During a recent field trip whirlwind startup visiting tour in Berlin, one of the offices I dropped by was those of social gaming juggernaut Wooga.
Founded in 2009 by CEO Jens Begemann and CTO Philipp Moeser, Wooga has seen remarkable growth over the past few years.
It?s one of those European gaming companies that have managed to grow like gangbusters even when competing against publicly listed powerhouses such as EA and Zynga.
The German company?s games ? which include hits like Diamond Dash, Bubble Island and Monster World ? are being played by over 50 million users on Web and mobile every month. This has made Wooga one of the most successful developers on the Facebook platform (it?s currently ranked fifth, ahead of the likes of Yahoo, Spotify, TripAdvisor and Yelp).
What I thought was amazing about Wooga when I visited the company?s offices in Berlin (which, by the way, are stunning as you can probably tell from the photos embedded in this article), is just how international its workforce is ? and how Wooga has managed to get this talent from all over the world interested in joining (and sticking with) them.
From what I gather, Wooga isn?t keen on opening offices elsewhere. That?s not to say they never will, but the focus of the company right now seems to be on getting the best people to come live and work for Wooga in Berlin instead of launching remote offices.
Wooga currently employs 280 people (and counting) with 40 nationalities, including folks from far-flung places like Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Brazil, China, Pakistan, India, Argentina and even Scotland.
To give all those employees enough room to work comfortably, Wooga just expanded its offices in the same building with a third, 1,200 square metre floor, increasing the total size of its office space to approximately 3,500 square metres.
Bringing people on board
The cool thing is that Wooga is so serious about keeping its operations centralized in its Berlin office, that they?re attracting international talent by making the moving and settling in part for people from abroad as smooth as possible.
For one, Wooga is renting 20 flats in Berlin on a permanent basis. New hires from other nations are welcome to stay in one of them for 6 weeks to 3 months to adjust to life in their new home country, and the company also helps out with getting all the necessary administration in order (which, in Germany, can be quite a tedious task).
Aside from the accommodation assistance, Wooga?s HR staff includes an ?on-boarding team? who basically help out with things like filling out forms, finding a good plumber of electrician, cultural adjustments and anything else that can prove tricky for a non-German speaker.
They also get free candy and chocolate!
Gitta Blatt, Wooga?s head of HR, explains the reasoning behind all this:
?Our aim is always to hire the best people for the job and for Wooga, wherever they might in the world. We have a lot of recruiters, but 40% of our new hires actually come from employee referrals.
Our employees are our best recruiters because they know smart people who would not only do a great job, but also fit into the culture we?ve built here. That right fit is a huge priority for us, so once they?ve passed the hiring process our on-boarding team is there to help with any difficulties international employees might have getting settled in.?
Some other remarkable things about Wooga?s HR policy:
- Every new employee receives an education budget which they can use for a German tutor or ?professional development? - Sports groups are organized and paid for - Wooga organizes its own events, e.g. a monthly ?mystery lunch? where employees are put into random groups and have lunch paid for them
It just goes to show that European technology companies are also thinking about ways to bring some innovation to the HR processes ? it doesn?t always have to be about Google or Netflix.
All images above and below are awesome and courtesy of the fine photographers over at Heisenberg Media.
One of the most common Truth-in-Housing?repair items is an unfilled opening in an electrical box or panelboard. ?If you walk through the garage or basement of just about any old Minneapolis or Saint Paul home, you?ll probably be able a few of these.
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The national electric code says that unused openings in such equipment need to be closed. ?Covering these openings helps to prevent accidental shocks (think of kids), helps to prevent hot sparks from escaping if something goes wrong inside the enclosure, and helps to prevent pests from entering. ?It happens.
How to fix a missing knockout plug
First, determine the size of the missing knockout hole and subtract 3/8? to figure out what size knockout plug you?ll need. ?For example, if you have a 7/8? hole, you?ll need a 1/2? knockout plug.
Next, go buy some knockout plugs. ?They?re sold in small quantities at hardware stores and home improvement stores for about a quarter each.
Next, kill the power to any circuits going through the box you?re working on. ?As GI Joe?always thought to himself, ?being safe is the other half.?
Finally, put the plug in the hole. ?If you bought the right size, it will be nearly impossible to push the plug in to place with just your hands ? you?ll need to tap the plug in to place using a hammer.
