Salary Negotiation Tips How Much Are Benefits Actually Worth

Salary Negotiation Tips How Much Are Benefits Actually WorthSalary Negotiation Tips How Much Are Benefits Actually WorthQ How much are benefits actually worth? For example, if someone is willing to take a pay cut for more vacation days, how much is each vacation day worth? What are some additional perks and benefits a candidate could negotiate for aside from a higher salary?A There are two kinds of benefits objective, and subjective. Each has its own yardstick. Subjective things are assessed relative to your values. For instance, you might take less money in exchange for the ability to work from home. You might want to do that to save expenses such as wear and tear on your car, or it could be valuable to you as lifestyle freedom. These are not measured to performance of the geschftsleben or a compensation package, which are more objective.One example is a person who has adopted a child and wants to be there for her, but also needs to work to pay the rent. For that person, it is impor tant to have the ability to work from home to be around for the child. Thats worth maybe tens of thousands of dollars to this candidate. Or maybe the time it takes you to commute to a higher-paying job doesnt work out in terms of gas expenditure and the additional wear and tear on your car compared to a job with a lower salary that is closer to home.Objective things would include stock options, bonuses, retirement contributions, severance, health benefits - items that can very easily be quantified into dollars. Here you need to calculate the best-case and worst-case scenarios and youll know your short- and long-term compensation. If stock options are worth one percent if the company is sold, you get one percent of whatever the selling price is. You can then calculate the potential selling price so you have some idea of what that means to you. You can make the same sort of calculations with bonuses, healthcare, etc.Next weeks question Did I sabotage my chances for this position beca use I disclosed my past salary and it was too high?

Using AI to Manage the Grid

Using AI to Manage the Grid Using AI to Manage the Grid Using AI to Manage the GridBig Data is coming to the nations electric gridfinally.More municipal officials and utilities are already using it to promote smart city development. Now the Department of Energy is moving on a plan to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop an autonomous grid. One of the first steps is a project to create algorithms and tools to gather and digest data from satellite imagery, utility operations, and other sources to build a body of knowledge on how electrical distribution systems work, identify places where the grid is vulnerable, reinforce those spots and recover quickly if a failure occurs.SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a research center for astrophysics, photon science, accelerator and particle physics. Image Stanford UniversityThe idea is to identify anomalies, find trends and then alert system operators, says Sila Kiliccote, director of DOEs SLAC National Accelerator L aboratory at Stanford University. SLAC is the lead agency for the project, which also includes Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other federal labs, as well as utility partners including the National Electric Rural Cooperative. The project will be the first of its kind to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the resilience of the grid.The Grid Resilience and Intelligence Project, or GRIP, is a $6-million DOE effort and one of seven projects addressing grid resiliency and security. It is not starting from scratch, Kiliccote says, and will draw from work done by Stanfords GisMo Lab, especially its VADER project.VADER, or Visualization and Analytics for Distributed Energy Resources, is an effort to develop and model a platzdeckchen of tools to monitor and oversee control of new electric distribution systems, verify them using data from industry partners, and validate them in a pilot project. Kiliccote points to the changes happening in the distribution sy stem because of the increasing number of renewable energy projects feeding power to the grid. The existing system was designed to handle passive loads traveling one way, from the generation source to the user. Increasingly, loads can now travel in both directions and with a high degree of variability. On the user side, electric vehicles, demand response, and smart loads compound the problem.Theres a paradigm shift in the way assets are being run, she says. Present models dont recognize new types of inverters, for instance.Solar inverters automatically convert variable direct current from photovoltaic systems to AC current that flows into the grid. Berkeley Lab has developed control systems for the new inverters, and will build on that for GRIP.Berkeley Lab has pioneered the development of algorithms that can optimally manage distributed energy resources like wind, solar, and batteries, and are completely plug and play, said Dan Arnold, the research scientist leading the Berkeley pro ject. For GRIP, those controls will be deployed and tested on an existing utility network. We hope to be able to create an electric grid that can use distributed energy resources to automatically reconfigure itself to maximize reliability.Kiliccote is excited about using the tools with partner utilities. She says a large California utility already is on board but is not yet identified because details of proprietary issues are not yet worked out. However, its partnership with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association should open up new tools and technologies to small utilities that currently dont have easy access to them.NRCA represents 834 distribution cooperatives that provide power to some 42 million customers in 47 states. Vermont Electric Cooperative already is working with a vendor that develops software and systems to adjust power consumption of home thermostat-controlled devices when the grid is overloaded or the power supply fluctuates. Kiliccote says they want to demonstrate tools on how to absorb grid events by reducing loads and moving them around.In California, the utility will be one of the first places to test the data analytics platform. It will be populated with specific information about what aspects of the grid look like, such as where solar or wind power sources are located, where batteries are located and how distribution lines are laid out. That will allow managers to look for anomalies and identify problem areas and propose appropriate solutions.Something as common as satellite imagery can play an important role. Although the system is not being designed to handle physical security, it could be used to identify problem areas, such as encroaching stands of trees, and anticipate when they would grow over and threaten power lines.GRIP will build on VADERs work to integrate data and provide real-time intelligence through a unified data analytics platform. This is certainly evolutionary, says Kiliccote. Were not creating new approach es or methodology. It is just that artificial intelligence has not been applied here, on the electric grid. This industry has been dominated by power system engineers, not computer scientists.Kiliccote expects to receive the $6-million grant for the three-year program soon. The award is part of DOEs Grid Modernization Initiative. Other projects receiving funding are distribution system improvements in Alaska using automation network analysis, control and energy storage increasing distribution resiliency using flexible distributed generations sources and microgrids and research and validation of open-source home-energy management systems to support distribution resiliency. For Further DiscussionThe project will be the first of its kind to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the resilience of the grid. Sila Kiliccote, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

