This week, I observed a lot of discussion on the media related to ecology, sustainability, and Bitcoin’s place in the picture. As a person who is now professionally involved in looking for value in people and projects, I would like to refer to the main arguments mentioned in the discussion and explain what I believe is the value of Bitcoin.

Some ideas are worth spreading. With that thought in mind, in 1984, Marry Marks and Richard Saul Wurman found TED Conferences LLC. Now, in 2020, TED is going through a little revolution. Can we give TEDx talks in virtual reality? It turns out that yes - we can!

As we all know, women don’t have an easy time in their professional lives. However, while working with lots of people in pursuit of improving their situation in the job market, I noticed that some women also involuntarily make their situation in the job market even harder than it already is — in at least five different ways.

The space of online resources for PhDs thinking of transitioning to industry is massive! This blog post lists courses, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, content platforms, and online communities dedicated to helping PhDs in the job market.

This blog post is dedicated to Master students who are at the end of their Master’s programs, and consider going to grad school. What are the pros and cons of going for the academic career, as compared to starting an industry job? What is the best motivation to start a PhD?

In this blog post, Natalia Bielczyk and Elisenda Bonet-Carne discuss the similarities and differences between different post-PhD career tracks. There is a whole landscape of possibilities!

For my whole youth, I was spending most of my time reading books and going through thousands of textbook assignments. In the end, after twenty years of torturing myself with books, articles, and never-ending assignments, I realized that being an egghead doesn’t really prepare you for life in the real world. So, I made a 180-degree turn: I took a dive from the ivory tower straight to the street level.

When working with academics planning their first post-PhD jobs in the industry, one pattern keeps coming back: the more accomplished the person is in academic terms, the more difficult time they have with finding their first jobs outside academia. The underdogs on the other hand — the early career researchers who are nowhere near that accomplished, and who are often disrespected by their bosses and considered poor academics — are much quicker and more accurate in finding their next career paths. Often happier there as well.

It’s not a secret that both the Millennials and the Z-generation are vision- or mission-oriented. Young people are no longer looking for a paycheck in their jobs, but also a broader purpose (or, from Japanese, ikigai). This can have really interesting long-term consequences for the job market. In particular, one new type of job that is going to emerge soon.

A few days ago I had a long and interesting conversation with a friend who started doubting in her future in academia. She complained that academic life negatively changes both personality and mindset. This made me think a lot.

Is this me, or is this my millennial brain? I am asking myself this question a lot these days.

Almost every recruitment process for a large company these days, requires going through a battery of aptitude tests - especially in IT industry. IQ tests, emotional intelligence tests, personality tests, social skill tests. You will get tested inside and out. But there is one very crucial yet chronically overlooked factor of productivity which is typically not tested: the attention span.

Blockchain is already changing the world of supply chains, higher-education certificates, internet of things, communication between institutions etc. All these systems work well when they do not need to rely on human trust. In blockchain industry, trustless systems are implemented by means of decentralization. Does it also imply that you could, in principle, move labor onto a blockchain? One platform created with a purpose of creating such a friendly marketplace, is Moonlight. The main goal of this initiative is to optimize employment both from the employer’s and employee’s point of view. Could Moonlight change academia?

The year of 2009 was groundbreaking, for at least two separate reasons. Firstly, on January 3rd of 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin was mined. Secondly, on October 12th of 2009, Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom has became the first woman awarded with a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons". The clue of this work is a phenomenon known in economy as the tragedy of commons. This phenomenon occurs when a group shares a resource, but at the same time, every individual acts on their own behalf, which is often against the common interest of the community. Can we spot the tragedy of commons in academia?

Yesterday was a nostalgic day not only for me, but for every Polish person there is. The reason is because one of our little heroes, Tomasz Mackiewicz, is dying in Karakorum, and no one can really save him from death at this point. Climbing in Himalayas can seem like a distant and exotic concept, but one thing we can definitely learn from mountaineers is a team work.

It seems to me that the whole Uber phenomenon is ephemeral as in a few years, cab drivers - especially here, in Sillicon Valley - will most probably be replaced by self-driving cars. However, it is interesting to observe this phenomenon from the psychological point of view.