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If you want to make the plug super tight and impossible to remove, you could bend the tabs inside the box with a screwdriver. ?I?m sure some electricians would say this should always be done. ?The photo below left shows the tabs in their normal position, and the photo below right shows the tabs bent out.
For Truth-in-Housing evaluations, missing knockout plugs are required repair items in Bloomington, Hopkins, Robbinsdale, and South Saint Paul. ?They?re considered a hazard (H) in Saint Paul, and they?re a suggested correction (SC) in Minneapolis.
How to fix a missing twist-out at the front of a panel
First, determine the brand and type of panel. ?It will probably say so right on the door. ?If it helps, take a photo of the label.
Next, go buy some filler plates at a home improvement store or hardware store. ?You?ll find them next to the circuit breakers.
Finally, shut off the power to the panel and pop the appropriate filler in to place. ?This can typically be done without even removing the cover.
For Truth-in-Housing evaluations, openings in the front of an electric panel are?required repair items in Minneapolis, Bloomington, Hopkins, Robbinsdale, and South Saint Paul. ?They?re considered a hazard in Saint Paul.
Now go forth and fill your holes with impunity.
Author:?Reuben Saltzman,?Structure Tech Home Inspections
Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
PRAISE FOR POLITICAL WIRE
"There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them."
-- Chuck Todd, NBC News political director
"Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I?m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all."
-- Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
"Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.?
-- Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
"The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom -- nicely packaged, constantly updated... What political junkie could ask for more?"
-- Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
"Political Wire is a great, great site."
-- Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's Morning Joe
"If I were on the proverbial desert island and had only one web site to access, Political Wire would be it."
-- Dotty Lynch, CBS News political consultant
"Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don't want to kick."
-- Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
"Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere."
-- Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
"I rely on Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It's an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading."
A reconstructed Neanderthal skeleton, right, is on display near a modern human's skeleton, left, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
By Jennifer Viegas Discovery News
For ages, anthropologists have puzzled over Neanderthal and human brains, since they were the same size. If each species had comparable brain power, why did humans dominate?
A comparison of Neanderthal and human brains has revealed it was a matter of allocation: Neanderthal brains focused more on vision and movement, leaving less room for cognition related to social networking.
According to the study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, bigger-eyed and larger-bodied Neanderthals required more brain space devoted to the visual system and basic body functions, leaving less area for what co-author Robin Dunbar called "the smart part."
He explained to Discovery News that this is "the part that is doing the creative thinking."
Eye sockets measured Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford, and colleagues Eiluned Pearce and Chris Stringer compared the skulls of 32 anatomically modern humans and 13 Neanderthals. The skulls date to 27,000 to 75,000 years ago. The researchers noticed that Neanderthals had significantly larger eye sockets.
The researchers next used the known relationship between the height of the eye socket and the size of visual brain areas in living primates to estimate how much of each brain was dedicated to visual processing. Once differences in body and visual system size were taken into account, the researchers could then compare how much of the brain was left over for other types of cognition.
It's clear that environmental differences affected the evolution of each species. The common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens was Homo heidelbergensis. It had a bulkier body, as did the Neanderthals, but Homo heidelbergensis did not possess enlarged eyes.
"The large eyes (of Neanderthals) are purely an adaptation to low light levels, and long dark nights at higher latitudes outside the tropics," Dunbar said.
Flash interactive: Before and after humans
Neanderthals also tended to be shorter than humans, which again was an adaptation to colder climates. Shorter stature reduces heat loss through the extremities. Modern Eskimos exhibit some of this adaptation.
Neanderthals in Europe also "developed a very confrontational and dangerous style of hunting, and were very dependent on a heavy meat diet," Dunbar shared. "Modern humans (in Africa) developed the bow and arrow, as well as spear throwers, which allowed hunting at arms? length and often focused on smaller prey."
As for what happened to the Neanderthals, some researchers believe that they were simply absorbed into the modern human population. There is evidence that, as numerous humans migrated north into Europe, they interbred with Neanderthals.
Social smarts Another theory, supported by this new study, is that Neanderthals went extinct because they were less capable of forming larger social networks. Pearce theorized that "smaller social groups might have made Neanderthals less able to cope with the difficulties of their harsh Eurasian environments because they would have had fewer friends to help them out in times of need."
She continued, "Overall, differences in brain organization and social cognition may go a long way towards explaining why Neanderthals went extinct whereas modern humans survived."
