Tech Geeks

We can't get no job satisfaction.

Even Americans who are lucky enough to have work in this economy are becoming more unhappy with their jobs, according to a new survey that found only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their work.

That was the lowest level ever recorded by the Conference Board research group in more than 22 years of studying the issue. In 2008, 49 percent of those surveyed reported satisfaction with their jobs.

The drop in workers' happiness can be partly blamed on the worst recession since the 1930s, which made it difficult for some people to find challenging and suitable jobs. But worker dissatisfaction has been on the rise for more than two decades.

"It says something troubling about work in America. It is not about the business cycle or one grumpy generation," says Linda Barrington, managing director of human capital at the Conference Board, who helped write the report, which was released Tuesday.

Workers have grown steadily more unhappy for a variety of reasons:

- Fewer workers consider their jobs to be interesting.

- Incomes have not kept up with inflation.

- The soaring cost of health insurance has eaten into workers' take-home pay.

The findings coincide with a CBS News poll that reports that more than one in four says they have worse opportunities than their parents' generation.

The poll was taken as part of CBS News' "Where America Stands" series, an in-depth look at where the country stands today on key topics and an outlook for the future decade.


If the job satisfaction trend is not reversed, economists say, it could stifle innovation and hurt America's competitiveness and productivity. And it could make unhappy older workers less inclined to take the time to share their knowledge and skills with younger workers.

Nate Carrasco, 26, of Odessa, Texas, says he's been pretty unhappy in most of his jobs, including his current one at an auto parts store.

"There is no sense of teamwork in most places any more," Carrasco gripes.

When the Conference Board's first survey was conducted in 1987, most workers - 61 percent - said they were happy in their jobs. The survey of 5,000 households was conducted for the Conference Board by TNS, a global market research company.

One clue that may explain workers' growing dissatisfaction: Only 51 percent now find their jobs interesting - another low in the survey's 22 years. In 1987, nearly 70 percent said they were interested in their work.

Workers who find their jobs interesting are more likely to be innovative and to take the calculated risks and the initiative that drive productivity and contribute to economic growth, Barrington says.

"What's really disturbing about growing job dissatisfaction is the way it can play into the competitive nature of the U.S. work force down the road and on the growth of the U.S. economy - all in a negative way," says Lynn Franco, another author of the report and director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center.

Conference Board officials and outside economists suggested that weak wage growth helps explain why workers' unhappiness has been rising for more than 20 years. After growing in the 1980s and 1990s, average household incomes adjusted for inflation have been shrinking since 2000.

Also, compared with 1980, three times as many workers contribute to the cost of their health insurance - and those contributions have gone up. The average employee contribution for single-coverage medical care benefits rose from $48 a month to $76 a month between 1999 and 2006.

Workers under 25 expressed the highest level of dissatisfaction. Roughly 64 percent of workers under 25 say they were unhappy in their jobs. The recession has been especially hard on young workers, who face fewer opportunities now and lower wages, some analysts say.

The most satisfied were those ages 25 to 34, who may see some opportunities for upward mobility as baby boomers retire. Around 47 percent of workers 25 to 34 say they were happy in their jobs.

Some other key findings of the survey:

- Forty-three percent of workers feel secure in their jobs. In 2008, 47 percent said they feel secure in their jobs, while 59 percent felt that way in 1987.

- Fifty-six percent say they like their co-workers, slightly less than the 57 percent who said so last year but down from 68 percent in 1987.

- Fifty-six percent say they are satisfied with their commute to work even as commute times have grown longer over the years. That compares with 54 percent in 2008 and 63 percent in 1987.

- Fifty-one percent say their are satisfied with their boss. That's down from 55 percent in 2008 and around 60 percent two decades ago.

Carrasco said he wishes his bosses would take time to listen to workers' ideas - and their difficulties on the job.

"Most of the time they only listen to what their bosses are saying," he says. "Bosses need to come down to the employee level more and see what actually goes on, versus what their paperwork tells them is happening in the stores."

It wouldn't be fair to blame low job satisfaction solely on bad bosses, Barrington says.

"It is two-way responsibility," she says. "Workers also have to figure out what they should be doing to be the most engaged in their jobs and the most productive."

Nokia unveiled N900, its first smart phone running on Linux software, aiming at improving its offering at the top end of the market.
The Nokia N900 runs on theLinux-based Maeme 5 software, featuring true multitasking with applications as well as Web browsing with Adobe Flash support.
Nokia’s workhorse Symbian operating system controls half of the smartphone market volume — more than its rivals Apple, Research in Motion and Google put together. Nokia said Linux would work well in parallel with Symbian in its high-end product range.

“As Nokia announces the software platform that will drive its future services aspirations it created a dedicated solutions unit — the challenge will be to ensure that all these elements work in harmony in the face of fierce competition from Apple and Google,” said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.

