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100,000+ Layoffs in Financial Services YTD... A Good Thing for Innovation?
The best and brightest minds in the country have been investing their human capital into financial services because that's where the big money has been for so long. People that would have been innovating in industries like technology, life sciences, and energy have not been. And that could all change now.
Year-to-date, over 100,000 jobs in the financial services industry have been lost, and that number will most likely grow in the coming months. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Americans will have to sacrifice and work hard to pull out of this mess. Reigning in the Fed's policy to encourage credit and discourage debt would be a great place to start. Reigning in waste in both government and industry is another rat-hole that needs to be spring-cleaned.
And getting back to our roots of making it easy, easy, easy to start new businesses is another place where we need to get to work (Right now, it's easier to start a company in Communist China than California. If you had the choice, where would you invest? That's one of the reasons we're losing jobs overseas, by the way).
In any given population about 10% of the people are entrepreneurial. 10% of 100,000 is 10,000, so 10,000 entrepreneurial employees have been laid off. And these aren't just run-of-the mill employees that are losing their jobs. These are the best and brightest of America's universities. They are the creme of the creme. (And in the case of investment banking firms, a much higher percentage of entrepreneurs are drawn to these companies than the 10% figure above, so perhaps my 10,000 number is too conservative).
In any case, I'm very interested to see how this all turns out. Maybe several thousand of those who have been laid off will start new ventures. Maybe they'll join new ventures. Or maybe they'll come to work in bigger companies and help them innovate. In any case, these entrepreneurial problem-solvers can be a great help to the economy as they leave financial services. But the number need not be big if the quality and stamina of the individual is high enough.
How many awesome people did it take to start Google? 2. What about Apple? 2. Microsoft? 2. Maybe the next Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Larry Page or Sergey Brin is holding a pink slip from Lehman Brothers in his hands, and maybe he's about to create 1,000 new jobs and help to write another chapter in America's tech history. What do you think?
Find Your Passion in Life and You Will Come Alive - Fence-Building on Esperanza
"A successful life is one that is lived through understanding and pursuing one's own path, not chasing after the dreams of others." Chin-Ning Chu My passion is creating value for others. A quick story to illustrate. I was 21, had just returned from a 2-year service and teaching mission.
I didn't have a whole lot to do yet, and so I found myself scrambling to find creative ways to spend my time. I don't remember all the how's and what's, but my dad and I decided to build a fence in the backyard. As I recall, I went to my dad to get a list of all the materials that we would need. "Make sure the fence boards are y long, and make sure the posts are specially treated to expand and contract so they don't crack when the seasons change.
Get y type of cement, and make sure that you don't forget x." After getting everything we needed came the work. We hammered and nailed and screwed for 2 days straight. My dad's fence-building experience guided us throughout the project. One of the days my dad and I worked in the rain, but we were happy. We had already made up our mind that we would create this fence, and we weren't going to finish until it was done. Finally, we looked at what we had built. Beautiful. This fence was perfect. We looked at what we had done, and were pleased with the work.
The fence sloped perfectly down because of how we had measured and aligned the posts and boards throughout the process of building. This new wooden barrier was very sturdy throughout its 40 foot or-so span because we had taken special care to cement the posts individually and tested them to make sure they had dried correctly. The point of the story is this: My sense of accomplishment came because of what I had created -- that the thing I had made was good.
It would serve a useful purpose for my family. I was very pleased with that, and walked away feeling a very strong sense of accomplishment. Does that mean that I want to build fences for a living? Honestly, no. My passion is in technology, so that's where I'd prefer to build. But I look at the fence-building story as a metaphor for my life. I find that the times where I'm truly satisfied is when I'm building value for others, when I'm creating something useful for another person.
Where my efforts can have an impact for good on somebody else's life. "A successful life is one that is lived through understanding and pursuing one's own path, not chasing after the dreams of others." Chin-Ning Chu What's your passion? Your path? Have you found it? Are you pursuing it? Find out, and you will come alive. I know that I have. You might find it in something simple like building a fence. Pick this up in a feed? Go to the original article and make a comment.
