#jobs at public sector company 2022

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - August 21, 2023

🌊 - Discover the Ocean's Hidden Gem Deep down in the Pacific

1. Massachusetts passed a millionaire's tax. Now, the revenue is paying for free public school lunches.

Every kid in Massachusetts will get a free lunch, paid for by proceeds from a new state tax on millionaires.

A new 4% tax on the state's wealthiest residents will account for $1 billion of the state's $56 billion fiscal budget for 2024, according to state documents. A portion of those funds will be used to provide all public-school students with free weekday meals, according to State House News Service.

2. Plant-based filter removes up to 99.9% of microplastics from water

Researchers may have found an effective, green way to remove microplastics from our water using readily available plant materials. Their device was found to capture up to 99.9% of a wide variety of microplastics known to pose a health risk to humans.

3. Scientists Find A Whole New Ecosystem Hiding Beneath Earth's Seafloor

Most recently, aquanauts on board a vessel from the Schmidt Ocean Institute used an underwater robot to turn over slabs of volcanic crust in the deep, dark Pacific. Underneath the seafloor of this well-studied site, the international team of researchers found veins of subsurface fluids swimming with life that has never been seen before.

It's a whole new world we didn't know existed.

4. How solar has exploded in the US in just a year

Solar and storage companies have announced over $100 billion in private sector investments in the US since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) a year ago, according to a new analysis released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Since President Joe Biden signed the IRA in August 2022, 51 solar factories have been announced or expanded in the US.

5. Researchers have identified a new pack of endangered gray wolves in California

A new pack of gray wolves has shown up in California’s Sierra Nevada, several hundred miles away from any other known population of the endangered species, wildlife officials announced Friday.

It’s a discovery to make researchers howl with delight, given that the native species was hunted to extinction in California in the 1920s. Only in the past decade or so have a few gray wolves wandered back into the state from out-of-state packs.

6. Record-Breaking Cleanup: 25,000 Pounds of Trash Removed from Pacific Garbage Patch

Ocean cleanup crews have fished out the most trash ever taken from one of the largest garbage patches in the world.

The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit environmental engineering organization, saw its largest extraction earlier this month by removing about 25,000 pounds of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Alex Tobin, head of public relations and media for the organization

7. The Inflation Reduction Act Took U.S. Climate Action Global

The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) aimed to promote clean energy investments in the U.S. and globally. In its first year, the IRA successfully spurred other nations to develop competitive climate plans.

Clean energy projects in 44 U.S. states driven by the IRA have generated over 170,600 jobs and $278 billion in investments, aligning with Paris Agreement goals.

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That's it for this week :)

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#blessed #best news of last week #Youtube

[coochiequeens]

This is why accurate information about sex and race is important. A study just gave a name to another way businesses pass over women for promotions and how women of color are impacted at greater rates.

Forget The Glass Ceiling, 'The Broken Rung' Is Why Women Are Denied Promotions

A new study finds Black women and Latinas in particular are the least likely to get that first promotion — and it’s not because they’re not asking for it.

by Monica Torres

Getting your first promotion into management is a huge achievement in your career. But a new study from consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and nonprofit Lean In shows it’s an opportunity that is not equally afforded to everyone. 

According to the study, which used pipeline data from 276 companies in the private, public and social sectors, women ― and women of color, in particular ― are the least likely demographic to get promoted from entry-level to first-time manager. 

For every 100 men promoted from entry-level contributor to manager in the survey, only 87 women got promoted. And this gap gets wider for women of color: This year, while 91 white women were promoted to manager for every 100 men, only 89 Asian women, 76 Latinas and 54 Black women would get that same opportunity. 

“As a result of this broken rung, women fall behind and can’t catch up,” the study states.

It’s not because those women were not asking for it ― the study found that the women were asking for promotions at the same rate as their male peers. And it’s not because these women did not stick around long enough to be considered for the job ― the study found that they were no more likely to leave their company than their male peers. 

The main culprit to this “broken rung” in the career ladder? It’s what known as a “performance bias.”

Why women deal with the “broken rung” phenomenon.

Under a performance bias, men get promoted more because of their future potential, while women get judged on their past accomplishments and have their leadership potential doubted.

“Because women early in their careers have shorter track records and similar work experiences relative to their men peers, performance bias can especially disadvantage them at the first promotion to manager,” according to the study. 

This research aligns with the “prove-it-again bias” studies have found women face throughout their career: where they do more work in order to be seen as equally competent to their male peers. 

As for why it’s hardest for women of color to make that first leap into management? Workplace consultant Minda Harts, author of “The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table,” said it’s because systemic biases and stereotypes cause women of color to be less trusted for the job. 

“This lack of trust can manifest in several ways, such as doubts about competence, commitment or ‘fit’ within a leadership role,” Harts told HuffPost. “When senior leadership is predominantly male and white, an unconscious bias might lead them to trust individuals who mirror their own experiences or backgrounds ... As a result, women of color may be disproportionately overlooked for promotions.”

The McKinsey study found that women of color surveyed this year were even less likely to become first-time managers in 2023 than they were in 2022.

Feminist career coach Cynthia Pong told HuffPost it’s because in tough financial times, companies often operate under a scarcity mindset and might see women of color as a bigger “risk” to promote when they are underrepresented in leadership. 

“We just had to go through layoffs, and we only have three [manager roles]. You can easily see how in times like that, it would just end up replicating these systems where we only trust and only give the benefit of the doubt to certain folks,” Pong said. “And it’s not going to be women of color.” 

That sends a dispiriting message to people who watch their peers advance while they get told they are still not ready.

“It’s even more frustrating and infuriating ... when you see that there is a pathway for others, but not for you. Because the injustice of it makes your blood boil,” Pong said.  

This should not be on women and women of color to fix. Employers should proactively take steps to make a clear promotion path for all. 

There is a lot of talk about the “glass ceiling” and the barrier women face that prevents them from becoming executives at the top. But this study illustrates that there is a more fundamental problem happening to women early in their career: the systemic bias that prevents women from being seen as a leader who can manage other people. 

“Our success must be something other than a solo sport,” Harts said. “We can’t promote and advance ourselves.”

For companies to be part of the solution, employers should be more transparent about how managerial promotions happen.

“Trust is enhanced when employees understand what is expected of them and what they can expect from their leaders,” Harts said. “This transparency can help mitigate unconscious biases or misconceptions about capabilities or trustworthiness.”

To break down stereotypes and build trust between employees of color and leadership, Harts also recommended companies to implement programs where women of color are paired with sponsors in senior roles. 

What you can do about this as an employee.

If you keep being told vague “no’s” after every promotion request, start asking more questions about what your peers are doing that you are not.

“They’re not going to admit to having a systemic problem. They’re going to say, ‘We just don’t have it in the budget,’” said Elaine Lou Cartas, a business and career coach for women of color. 

“I’ve seen people that got promoted to this where they are also doing the same amount as I was, but I was doing A, B and C. Help me understand,” is the kind of assertive framing you can use to ask more questions, Cartas said.

And if you find the goalpost of promotion metrics keeps moving after your conversation with your manager, that might be the time to start job hunting. 

“Once you already have that conversation, and nothing’s being done, or at least there’s no steps or actions for it to be done in the future, that’s when [you] could start looking,” Cartas said.

Ultimately, one missed promotion may not seem like a huge setback, but it adds up over time with lost wages and earning potential, Pong said. 

“And then that also ripples out generationally to all the families and family units that each woman of color is supporting, and then those to come,” she said. “So it seems like it might be like no big deal to have this person promoted one or two years later. But ... these things really snowball.”

#Glass ceiling #Broken rung #Women in the workplace #Women of color in the workplace #For every 100 men promoted only 89 Asian women 76 Latinas and 54 Black women would get that same opportunity #Prove it again bias #The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table #Minda Hart's

[ateezreactionsandscenarios]

Kinktober Day 5 - Mirror Sex

Pairing: Choi San x Reader

Genre: Smut

CW: Semi public sex, fingering (F receiving), abused used as a descriptor, hair pulling, praise, creamie.

Word Count: 2510

Summary: An empty practice room and a bit of sexual tension between friends, surely nothing will happen...Right?

Prompt List               MasterList         Kintktober 2022      Buy me a Coffee

Sector 1 played through the speakers of the practice room for what felt like the 100th time today. You’d offered to keep your best friend San company while he ran through the choreography, he’d been having a hard time of it the past few days so he wanted to take a day to practice on his own to see where he was going wrong and what needed improving. In your opinion you thought he did everything flawlessly, ever move was on point and he kept time with the music, but being the perfectionist that he is you knew that even one wrong step meant trouble. As the song came to an end a frustrated growl came from San, it was clear he wasn’t happy with it, what you didn’t know but what you did know was he needed a breather. “Come on take a break for a bit.” You call over to him patting the space on the couch next to you inviting him to sit. San trudged his way over to you before flopping down in the empty seat, breathing heavy as he tried to catch his breath. 

“You did great San.” You cheered on hoping to rise his spirits a little. “I’m still not happy with it.” He huffs taking a sip from his bottle. You furrow your brows at him, it always baffled you how he could find any fault in what he does, you envied how great a dancer he is and there he was bitching that he put his foot out to the side a little too far. “San really, what’s wrong with it.” You fold your arms looking at him waiting for a response. “Y/n, I don’t think you get how hard this is.” He chuckles as he looks over to you, your eyes judging him. “Well maybe I can have a go, see how hard it really is.” You suggest quirking an eyebrow at him. “You want to learn the dance?” He asked a little surprised at your sudden suggestion. You were fairly confident you could do a pretty okay job at it, you’d been watching San go through it for the past few hours, closely watching every move he made so at a bare minimum you had the basics down. “Yeah why not, it’ll be fun and at the very least you’ll get a good laugh at me if I mess up.” He couldn’t argue with that, he’d seen you dance before, or at least try, you weren’t a dancer but it never stopped you trying even if it did mostly end in you falling on your ass. “Okay, deal.” He chimes standing up and holding a hand out to pull you up from your seat and leading you to the centre of the room. 

