People have different reasons to want to quit their 9-5 to pursue entrepreneurship full time. I was drawn to the opportunity to take something from idea to product and being able to “be my own boss”. We all want the lifestyle of a successful entrepreneur but you don’t need to have your own VC funded startup to build a great product.
High-value employees are a major assets for a strong company. Losing a high contributing team member could leave a void and impact the team’s morale and workflow. Investors are also concerned by high turnover rates, especially amongst the senior executives. Groupon had trouble retaining their senior executives, which contributed to an 85% drop in their value a year after going public. It’s clear we want to retain high-valued employees, but is employee loyalty the way to achieve retention?
If you asked me to give you three facts about myself, I would tell you (1) I’m a evening and weekend entrepreneur, (2) when I start working on something I enjoy, I can’t put it down, and (3) I love coffee. This a formula for disaster because I have a full time job that I have to show up to by 9AM and I’m a normal human person who needs at least 6 hours of sleep.
The average completion rate of Online Open Course (MOOC) certification programs is abysmally low. A report published in 2016 by researchers at Harvard and MIT based on 4 years of data indicated an average certification completion rate of just 5.5%. This does not discredit MOOCs to be a good source of quality education content for those looking for good information to improve their understanding for a particular subject; however, the depressing statistics underlines a deeper concern with the ineffectiveness of using a college curriculum to steer people’s professional development.