Dunbar further thinks that new diseases brought in by humans could have hurt Neanderthals. He said, "It was clear that, by the end, they were struggling to maintain a foothold in Ice Age Europe, having been squeezed down into the southern appendages of Europe (in places like Spain and Italy)."
Clive Gamble, an expert on the archaeology of human origins and a professor at Southampton University, praised the new work. "This paper cracks a big problem in human evolution. Neanderthals had brains as big as ours, yet did not regularly produce the sorts of cultural stuff ??art, ornamentation and complicated tools ??that we take for granted ... Brains got bigger, but in different ways," Gamble said.
"I've long argued for social differences between Neanderthals and ourselves," Gamble concluded. "It doesn't make us better than them and it doesn?t confirm the age-old prejudices about stupid, brutish Neanderthals. What it does do, quite literally, is make us see them with different eyes."
PARIS (AP) ? The U.S. Justice Department is investigating drug maker Sanofi's disclosures to the Food and Drug Administration about different responses to its blockbuster blood thinner Plavix.
The French company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week that it learned in June about the investigation.
It only said the investigation centered on "the variability of response to Plavix." The company did not immediately respond to requests to give more details on the investigation.
In 2010, the FDA added a black box ? its strongest form of warning ? to the label for Plavix. At the time, the watchdog said certain patients with a genetic variation cannot metabolize the drug, putting them at increased risk for heart attack and stroke.
Before it got U.S. generic competition last May, Plavix was the No. 2 drug in the world by revenue, with annual sales of around $9 billion in 2011.
Sanofi says it is cooperating with the investigation into Plavix, which is jointly marketed with U.S.-based Bristol-Myers Squibb. Bristol-Myers Squibb spokeswoman Jennifer Fron Mauer said the company had no comment on the investigation.
Plavix is prescribed to heart disease patients to prevent dangerous blood clots, which can cause heart attack, stroke and death.
In order to work effectively, Plavix must be broken down by a particular liver enzyme. But the FDA says 2 to 14 percent of people in the U.S. have low levels of the enzyme, preventing them from successfully processing Plavix. The likelihood of being a non-responder varies by race, according to the FDA.
Contact: George Hunka ghunka@aftau.org 212-742-9070 American Friends of Tel Aviv University
Top 20 percent of burnt-out employees have a dramatically increased risk of heart disease, Tel Aviv University researcher finds
Americans work longer hours, take fewer vacation days, and retire later than employees in other industrialized countries around the globe. With such demanding careers, it's no surprise that many experience job burnout physical, cognitive, and emotional exhaustion that results from stress at work. Researchers have found that burnout is also associated with obesity, insomnia, and anxiety.
Now Dr. Sharon Toker of Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Management and her fellow researchers Profs. Samuel Melamed, Shlomo Berliner, David Zeltser and Itzhak Shpira of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine have found a link between job burnout and coronary heart disease (CHD), the buildup of plaque in the coronary arteries that leads to angina or heart attacks.
Those who were identified as being in the top 20 percent of the burnout scale were found to have a 79 percent increased risk of coronary disease, the researchers reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Calling the results "alarming," Dr. Toker says that these findings were more extreme than the researchers had expected and make burnout a stronger predictor of CHD than many other classical risk factors, including smoking, blood lipid levels, and physical activity.
Taking a toll on the heart
Some of the factors that contribute to burnout are common experiences in the workplace, including high stress, heavy workload, a lack of control over job situations, a lack of emotional support, and long work hours. This leads to physical wear and tear, which will eventually weaken the body.
Knowing that burnout has been associated with other cardiovascular risk factors, such as heightened amounts of cholesterol or fat in the bloodstream, the researchers hypothesized that it could also be a risk factor for coronary heart disease. Over the course of the study, a total of 8,838 apparently healthy employed men and women between the ages of 19 and 67 who presented for routine health examinations were followed for an average of 3.4 years. Each participant was measured for burnout levels and examined for signs of CHD. The researchers controlled for typical risk factors for the disease, such as sex, age, family history of heart disease, and smoking.
During the follow-up period, 93 new cases of CHD were identified. Burnout was associated with a 40% increased risk of developing CHD. But the 20% of participants with the highest burnout scores had a 79% increased risk. Dr. Toker predicts that with a more extended follow-up period, the results would be even more dramatic.