He decided to start you off with the chorus since it was the most run through part of the song and he felt you probably would have picked up on that part more than anything. He started off slow breaking down the moves bit by bit until he felt you were ready to speed it up. You were having a great time and had a lot of laughs as you go the hang of the choreography pretty quickly, surprising San in the process. “Since when could you move like that?” San asked quirking an eyebrow at you once you’d finished. “I guess I’m a fast learner.” You wink back with a small laugh as you watch him smirk at your response. “Can I try another part.” You ask beaming excitedly, you were in the flow, you couldn’t stop now. “Go ahead, do you have a part in mind or do you want me to pick?” It didn’t take long for you to think of an answer, after watching San all day you knew exactly what you wanted to learn next. “The beginning, you know the bit where you, Yeosang and Yunho do the...” You try your best to mimic the hip movements from the beginning of the song so he’d get the gist. It took him a little longer to process what you were saying, his attention fully on how you moved your hips in front of him, he didn’t even realise he was staring until you were snapping your fingers at him. “Hello, Earth to San?” His eyes snapped back to yours quickly nodding his head. “Yep...Yep we can do that.” He rushed, quickly running over to start the song, giving himself a bit of time for the small blush to leave his face before he turned to you again.

Slowing the music down he stood behind you the whole time guiding you through the dance, his hands holding your arms lightly moving them to the music. Everything about the way he was teaching you felt normal and you might even say comfortable, he kept a small bit of distance between you to give you enough space to move but was close enough to guide you through every step. His hands made their way from your arms to gently rest on your hips, slowly guiding them to replicate how he moves. Your breath caught in your throat the moment you felt it, all the hair on your body standing on end. You take a quick glance at him in the mirror to see if he noticed your reaction and you silently sigh in relief when you see his eyes are a focused elsewhere. It was like San flipped a switch in you somehow and you were surprised over how much you loved the way his hands felt on your hips, it was new and quite frankly you wanted more.

A few more run throughs and you got the hang of the movements, so much so San stopped helping and stuck to observing. You missed the way he held your hips to guide you, you were desperate for him to do it again, so you figured the only way to get him back was to purposely throw the dance. You started losing rhythm which gained his attention pretty quick. “Y/n, like this remember.” He says quickly coming over to you to guide you once again. You didn’t give up on your attempts as you continued to mess up feigning annoyance. “Damn it! I had it a minute ago.” You say through gritted teeth trying to sound annoyed. “Come here, follow how I move.” San says quietly into your ear as he pulls you flush against his body. The closeness made you heat up, you could feel every inch of him against your back. He played the music again before resting his chin on your shoulder and placing his hands back on your hips keeping you against him. Taking it slow you went through it again, eyes not leaving each others.

You lost it completely when you heard a low groan come from San as your ass grazed against his crotch mid dance, feeling start to harden against you, but it still didn’t stop you both as you carried on. “You’re driving me insane.” San growls to you before placing a light kiss on your neck testing the waters. You let out a small whine at the light sensation, heat pooling at your core. You moved your hips again to the music desperate to hear the sounds he makes again. “You messed up on purpose didn’t you?” San chuckles against your neck between kisses as you smirk back, “Maybe.” You breathe out trying to keep it together. “All an act to get me like this huh? Dirty girl.” He purred as he nipped your ear, his words sending a chill down your spine. Another whine leaves your lips as his grip on you tightens pulling your ass closer to his crotch. The music was background noise at this point as San continued to toy with you kissing and biting at the sensitive skin of your neck while his hands moved between grabbing your hips and grabbing your ass before turning you to face him. “If you wanted me like this you could have just said.” His eyes were dark as they pierced your own, his warm breath brushed against your lips as he spoke, it had you going crazy. “I want you.” You breathed trying to close the gap between you before he pulls away slightly with a smirk. “That wasn’t so hard now was it?” He says lowly closing the gap between you capturing your lips in a heated kiss. 

San pulls away after a while leaving you both gasping for air before abruptly turning you to face the mirror again gliding a hand down to cup your heat as you as you gasp at the contact. “Look at you.” He purrs making eye contact with you through the mirror watching you slowly come undone in his arms. “You’re so needy already.” You give out a small hum slowly nodding in response, your mind too occupied to think of words. He glides one finger along your clothed slit feeling your legs slightly give out as he holds you up chuckling lowly to himself. “How about we remove some of these clothes, they’re getting in the way don’t you think?” You wasted no time, turning on your heels to face him as you fumble with the hem of his shirt practically begging for him to take it off.

With the clothes discarded all across the room San was glad he’d decided to look the door of the practice room, he never planned for this to happen in the first place but if anyone was to walk in right now he didn’t want to know what would happen. The sound of heavy breathing filled the room as the kiss between you and San became hungrier and needier by the second, tongues fighting for dominance as his hands roamed anywhere and everywhere they could reach. As he dipped a finger into you, you couldn’t help the moan that escaped, feeling lucky the kiss muffled most of it. “So wet already baby.” San smirks into the kiss before biting down on your bottom lip. “Want me that bad?” Your grip on his shoulders tightened, nails digging in leaving small crescent dents. “Please San...Need you now.” You breathed out hardly pulling away from the kiss, too lost in the taste of him, the taste you’ve been earning for since you can’t remember when. “All fours.” He starts, thrusting his finger into you one last time before pulling out. “And face the mirror, I want you to watch yourself as I fuck you.” You didn’t think twice before dropping to his feet on your hands and knees, watching San through the mirror as you waited on his next move. San decided to take his time a little, taking in the view of you in front of him, bare and all for him, running a hand lightly over your ass as he tried to think of where to even start. “San...Please hurry up.” You begged looking at him through the mirror with pleading eyes. Setting himself on his knees behind you he leaned over, chest flush against your back as he whispered in your ear. “Since you asked so nicely.” He eased himself into you, feeling you clench around him as he groaned at the tightness of you around him. A breathy moan was all you could manage, the way he stretched you had your reeling and needing more. He gave you a moment to adjust before he started to thrust into you jolting you forward with each one. 

You had to cover your mouth to stop from screaming out as he abused your core with harsh thrusts, the sound of his heavy breathing and groans going straight to your core soaking the both of you even more with how turned on he was making you. “So pretty.” He pants watching you in the mirror as he fucks into you. “You look so pretty like this and it’s all for me.” Your head drops to look at the floor when he grazes your sweet spot, a cry escaping you as your legs start to weaken and your arms shake, too overcome with pleasure to be able to hold yourself up for much longer.

San didn’t like it when you stopped watching yourself, wrapping your hair around his hand to tug you up against him he growls into your ear once again. “Did I tell you to stop watching?” The tone in his voice was working you in ways you couldn’t imagine, you moaned louder than intended before covering your mouth again, shaking your head in response to his question. “Watch me ruin you, watch yourself fall apart on my cock baby.” His arm wraps around your waist to hold you against him, his knees keeping your legs apart as he mercilessly thrusts into you while his free hand toyed with your clit sending shock waves of white hot pleasure through you. 

His pace picking up you could feel your high creeping closer and closer only to be sped up by the harsh circles San was drawing on your clit, the knot was ready to snap but you held off for as long as you could, your walls clenching uncontrollably around him. “Are you that close already baby? Do you wanna cum for me?” You nod frantically as cries of his name spill from you with each thrust. “Please San...Please.” You beg needing to feel your release. “Go on then, make a mess baby.” His hand flies to cover your mouth as soon as he feels you tighten as your orgasm washes over you, screaming into his hand your legs start to tremble from the intensity. “Look how beautiful you are.” He coos turning your head to look at yourself once again, your face flushed, eyes glazed over and teary, you looked completely fucked out and it was all thanks to San. “You’re so pretty when you cum around my cock.” His voice trembles a little as you feel him twitch inside you, you knew he was reaching his own orgasm his thrusts now becoming choppy. The weakness in your legs didn’t stop you from slightly bouncing on him meeting each of his thrusts, helping him chase his orgasm. “Keep doing that and I won’t last much longer.” He chuckles biting down on your shoulder as you start to bounce a little faster. 

Only a few moments later and San had toppled over the edge, shuddering as he painted your walls, wrapping his arms around your waist keeping you as close to him as possible while he rode out his high. The room was filled with the sound of your breathing as you both took a bit of time to recover and to process what had just happened. Looking at San in the mirror, his face nestled in your neck and his arms still holding you close, you couldn’t help but smile, what just happened was never planned but just by looking at him you could tell this wasn’t going to be the last either.

Tag list: @kpopcrossworlds @kpopjust4u @littleparkseonghwa   @whatudowhennooneseesyou​ @8tinytings​ @jenotation​​ @owjohny​  @ker1​  @hellomingi  @ate-ez @steponmesannie​  @azeret98​ @queenwiinks​  @wubbster​​ @eternalhongshine​ ​

#ateez #ateez scenarios #ateez smut #ateez hard hours #ateez kinktober #san #choi san #ateez san #san sceanrios #san smut #san hard hours #choi san scenarios #choi san smut #choi san hard hours #kpop #kpop scnearios #kpop smut #kpop hard hours #kpop kintober #kinktober #kinktober 2022

[banananutsmuthie]

Idol Club Shareholder Letter

Word Count: 2.2k+ words

A/N: NOT SMUT. This is Idol Club lore written in the form of a shareholder letter. I promise you'll be rewarded with a bunch of easter eggs and future Idol Club spoilers if you read the whole thing. Enjoy while I prepare a proper comeback soon!

