Eggs as Bad as Smoking? Vitamins Linked to Mortality? Making Sense Out of Nutritional Studies With Expert Dr. Alan Gaby 12-05

Eggs as Bad as Smoking? Vitamins Linked to Mortality? Making Sense Out of Nutritional Studies With Expert Dr. Alan Gaby

The abundance of nutritional research available certainly gives us food for thought when making decisions regarding diet and nutritional supplementation. It can also lead to confusion due to misleading headlines and questionable interpretations of studies.

If you've come across headlines such as "Are Eggs As Bad As Smoking?,"   "Are Our Vitamins Killing Us?"   and "Fish Oil No Lifesaver?,"   you can't but help feeling puzzled as to how to separate the truth from the hype.

The average person who is interested in keeping up with the latest research most likely doesn't have the time or the expertise to weed through the actual studies to determine if the press reports of the research are reliable. Fortunately, a nutritional science expert has taken the time to interpret the studies for us as well as provide takeaways so we can put these studies to practical use for optimal health. Alan Gaby, M.D., is the author of Nutritional Medicine  , a comprehensive scientifically-based guide to the use of diet and nutritional supplements to prevent and treat illness. With more than 1,374 pages and over 15,000 references, Dr. Gaby considers Nutritional Medicine the pinnacle of his life's work -- to investigate nutritional medicine and to teach others what he has discovered.

I was fortunate to recently meet up with this brilliant researcher at a medical conference where he was teaching doctors how to interpret nutritional studies.

PF: Dr. Gaby, thanks for taking the time to speak with me and share your wisdom with The Huffington Post audience. It seems that as the volume of nutritional studies and the corresponding media reporting increase, the confusion as to how to make sense of these studies is also on the rise. Not too long ago, we saw eggs being compared to smoking, yet we have also seen other studies   demonstrating benefits   of eating eggs. How can one interpret these studies to know if eggs are beneficial or harmful to health?

AG: Eggs are a good source of many beneficial nutrients, and they also contain a large amount of cholesterol (all of it in the yolk). Studies in animals have clearly shown that dietary cholesterol in its pure form does not cause atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). However, cholesterol is an unstable molecule that spontaneously oxidizes in the presence of oxygen (room air) to form cholesterol oxides, which are highly toxic to arteries. The oxidation of cholesterol by oxygen is greatly accelerated in the presence of heat. If the yolk of an egg remains intact during cooking (as with boiling or poaching), the cholesterol in the yolk is not exposed to room air, and the formation of cholesterol oxides would be expected to be minimal. In contrast, breaking the yolk during cooking (as with scrambling) would presumably lead to the formation of large amounts of cholesterol oxides. Consequently, the benefits and risks of eating eggs may depend in large part on how they are cooked.

The study   you cited showed that eating more eggs was associated with more extensive atherosclerosis in the carotid arteries. However, simply showing an association does not prove cause and effect. There might be fundamental differences in diet, lifestyle, and body chemistry between people who do and do not eat large amounts of eggs, and some of those differences (as opposed to the number of eggs consumed) might explain the observed association. Based on the totality of the evidence, it appears that boiled or poached eggs can be an important part of a healthful diet, whereas consumption of scrambled (and possibly fried) eggs should be kept to a minimum.

PF: The benefits of another popular item, fish oil, have been questioned in a study   that recently received a lot of attention in the media. Millions of Americans take fish oil daily. Doctors prescribe it. We have read about so many benefits for cardiovascular health, brain health, and anti-inflammatory benefits. Are there benefits to fish oil, specifically for heart health?

AG: The study you mentioned was a meta-analysis (pooled analysis) of 20 randomized controlled trials (including a total of 68,680 patients) that examined whether supplementing with the omega-3 fatty acids present in fish oil can decrease heart disease-related mortality or deaths due to any cause. In the pooled analysis, omega-3 fatty acids decreased heart disease-related deaths by 9 percent and deaths due to any cause by 4 percent. Because these decreases were not statistically significant, the researchers concluded (erroneously) that omega-3 fatty acids had no effect on cardiac or all-cause mortality. The correct conclusion is that omega-3 fatty acids decreased cardiac deaths by 9 percent and all-cause mortality by 4 percent, but because the effects were not statistically significant, we are less than 95 percent certain that the benefits were real (as opposed to being due to chance). Failure to demonstrate that an effect was statistically significant is not the same as demonstrating there was no effect.