Avoiding long-term damage
These results are valuable for preventative medicine, says Dr. Toker. Healthcare providers who know that their patients are experiencing burnout can closely monitor for signs of coronary heart disease as well.
Once burnout begins to develop, it sparks a downwards spiral and ultimately becomes a chronic condition, she warns. Employers need to prioritize prevention by promoting healthy and supportive work environments and keeping watch for early warning signs of the condition. Simple diagnostic questionnaires that identify burnout are already available online. Workers can contribute to prevention by making healthy lifestyle choices, such as exercising more regularly, getting seven to eight hours sleep per night, and seeking psychological therapy if required.
###
American Friends of Tel Aviv University (http://www.aftau.org) supports Israel's leading, most comprehensive and most sought-after center of higher learning. Independently ranked 94th among the world's top universities for the impact of its research, TAU's innovations and discoveries are cited more often by the global scientific community than all but 10 other universities.
Internationally recognized for the scope and groundbreaking nature of its research and scholarship, Tel Aviv University consistently produces work with profound implications for the future.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: George Hunka ghunka@aftau.org 212-742-9070 American Friends of Tel Aviv University
Top 20 percent of burnt-out employees have a dramatically increased risk of heart disease, Tel Aviv University researcher finds
Americans work longer hours, take fewer vacation days, and retire later than employees in other industrialized countries around the globe. With such demanding careers, it's no surprise that many experience job burnout physical, cognitive, and emotional exhaustion that results from stress at work. Researchers have found that burnout is also associated with obesity, insomnia, and anxiety.
Now Dr. Sharon Toker of Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Management and her fellow researchers Profs. Samuel Melamed, Shlomo Berliner, David Zeltser and Itzhak Shpira of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine have found a link between job burnout and coronary heart disease (CHD), the buildup of plaque in the coronary arteries that leads to angina or heart attacks.
Those who were identified as being in the top 20 percent of the burnout scale were found to have a 79 percent increased risk of coronary disease, the researchers reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Calling the results "alarming," Dr. Toker says that these findings were more extreme than the researchers had expected and make burnout a stronger predictor of CHD than many other classical risk factors, including smoking, blood lipid levels, and physical activity.
Taking a toll on the heart
Some of the factors that contribute to burnout are common experiences in the workplace, including high stress, heavy workload, a lack of control over job situations, a lack of emotional support, and long work hours. This leads to physical wear and tear, which will eventually weaken the body.
Knowing that burnout has been associated with other cardiovascular risk factors, such as heightened amounts of cholesterol or fat in the bloodstream, the researchers hypothesized that it could also be a risk factor for coronary heart disease. Over the course of the study, a total of 8,838 apparently healthy employed men and women between the ages of 19 and 67 who presented for routine health examinations were followed for an average of 3.4 years. Each participant was measured for burnout levels and examined for signs of CHD. The researchers controlled for typical risk factors for the disease, such as sex, age, family history of heart disease, and smoking.
During the follow-up period, 93 new cases of CHD were identified. Burnout was associated with a 40% increased risk of developing CHD. But the 20% of participants with the highest burnout scores had a 79% increased risk. Dr. Toker predicts that with a more extended follow-up period, the results would be even more dramatic.
Avoiding long-term damage
These results are valuable for preventative medicine, says Dr. Toker. Healthcare providers who know that their patients are experiencing burnout can closely monitor for signs of coronary heart disease as well.
Once burnout begins to develop, it sparks a downwards spiral and ultimately becomes a chronic condition, she warns. Employers need to prioritize prevention by promoting healthy and supportive work environments and keeping watch for early warning signs of the condition. Simple diagnostic questionnaires that identify burnout are already available online. Workers can contribute to prevention by making healthy lifestyle choices, such as exercising more regularly, getting seven to eight hours sleep per night, and seeking psychological therapy if required.
###
American Friends of Tel Aviv University (http://www.aftau.org) supports Israel's leading, most comprehensive and most sought-after center of higher learning. Independently ranked 94th among the world's top universities for the impact of its research, TAU's innovations and discoveries are cited more often by the global scientific community than all but 10 other universities.
Internationally recognized for the scope and groundbreaking nature of its research and scholarship, Tel Aviv University consistently produces work with profound implications for the future.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 12-Mar-2013
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