My fellow shareholders,

I was there on Opening Day next to Founder Kim as the VP of Public Relations when we officially opened the doors to our maiden Idol Club branch in Gangnam. Since then, I’ve risen through the ranks at Idol Club Entertainment, serving as the Chief Communications Officer for the last eight months. I’ve given many speeches on behalf of this company, addressed our employees through countless emails, and weathered the storm of numerous media queries during the Aberration scandal. Yet, never could I have imagined addressing you all in this annual shareholder letter, a job usually reserved for Founder Kim who has served as chairman since day one.

Founder Kim has been a pioneer and visionary in leading this company into the next golden age of technology and entertainment, so it came as a shock to receive Founder Kim’s resignation from the company last month. We wish Founder Kim all the best.

Rest assured, as the newly elected chairman of Idol Club Entertainment, I will do everything in my power to continue to steer this ship in the right direction, staying true to Founder Kim’s original vision while maintaining the best interests of our stakeholders.

That said, the transition in leadership could not have come at a worse time. These are murky and uncertain waters, and I’ve been tasked with guiding us through a global economic crisis, war, a chip shortage, and rising inflation across the world.

But we remain resilient.

2022 has shown us that as the world slowly emerges out of the pandemic and we find our cadence to the “new normal”, our customers are flocking to Idol Club for things they lacked in 2020 and 2021: social interactions, intimacy without consequence, and a damn good time.

And our numbers support that. Even though we temporarily lost the licensing rights to Everglow’s Yiren (one of our highest-rated and popular models) due to her sudden hiatus, we saw our profits soar to unimaginable heights in 2022, bringing a 403% increase in profits compared to 2021! This could not have been possible without all the strides we’ve made across all sectors of our business. From our engineers to the hosts at the front lines and even all the way down to our sanitation specialists, each one of our employees has helped us deliver an exceptional product and live up to our slogan to “make dreams a reality”.

Differentiators in 2022

But profits aren’t the only thing to smile about as we close out the fiscal year: reviews and ratings are up not just for the company, but also across all of our android models, finishing the year with an average rating of 4.92 out of 5 stars, up from 4.89 in 2021. We also received the prestigious Club of the Year award for the third year in a row. There were also a couple of huge accomplishments we achieved this year which helped differentiate our brand from our competitors:

Idol Club Goes International

Earlier this year, we launched our first Idol Club branch overseas in the heart of Singapore’s red light district, which has outperformed initial profit estimates by 32%. Customers are flocking to the affluent city-state in Southeast Asia and have helped us carve out a hearty 60% market share in Singapore’s escort sector. I’d like to thank the local government, our staff, and our external risk assessment vendor for making this all possible.

This is just the beginning. As part of Idol Club Entertainment’s five year plan, we are looking into entering the three largest markets in the world: China, Japan, and the United States. This is not an easy task, however. Each market has its own local laws and regulations that inhibit our current business model. We’ve hired local teams in these markets working around the clock with the hope that we can eventually enter these markets in a viable and legal way.

JYP Entertainment Signs Exclusive Idol Club Contract

I am proud to announce that after months of negotiation, we were able to land our biggest client to date in JYP Entertainment Corp (JYPE, KOSDAQ: 035900). This brings aboard TWICE, by far the most requested group by our customers, to the Idol Club family in addition to other JYPE girl groups like ITZY and select members of NMIXX and NiziU. This exclusive contract helps to diversify the products and services offered by the Idol Club brand as well as keep us ahead of our competitors.

It has only been a few months since we onboarded JYPE to our family of companies, but our Chaeyoung and Nayeon models have already been wildly successful at our Idol Zoo subsidiary, accounting for nearly 36% of all 2022 sales in just Q3 alone. Our plan is to introduce our Tzuyu models at our Singapore branch in early Q1, followed by the rest of the JYPE idols spread across our various brands. This further cements our commitment to providing our customers with the largest catalog of idols in the adult idol entertainment industry, joining our already star-studded premium lineup featuring BLACKPINK, Red Velvet, and aespa.

First Subsidiary Idol Zoo Launches

Expansion of our Idol Club flagship branch successfully completed in Q1 this year, introducing Idol Zoo, our first subsidiary, to the family of companies. This has led to numerous opportunities for brand exposure to the public.

Currently, Idol Zoo houses numerous ‘exhibits’ that our customers have access to, including free public shows known as the ‘Exhibitionist Exhibits’, such as the monthly Chaeyoungs show and the daily topless teasers. For the not-so-adventurous, we also offer private encounters for our paying customers. Among the exhibits our customers can peruse and enjoy: the Feline and Rodent display with the aforementioned Chaeyoungs; our popular Bunny Breeding Grounds featuring such idols as TWICE’s Nayeon, ex-IZ*ONE leader Kwon Eunbi, Kep1er’s Yujin, and Billlie’s Tsuki; and the Aquatic Animals Squirt Zone, featuring various idols who really know how to make a splash.

In 2023, we plan to further expand our exhibits, bringing in TWICE’s Mina to headline the new Penguin Habitat, as well as adding a new Screaming Deer Show to our line of Exhibitionist Exhibits featuring Oh My Girl’s Arin and NMIXX’s Sullyoon.

Endorsements from Idols

We’ve been fortunate this year to feature some surprise appearances from idols, both as clients and cameo performers, ranging from Weki Meki’s Choi Yoojung to ex-IZ*ONE’s Kang Hyewon, and many more who have preferred to not be named. And although this represents a tiny fraction of our sales, their endorsements and appearances at Idol Club have helped strengthen our brand reputation as the leader in adult idol entertainment. Their continued partnership undoubtedly will help us develop relationships with other labels not yet licensed to Idol Club Entertainment. These endorsements alone accounted for 12% of client referrals, not an insignificant number to our bottom line.

The Road Ahead

As we look ahead toward the next fiscal year, we are launching a bunch of new products and services that we hope will entice more customers and bring in new revenue. There are many great things to look forward to, but there’s also things we need to account for in our 2023 forecasts as well.

Generation 2 Androids

With our Gen 1 androids nearing the end of their lifecycle, we began replacing our fleet with the new Gen 2 androids at the start of Q4 this year, continuing the rollout into Q1 until we are 100% transitioned. Our engineers have made enhancements to the current hardware and completely revamped the software, providing customers with an even better sensual experience with the addition of reactive sweat glands and more realistic skin made with a polymer built in-house.

The software has been finely tuned to ensure a 0% chance of any Aberrations, but perhaps the most exciting development with these next-gen androids is the limitless options for customizations. The new models are modular, meaning each part of their body can be switched out quickly for different parts to create the customer’s ideal idol.

We plan to roll out the customizations in Q3 with an OTA update, allowing our customers to change the stock model androids to their heart’s desire: hair color, eye color, breast size, you name it. If they can dream it, we can build it.

More Product Offerings

As an entertainment company, we cannot be complacent with our current product offering. Customers will always seek out more thrills, and we must be ready to pivot and innovate when the tides change in order to meet the growing demands of our customers. We are exploring different ways to increase profits in 2023 by making our product more accessible to a wider audience without sacrificing the brand reputation and trust that Idol Club Entertainment has come to be known for.

In early Q1, we will be testing a weekly ‘lottery’ where one lucky winner will be chosen at random for a 1-hour session with any of our androids from our product lines in Tier 3 and below. Each ticket to the lottery will be sold at an affordable price yet to be determined, thus making it more accessible for customers who may not normally have access to Idol Club. Our research indicates there is an itch that needs to be scratched in this demographic, one that has not yet been tapped into by our competitors. If profitable, we plan to roll out the offering permanently, simultaneously introducing a secondary monthly lottery with a higher ticket price, with the winner given access to our premium Tier 4 and Tier 5 product lines.

For our current customers, we are rolling out a tiered subscription plan in Q2 that will work in tandem with our current on-demand pricing scheme. In total, there will be three different tiers, each offering unlimited visits to Idol Club for a specified time period: a week, a month, or a year. Each of the three tiers is broken down even further into a basic plan which allows access to Tier 3 and lower products, and a premium plan offered for an upcharge, allowing the customer access to our full line of androids across all product tiers.

A possible Idol Club Rewards program is also currently in the works. Though I have no further information at this time, our teams are working hard to roll out this program in Q4 of 2023.

Proposition 12

It would be irresponsible of me to end this letter and not mention Proposition 12 currently being voted on, and I’ve saved this issue for last because it is the biggest detriment to Founder Kim’s dream and affects every single employee and shareholder of Idol Club Entertainment. If Proposition 12 passes legislation, our successes from this past year and our roadmap for next year will be all for naught. Proponents of Proposition 12 want the general public to believe that our androids are sentient, that they should be afforded the same rights as human beings, thus making Idol Club operations illegal under current South Korean laws. Meanwhile, other proponents argue androids should be shut down entirely because they are dangerous, citing the Aberration scandal.

I want to assure our shareholders that these arguments hold no merit. We’ve hired an external research team that has concluded that while our androids are best in class, they are not sentient. Their findings also concluded that there was no evidence of remaining Aberrations. We continue to deliver a sound product; our engineering teams worked tirelessly to quickly rectify the bugs shortly after news of the Aberration scandal first broke. Still, the possibility looms that Proposition 12 proponents could sway public opinion enough to make it the law of the land.

I want to thank our legal team and lobbyists who have fought for us to make sure that Idol Club Entertainment stays in business. However, it will ultimately fall into the hands of the voters, so I am asking our shareholders to be proactive and vote ‘No’ on Proposition 12 in this upcoming election. Tell your family. Tell your friends. Together, we can make sure Idol Club continues to operate.

In the event that Proposition 12 passes, we have contingencies in place to make sure Idol Club Entertainment continues to operate in some capacity, and we are also exploring other sectors to further strengthen our current contingency plans. These plans aren’t 100% fool-proof, which is why I cannot stress enough just how important voting against Proposition 12 is.

Closing Statement

Idol Club Entertainment started from just an idea from Founder Kim, an idea that sprouted into a dream, and a dream that blossomed into a reality. There’s a storm brewing in the form of Proposition 12 that threatens our budding business, but all storms pass, and from the clouds emerges the sunlight. We will weather this storm, and when the clouds clear, we will prevail.

