Stories that make me glad to be an academic
In a "wage management initiative" (how's that for corporate speak), Circuit City cut 3,500 jobs yesterday. These were not bad employees--in fact, the problem was that due to expertise and experience, they were just making too much money. Many positions will be filled with new hires making substantially less money.
Having faced a potential downsizing in my dept. a few years back, I feel like I can emphathize more with employees in this kind of situation. But this is still pretty cold stuff--money over people. Especially after reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch on the plane ride back from New York, I'm sure glad to be in a profession where performance is still the overriding job performance measure.