Reinventing Yourself: Tales of Career Changes

[payaSo]

Stuff Magazine has revealed "Survivor II" contestant Amber Brkich will be featured in various states of undress in their July issue.

"Amber is definitely the hottest reality-TV contestant so far, and that includes that old marine guy from last season," says Stuff Editor-In-Chief Greg Gutfeld. "Amber may have been under the radar, but she flew straight into our hearts. This is a monumental moment not only for Amber and Stuff Magazine, but for society in general."

The 22-year-old is attempting to launch a career in the entertainment biz rather than returning to her life as an administrative assistant. According to Amber, Stuff is a "more respectable" magazine than Playboy, and her two brothers who subscribe are excited to see her sexy pictorial. The comments, combined with previous words from Playboy that they'd likely wouldn't want her if she posed for any competition, could very well mean she won't appear as one of Hugh's girls anytime soon.

Source: Mystique Magazine

[lupuS]

David Brooks, 36, a programmer for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, was a Vincent van Gogh enthusiast in his spare time. Five years ago, Brooks decided it was time to take his hobby online and created The Vincent van Gogh Gallery (http://www.vangoghgallery.com/). In developing the site, Brooks located, scanned, and digitally mounted reproductions of about 2,200 van Gogh paintings, drawings, and sketches, and inluded the texts of all the artist's 864 surviving letters. The site draws 35,000 visitors a week and was so authoritative it has been praised by the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

An Internet-based poster shop in Boston agreed to sponsor the site, enabling Brooks to make some money from banner ads. He also entered into an agreement with a Dutch company named On-Site to publish his database on a CD-ROM.

With this initial success, Brooks felt he was close to realizing his dream of making a living as a van Gogh researcher and quit his job at the bank.

Does he live happily ever after?

Apparently not. In December 2000, Brooks was alerted by his friends at the van Gogh Museum that a rival site (http://www.about-van-gogh-art.com/) appeared to have been using Brooks's material without his permission. About Van Gogh Art is a commercial site with products such as van Gogh lunch boxes and reproductions made in China.

Brooks found out the hard way that copying websites is not only easy, it might even be legal. A lawyer for the rival site said Brooks is trying to exert rights over intellectual property he does not own. Van Gogh's paintings entered the public domain in Canada in 1940, and in the United States in 1960.

Brooks has succeeded in getting the rival to remove copies of the van Gogh letters, which, as translations, are protected by copyright law. In the meantime, some of Brooks's images, which appear to have been copied and reinstalled by the rival without any alteration, have also been removed.

When the rival site opened an online discussion forum, Brooks joined in and opened a thread about the ethics of stealing someone else's work and presenting it as your own. The thread soon attracted some very talkative Brooks followers and remained on the board for three days before being removed.

Brooks has hired a lawyer in the Netherlands to force the competing website to remove the images on the grounds of database copyright infringement, which is against the law in some European Union countries.

[§oullessPunk]

Pink Slips with a Silver Lining
Cisco gets creative about layoffs -- and keeps ties to its labor pool

If layoffs can have happy endings, this may be one case: Cisco Systems (CSCO), which dismissed 6,000 full-time workers in April, got creative about its severance package -- and decided to help charity. The San Jose (Calif.) company is allowing the pink-slipped who agree to work for a local nonprofit organization for a year to collect one-third of their salaries, plus benefits and stock options -- and be first in line for rehire once the economy recovers.

Nonprofits, of course, are delighted. "It's going to allow us to move ahead faster on technology projects," says Dave Sandretto, director of the food bank for Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. He's interviewing Cisco candidates for five accounting and computer-related positions.

Read the full story here (http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/may2001/ca20010601_887.htm)

[§oullessPunk]

Disgraced former-Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding has reportedly been shopping her surgically enhanced boobs around to Las Vegas casinos. Word is the knee-capping queen wants to star in a topless Ice Capades that would debut in time to ride the publicity wave emanating from the 2002 Winter Olympics in neighboring Utah.

According to the Las Vegas Sun, Tonya will make Sin City her base if she can cut a deal. The paper quotes one source close to the deal saying Harding is, "very serious about her Las Vegas options, and considering them in a long-term scenario."

[lupuS]

Whoopi Goldberg was a mortuary cosmetologist and a bricklayer before she became an actress.

[KuyaDanny]

(Thanks to pale_pilsen for posting the link to this story in another thread.)