I would like to thank all of our shareholders for continuing to believe in us enough to invest in our product. I look forward to serving as your new chairman for the foreseeable future and hope to make Founder Kim proud. And as always, I will continue to operate this company with our core value in mind, the same core value that Founder Kim used as the foundation for Idol Club Entertainment, and the same one that continues to drive our company to be the best in the world:

“The customer always comes first, and the customer always comes.”

Regards,

Chairman Choi

#idol club #lore #non-smut #bns spoilers #bns easter eggs

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Canada's privatised shadow civil service

PJ O’Rourke once quipped that “The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.” But conservative parties have unlikely allies in the project to discredit public service: neoliberal “centrist” parties, like Canada’s Liberal Party.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

The Liberals have become embroiled in a series of scandals over the explosion of lucrative, secretive private contracts awarded to high-flying consultancy firms who charge hundreds of times more than public sector employees to do laughably bad work.

Front and centre in the scandal, is, of course, McKinsey, consligieri to opioid barons, murdering Saudi princes, and other unsavoury types. McKinsey was brought in to “consult” on strategy for the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), a Crown corporation that gives loans to Canadian businesses.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/business-development-bank-canada-hudon-mckinsey-1.6720914

While there, McKinsey performed as per usual, veering from the farcical to the grotesquely wasteful. Most visible was the decision to spend $320,000 on a livecast fireside chat between BDC president Isabelle Hudon and a former Muchmusic VJ that was transmitted to all BDC employees, which featured Hudon and the host discussing a shopping trip they’d taken together in Paris.

Meanwhile, BDC has been hemorrhaging top people, which leaving the organisation with many holes in its leadership — the kind of thing that would pose an impediment to its lofty goals of substantially increasing the support it gives to businesses run by women, First Nations people and people of color.

Hudon — a Trudeau appointee — vowed to “start from scratch” when she took over the organisation, but then went ahead and did what her predecessors had done: hired outside consultants who billed outrageous sums to repurpose anodyne slide-decks full of useless, generic advice, or unrealistic advice that no one could turn into actual policy. They also sucked up BDC employees’ time with endless interviews.

The BDC has (reluctantly) disclosed $4.9m in contracts to McKinsey. The CBC also learned that Hudon parachuted several cronies from her previous job at Sun Life into top roles in the organisation, and that BDC had reneged on promised promotions for many long-term staffers. Hudon also repeatedly flew a chauffeur across the country from Montreal to BC to drive her around.

In Quebec, premier François Legault hired an army of McKinsey consultants at $35,000 per day to advise him on covid strategy, for a total bill of $8.6m. McKinsey’s contract with the province stipulated that they wouldn’t have to disclose their other clients, even in the event that they had conflicts of interest:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/caq-legault-mckinsey-pandemic-consulting-1.6602374

The contract was kept secret, as was the long-running, $38m contract between McKinsey and the Hydro Quebec power authority:

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1927738/mckinsey-hydro-quebec-consultants-barrages-affaires

Most of the bad press McKinsey gets revolves around the evil advice it gives — like when it advised opioid companies to pay cash bonuses to pharma distributors for every death-by-overdose in their territory (no, I’m not making this up):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/30/mckinsey-mafia/#everybody-must-get-stoned

But these rare moments of competence should be understood in the broader context in which McKinsey isn’t evil, they are merely utterly, totally fucking useless. The 2022 French Senate report on McKinsey really digs into this:

http://www.senat.fr/commission/enquete/2021_influence_des_cabinets_de_conseil_prives.html

They find that a quarter of the work McKinsey turned in was “unacceptable or barely acceptable in quality.” This is in line with the overall tenor of work performed by consultants. For example, when it came to giant Capgemini, the French Senate found that the work it provided was “of near-zero added value, indeed sometimes counterproductive.”

And yet, despite the expense and “near-zero added value,” hiring outside consultants is a reflex for neoliberal centrist leaders. Trudeau has presided over a massive expansion of the Canadian government’s reliance on outside consultants:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-liberals-spend-billions-more-on-outsourced-contracts-since-taking/

After campaigning on a promise to reduce outside consultancy, the Trudeau administration increased consultant spending by 40%, to $11.8 billion. This shadow civil service is not just more expensive and less competent that the real civil service — it is also far more opaque, able to fend off open records requests with vague gestures towards “trade secrecy.”

Since 2015, McKinsey has raked in $101.4m in federal contracts, even as the civil service has been starved of pay. Meanwhile, federal departments insist that they need to “protect Canada’s economic interests” by not disclosing outside contracts, and list their total spend at $0.00.

https://nationalpost.com/news/outsourcing-contracts-mckinsey-billions

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada estimates that between 2011–21, the Canadian government squandered $18b on outside IT contracting that could have been performed by public servants. In 2022, the Government of Canada spent $2.3b on outsource IT contracts, while the wage bill for its own IT staff came in at $1.85b.

It’s not like these outside IT contractors are good at their jobs, either. The most notorious example is the ArriveCAN covid-tracking app for travellers, the contract for which was awarded to GCstrategies, a two-person shop in Ottawa, who promptly turned around and outsourced it to KPMG and other contractors, whom they billed to the government at $1,000–1,500/day, raking off 15–30% in commissions.

For months, the origins of the ArriveCAN app were a mystery, with the government insisting that the details of the contractors involved were “confidential.” But ArriveCAN was such a steaming pile of shit, and so many travellers (a population more likely to be well-off and politically connected than the median Canadian) had to deal with it, that eventually the truth came out.

The ArriveCAN scandal is ongoing — just last year, it cost the Canadian public $54m:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-arrivecan-subcontractors-multinationals/

Trudeau’s Liberals didn’t invent outsourcing high-stakes IT projects to incompetent grifters. Under Conservative PM Stephen Harper, Canada paid IBM to build Phoenix, an utterly defective payroll system for federal employees that stole millions from civil servants, bringing government to a virtual standstill. Thus far, the Government of Canada — which paid IBM $309m to develop Phoenix, as a “cost savings measure” — has paid $506m in damages to make good on Phoenix’s errors:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-paid-out-400-million-in-phoenix-pay-compensation-to-federal/

The Liberals didn’t invent Phoenix — but they did deploy it, after campaigning on the wastefulness and incompetence of the Tories’ outsourcing bonanza. And after Phoenix crashed and burned, the Liberals increased outsourcing spending.

All of this is well-crystallized in last week’s Canadaland discussion between Jesse Brown and Nora Loreto:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/853-the-indulgent-consultant/

And on his Substack, Paul Wells proposes that the Senate — a largely ornamental institution in Canadian politics — is the unlikely check of last resort on the Liberals’ fetish for outsourcing:

There are former deputy ministers at the federal and provincial levels, secretaries to cabinet, a former Clerk of the Privy Council, a former chief of staff to a prime minister. A lot of them can remember the days when big decisions weren’t farmed out to firms that make their founders rich and are spared the rigours of accountability for their counsel. Surely some of them would like to shine a light?

https://paulwells.substack.com/p/shine-a-brighter-light-on-contract?

Image: Sam (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Canadian_House_of_Commons.jpg

Presidencia de la República Mexicana (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Justin_Trudeau_June_2016.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: The legislative chamber of Canada's House of Commons; behind the speaker's chair, the back wall has been replaced by an enormous $100 bill. The portrait on the $100 bill has been replaced with an unflattering, braying picture of Justin Trudeau. The Bank of Canada legend across the top of the note has been replaced by the McKinsey and Company wordmark.]

#pluralistic #canada #cdnpoli #neoliberalism #consultancy #opacity #impunity #hollow government #mckinsey #justin trudeau #liberal party #covid #quebec #profiteers

[knuckle]

“We are seeing people being fired from their jobs, being investigated by HR over their social media posts or conversations with colleagues, and having job offers rescinded. There is a clear trend that people’s jobs are being targeted right now,” said Dima Khalidi, the founder and director of Palestine Legal, an advocacy organization that seeks to preserve the civil rights of supporters of Palestinian rights in the United States.

Khalidi said that her organization has dealt with roughly 2,200 cases of speech suppression between the years 2014 to 2022. Yet in the last two weeks alone, they have fielded 300 new requests for legal assistance, a figure that usually matches their level of requests during a full year. “There is an exponential increase in the need for legal support,” she said. “It is a direct result right now of the kind of incitement that our own elected officials are engaging in, as well as the failure of universities and employers to push against pressure.”

Due to the obvious religious, cultural, and ideological fault lines, the Israel–Palestine conflict has always been a wedge issue for free speech advocates in the United States. But recent events have exposed a gaping chasm in perspective as a tidal wave of speech suppression has been met with a largely muted reaction, or even active support, from elected officials who normally depict themselves as champions of free speech. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this week ordered Students for Justice in Palestine groups to shut down over recent protests in solidarity with Palestinian nationalism that he described as supporting Hamas.

A full accounting of the speech suppression across multiple industries would be difficult given the incredible scope of retaliation, which expands daily. But across the media and technology sectors, the arts, academia, and even generally nonpolitical industries like aviation and public relations, there has been an obvious effort to threaten, ostracize, and remove individuals from jobs based on their stated views on the subject.

In recent weeks, the editor-in-chief of the nonprofit scientific journal eLife, Michael Eisen, was forced to resign after sharing an article from The Onion satirizing public indifference to Palestinian civilian deaths; a top Hollywood talent agent, Maha Dakhil, was removed from the board of her company for suggesting on Instagram that a genocide was taking place in Gaza; and numerous journalists engaged in nonpolitical coverage, as well as ordinary corporate employees both in the United States and beyond, have faced reprimands and dismissals over their statements on the war.

