How You Can Mix Foreign Travel and Your Career

If you already know you’re one of those people who will never be content with two weeks of vacation each year, it’s time to figure out how to make travel your lifestyle. Fortunately, there are more opportunities than ever to do this.

Getting Your Degree

In order to get most of the types of jobs that allow you to travel and live abroad, you’ll need a bachelor’s degree at minimum. You might think that you should be saving every penny for travel, but college will pay off with a lifetime of opportunities to live and work overseas. If money is an issue, consider taking out a student loan. Student loans tend to be easy to apply for and can supplement or replace federal funding, scholarships, grants, savings and any other sources of funding for school. While you are in school, doing a study or work abroad program and learning another language can better prepare you for an international lifestyle.

Choosing Your Travel Lifestyle

There are many different choices for your travel lifestyle, and of course, you may find that you want to change it up throughout your life. But you have to start somewhere, so here are some questions you need to ask yourself. Do you want to be based in the United States and work at a job that has you traveling often? Do you want to move to another country and put down roots there? Do you want to have the opportunity to live in many different countries for short or medium periods of time? How much control do you want to have over where you go next? Do you want to be self-employed? The answers to these questions will help you determine what type of career to pursue.

Your Career Options

One in five workers will look for a new job in the next six months. That’s because career options are many and varied. Looking for a job that allows you to be US-based but offers a lot of foreign travel is fairly straightforward as this is usually in the job description, but you still may want to consider what type of job you want. Would you like an office job that involves business trips, or would you prefer to work as a flight attendant? Another fairly straightforward option is if you have a parent or, sometimes, a grandparent from a country you’d like to live and work in. It is often possible to gain citizenship even if you are not one presently.

Beyond these situations, there are many other options. You could take a position at a company that has overseas branches and try to get an internal transfer. You could find out what skills are in demand and will get you a visa in the country of your choice, and study that in college. You won’t get rich travel nursing or English teaching, but you will just about have your pick of countries and opportunities. You could also join the foreign service, which, if you pass their stringent hiring requirements, will transfer you somewhere different every few years. Finally, you could start your own business, one that allows you to work in any location, as long as you don’t come into conflict with local visa regulations.

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Google Adsense will begin featuring publishers owned by underrepresented groups

 

Google Adsense has announced in an email that they will being to feature publishers owned by underrepresented groups as a way to fight inherent, systemic racism and bias as part of Google’s commitments to racial equity.

How it all started

This all started in 2020 when one of our buyers, Display & Video 360, began highlighting self-identified Black-owned publishers within Marketplace,  This program has allowed interested advertisers to thoughtfully design campaigns that support underrepresented businesses.

Now Display & Video 360 has expanded this program to both Women-owned and Latino-owned publishers. Display & Video 360’s program is one element of a broader initiative across Google to make our products more inclusive and make it easier for customers to find and support underrepresented businesses. This program remains a pilot and we hope to expand to more underrepresented groups in future – watch this space.

Program eligibility requirements

• Publisher must have their own Google AdSense or Ad Manager account
• Publisher’s AdSense account must have the billing address located in the United States; for Ad Manager, the network must have country set at ‘United States’
• The Google entity that signed the self-identified AdSense or Ad Manager contract must be Google LLC
• Publisher’s organization must be majority owned and controlled by members of the group they are self-identifying as (Black, Women, or Latino)

Google notes that the program will highlight businesses owned by underrepresented groups, but not content aimed at these specific groups. Display & Video 360 does not allow advertisers to target ads based on categories such as race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

To participate in the program

If your a business that’s part of the one of these underrepresented categories, meet the criteria above and would like to be included in this beta program, please submit your information on Google’s Marketplace Diversity & Inclusion form.

When accepted, Google will be periodically add new publishers who apply. This is a voluntary program; if you do not wish to participate, no action is required.

 

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Unlimited PTO (Flexible Time-Off) is great for proactive, empowered workers, not so much for passive employees

The unlimited PTO policy — also referred to as Flexible Time Off — has gone from an edge perk that technology companies used to stay competitive when wooing talent to their organizations to being adopted outside of that industry.

On the surface, Unlimited PTO presents the company as progressive and at the least, the appearance that they care about work-life balance.

Maybe the company is progressive and genuinely care about their employees’ well-being, but being forward-thinking and truly caring about your workforce requires more than offering a perk to make it seem so.

The cons of an Unlimited PTO policy

Whether the consequences of unlimited time off are intended or not, we have to understand and respect that those problems can arise. And that is especially true if the company’s goal is employee happiness.

Some believe that an Unlimited PTO policy is actually chipping away at your hard-earned right to paid time off.

In other words, many workers feel less empowered to take PTO when they feel as if they haven’t “earned” those hours. No longer can they look into their PTO balance, see that they have 14 hours of PTO leftover that will expire at the end of the month. That triggers the decision to take a quick long weekend to Vegas to play free no download slots and enjoy some time off.

