Outdoor Haven

 Shutterstock Dear Liz, I spent half of last year campaigning for a salary increase and helping my boss prepare the “business case” for my raise, and in April of this year I finally got the pay bump I worked so hard for. However, I have to acknowledge that I am still badly underpaid. I earn $78,500 in a job that typically pays about $90,000. Every salary survey shows the same range. My boss is embarrassed about my under-market pay rate but he knows I’m worth more to the company. My employer is not generally cheap when it comes to salaries, but my boss is somewhat wimpy if we are honest, and he doesn’t push for fair pay for his employees. Now a headhunter is trying to get me to go on an interview with another company that needs a technical project manager like me. The job opportunity pays between $95,000 to $105,000. Part of me wants to go on the interview and get the offer to use as ammunition to get another pay increase that will bring me to at  least $90,0...

Facebook launched a new e-commerce platform called ‘Marketplace’ on Monday. (Getty Images) Facebook is making a major e-commerce push. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company on Monday announced the launch of “Facebook Marketplace,” a new, prominent feature that allows individual users to easily buy and sell a range of items, such as clothing electronics, household goods, furniture, jewelry, art and cars. To start, Marketplace is rolling out to users over the age of 18 in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand on iOS and Android over the next few days. Facebook plans to extend the service to its desktop site and additional countries over the coming months. For now, Marketplace can be accessed by tapping a highly-visible shopping bag icon at the bottom of the app, alongside icons such as ”Messenger” and “Notifications.” Facebook’s massive 1.7-billion person user base and the new feature’s ease of use give it a good shot of competing with more established, peer-to-pee...

Bring IT on: 120 Colombian technology companies came to Miami, Florida, to meet with potential clients and partners during the third edition of the Colombian IT Business Matchmaking Forum.   Last month, Florida became Colombia’s new technology business hub, as 120 Colombian tech companies met with potential North American clients and partners during the third edition of the Colombian IT Business Matchmaking Forum. “Colombia is the third largest provider of IT services in Latin America with more than 5,400 companies and record sales in 2015 close to $2.5 billion,” explained Luis German Restrepo, the director for ProColombia Miami. “The tech industry has established itself as an engine of economic development, with software and IT related services representing 1.19% of Colombia’s GDP.”   At the Colombian IT Business Matchmaking Forum in Miami, 1,100 business meetings generated over $20 million in direct sales.   The event was held in Miami and...

Taking a look back at seven days of news across the world of Apple, this week’s Apple Loop includes a comparison of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus cameras next to the competition, a review of the iPhone 7 Plus, a look at the stock shortages, the latest information on 2017′s iPhone 8, asking if we have passed ‘peak iPhone’, how to fix your broken iPhone 7, Apple’s solution to beating Moore’s Law, and how not to lose the new headphone adaptor. Apple Loop is here to remind you of a few of the very many discussions that have happened around Apple over the last seven days (and you can read the weekly digest of Android news here on Forbes). The New iPhone Cameras Are Good, But Not The Best Apple has put a lot of faith in the camera of the iPhone 7 and especially the iPhone 7 Plus. The smaller handset picks up optical image stabilisation while the dual-lens of the larger smartphone is one of the key selling points of Apple’s third phablet. How do the cameras compare to the opposition? ...

Shutterstock I don’t remember much from the time I spent working for bad bosses except the feeling “I can’t wait until I don’t work for this person anymore.” I was too young and inexperienced to realize that working for a bad boss is only painful if you take the bad boss seriously. Of course, it is your lousy boss’s fondest hope that you will take him or her very seriously, but just because your boss wants you to be afraid of them doesn’t mean you have to do it. One of the best things you can do for yourself when you’re stuck working for a terrible boss is to grow a thicker skin. It took me ages to learn that lesson. My bad bosses gave me gifts that I didn’t appreciate until years later. Now I look back and see that in many ways, it is more beneficial to spend some time working for lousy bosses than to have an unbroken string of great managers coaching you. The great managers teach us a lot, of course — but awful managers teach us lessons that we couldn’t learn any...

Millennials will represent 75% of the American workforce by 2025. This statistic is commonly used, but there isn’t much thought put into the implications of that number. The reality of this number will fundamentally change businesses, as it is unprecedented for one single generation to comprise such a majority of the workforce. This number is significant when compared to the 63.3% of executives eligible for retirement within the next few years. That number breaks down to roughly 10,000 people retiring every day. As baby boomers retire, younger employees have the opportunity to step into vacant roles. Millennials are currently leading the way in getting promoted, as one study found 87% of millennials have taken on management roles in recent years. This is compared to 38% of those in Generation X and 19% of Baby Boomers. Jared Freeman became the youngest president ever at ASECU last year. (Credit: Trey Taulbee/University of Mobile)  What can millennials do to prep...

There’s an odd sense of vertigo when you see a face you recognize in a glossy magazine. Still, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Abai Schulze confidently gazing at me from the magazine rack. In an economics class full of the standard George Washington University overachievers, she stood out. Even then she spoke about her twin passions of fashion and improving life in Ethiopia, the country of her birth. That struck me as an odd pairing at the time. But not long after graduation, Schulze founded ZAAF, a premium leather goods and accessories collection handcrafted by artisans in Ethiopia. She’s one of a rising tide of African designers, such as Maki Oh from Nigeria, aAks from Ghana, among others. Schultze recently turned 28 but started the business when she was 25. ZAAF brought in revenue of $160k last year and has 15 full-time employees and an additional 5-7 part-time employees depending on the season. They are based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. However, I wanted to know ...