#united states #Palestine #israel

[antidrumpfs]

Opinion-Joe Biden: We must keep marching toward Dr. King’s dream

From the Joe Biden Washington Post opinion piece August 27, 2023

Sixty years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans marched on Washington for jobs and freedom. In describing his dream for us all, Dr. King spoke of redeeming the “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir” derived from the very idea of America — we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. While we’ve never fully lived up to that promise as a nation, we have never fully walked away from it, either. Each day of the Biden-Harris administration, we continue the march forward.

That includes a fundamental break with trickle-down economics that promised prosperity but failed America, especially Black Americans, over the past several decades. Trickle-down economics holds that taxes should be cut for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, that public investments in priorities such as education, infrastructure and health care should be shrunk, and good jobs shipped overseas. It has exacerbated inequality and systemic barriers that make it harder for Black Americans to start a business, own a home, send their children to school and retire with dignity.

Vice President Harris and I came into office determined to change the economic direction of the country and grow the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. Our plan — Bidenomics — is working. Because of the major laws and executive orders I’ve signed — from the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Chips and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, my executive orders on racial equity and more — we’re advancing equity in everything we do making unprecedented investments in all of America, including for Black Americans.

Black unemployment fell to a historic low this spring and remains near that level.More Black small businesses are starting up than we’ve seen in over 25 years. More Black families have health insurance. We cut Black child poverty in half in my first year in office. We aredelivering clean water and high-speed internet to homes across America. We’re taking on Big Pharma to reduce prescription drug costs, such as making the cost of insulin for seniors $35 a month. We’re taking the most significant action on climate ever, which is reducing pollution and creating jobs for Black Americans in the clean energy future.

This administration will continue to prioritize increasing access to government contracting and lending. We awarded a record $69.9 billion in federal contracts to small, disadvantaged businesses in fiscal 2022. We’re taking on housing discrimination and increasing Black homeownership. To date, we’ve invested more than $7 billion in historically Black colleges and universities to prepare students for high-growth industries. We’ve approved more than $116 billion in student loan debt cancellation for 3.4 million Americans so that borrowers receive the relief they deserve. And a new student debt repayment plan is helping Black students and families cut in half their total lifetime payments per dollar borrowed. We’re doing all of this by making sure the biggest corporations begin to pay their fair share, keeping my commitment that Americans earning less than $400,000 a year not pay a single penny more in federal taxes.

And to help guide these policies, I made it a priority to appoint Black leaders to my Cabinet, my staff, in the judiciary and to key positions in agencies such as the Federal Reserve to ensure policymakers represent the experiences of all Americans in the economy.

But we know government can’t do it alone. Private-sector leaders have rightly acted to ensure their companies are more reflective of America, often in response to their employees, their customers and their own consciences. Right now, the same guardians of trickle-down economics who attack our administration’s economic policies are also attacking the private sector and the views of the American people. A recent poll from the nonpartisan Black Economic Alliance Foundation shows overwhelming bipartisan support for promoting diversity as central to a company being more innovative and more profitable, and central to fulfilling the promise of our country for all Americans. Despite the attacks, we all must keep pushing to create a workforce that reflects America.

For generations, Black Americans haven’t always been fully included in our democracy or our economy, but by pure courage and heart, they have never given up pursuing the American Dream. We saw in Jacksonville, Fla., yet another community wounded by an act of gun violence, reportedly fueled by hate-filled animus. We must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin. On this day of remembrance, let us keep showing that racial equity isn’t just an aspiration. Let us reject the cramped view that America is a zero-sum game that holds that for one to succeed, another must fail. Let us remember America is big enough for everyone to do well and reach their God-given potential.

That’s how we redeem the promissory note of our nation.

#vote democratic #vote blue #votebluetosaveamerica #biden harris 2024

[animefeminist]

What we can learn about labor organization from Akiba Maid War

Content warning: gun violence, organized and anti-labor crime

Spoilers for Episode 4 of Akiba Maid War.

Living in late stage capitalism is a bizarre paradox of being expected to work harder and more skilfully than ever before, but receiving so little compensation that even a semblance of fiscal sustainability and job security are considered blessings. Supposedly stable jobs in the much-lauded tech sector fail to live up to the respect they demand from the public, with layoffs among tech giants kicking off 2023. Creatively fulfilling jobs, especially those related to anime production, are notorious for abusing young people while paying them next to nothing. Even gesturing at possibly improving these working conditions is suppressed by companies, as seen in MAPPA’s Chainsaw Man anime removing a thematically relevant reference to labor unions.

With this as the status quo for working and enjoying art in the world today, I was absolutely floored when Episode 4 of Akiba Maid War aired with a plotline that it is capital-a About organizing workers to resist corporate manipulation and exploitation.

Directed by Masui Sōichi and written by Hiki Yoshihiro, Akiba Maid War was the surprise hit of the Fall 2022 season, and is a lovably imperfect piece of feminist media. Episode 4, “The Inside Story! A Drillmaster For the Swine!!” sees the maids of the Oinky Doink Cafe fight against their parent company’s efforts to turn their pig sty into a cash cow. While not comprehensive, the episode perfectly captures many of the tactics corporations use to suppress their workers. Of course, the challenging relationship these characters already have with labor organizations as sensationalized mobsters further complicates the themes of this episode, but the pro-union sentiment of this zany plotline deserves analysis. 

Read it at Anime Feminist!

#akiba maid war #ranko mannen #wahira nagomi #articles

[follow-up-news]

Apple became the first publicly traded company to close a trading day with a $3 trillion market value, marking another milestone for a technology juggernaut that has reshaped society with a line-up of products that churn out eye-popping profits. Apple shares closed up 2.3% at $193.97 Friday, bringing its market value to $3.04 trillion. Apple is one of a handful of technology companies, including Microsoft and chipmaker Nvidia, that helped drive the S&P 500 to a gain of nearly 16% in the first half of the year. The 47-year-old company co-founded by Silicon Valley legend Steve Jobs had briefly eclipsed a $3 trillion market value on back-to-back days in January 2022, but couldn’t hold on by the time the market closed. Instead, Apple’s stock sunk into a prolonged descent that pushed its market value briefly below $2 trillion earlier this year amid a slowdown in growth and investor jitters about rising interest rates that affected the entire tech sector.

#apple

[mariacallous]

With the 2022 midterms ushering in a divided federal government, the consensus view—at least in the media—is that Washington’s moment to enact big policy measures has now passed. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and others predict that disputes between a Republican-led House and Democrat-led Senate will cause federal legislative work to grind to a halt. A Politico headline said it most succinctly: “Biden’s era of big government is over.”

It’s true that a divided Congress should mean a less productive and less ambitious legislative calendar. But Washington has only begun to execute all the work created by the previous Congress—and nowhere is that more true than infrastructure policy.

Between the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the 117th Congress invested $1.25 trillion across the transportation, energy, water resources, and broadband sectors for the next five to 10 years. It’s now the Biden administration’s responsibility to get that historic amount of money out the door—yet the bulk of it is still sitting in federal coffers or unrealized tax credits on the federal balance sheet.

Nor will implementation outside Washington be easy. Leaders in state and local governments, utilities, and qualifying industries will confront a range of challenging economic conditions to put all that federal money to work. Significant price inflation in the construction sector, the growing cost of municipal debt, a tight labor market, and a general downturn in state and local government revenues could all limit how many projects move from planning to physical construction. Communities and companies may need to right-size their infrastructure ambitions for those volatile economic realities.

The goal of this report is to use the past year of legislative activity and economic data to prepare public officials, practitioners, and analysts for what the next few years of federal infrastructure implementation may entail. If there’s one common theme across all the data, it’s this: With so much money available across so many programs, strategic implementation is now the most urgent priority. We recommend the following three cross-cutting strategies:

Rank major priorities. No matter the infrastructure sector or asset owner, there is a likelihood that not all “good” projects can be completed by the time the IIJA or IRA expire. Leaders must reconsider priorities and rank what matters most to constituents, customers, and the bottom line.

Prepare for different funding scenarios based on shifting economic conditions. Even with the significant increase in federal resources, all projects will require either matching public funding (such as formula programs), private investment (such as those incentivized by tax credits), or both. With economic conditions feeling especially volatile, practitioners should consider how different amounts of state and local dollars will impact access to federal funding. Experiences in Philadelphia and Colorado—both of which adopted policies to secure funding to make federal matches—could serve as models.

Expand the talent pipeline. The IIJA and IRA primarily fund capital investments or operations, leaving the question of where talent comes from to infrastructure owners and operators. With five to 10 years of funding increases, public and private stakeholders won’t complete their project pipeline if they don’t also address their workforce pipeline. States should make use of flexible workforce funding within the IIJA, and localities should consider new regional strategies.

[warningsine]

The gender pay gap has reduced to its lowest level since reporting became mandatory for businesses in 2017. However, women are still being paid just 91p for every £1 a man earns, according to analysis of official government data.

Almost four out of five companies and public bodies are still paying men more than women (78.4%) although the median pay gap reduced slightly from the previous year to 9.1% in 2023-2024, the lowest level since mandatory reporting became law in Great Britain in 2018.

However, the gender pay gap remains stubbornly higher in the public sector at 14.4% with almost nine-in-10 (87.6%) public sector organisations paying men more than women in comparison to just over three-quarters of private companies.

By 3pm on Friday – ahead of the midnight deadline for private companies – a record 10,380 organisations with 250 or more employees had filed data.

However, campaigners have called for further action by the government to tackle pay disparities, including the introduction of fines for companies who do not comply with the law.https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2024/04/gender-paygap2024/giv-13425od72Cmb6X54x/

The general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Paul Nowak, said: “Working women deserve equal pay but the gender pay gap is still a huge issue. At current rates of progress, it will take more than 20 years to bring men and women’s pay into line. That is not right … companies must now be required to implement action plans to close their pay gaps and bosses who don’t comply with the law should be fined.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission did not respond to questions on how many relevant companies and bodies had never filed a report despite having a legal obligation to do so but insisted that non-compliance with reporting this data was low, citing only eight known organisations failing to report by the deadline in 2023, and 28 in 2022.