That feeling of needing to “earn” your paid time off is due to the built-in power structure that capitalism instills in us when we enter the workforce, but that’s a topic for another time.

On top of that feeling of losing power over your own “free time,” studies have shown that employees tend to take less vacation time under an Unlimited PTO policy.

A limitless PTO policy also means that Human Resources no longer has to track or police PTO hours and the company no longer has to pay out thousands of dollars from that accrued paid time off at the end of the year or when the employee decides to leave the company.

What do workers actually say about Unlimited PTO?

Also known as an Open Vacation policy, it all comes down to how the workers and employees adapt to the new program.

In order we cover all angles, we actually surveyed and interviewed workers and participated in forums on the topic. These workers all worked for companies that went from a traditional accrual system for time off to an Unlimited PTO policy and here’s how some of them responded.

Some weren’t sure how the new system would translate or didn’t really understand that “Unlimited” actually means “unlimited:”

So how will it work with those that have earned 5 weeks a year? Should we continue to take 5 weeks a year? What if our managers decline to let us take that amount?

So PTO is now NEED based, so if I need only 2 weeks I lost 3 weeks of my PTO benefits.

Others wanted a choice to pick between the new and old policy.

Can we opt out of the Flexible Time Off? I am not a fan. I have been here over 10 years and like my 5 week a year entitlement. With Flexable Vacation plans, it all up to the manager or the workload of the team and could not be applied equally.

While many were concerned how the policy would be applied company-wide, specific managers, workload, etc.

How are you going to ensure that PTO allowances are applied fairly? Will there be guidelines for managers to allow for min and max.? I have seen from other companies some people take 5-6 weeks and others due to workload can only take 2 weeks. Some managers are more liberal and others are not. Having worked at my company for over a decade, I like to know I have earned PTO.

And there are some edge cases that make Unlimited PTO a problem. Say for example, imagine that you planned out a vacation and then were laid off – zero payout for that planned vacation.

How it gets administered matters, my friend at another tech company had a manager that implemented and unspoken policy of two to three weeks of vacation max in one year.

Concerns of how the policy would be administered and potentially-abused (by managers) was a common concern that popped up in our conversations and interviews.

Yeah, this is going to get abused like crazy. I already know a few managers who aggressively discourage PTO even when they are required to let their people take it. Now that it’s optional I can only imagine the creative reasons they will come up with to deny it. Will be interesting to see what impacts this has on attrition long term.

The key is to change your mindset; own your time off

Personally, I’ve never had a problem with Unlimited PTO because I never had an issue taking vacation whenever I wanted to. I worked. The company profits off me. I deserved as much time off as I could get. If I wanted to take a three week trip to Thailand or spent my time off playing free casino machines like sun and moon slots, Candy Crush or binge 56 hours of Netflix, I never flinch to request that time off. Ever.

Nor should you. This is about flipping a small part of the power structure (that’s been developed in American workplaces) on it’s head. That said, I understand that not everyone is down to fight that battle nor want to rock the boat, so getting out of that old capitalist mindset is difficult.

While I appreciate the spirit and idea that goes into Unlimited PTO Policy, I understand that people don’t take to change and especially ones that force them to be more proactive than passive.

So unless the new FTO policy comes with a minimum amount of PTO, it seems subject to causing a reduction, not increase, in PTO taken. At least in the mid term as workers get used to how to manage that additional freedom.

We’ll leave you with one of respondent’s replies to a fellow workers complaints about the new unlimited system.

What I’m getting at is the main opposition to this model is based on the idea that the previous model somehow protected you. If you’re truly worried about being able to take your time off, challenge yourself to take a minimum amount of PTO. If your manager rejects your requests without good reason and/or doesn’t approve your PTO request multiple times, that’s a direct violation of our corporate culture guidelines and should be brought up with a higher authority.

 

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How Many Bicyclist Deaths/Fatalities in New York City by Year (since 1996)

New York City has added miles and miles of protected bike lanes over the last couple decades as ridership has increased many-fold. Continue reading “How Many Bicyclist Deaths/Fatalities in New York City by Year (since 1996)”

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“Dockpocalypse” hits Citi Bike stations in East Village, Alphabet City

Living near the East Village, it’s not a rare occurrence to find the two Citi Bike stations nearest my apartment completely bare. When it happens, I have to walk to a station a couple extra streets to grab a bike. Continue reading ““Dockpocalypse” hits Citi Bike stations in East Village, Alphabet City”

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Get 24 free months of Citi Bike by referring 24 friends

Are you considering Citi Bike? If you open a new annual membership, you can get a free month through if an active member refers you for a membership.

Continue reading “Get 24 free months of Citi Bike by referring 24 friends”

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