The new N900 model, with cellular connection, touch screen and slide-out keyboard, will retail for around $712, excluding subsidies and taxes.
Nokia also unveiled a new Solutions business unit, which aims to better tie together its phone operations and new mobile Internet services offering.
Technical details of N900:
Display:
3.5 inch touch-sensitive widescreen display
800 × 480 pixel resolution
Web browsing:
Maemo browser powered by Mozilla technology
Adobe Flash™ 9.4 support
Full screen browsing
Camera:
5 megapixel camera (2584 × 1938 pixels)
Image formats: JPEG
CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens
3 × digital zoom
Autofocus with assist light and two-stage capture key
Dual LED flash
Full-screen viewfinder
Photo editor on device
TV out (PAL/NTSC) with Nokia Video Connectivity Cable (CA-75U, included in box) or WLAN/UPnP
Landscape (horizontal) orientation
Capture modes: Automatic, portrait, video, macro, landscape, action
Video:
Wide aspect ratio 16:9 (WVGA)
Video recording file format: .mp4; codec: MPEG-4
Video recording at up to 848 × 480 pixels (WVGA) and up to 25fps
Video playback file formats: .mp4, .avi, .wmv, .3gp; codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263
Music and audio playback:
Maemo media player
Music playback file formats: .wav, .mp3, .AAC, .eAAC, .wma, .m4a
Built-in FM transmitter
Ring tones: .wav, .mp3, .AAC, .eAAC, .wma, .m4a
FR, EFR, WCDMA, and GSM AMR
Digital stereo microphone
DLNA

Facebook has announced a partnership with Skype to add video chat to the social networking site.
The move is likely to be seen as a shot across the bow of Google, which recently launched a Facebook rival, Google+, also featuring video calling.
This is not the first time Facebook and Skype have teamed up – they already share some instant messaging tools.
Skype is in the process of being bought by Microsoft, which is a major shareholder in Facebook.
The new video-call service was launched by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who also revealed that the site now had more than 750 million users.
However, he said that the total number of active users was no longer a useful measure of the site’s success.
Instead, the amount of sharing – of photographs, videos and web links – was a better indication of how people engaged with the site, explained Mr Zuckerberg.
At launch, Facebook’s video chat service will only be able to connect two users face-to-face, whereas Google’s system allows group video calls, known as Hangouts.

Mark Zuckerberg: “This type of thing is only possible because of the social infrastructure that already exists”

The latest version of Thunderbird includes more than 390 improvements and performance enhancements that make Thunderbird more responsive, faster to start up and easier to use.  Thunderbird delivers several improvements to some favorite features such as RSS feeds, Attachment management, and Tabs which can now be reordered and dragged into a new window.

1. Persevere

“It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

Your blog won’t succeed overnight; success requires perseverance! There’s no such thing as an “overnight success.” What often appears to happen overnight is the result of many years of work.

This is what I call the “silent years” of success. If you can persevere through the “silent years,” then you will qualify to succeed.

Eddie Cantor said, “It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.”

2. Focus

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”

I like to say, you can do anything, but not everything! To succeed in blogging you must give your blog the attention it deserves. If you want a part-time income, then you put in part-time hours, if you want a full-time income, …you’ll have to put in full-time hours.

Focus your efforts, if you want to succeed! Focused energy is power, and it’s the difference between success and failure.

If you never focus your efforts …you won’t have a future, just a longer today.

3. Create Value

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

Don’t waste your time trying to create a successful blog, dedicate your time creating a valuable blog. If your blog is valuable to others, it will succeed.

You create value for others by solving their problems. Your blog must solve people’s problems. You will only be rewarded in this lifetime for the problems that you solve for others.

Labor to be valuable and success will chase you down!

4. Be Curious

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

What you’re curious about is what other like-minded people are also curious about, so blog about things that pique your curiosity.

Don’t write about the mundane, and the obvious; explore your curiosity. Research the unknown and document what has never been documented before.

You have to “think bigger,” Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

You have to think differently, he said, “He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”

5. Make Mistakes

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

Make mistakes; mistakes make you better, smarter, faster, and more relevant. If you’re not making mistakes then you’re not making progress. Get rejected a few times, mess up a few projects, this is the pathway to success.

Want to succeed twice as fast, make twice as many mistakes, run into twice as many obstacles.

Frank Clark said, “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”

6. Don’t Be Insane

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

You can’t keep doing the same thing everyday and expect different results. In other words, if your blogging routine is the same from month-to-month, your results will be the same from month-to-month.

In order for your results to change, you must change your actions, to the degree that your actions change will be to the degree that your results change.

7. Expect Opposition

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

There will always be opposition. People will oppose your blog, your ideas, and the risk that you’re taking. Zig Ziglar said, “Little men, with little minds, and little imaginations, go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.” Never let “little men” stop you from achieving your dreams. Great spirits have always encountered great opposition.

8. Play Better

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”

When it’s all said and done, your success will depend on how well you played the game. You must commit to play the game better than anyone else. If you can play the game “better,” you will succeed!