A spokesperson added: “There have been no penalties or fines issued to date. It is important to note that the EHRC does not have the power to issue fines directly, which would be issued via a court order.”

The construction (22.8%), finance and insurance (21.5%), and education (20%) registered the biggest median pay gaps, according to analysis of the sectors reported by each body.

The educational sector’s poor standing is due, in part, to large gaps in Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs); of the worst-performing 100 public bodies with the largest gender pay gap, all but three were academy trusts.

Responding to questions on whether the government should intervene on the large and persistent gender pay gaps in MATs a spokesperson for the Department of Education said schools were responsible for their own decisions on employment issues but were expected to give due consideration to their obligations under the Equality Act 2010.

The accommodation and food, and health and social work sectors reported some of the lowest gender pay gaps, with women earning 0.5% and 1.5% less than their male colleagues, respectively.

Under the Equal Pay Act 1970, it is illegal to pay different amounts to men and women doing the same jobs.

Survey data by the Office for National Statistics, published in November 2023 which covers the wider UK population regardless of the size of the company, shows the gender pay gap declining slowly over time to 7.7% in April 2023. The data also demonstrated higher disparities among full-time employees in every English region than in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

A government spokesperson said: “The gender pay gap has been trending downwards since 1997, and the government is committed to ensuring women have equal access to employment, enterprise and investment opportunities.”

#pay gap #gender equality #uk #news tag

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Fighting the privacy wars, state by state

In 2021, Apple updated its mobile OS so that users could opt out of app tracking with one click. More than 96% opted out, costing Facebook $10b in one year. The kicker? Even if you opted out, Apple continued to spy on you, just as invasively as Facebook had, as part of its competing targeted ad product:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/23/state-of-play/#patchwork

The fact that Apple — a company that has blanketed the world with anti-surveillance billboards — engaged in deceptive, pervasive surveillance reveals the bankruptcy of “letting the market decide” what privacy protections you should have.

When you walk into a grocery store, you know that the FDA is on the job, making sure that the food you buy doesn’t kill you — but no one stops the grocery store from tracking literally every step you take, every eye movement you make (no, really!) and selling that to all comers:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/02/16/forget-milk-and-eggs-supermarkets-are-having-a-fire-sale-on-data-about-you

America’s decision to let the private sector self-regulate commercial surveillance is a grotesque failure of duty on the part of Congress, which has consistently failed to pass comprehensive privacy legislation. There are lots of reasons for this, but the most important is that American cops and spies are totally reliant on commercial surveillance brokers, and they fight like hell against any privacy legislation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#axciom

The private sector’s unregulated privacy free-for-all means that cops don’t need to get warrants to spy on you — they can just buy the data on the open market for pennies:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/18/fifth-pig/#ppp

The last Congressional session almost passed a halfway decent (but still deeply flawed) federal privacy law, but then they didn’t. Basically, Congress only passes laws that can be sandwiched into 1,000-page must-pass bills and most of the good stuff that gets through only does so because some bought-and-paid-for Congressjerks are too busy complaining about “woke librarians” to read the bills before they come up for a vote.

The catastrophic failure to protect Americans’ privacy has sent human rights groups hunting for other means to accomplish the same end. On the federal level, there’s the newly reinvigorated FTC, under the visionary, muscular leadership of Lina Khan, the best Commission chair in a generation. She’s hard at work on rules to limit commercial surveillance:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

But FTC regs take time to pass, and it can be hard for ordinary individuals to trigger their enforcement, which might leave you at the mercy of your local officials when your privacy is invaded. What we really need is a privacy law with a “private right of action” — the right to go to court on your own:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

The business lobby hates private right of action, and they trick low-information voters into opposing them with lies about “ambulance chasers” who sue innocent fast-food outlets for millions because they serve coffee that’s too hot:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

With Congress deadlocked and privacy harms spiraling, pro-privacy groups have turned to the states, as Alfred Ng writes for Politico:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/22/statehouses-privacy-law-cybersecurity-00083775

The best provisions of the failed federal privacy law have been introduced as state legislation in Massachusetts and Illinois, and there are amendments to Indiana’s existing state privacy law — 16 states in all are working on or have some kind of privacy law. This means businesses must live with the dread “patchwork of laws,” which serves the business lobby right: they must do business in potentially radically different ways in different states, and small missteps could cost them millions, in true fuck-around-and-find-out fashion.

As Ng writes, these laws don’t have to pass in every state. America’s historically contingent, lopsided state lines mean that some states are so populous that whatever rules they pass end up going nationwide (the ACLU’s Kade Crockford uses the example of California Prop 65 warnings showing up on canned goods in NY).

As Congress descends further into self-parody, the temptation to treat the federal government as damage and route around it only mounts. It’s a powerful, but imperfect strategy. On the negative side, it takes a lot of resources to introduce legislation into multiple states, and to win legislative fights in each.

Think of the incredible fuckery that the coalition of Apple, John Deere, Wahl, and other monopolists got up to defeat dozens of state Right to Repair laws, even snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in New York state, neutering the incredible state electronics repair law before it reached the governor’s desk:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/17/more-details-on-how-tech-lobbyists-lobotomized-nys-right-to-repair-law-with-governor-kathy-hochuls-help/

Indeed, the business lobby loves lobbying statehouses, treating them as the Feds’ farm-leagues, filled with naive, easily hoodwinked rubes. Organizations like ALEC use their endless corporate funding to get state legislation that piles farce upon tragedy, like the laws banning municipal fiber networks:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/#unrequited-love

The right has always had hooks in state legislatures, but they really opened up the sluice gates in the runup to the 2010 census, when a GOP strategist called Thomas Hofeller started pitching Republican operatives on a plan called REDMAP, to capture state legislatures in time for a post-2010 census mass-redistricting that would neutralize the votes of Black and brown people and deliver permanent rule by an openly white nationalist Republican party that could lose every popular vote and still hold power.

Of course, that’s not how they talked about it in public. Though the racial dimension of GOP gerrymandering were visible to anyone on the ground, Hofeller maintained a veneer of plausible deniability on the new REDMAP districts, leaving the racist intent of GOP redistricting as a he-said/she-said matter of conjecture:

https://www.klfy.com/national/late-gop-redistricting-gurus-files-hint-at-partisan-motives/

That is, until 2018, when Satan summoned Hofeller back to hell, leaving his personal effects in the hands of his estranged anarchist daughter, Stephanie, who dumped all her old man’s files online, including the powerpoint slides he delivered to his GOP colleagues where he basically said, “Hey kids, let’s do an illegal racism!”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pked4v/the-anarchist-daughter-of-the-gops-gerrymandering-mastermind-just-dumped-all-his-maps-and-files-on-google-drive

Sometimes, laws that turn on intent are difficult to enforce because they require knowledge of the accused’s state of mind. But there are so many would-be supervillains who just can’t stop themselves from monologing, and worse, putting it in writing.

As bad as state politics can be, they’re still winnable battlefields. Last year saw a profound win on Right to Repair in Colorado, where a wheelchair repair bill, HB22–1031, made history:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/when-drm-comes-your-wheelchair

That win helped inspire Rebecca Giblin and I when we were writing Chokepoint Capitalism, our book about how Big Tech and Big Content rip off creative workers, and what to do about it.

https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Many readers have noted that the first half of the book — where were unpack the scams of streaming, news advertising, ebooks and audiobooks, and other creative fields — is incredibly enraging.

But if you find yourself struggling to concentrate on the book because of a persistent, high-pitched whining noise that you suspect might be a rage-induced incipient aneurysm, keep reading! The second half of the book is full of detailed, shovel-ready policy proposals to get artists paid, including a state legislative proposal that works from the same playbook as these state privacy laws.

If your creative work entitles you to receive royalties, your contract will typically include the right to audit your royalty statements. If you do audit your royalties, you will often find “discrepancies.” We cite one LA firm that has performed tens of thousands of record contract audits over decades, and in every instance except one, the errors they discovered were in the labels’ favor.

This is a hell of a head-scratcher. I can only assume that some kind of extremely vexing, highly localized probability storm has taken up permanent residence over the Big Three labels’ accounting departments, making life hell for their CPAs, and my heart goes out to them.

Anyway: if you find one of these errors and you tell your label or publisher or studio, “Hey, you stole my money, cough up!” they will pat you on the head and say, “Oh, you artists are adorable but you can’t do math. You’re mistaken, we don’t owe you anything. But because we’re good natured slobs, we’ll offer you, say, half of what you think we owe you, which is good, because you can’t afford to sue us. And all you need to do to get that money is to sign this non-disclosure agreement, meaning you can’t tell anyone else about the money we’re stealing from them.

“Oh, and one more thing: your accountant has to promise never to audit us again.” As Caldwell-Kelly said when we talked about this on Trashfuture, this is like the accused murderer telling the forensics team, “Dig anywhere you’d like in my garden, just not in that corner, I’m very sentimental about it.”

https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/amazon-billing-amazon-for-amazon-feat-cory-doctorow-and-rebecca-giblin/

Now, contracts are a matter of state law, and nearly every entertainment industry contract is signed in one of four jurisdictions: NY, CA, TN (Nashville), and WA (games companies and Amazon). If we amended the state laws in one or more of these to say, “NDAs can’t be enforced when they pertain to wage theft arising from omissions or misstatements on royalties,” we could pour money into the pockets of creative workers all over the world.

Yes, the entertainment giants will fight like hell against this, and yes, they have a lot of juice in their state legislatures. But they’re also incredibly greedy and reckless, and prone to such breathtaking and brazen acts of wage theft that they lurch from crisis to crisis, and at each of these crises, there is a space to pass a law to address these very public failings.