Click here for full story. (http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/07/03/webmaster/index.html)

Not long ago, Philip Brandes, 26, could have been a shiny-happy poster boy for the dot-com entrepreneurial spirit.

The Montreal native started his first company while he was still an undergrad at the University of California at Santa Barbara, studying economics and business. As a college graduation present, his parents gave him money to invest in the stock market; instead he used the gift to finance an online fax product, which he later sold to eSynch. (What pluck!) With a bio like Michael Dell's and a physical resemblance to Matthew Perry, he tools around the Bay Area in a new Lincoln Navigator SUV, wearing Dr. Martens and a TAG Heuer watch.

But we all know what's been happening to the Philip Brandeses of the world over the past year.

When the last company Brandes invested in and worked for went out of business in August 2000, he found himself out of a job -- "a start-up guy" at a time when start-ups weren't starting.

But this whole dot-com downturn business hasn't snuffed out Brandes' conviction that there's money to be made online. These days he's pursuing a new entrepreneurial scheme: teaching other out-of-work dot-commers to become online pornographers.

[zimdude]

Virtual Tycoon players, take a look at recent history. Eight years ago, Brokers learn the hard way that money isn’t everything.

http://www.inq7.net/bus/2001/jul/31/bus_8-1.htm

By Tina Arceo-Dumlao
Inquirer News Service

IT SEEMED so long ago, but it was really just eight years back when it was every young graduate’s dream to become a stockbroker.

During the boom years in the early 1990s, the stockbroker personified the young upwardly mobile professional.

Barely out of college, they had their own cars, were paying for their own houses, partied left and right, and ate in all the right, expensive places. It was not unusual at that time to hear about brokers receiving 5-, 10- and even 12-month bonuses because business was just so good.

The really good ones who were pirated left and right by foreign stockbrokerages that set up shop here received car-and-housing packages as part of their signing bonuses.

Yes, those were the good times. The 30-share Philippine Stock Exchange composite index was hitting 3,000 points, and the value of trade reached an average 150 million dollars a day, which indicated the presence of foreign investors.

So what are the glamor jobs of today?

[KuyaDanny]

Welch, of G.E., Signs On at Clayton, Dubilier (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/business/03JACK.html?ex=1002772800&en=589ac1d1838b8e43&ei=5035&partner=MARKETWATCH)

By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

John F. Welch Jr., the former chairman of General Electric, decided on at least one second career path yesterday, joining the leveraged buyout firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice as a special partner.

Mr. Welch, who retired from General Electric in September, will act as a Mr. Fixit coach for businesses that Clayton, Dubilier buys to rebuild. Such a job would mirror his role at G.E., where he often made acquisitions to restructure and streamline the companies.

For Clayton, Dubilier, which has $6.6 billion in managed capital and controls Lexmark International (news/quote) and Kinko's among others, the appointment of Mr. Welch is a coup that analysts expect will bolster the firm's credibility and ability to win deals.

"I can't tell you exactly how we deserve this," Donald J. Gogel, president and chief executive of Clayton, Dubilier. "We're lucky."

[payaSo]

Displaced techies turn to public sector (http://www.usatoday.com/money/bcovwed.htm)

By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Genny Biggs moved to Silicon Valley from Washington, D.C., to be part of the Internet revolution. She ended up back at her non-profit roots.

Dazzled by the dot-com craze, Biggs plunged into the world of high-tech public relations in mid-1999.

But the experience left her cold when, at computer trade shows, she saw millions of dollars sunk into publicity that could have been spent on community programs.

"I felt as if I'd sold out," says Biggs, who previously worked with the Sierra Club.

Biggs, 28, vowed to work for a "higher purpose" — even if it meant a lower salary and longer hours. She ditched the public relations gig and joined a private environmental foundation in the valley early last year.

Many high-tech dreamers of the go-go '90s have turned away from the industry they once pursued for fame and riches. Many have no choice: The job market is bleak. Others can: The dot-com boom enabled them to make enough money, often via stock options, to trade fast-track lifestyles for low-paying positions at non-profits. Some, especially post-Sept. 11, are driven by the belief that they can change the world in ways outside of technology.

[zimdude]

Employer went bankrupt and lost your job?


Just be a Playboy Woman of Enron! (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/front/1472531)

[blueshark]

After so many years of working in a particular company / industry, are there people here who has been successful in their career shifts? i.e. from being an admin staff to marketing/sales people, sales to call center agents etc.

Just want to know your stories. Share naman po.

:)

[Tmac_1]

bump. good read.