Furthermore, the potential benefit of taking fish oil might be greater than the results of the meta-analysis suggest. That is because some of the studies that showed a strong positive effect were "diluted" by several flawed studies that found no beneficial effect of fish oil. One of the negative studies enrolled 18,645 Japanese patients (27.2 percent of all the patients in the meta-analysis), and therefore had a relatively strong influence on the results of the pooled analysis. The main weakness of that study is that fish consumption is high in Japan. The protective effect of omega-3 fatty acids against heart disease can be obtained with relatively low doses, and little or no additional benefit can be achieved by increasing the dose. Consequently, one would not expect fish oil supplementation to reduce mortality in this population where fish consumption is high. In another negative study included in the meta-analysis, olive oil was used as the "placebo." Olive oil is a known cardioprotective agent, so the fact that fish oil was not more effective than olive oil does not mean fish oil was ineffective.

A large body of research has shown that fish oil is useful for preventing and treating heart disease. Some experts recommend a dose of approximately 1 gram per day for people who want to reduce their risk of developing heart disease, and about 2 to 6 grams per day for people with existing heart disease. People with heart disease and those taking medications should consult a health care practitioner before supplementing with fish oil.

PF: Millions of Americans take a basic multivitamin, and they believe they are doing something beneficial for their health. They certainly aren't taking them to bring about an earlier death! However, several recent studies have implied that multivitamins do not contribute to a longer life. Is it beneficial to take a multivitamin? Are these studies misleading?

AG: Yes, the studies are misleading. The first study   claimed to find that women who took a multivitamin had a 6 percent higher death rate than women who did not take vitamins. However, nowhere in the study was the actual death rate reported. Rather, the researchers reported "adjusted" death rates. When the data were adjusted only for age and caloric intake, there was no significant difference in mortality between vitamin users and nonusers. It was only after further adjustment for cigarette smoking, body mass index, blood pressure, educational level, diabetes, use of hormone-replacement therapy, physical activity, and intake of fruits and vegetables that the increase in mortality was found. For each of these factors, the vitamin users were in the "healthier" category when compared with the nonusers (e.g., less diabetes, less obesity, more physical activity). To compensate for these differences, the researchers artificially adjusted the death rate of the vitamin users upward. No information was provided about how those adjustments were calculated, and it is possible that the researchers over-adjusted the data. In addition, the researchers failed to consider various health characteristics of vitamin users that would have led them to adjust their death rate downward. Some of the reasons that people take vitamins (for example, they are tired or depressed, their joints hurt, or both of their parents died of heart disease) might predict an increased risk of mortality. Failure to consider those factors might give a skewed picture of the risks and benefits of taking vitamins.

In the more recent study  , the incidence of heart disease was not lower in male physicians who took Centrum Silver for 11 years than in those who took a placebo. According to the label, Centrum Silver contains (in addition to vitamins and minerals) crospovidone, butylated hydroxytoluene, FD&C Blue 2 Aluminum Lake, FD&C Red 40 Aluminum Lake, FD&C Yellow 6 Aluminum Lake, polyethylene glycol, polyvinyl alcohol, sodium aluminum silicate, sodium benzoate, talc, and titanium dioxide. It would be surprising if none of those chemicals were harmful with long-term use. In addition, Centrum Silver provides 15 milligrams of zinc per day. Long-term use of zinc might deplete copper, and copper deficiency may increase the risk of developing heart disease. Centrum Silver does contain copper, but during the study period it was in the form of cupric oxide, which studies have suggested cannot be absorbed by humans. A number of earlier studies suggested that various vitamins and minerals can, indeed, help prevent heart disease. The new study did not address the question of whether a better-formulated product that is free from extraneous chemicals would be beneficial.

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How much does it cost companies to lose employees? 12-05

How much does it cost companies to lose employees?

An average performing employee comes to you with evidence that he is underpaid by 5 percent. Your company's budgets are already tight. He makes $50,000 a year. Should you: 

A. Offer a 1-2 percent raise; B. Offer nothing. In this economy he's lucky to have a job; C. Offer a 5 percent raise; D. Give him $50 gift card to the local mall.

With job applicants lining up around the block, it might seem like good business sense to let employees quit rather than raising their salaries to be competitive. But a recent study from the Center for American Progress drives home why that isn't so: 

Employee turnover is expensive  .

Turnover costs include productivity losses during training, recruiting and lost work while a position is vacant. For all jobs earning less than $50,000 per year, or more than 40 percent of U.S. jobs, the average cost of replacing an employee amounts to fully 20 percent of the person's annual salary, the liberal-leaning think-tank found in a study that looks at 31 corporate case studies.