For example, in 2022, the Writers Guild of America — one of the best, most principled, most solidaristic and unified unions in Hollywood — wrested $42 million from Netflix, which the company had stolen from its writers:

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/wga-wins-42-million-arbitration-netflix-1235333822/

Netflix isn’t alone in these massive acts of wage theft, and this is certainly not the only way Netflix is stealing from creative workers. There’s never just one ant: if Netflix cooked the books for writers, they’re definitely cooking it for other workers. That means there will be more scandals, and when they break, we can demand more than a bandaid fix for one crime — we can demand modest-but-critical legislative action to fix contracts and prevent this kind of wage-theft in the future.

The state legislatures aren’t an intrinsically better battlefield for just fights, but they are an alternative to Congress, and there is space to make things happen in just some of the 50 state houses that can ripple out over the whole country — for good and bad.

[Image ID: Blind justice, holding aloft a set of unbalanced scales; in the lower scale is a map of the USA showing the state lines; in the higher scale rests the capitol building.]

#pluralistic #states rights #laboratories of democracy #privacy #gdpr #federalism #contract law #chokepoint capitalism #wage theft #redmap

[amitypatna]

7 Criteria For Selecting The Best BCA College In Patna

BCA course is listed among trending and popular courses in India. The demand for skilled professionals in technology and innovation is increasing day by day. Indian government's announcement to budget ₹88,567 crores in the IT sector for 2022-23 has not only created several prospects for applicants with computer science backgrounds but also has burdened a lot of IT companies with new job vacancies.

However, choosing the right Bachelor of computer applications college is crucial for your career and growth. In this article, we are going to look at the top 7 criteria that are required for choosing the best Bachelor of Computer Applications University in Bihar.

Is BCA Worth Pursuing?

BCA courses are getting immensely popular all across India, including smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. Students now understand the scope of a BCA program and are willing to pursue the same across various Indian colleges and universities.

But how can one judge a college even before starting to pursue it? Well, I am going to share with you 6 factors from which you can judge the Bachelor of Computer Applications University in Bihar.

Syllabus and Curriculum

Search for colleges with a strong curriculum and a well-structured syllabus that covers the latest trends and technologies in computer applications.

Computer Application Specializations

Before enrolling, check if the college offers specialized tracks or concentrations within the BCA program. ​It is the process whereby a student can especially concentrate on his interest in software development, web design, data analytics, and many other areas.

Course Professors

Faculty plays a crucial role in your academic experience. Choose a college with a team of highly qualified and experienced professors who are passionate about teaching and industry trends.

College Infrastructure

Consider the infrastructure and facilities provided by the college, It should have modern computer labs installed with the latest software and hardware, libraries stocked with relevant resources, and conducive learning environments.

Placements After the Course

Examine the track record of college in terms of placement opportunities for BCA graduates. A strong placement cell and collaborations with industry partners enhance the prospects of securing great job offers.

Career Options

Consider the different career paths of graduates of BCA, which may include areas such as software development and programming, database administration and information technology consulting. A reputable BCA college should prepare students for a wide array of career opportunities.

Consider Location

When choosing a college, consider the location's suitability for your needs. Factors like proximity to home, access to public transportation, and the surrounding environment (urban, suburban, rural) can all impact your learning experience.

How Amity Stands As A Pioneer For BCA College In Patna

Amity University stands as the pioneer when it comes to the best BCA college in Patna.

It puts together a fun curriculum that traces the tracing of highly demanding skills and service-focused differentiation concepts that differentiate cutting-edge technology applications in computers.​

This ensures that students are in sync with the industry's demands.

With distinct fields offered, e.g. software development, web design, and data analytics, students are afforded the liberty to formulate their academic pathway as per their interests and career aspirations.

Key Strengths Of Amity University, Patna

The key strengths of Amity University are its exceptional placement records and its team of highly qualified and experienced professors. The university has strong ties and collaborations with industry leaders, It ensures that students have access to great internships and job opportunities.

Amity University, Patna, offers students the ideal learning environment with easy access to transportation and a vibrant surrounding urban setting. ​On the one hand, it ensures that students can entirely concentrate on their studies, not limiting the satisfaction of their room temperature, lighting etc.

Wrapping Up With Final Thoughts

Students at Amity University can get themselves introduced to the multi-dimensional career field related to computer applications which will give them the required abilities and information to establish themselves in a variety of roles such as software development, programming, data administration, and IT consulting. So if you are looking to pursue a BCA degree, Apply Now at Amity University, Patna!

Source: https://sites.google.com/view/best-bca-college-in-patna-/home?authuser=2

#Best BCA College in Patna #Bachelor of Computer Applications college #Bachelor of Computer Applications University in Bihar

[perssonriise06]

Anshuman Goenka: Iifl Wealth And Asset Management Appoints Anshuman Goenka As Private Fairness Enterprise Head The Financial Times

Because of the nice degree of uncertainty around which corporations ultimately develop effective therapeutics, the technique is equally weighted. Further, the strategy will continue to give attention to urgent research and growth issues beyond the COVID-19 crisis. The emphasis on healthcare is mirrored within the move of household office money into venture capital — a fast-growing investment channel for younger companies. That’s why our group goes beneath the surface to assist the unique wants of trade subsectors, including biotechnology, biopharmaceuticals, pharmaceuticals, medical units, medical instruments and diagnostics, and CROs, CDMOs and CMOs. For most wealth managers, shifting to a digital and AI-enabled wealth management mannequin would require reworking their working mannequin and constructing new capabilities. That in flip requires a evaluate of the organizational construction, talent, tradition, incentives, and ways of working, with the aim of redesigning these as needed to assist the organization’s folks deliver value to their customers at scale. A year later, he founded an “anti-woke” index fund provider—think BlackRock, with out all of the speak about saving the world—named Strive Asset Management. Investors just lately valued Strive at a lofty $300 million or so, in accordance with two individuals acquainted with the financing, implying that Ramaswamy’s stake is value well over $100 million. One of the keys to driving Responsible Growth is being a great place to work for our teammates around the world. We rent people with a broad vary of backgrounds and experiences and invest heavily in our teammates and their households by providing competitive advantages to help their physical, emotional, and financial well-being. With an expense ratio of 0.95%, the fund seeks every day investment outcomes of two instances the daily performance of the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index. It is our belief that wealth can't be managed in isolation and wishes an built-in and holistic strategy. The economic influence of biotechnology and biomanufacturing is poised to increase at a rapid pace over the following 20 years, adding hundreds of good-paying jobs throughout many sectors of the economic system. Since President Biden issued an govt order to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing in 2022, the Biden-Harris Administration has been working to make this imaginative and prescient a actuality by way of the President’s Investing in America actions. Our team has advised corporations on most of the largest and most high-profile activist campaigns and hostile defense assignments in latest years. In public firm conditions, Evercore’s strategic shareholder advice is an integral a half of our M&A follow and a decisive edge for purchasers in search of to unravel sophisticated issues and acquire shareholder support for his or her transactions. If you’re on the lookout for one thing other than typical cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all wealth management, HoyleCohen is the place. biotech estate planning boston There is amassive push for tokenized assets inside the crypto universe and while nonetheless anascent technology, the crypto crowds have shown us, time and time again, thatthey can come up with intelligent and disruptive methods of rethinking finance. In truth,Artificial Intelligence opens up new prospects inside the realm ofinvesting as it is in a position to optimize portfolios, benchmarks, present new ways ofassessing lively risks, ship alternative models, and automate investmentprocesses. Whether it’ssimple portfolio optimization or complete investment strategies, masspersonalized investing products will surely be a hot new development going forward. CRISPR fusion proteins and new nucleases are being investigated for his or her capability to facilitate site-specific integrations of large genetic sequences. So far, there has been significant exercise in R&D applying gen AI to make use of circumstances similar to accelerating drug discovery with de novo drug design across modalities and enhancing indication finding. With greater than $15 billion raised in VC funding for platform biotechs in 2022, investors have been drawn to areas corresponding to the mixing of enormous omics information units, investigation of regenerative medicines, and unlocking of large-scale genomic edits. These areas of improvement point out the place progressive biotech could additionally be heading. So a health care ETF might provide a beautiful way to put money into a resilient sector of the financial system. Of course, one of the best investments for beginners also offer tons of choices for all kinds of traders. The provides that appear on this site are from corporations that compensate us. This compensation may impact how and the place products appear on this site, together with, for example, the order during which they could appear within the listing categories, besides where prohibited by regulation for our mortgage, home equity and different home lending merchandise. But this compensation does not affect the data we publish, or the reviews that you see on this site. Your career is central to the Biotech and Pharmaceutical Management MSc experience at UCL GBSH. You’ll discuss it with programme leaders and trade experts within the immersive induction, and revisit it throughout workshops and specialist sessions throughout the degree. This strategy introduces a new risk for biotech buyers to consider, and may weigh on the performance of stocks in the sector within the coming months. We consider that our clients’ challenges require an integrated strategy to analysis, portfolio management, and solutions design throughout asset lessons.

#biotech wealth management #biotech financial services #biotech investment advisors #biotech tax planning #biotech estate planning #biotech investment planning #biotech retirement planning #biotech financial services boston #biotech investment advisors boston #biotech tax planning boston #biotech estate planning boston #biotech investment planning boston #biotech retirement planning boston

[accountitans]

Job Security: Why Accounting is a Path to a Stable and Rewarding Career?

Introduction

When looking for a job, I think all we have in mind is, ‘Does it pay high?’ But what if I told you there’s a career that not only offers earning potential but also provides unmatched job security and stability? This is where Accountancy comes to light! Accounting provides a wide range of job possibilities and is frequently referred to as the language of business. Still, there's a persistent question: Are accountants able to obtain high-paying jobs? Thus, in this Blog, join me as we crack the code of the accounting profession and unveil the opportunities it holds, presenting 5 main reasons for the profession's security and stability.

1. High Demand

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, From 2022 to 2032, the employment of accountants and auditors is expected to increase by 4%, which is faster than the average for all occupations. The demand for accountants and auditors is predicted to remain high due to globalization, economic growth, and a complex tax and regulatory environment.