This criminal psychologist says its healthy to fantasize about killing your boss

This criminal psychologist says its healthy to fantasize about killing your baboThis criminal psychologist says its healthy to fantasize about killing your bossAccording to criminal psychologistJulia Shaw its not only normal to fantasize about murdering your boss, but its also healthy.Chances are, you are not a psychopathShaw, author of Evil The Science Behind Humanitys Dark Side,and an honorary associate at University College London, recently spoke atCheltenham Science Festival. Her work has explored many themes, though the virtue of empathy seems to be a well shes particularly fond of. To Shaw, the term is a pluralistic one. Sometimes, employing empathy is easy. Like when youre watching one of those Sarah Mclachlan commercials with the hungry three-legged dogs, or an ad about relief agency rice for displaced children from third world countries. Its not exactly a challenge to feel bad for limping puppies or starving children.But sometimes empathy takes a hair more effort, like tryin g to observe the nuance in a case like Jeffrey Dahmers. Shaws bibliography will tell you, that the line separating us from the heinous acts committed by your Bundys or your Dahmers, is a biological one that we have virtually zero say in, but even non-psychopaths occasionally bend to the beckon of violent mechanisms.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreShaws research determined that just about half of the population has fantasized about murdering someone that they know at some point or another-the most common imagined victims being ex-partners and our work superiors. If you belong to the sizable portion of employees that has at one point daydreamed about throwing their boss down an elevator shaft, you just as likely belong to the sizable portion of employees that felt pretty bad about doing so immediately after.True psychopaths actually only account for 1% of the population. As far a s Shaw is concerned, merely being tempted by the ideals of manslaughter alone doesnt determine psychopathy. In her opinion to evaluate psychosis strictly by the basis of moral vigor is to oversimplify things. She hesitates from calling most murders evil, instead describing them as instances where a person loses control. Shaw explained at the Festival how labeling psychopathic acts as evil omits the prospect of serious and compelling discussion.Its a cop-out, its lazy - calling someone evil is saying, Im done with this conversation, this person is subjectively bad, I dont need to empathize with them, I dont need to understand them I dont need to figure out why I might be similar to them in any way, she says.In a Ted Talk from April of last year, titled Time To Rethink Evil, Shaw posed an interesting point about how we keep two sets of books for morality. If you were to ruminate on the worst thing youve ever done, youd likely apply context. Our own misdeeds are intricate affairs, but when surveying the misdeeds of others, we apply a simple binary moral standard. Murder, thief, liar, monster, evil, in Shaws estimation, are knee jerk labels too often employed when wed rather not tangle with exercises of empathy.Tagging this is Shaws suggestion that we not be so quick to be ashamed of indulging in morbid ideations. Fantasizing asopposedto acting on behauptung thoughts, occasions our empathy, even for those we hate tremendously. Fantasies and empathy exercises are critical to making good decisions, particularly in situations where you dont have much time. While things are pretty good thats the time to do empathy exercises, Shaw continued.Not only does exercising fancies of an evil force us to identify our own moral codes, but it also works out our muscles of reasoning. Evolution has taught us that survival favors forethought and planning. The next time you slip into a fantasy about exacting revenge on the guy from your office that hasnt troubled to say your last n ame correctly, instead of feeling bad for having the thoughts, be grateful that you have the fortitude not to act on them, and empathetic towards those that arent so lucky.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people