So in the above example, choosing to not give even a middling performer a raise may net a temporary cost savings, but if he quits you'll be out 20 percent of his salary. The best option? Bump his pay up 5 percent. Although employee replacement costs are a one-time expense and a salary increase is ongoing, it would take four years of at higher salary to equal the cost of replacing him one time.

High turnover, lower-paying jobs (those under $30,000 a year) are slightly less expensive to replace, at only 16 percent of annual salary, but that still adds up quickly. For instance, 37 percent of hotel/motel and food services employees voluntarily quit a job in 2011. That represents a major expense to businesses already running at the margin.

MIT Sloan business professor Zeynep Ton found that such businesses could reduce their turnover by changing their internal policies. For instance, Wegmans Food Markets  , which consistently ranks in Fortune's Top 100 companies to work for (this year it's number No. 4), has a full-time turnover rate of only 4 percent for it's hourly workforce [disclosure: I used to work for Wegmans.] In other words, those same policies that make it a great place to work also lowers turnover costs.

While the costs of losing a "normal" employee are high enough, CAP found that the cost of losing an executive is astronomical -- up to 213 percent of the employee's salary.

CAP also says that offering workers low-cost benefits, such as sick days and a little flexibility, can significantly lower turnover. The upshot is clear: While there is no perfect package of salary and benefits that will stop employees from jumping ship, companies should take turnover costs into account.

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The Surprising Poverty of Too Many Choices 12-05

The Surprising Poverty of Too Many Choices

  Kristi Hedges  , Contributor

People get stuck. Increasingly as we reach certain levels of success, the reason is a surprising one: we actually have too many choices. We’re paralyzed by them, plagued in turn by a self-flagellating frustration and a gnawing stagnancy.

If this is your situation, then you may feel as if you’re standing on a ledge, toes hooked over the side, with no idea how you got there exactly or what to do next. But there you are just the same.

Consider an early retiree who can do just about anything with the next 20 years , but doesn’t have any idea what to do. Or a successful consulting firm executive who is burned out, yet can’t determine how to take a left turn from the steady job he’s held for a decade. And even the college student who can major in anything, and can’t decide which is the best intersection of her talents with market need.

You can get the picture pretty quickly. Having too many choices is actually harder than a defined few.

In his well-known work, psychologist Barry Schwartz, calls this choice paralysis.  He argues that more choices make us less likely to take action, and to be less satisfied with our eventual decision. With so many great options, we can only blame ourselves if we’re not meeting our own standards, and we engage in frequent regret about the roads not taken.

In this TED talk  , Schwartz cites research that when people are given more options for their 401K account, they actually put off the decision rather than making it. Retailers know well that having  too many choices makes buyers less likely to purchase. Complexity leads to indecision, leads to stagnation.

Which comes back to our modern condition, with its increase in complexity. These decisions both life changing and not, will only get harder. No one is arguing for less choice here, only that there’s power in acknowledging why we’re stuck, and learning how to move with less certainty.

It calls to mind MIT lecturer Otto Scharmer’s greatU Theory  , of how we get ourselves through change by a combination of inward work and incremental movement. As Tony Robbins says, “The greater degree of uncertainty that you can comfortably live with, the richer your life will be.”

I don’t have a simple fix for getting unstuck in a sea of choices, and frankly, I suffer from the same issue myself managing a constantly evolving coaching practice. I can only offer what’s helped me, and my clients, create movement, and to start wading through the muck that is any kind of change.

1. Allow for ideas without action.

Change of any kind requires reflection, but not so much that we get lost in analysis paralysis. Set aside a space and time for ideation, without requiring action. Keep a list of your best ideas and revisit it once a week. Give yourself three months to determine your plan. Or go on a solitary retreat for a weekend. Allow the ideas to flow and give yourself parameters to think while reducing the pressure that it’s some excuse not to act. Good reflection will actually help you move more swiftly and save time in the end.

2. Beware of all or nothing thinking.

I hear this frequently in coaching. Clients will set up stark differences between their choices, thereby making any movement that much harder. For example, I have to quit my high-paying job and be financially strapped if I follow my dream of nonprofit work. There’s always a middle ground, and so be diligent about finding it and increasing your options. In this instance, you could ask to cut your hours back, and work part-time for a nonprofit. Or even keep your job and start your own foundation.

