drug business into AbbVie, Abbott Laboratories found itself a very different company. It didn’t just completely switch up what it sold. The parts of the world and people that mattered most changed, too.

Punched walls, broken phones, thrown pens, and slammed doors.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer created a furor when she ordered the company’s remote workers back to the office in early 2013. But that move was minor compared to some of the deeper management issues at the company, according to an adapted excerpt of Nicholas Carlson’s upcoming book, Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!, just published in The New York Times (paywall).

LinkedIn is a must-have for many professionals, even the happily employed. It pays to have some presence on the career-oriented social network to generate an early and recognizable Google search result where you have control over how your background is portrayed.

Facing dismal sales numbers around the world, McDonald’s is in the midst of a major transformation of its management structures and food. The company revealed this week that it will offer customized burgers, conduct a massive review of its ingredients and cooking methods, and axe eight menu items and five “Extra Value Meals” from an increasingly bloated list.

One company you wouldn’t expect to stumble in China is Wal-Mart. It has juiced growth with cheap manufactured goods from the country for years. It had equally high hopes for China as a retail market. During the global recession, China offered a rare bright spot, showing big sales numbers and growth.

While there’s no denying the success that Keurig Green Mountain has had with its K-Cup coffee machines, there are plenty of reasons to lament it. For starters, single-serve K-Cups are awful for the environment, and the coffee inside of them costs substantially more per pound (paywall) than even freshly roasted specialty coffee. But now, even loyal users of Keurig brewing systems are angry—and they’re fighting back by hacking the company’s new machines.

Mike Jeffries, the longtime CEO of teen clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, stepped down effective today without a successor. Jeffries weathered controversies that may have sunk many other CEOs, and defined the company’s previously successful aesthetic, but he couldn’t weather changing tastes and a reversal in the stock performance:

There’s been a great deal of attention paid to the supposed growing talent rivalry between Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Silicon Valley started booming just as Wall Street tried to recover from the financial crisis, which created a new post-graduate destination for young over-achievers. Now many MBAs at top US schools are picking tech over finance, and several US banks have upped analyst salaries to stay attractive.

In addition to running one of the world’s largest charitable foundations, and taking on a dramatically expanded role at Microsoft, Bill Gates is a voracious reader and produces an annual list of his favorite reads.

Today’s college students are more aware and informed about rising costs and financial aid, and more sensitive to price. That’s going to put ongoing pressure on the whole higher education industry’s finances, according to a Moody’s report (paywall) which gave a gloomy outlook for the whole sector.

It’s the holiday season, and millions of people are about to get a flood of unsolicited career advice from older relatives.

Nearly everybody who went to secondary school remembers being peer-pressured into something—pranks, parties, or cutting class. It’s a time when people tend to be at their most insecure, and conscious of what others think of them. That spills over into decisions about the future: some students make poor decisions about their education because they’re worried about how peers will perceive them.

In 2012, Spain’s ruling party raised taxes on theater and movie tickets to 21%. The tax rate on magazines, including pornographic ones, is only 4%.

The United States is still the world’s most popular destination for highly skilled professionals. But it doesn’t seem to have quite the allure it used to.

Flash sales site and retailer Fab’s rise was as meteoric as anybody’s in Silicon Valley: it went from scratch to $250 million in sales in just two years. A little more than a year ago, it raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation, bringing it to a total of $310 million in venture capital funding.

RelSci has become a favorite tool of some of the biggest banks and companies in the world. It scrapes data from thousands of sources to let you know exactly how you’re connected to just about anybody in the world as well as the best way to get in touch with them.

When students pick a university and a major, they’re not always conscious of the debt burden they’re assuming. What you study impacts what you earn in a pretty substantial way. A new report and interactive tool from the Hamilton Project shows exactly how much tougher, say, drama majors in the US have it than engineers.