Accountants' and auditors' job growth is often anticipated to be strongly correlated with the state of the economy. These individuals will remain in demand as the economy expands to prepare and review financial records. Additionally, the need for public accountants to handle the legally required financial documentation will increase as more businesses become public.

Therefore, the ongoing demand for accounting services and financial management is one of the main reasons accounting is a secure career. For any firm to continue operating and making a profit, reliable financial records and professional financial advice are essential. Thus, regardless of the state of the economy, there is always a significant demand for accountants.

2. Professional Advancement

The fact that accounting offers a wide range of work options to suit diverse interests and skill sets is another factor that makes it a reliable career choice. Accountants may choose to specialize in financial accounting, auditing, taxation, management accounting, and other areas. People can find their area of expertise depending on their interests and skill sets thanks to these varied career options, which gives their professional journey a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.

Also, Having accounting knowledge might help you transition into other fields, such as banking, financial planning, or even information technology. If accountants find other industries more intriguing, they may be able to shift into financial planning and banking, which are particularly closely connected fields.

3. Technological Advancements

Accountants are now data analysts, financial advisors, and technology specialists in the digital age. They are no longer merely number crunchers. Moreover, the growing number of FinTech companies and the financial sector's innovation are attributed to the rising demand for accountants with expertise in business analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). The fantastic learning possibilities that accounting offers contribute to its safety as a profession. Staying up to date with the latest technologies is imperative for anyone in the accounting field. Accounting professionals can expand their knowledge into other areas of accounting and finance thanks to this continuous learning.  Accounting also offers a strong grasp of fundamental business ideas, which improves collaboration with other departments.

The extent to which accounting uses technology and automation is one of the key elements influencing job security in the field. Accounting professionals now have more time for research, expert-level decision-making, and collaboration with other business units thanks to the automation of routine operations made possible by technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. Instead of getting bogged down by repetitive tasks, accountants will be able to concentrate more on offering their clients strategic advice and recommendations. The need for human accountants will not, however, go down because of this automation. Rather, it will allow people working in accounting to take on more challenging assignments that call for exceptional abilities and knowledge.

4. Adaptable to industry changes

As said by Harvard Business Review, Adaptability is the new competitive advantage. So aside from the monetary benefits, professions in accounting offer security and stability in times of economic uncertainty.  This was especially clear during the COVID-19 pandemic when the employment rate of accountants was higher than that of other businesses. Even in these difficult circumstances, businesses still need accounting professionals, tax preparation services, and risk management assistance.

The accounting industry had to quickly adjust when the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic occurred. Many CPA firms had to figure out how to help their clients adjust to the numerous uncertainties they faced in addition to figuring out how to deliver services remotely. For many, the period since has been distinct, unusual, and difficult.

2020 has taught us many valuable lessons, one of which is that adaptability can be an asset. Businesses have discovered benefits in providing employees with greater flexibility with their schedules, ranging from longer-term work-from-home options to a shift from the traditional nine-to-five workday. After the pandemic, flexible work arrangements will persist. This additional tendency began before the pandemic and has significantly picked up speed in the past year.

Individuals and businesses experiencing financial difficulties seek solutions to improve their situation. This makes the demand for accounting skills greater than before. The need for consulting services will persist in the aftermath of COVID-19, which has pushed many individuals and organizations into this field and presented a huge potential for the industry.

COVID-19 was an incredibly challenging year for people all across the world. It's critical to acknowledge the positive evolutionary progress in addition to the importance of not downplaying the difficulties that have endured. The accounting sector can grow for many years to come by applying the lessons learned from the year during the pandemic. Accountants had a unique opportunity, even during those dark times, to transform the sector from being essential to being indispensable.

5. High-paying Job

Despite putting in a lot of effort and long hours to advance their professions, many accountants are positive about their experiences (Zaki, 2023). In addition, accounting is a financially stable profession due to its comparatively high pay. Accountants are among the top ten highest-paying professions for recent graduates, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Additionally, accountants can make even larger salaries with additional experience and knowledge.

Conclusion

Accounting is not just about numbers; it’s about creating a secure and fulfilling career path. The demand for skilled accountants is on the rise, offering job security even in challenging times. The adaptability to technological advancements ensures that accountants remain relevant and in demand across industries. Moreover, the diverse career opportunities and potential for professional advancement make accounting an amazing choice for those seeking stability and growth. As we’ve explored, the accounting profession is not only financially rewarding but also provides a sense of purpose and accomplishment. So, if you’re considering a career that offers stability, growth, and a chance to make a difference, look no further than accounting.

References:

Hood, T. (2021). How Covid Changed the Accounting Profession for Good. CPA Practice Advisor. Retrieved from: https://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/2021/03/28/how-covid-changed-the-accounting-profession-for-good/43323/ 

D&V Philippines. (n.d.). HOW THE POST-PANDEMIC NEW NORMAL AFFECTED THE ACCOUNTING INDUSTRY. Retrieved from: https://www.dvphilippines.com/facing-the-new-normal-of-the-accounting-industry

Indeed Editorial Team. (2024). Why Choose Accounting as a Career?. Retrieved from:

Percy, S. (n.d.). Accountancy is the best job in the world. ACT. Retrieved from: https://www.treasurers.org/hub/treasurer-magazine/accountancy-best-job-world

Zaki, A. (2023). 95% of Accountants Satisfied With Current Role. CFO. Retrieved from:

CPA Credits. (2023). Accounting: Stability and Job Security. Retrieved from: 

[hiet-chennai]

Best AME College in India

Aircraft Maintenance Engineering

Aircraft Maintenance Engineering (AME) is a program that imparts knowledge and equips students with skills to ensure the proper functioning of various aircraft. The graduates perform routine checks, do overhauling, repairing, and other maintenance-related activities of the aircraft. The Aircraft Maintenance Engineers have a responsibility to ensure a glitch-free and safe flight by certifying that the aircraft is operating in an entirely accurate manner. The engineers are also accountable for averting in-flight hazards. The AME course consists of theoretical and practical sessions on aircraft systems, maintenance procedures and regulations. With lucrative salary packages, a career in this field has great growth opportunities.

The student will pursue Aircraft Maintenance training in a DGCA-approved AME institute, followed by live training at DGCA-approved enterprises. The candidates will receive a license from the DGCA after clearing the modules and completing the practical training. The licensed AME can work in the commercial or public sector anywhere on the globe.

Career Opportunities:

Indian aviation sector is facing skill shortage in pilots and Aircraft Maintenance Engineers. India is growing in the aviation sector, so the requirement of AME is at its peak. Two Indian airports have been ranked in World’s top 10 fastest growing airports. The air traffic has increased in India, raising a hike in Aircraft Maintenance Engineers jobs.

From working with national and international carriers to aircraft manufacturing firms, pursuing AME courses will open door to an array of career opportunities in the aviation industry. This degree has a wide range of applications since it leads to a job in airlines, which is one of the highest-paying industries.

Candidates can become licensed engineers, which are in high demand at all levels, including defense, traveling airlines, international airlines, and so on. Because there is a growing need for AMEs both in India and overseas, individuals can find attractive job opportunities in both the private and public sectors in India and abroad.

A license holder Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (AME) has promising career opportunities in the government sector and private sector in India and abroad.

Airlines

MRO Industries

Aircraft Manufacturing Companies

Aircraft Part Manufacturing Companies

Aircraft Maintenance organization

Aviation Training Centers

Flying Clubs

Defence Aviation

Civil Aviation Organization

Best AME College in India with State of Art Facilities

One of the best AME college in India approved by DGCA that has consistently produced Aircraft Maintenance engineers over the decades is the Hindustan Institute of Engineering Technology (HIET), established with an aim of providing quality education, HIET is one of the best AME College in India with affordable fees specialized in offering AME courses offering practical training with placement assistance that meet the current demands of the aviation industry.

From its inception in 1966, the institution has focused on aviation industry education and training, recognizing the importance of this sector in India’s economy. To achieve this, the institution has formed partnerships with various aviation companies to provide practical training opportunities for its students. HIET being one of the Top AME Schools in India offers distinctive curriculum and top-notch training facilities ensure that students graduate as skilled Aircraft Maintenance Engineers ready to excel in their careers.

World Class infrastructure & Industry collaborations:

Hindustan Institute of Engineering Technology (HIET) Chennai a unit of the reputed Hindustan Group of Institutions stands as an esteemed aviation institution approved by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and recognized as the Best AME College in India in the year 2022 for their contribution for Educational service in the field Civil Aviation. The award was presented in January 2023 at the 14th Annual International Conference held in New Delhi, India by the Civil Aviation Minister Mr. Jyotiraditya M Scindia.

The institutes outstanding infrastructure boasts state-of-the-art facilities, including an Aero Hangar and a wide range of aircraft such as Learjet 24D aircraft, Dornier D0 228, Chetak and Robinson R-22 helicopter, HT-2 and Cessna 152/172 aircrafts and the JT8D engine installed on the Boeing 737, TV — 3 Engine installed in MI-17 Helicopter are dedicated for demonstration purposes. The Technical and Reference Library at HIET offers a wide range of periodicals, latest books, CBT, and DVDs, meeting the requirements set by the DGCA.

HIET’s commitment to excellence is evident in its well-structured internship programs, facilitated by MoU’s signed with prominent airline groups such as AIESL, Thiruvananthapuram, Blue Dart Aviation Limited, Chennai, GMR Air Cargo and Aerospace Engineering Limited, Hyderabad, Deccan Charters Pvt Ltd, Bangaluru and Orient Flights Private Limited, Mysuru. These partnerships and use of industry-standard equipment, latest technology, alumni network and career guidance further enhance the institution’s reputation for producing successful graduates.

#aircraft maintenance engineering #ame course in chennai #ame colleges in india