In his Wall Street Journal column  , psychologist Dan Ariely discusses the unchangeability bias that blocks our decision making. When we see something as immutable, i.e. changing our career or moving, then we get even more blocked. The cure? Reframing changes as “trials,” because after all, isn’t that what most decisions really are?

Rarely is the choice as black or white as we make it out to be.

3. Find ways to sample the future possibilities.

When we’re faced with change, we spend an inordinate amount of time guessing what the future state looks and feels like with scant actual research. Figure out how to get some good data by asking people currently in the opportunity you’re considering what their lives are like. If you can, even sample the opportunity before you commit to it. Thinking about taking a year off to travel alone, try spending two weeks doing it first. Experiential learning (or close to it) can bring great clarity, and a deeper wisdom.

The reality is that choices beget choices. You just can’t know what options will be open to you at Point C when you’re still at Point A. You have to trust that movement is positive, and that you have the ability to continue to create opportunities for yourself. If you start a new company  — even if it fails — the network and experience you gain puts you at a completely different vantage point. When you let go of predicting the entire journey, you can focus on the more manageable decision of what’s the first road to take.

As we head to the end of one year, and the beginning of the next one, it’s a natural time to reflect on the change we want to see in our lives. 

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How To Evolve Your Own Job And Stay Relevant 12-04

How To Evolve Your Own Job And Stay Relevant

BY PATTY AZZARELLO

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NOVEMBER 29, 2012

It’s dangerous to rely on your job description to tell you what to do, or to wait for your manager to fine-tune your job. It’s much safer, valuable, and satisfying to do it yourself. Here's how.

Your job description gets stale the moment when it is first given to you. Then you need figure out how to evolve it. As we come up on the end of the year, it is a great time to evaluate your role, your company, and the market relative to your job description and your career.

Don’t give this extra work of figuring out how your job needs to evolve to your boss or wait for direction. That is both a danger and a missed opportunity to stand out and contribute more value. Sort it out on your own and make a recommendation.

I have collected some questions that will help you figure out how to evolve your job over time to make sure you are staying relevant and adding enough value to the business.

1. Who uses my work and what do they need most?

• Who are the consumers of each piece of work that I do?
• Do they still use it? Do they still need it?
• Do they pass it on to others? Do those other people have needs I should understand?
• Can the content I deliver be modified to be more useful or relevant?
• Can the manner in which I deliver it be improved to be more useful or relevant?

Note: Stop producing work no one cares about. Ask.

I know so many organizations that are over-busy producing reports, analysis, or sales and marketing that no one uses. Don’t burn up your time on things that no one cares about. Do actively learn what they find most useful, and tune what you produce to be more valuable.

2. What business outcomes does my work drive?

• What is the business outcome that happens as a result of my producing this work?
• How does my work impact profit?
• Does my work impact quality, innovation, efficiency, competitiveness, cost reduction, process improvement, sales effectiveness…
• Can I tune my work to create a better or different business outcome?

Note: If you can’t connect your work to a business outcome, maybe it doesn’t need to be done.

You need to stay educated on the most important outcomes the business is driving and stay connected with them. Even if you are a cost center providing an internal service, you need to find ways to improve efficiency or usefulness.

3. What does my work cost?

• How much does it cost the company for me to do this work?
• Can it be done for less?
• What are the downstream costs of the things that I do?
• Who else does my work cause work or costs for?
• Is there a way to make my work more efficient for others?

Note Improve the outcomes your work causes, don’t just deliver the work.

Always be looking for and finding ways to take cost out. If you produce a 50-page document quarterly, maybe the right, improved 20-page document would be even better. It would be hard to find someone who didn’t prefer the shorter version!

If you do things manually or in a chaotic reactive mode, how many people are impacted by this? How can you create a process to streamline the work, make it less complicated, and require fewer touchpoints, questions, or follow-ups?

4. What has changed?

• What has changed in the market since I started this job?
• What has changed in our customers’ business since I started this job?
• What has changed in our competitors’ business since I started this job?
• What has changed inside our company since I started this job?
• Do these changes require a change in the way my job is done?

Note: If you are not evolving your job, you will no longer be qualified when the market and business changes.

Or, you will be doing the wrong job, and your job will get eliminated. Be the one to recommend changing your job to meet the evolving business needs.

5. Where do you see growth and ability to scale

• How much has the company grown since I started this job?
• How much does the company plan to grow in the future?
• What still works in the way I do my job if the company is much bigger?
• Which things about how I do my job don’t work if the company is bigger?

