The Legend of Speedo Guy

"Buying Your Kid an Internship"

This is one of the most controversial articles of the week -- it's flying around blogospheres and email inboxes. With the dismal job market, more and more parents are paying employers to hire their kids for unpaid internships:

...The whole idea of paying cash so your kid can work is sometimes jarring at first to parents accustomed to finding jobs the old-fashioned way -- by pounding the pavement. Susan and Raymond Sommer of tiny St. Libory, Ill., were dismayed when their daughter Megan, then a junior at a Kentucky university, asked them to spend $8,000 so she could get an unpaid sports-marketing internship last summer in New York City. Paying to work "was something people don't do around here," says Ms. Sommer, a retired concrete-company office worker; her husband, a retired electrical superintendent, objected that if "you work for a company, you should be getting paid."

But Megan, then 20, had already applied for 25 summer internships and hadn't received any replies. The Sommers gave in, and Ms. Sommer says they're glad they did...

Read the rest of the WSJ article here.

'Idiots' Indeed

The WSJ published an article today with a new spin on the infamous Wall Street bonuses. Some of the key points in the article explain how capping bonuses would not only create a "brain drain" from Wall Street, but it might also incentivise America's best and brightest to go abroad. It also covered some unintended reprocussions from diminishing bonuses:

A few quick facts about Wall Street bonuses. The pretext for the political outrage was the New York comptroller's report this week on the aggregate data for bonuses in 2008. That "irresponsible" bonus pool of $18 billion was for every worker in the New York financial industry, from top dogs to secretaries. This bonus pool fell 44% in 2008, the largest percentage decline in 30 years. The average bonus was $112,000; bonuses typically make up most of an employee's salary on Wall Street. The comptroller estimates that this decline will cost New York State $1 billion in lost tax revenue and New York City $275 million. Both city and state may have to announce layoffs.

Read the Wall Street Journal article here.

"Wall Street’s New Pariah Status"

This NY Times article identifies a few tensions between Wall Street and the rest of America. Everyone is looking for a little sympathy... and someone to blame:

A recent political cartoon in The Record, a newspaper in Hackensack, N.J., shows rats fleeing a sinking ship, labeled “Wall Street,” with treasure chests held aloft tagged “CEO” and “Bonus.” There are “I Hate Investment Banking” T-shirts for sale online. Last week on “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart rolled a clip of John A. Thain, Merrill Lynch’s chief executive, defending bonuses as a way to keep “your best people.”

“You don’t have ‘best people’!” Mr. Stewart shouted. “You lost $27 billion! Do you live in Bizarro World?”

All of this has taken a toll on the few industry veterans willing to discuss the subject...

Read the rest of article here and read about some more points of contention. It's quite insightful, and, at times, almost funny.

"Friends, Until I Delete You"

The NY Times covers the art of defriending people. Read the article here.

Altruism Meets a Weak Job Market

Katherine Atwill bypassed potential consulting jobs and joined Teach for America.

More people are applying to socially-oriented careers this year, such as Peace Corps and Teach for America. Here's a preview of the article:

"Young people ... are part of the growing ranks of college graduates who, amid a worsening job market, are contributing to a surge in applications and enlistments at public-service agencies like Teach for America and the Peace Corps. Indeed, only 59% of employers surveyed expect to hire 2008 graduates by the end of the summer, down from 76% the year before, according to a survey of about 1,000 employers by job-search company Monster Worldwide Inc.

But organizations cite another impulse behind this generation's embrace of nontraditional postgraduate employment: a simple desire to change the world."

Read the Wall Street Journal article here.

The Last Professor

Stanley Fish argues in a NY Times article that higher learning isn't what it used to be, and never will be again. Check out the article here. (It's not a light read, but it's short).