About 7 years ago, Google founded its People Analytics team, which collects and uses data to bolster the company’s own management practices. (You can thank this group for the death of Google’s infamous brain-teaser interview questions.)
This post has been corrected
The corporate tax rate in the US legally ranges from 15 to 35%. Many companies end up paying far, far less. In a report released today, the Institute for Policy Studies found (pdf) that seven of the country’s 30 largest companies by revenue paid out more to their chief executives than they did in corporate taxes in 2013, despite the fact that pre-tax incomes for those companies totaled more than $74 billion. Six of the 7 companies received tax refunds:
Slack, the increasingly popular messaging platform, is intended as a productivity enhancer, meant in large part to replace the time suck of email. To this end, it does a lot of clever things, which has made it enormously popular so quickly. But people will always find a way to procrastinate, and organizations to add layers of process.
First they came for the offices, replacing four-walls-and-a-door situations with desks in cubicles, even for workers of considerable stature (paywall).
Wal-Mart has a commanding lead in the US grocery market. But an urgent memo to staff obtained by the New York Times (paywall) makes it clear that the company is struggling during another fairly anemic quarter.
Most people find networking to be a somewhat uncomfortable endeavor. But the task of meeting and greeting strangers en masse—and ultimately asking them for business—can be far more painful for introverts, according to research. Extroverts, who tend to excel at building contacts outside their organization, shouldn’t be the only ones using the skill to earn more and advance in their careers.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz likes to experiment in things other than pumpkin lattes. He has inserted himself and his company with varying degrees of success into myriad social issues. His newest focus is on American veterans, and includes the following: a commitment to hiring 10,000 vets and military spouses over five years, work by his family foundation on expanding services and training, and the writing of a book with Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran on some of the overlooked stories of this generation of veterans.
Four people have started a class action lawsuit (pdf) against LinkedIn over its “reference search” function that allows anyone with a premium account access a list of references for anyone with an account—including other account holders who have worked for the same employer at the same time.
At a 2011 conference where prominent hedge fund managers presented key investment ideas, Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn raked Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, known for its K-Cup machines and pods, over the coals. It was a brutal presentation, more than 100 slides long, that argued the company was all but finished once its patent on K-Cup technology expired. It also alleged “aggressive” revenue recognition. The stock nosedived that day and again the next month on a disappointing quarter, and critics of the remarkably wasteful concept of single-serve coffee consumption rejoiced.
Project Loon director Mike Cassidy indeed has one of the coolest jobs at Google–trying to deliver high-speed internet to some of the most remote parts of the world, using balloons in the stratosphere. At Quartz’s The Next Billion conference, he talked about the challenges of operating equipment in an environment that’s -50 degrees celsius, to bring the mobile internet to the 2.7 billion people that have no access. And in an interview afterward, he described how he goes about selecting people for his team.
Google’s intensive studies on hiring that have changed how it works, leading to the elimination of brainteaser questions and GPA as deciding hiring factors. But the most important rule it follows is remarkably simple: to never once compromise on a high hiring bar.
A particularly bad day of smog—or in this case, a bad sandstorm in Israel—is enough to dent performance on a college entrance exam, reduce college enrollment, and put a dent in wages 10 years after the test according to new NBER working paper.
It’s rare to see a liquor company give up an entire brand in exchange for a piece of another. But that’s what Diageo, the world’s largest liquor company, is doing with Bushmills Irish Whiskey. It’s selling its entire Bushmills line to Jose Cuervo to acquire the other 50% of luxury tequila brand Don Julio (the half it doesn’t already own). Don Julio did about $168 million in sales last year, most of them through Diageo. Bushmills sales totaled around $75 million.
Soft US foot traffic during peak pumpkin spice latte season and an anemic outlook for sales have Starbucks investors worried. The company is trying a bunch of things to try to kickstart business, like opening a new set of premium cafes. But its biggest bet is on its mobile technology and new strategies to boost customer convenience.
Responding to allegations of cheating based on “specific, reliable information,” ETS, the company that administers the SAT college admissions exam, will delay scores for all students living in South Korea and China who took the test on Oct 11.
No technology company will spend more on research and development this year than Samsung. In fact, the electronics maker will outspend every company in the world except for Volkswagen, the top R&D spender for the third year running, according to consulting firm Strategy&.
Social media publishing startup Buffer publishes not only the salaries of its employees, but also the formula it uses to calculate them. It has made its revenue figures publicly available, as well as its equity structure.
American attitudes towards marijuana have undergone a pretty radical shift. The country has gone from the heavy, anti-drug messages of the 1980s and early 1990s, to legalization for medical purposes, to wholesale legalization in several states. Recreational use is now legal in Colorado and Washington, and 24 out of 50 states have made it either legal in one form or another, or have decriminalized its use.
The question of whether to buy or rent can have very different answers depending on where you live. There’s been a big split between housing markets that had a brief decline during the great recession and are now beginning to overheat, and those that are still in the midst of a very slow recovery.
Earlier this year, Procter & Gamble announced that it planned to get rid of as many as 100 brands in an effort to slim down the company. It revealed today that it is going through with the biggest anticipated part of that plan, and will spin off its valuable but stagnant Duracell battery business.
To be a great boss, you don’t have to be an extroverted back-slapper. A growing body of research suggests introverts can be excellent leaders too.
Disciples of the investing firm Berkshire Hathaway and its legendary leader, Warren Buffett, know that his mentors in investing were Benjamin Graham and Charlie Munger. But when Lawrence Cunningham, author of the recently-published Berkshire Beyond Buffett, asked the Berkshire CEO who should write the foreword, Buffett immediately suggested his friend of more than 40 years—Tom Murphy.
Is there a burrito barrier?