Note: When companies get bigger, all the jobs change.

You can’t keep using the same way of working. It doesn’t scale. You can be the one to build a new process that will scale, or you can be the one who gets pushed aside by someone with experience at a bigger company.

6. How can I help others?

• What can I do to communicate better?
• How can I share more knowledge?
• How can I teach someone to be more effective?
• How can I help someone step into a bigger role?
• How can I help someone believe that something bigger is possible for them?

Note: If you are not helping others, you are not adding enough value.

Another upside: If you are feeling unsatisfied about being in a corporate role that doesn’t make enough difference in the world, help someone. It feels meaningful--when you help someone else, you change the world for that person.

Don’t wait. I see a lot of people thinking that answering these questions is not part of their job. They wait for others to answer them, and await new instructions from their manager.

It’s dangerous to rely on your job description to tell you what to do, or to wait for your manager to fine-tune your job along the way. It’s much safer, more valuable to your company, and more satisfying when you do it yourself.

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So you think your job is safe? Guess again! 12-04

So you think your job is safe? Guess again!

november 30, 2012 by chuck frey leave a comment

So you think your job is “safe?” With all of the uncertainty surrounding us, job security is an illusion, as a talented friend of mine recently discovered.

I’m pissed!

I just learned that a good friend who lost his adult son in a tragic accident several months ago just lost his job. This guy was a senior manager in his company, a fine upstanding person and one of the “greats” of the industry in which I work – someone who mentored me when I was younger. And now he’s been unceremoniously “downsized.” I can’t believe he could be let go from his job under the circumstances. Why now?

This is the same guy who had enough talent and promise to survive a “Black Friday” at a Fortune 500 company back in the early 1980s, which decimated the office he worked at in suburban Chicago. At the end of the day, over 200 people on his floor were gone; he was one a of a handful of survivors.

As the global economy continues to sputter on fumes, it seems no one has job security any more. That bothers me – a lot.

So you think you’re “safe?”

There is no such thing as job security any more. Downsizings and reorganizations are the last resort, an attempt to stop the tide of red ink. As such, they tend to be done with a meat axe, not a scalpel. Large groups of people get lopped off without much concern for their personal situations or their past track record. Decisions are made solely upon your current value to the company compared to what it costs the company to employ you. What have you done for me lately?

You’re either an asset or a liability.

If you’re providing value well in excess of your salary and you have a high level of visibility with upper management and a reputation as an A-player, then you may be safe. On the other hands, if you’ve been running in place, no longer growing, but riding on the momentum of your past accomplishments and successes, then you may have a big-ass target on your back.

That’s the message of the diagram above. The more value you provide (and are visible in doing so), the “safer” you’re likely to be. You see, when companies downsize, they tend to get rid of “dead wood” – people who have been there a long time, have high salaries but who may not be pulling their weight. People with a sense of entitlement (“I’ve been working here 20 years and they haven’t given me a raise in 5 years – so I’m not going to do any more than what’s expected of me”) and a those with a “Minimum Viable Effort” mindset.

You may think you’re safe because nothing has happened yet. But that doesn’t mean your job is really secure. Anything can happen in the future. Your company could get acquired. Your division could get sold. Your top management may decide to ship your department or function to India or China as a cost-cutting move. A competitor could start “cherry picking” the most profitable parts of your firm’s business. Then there’s the fallout that is being caused by the results of the U.S. Presidential election, and the ramping up of Obamacare. Uncertainty abounds – and it doesn’t look like the picture is going to get better any time in the near future.

The point is that no one is really “safe” any more.

The idea of a company “taking care” of its people is a relic of the 20th century. You’re on your own now.

To survive, you must make yourself as valuable and employable as possible. The purpose is two-fold:

1. Reduce your odds of being “downsized” and increase your security in your present job
2. If the worst case scenario does happen, increase your odds of getting hired somewhere else.

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How to Empower Customers using Innovation: Karen Austin, CIO of PG&E 12-04

How to Empower Customers using Innovation: Karen Austin, CIO of PG&E

The job of any CIO is demanding, but especially so for a major utility company. Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) provides energy services to more than 15 million people.

Karen Austin, PG&E CIO

Karen Austin was appointed CIO in June 2011  —a critical time, when PG&E sought to transform itself into a more nimble and innovative company. Karen and her IT team play a key role in keeping the lights on  in Northern and Central California.

In this fascinating interview, Karen shares her vision, thoughts and perspectives about IT challenges, opportunities, and what makes her department a unique place to work.

What’s your vision for IT?

I came to PG&E because I knew my consumer products background would bring a customer-focused approach to the utility industry. My team is positioned to strengthen PG&E’s IT backbone so that when our field crews make gas safety upgrades or add new outage sensors to power lines, we can process, store, analyze, and use the data to improve customer service.

That’s why I’m here: to deliver technology that helps the rest of PG&E deliver safe, reliable and affordable energy to our customers.

How do you motivate your team and the extended team to embrace your vision?

My leadership style is about communication. It’s my responsibility to make sure my employees embrace the company’s vision and feel strong ownership and pride in their work. We discuss our business priorities and how to match our technology projects to the infrastructure upgrades the rest of the business is driving.

We need to upgrade our gas and electric systems, keep the public and our employees safe, and make power affordable for customers. With these goals in mind, I determine with my team how we will roll out new technology and systems.

A few examples include: new data centers to build in redundancy so IT systems stay strong and robust, mobile devices for field personnel to make their jobs simpler and more efficient, and sensing equipment that improves reliability. My plans and my vision become my leaders’ goals and objectives; and that in turn becomes part of the everyday work for each developer, information architect and technologist on our 1,600-person team.

What’s your view of technology vendors in general, and what role do we play in bringing your vision to life?

Our vendors play a key role in partnering with the industry to develop innovative solutions that will help both our customers and PG&E more effectively manage energy use and improve our ability to operate the power grid more reliably and safely.

How do you compete for talent? And what makes PG&E a great place to work?

The utility is going through one-of-a-kind upgrades to the power grid. We are moving from standard pipes and wires to pipes and wires strengthened by a sea of information that will give us real-time insights into customer energy usage and grid health.

The opportunities that lie ahead and the leadership we have in place give us an attractive proposition to recruit the best and brightest IT experts.

How are emerging technologies adding value to your business and customers?

More than two decades ago, using our reliable, slower methods of outage restoration—for instance, during a storm or a natural disaster like an earthquake—it took a lot longer to get things back to normal.

Now, our teams can pinpoint outages by pinging our 9-million-plus SmartMeter network. During an outage, meters signal that their customers are without power. We piece those “last gasp” communications together, figure out the hardest-hit areas, deploy our teams strategically, and repair what’s broken. We can restore critical services to our customers hours, days or weeks faster than before.

Even six years ago, instead of the largest [advanced metering infrastructure] network on this continent, we were still relying on phone calls to activate our outage response teams. We didn’t have a clear sense of restoration priorities then, either. But we do now.

So big data is an important part of smart metering?

The opportunities for leveraging big data beyond disaster recovery are numerous. We can get rid of older, less advanced line monitoring technology because SmartMeters are replacing the outage reporting sensors we had used on our electric system for years.

A couple decades ago, we wanted to get a better sense of how widespread and complex an outage was, so that we could deploy the right crews to the right locations. Sensors equipped with a radio were a brilliant idea, but now, with more than 9 million SmartMeters across Northern and Central California, we have far more data points; those old sensors can be retired.

Besides having real-time outage information for our customers when they call us, we’re working on showing premise-level outages to our customers. That way, if there is a temporary, momentary outage, or an occasional extended outage, the customer will know when it started, the cause and the potential restoration time.

So big data helps you provide a more reliable service?

Equipment failures are a key reason for distribution system outages for most electric utilities. With big data intelligence, we can better monitor the health of our electric assets and avoid equipment failures and their resulting outages. Using SmartMeter data to figure out which transformers across our electric system are bearing the lion’s share of the load, we can replace overworked transformers before they break down.

Understandably, reliability is a big focus for our customers. They want the lights to stay on, and if the lights go out, they want them to come back on quickly. So we’re insisting on putting the customer first by delivering safe infrastructure.

Customers want more reliable gas and electric service, and we’re working hard on that. And, to make the price of energy more affordable, we’re helping build better rate options.

To sum up, big data is pervasive, and what’s most important, its usefulness goes beyond utility efficiencies and directly to our customers, to make their lives better.

What’s your involvement with the White House’s Green Button initiative?

We partnered with the White House, SCE, and Sempra to make energy data available for our customers, using a standard format. The Green Button initiative has jump-started the development of applications that will help customers become even better energy managers.

Making this information available—in simple, standard formats—helps spur the development of innovative consumer applications and devices from entrepreneurs, big companies, and even students. Imagine being able to check your air conditioner from your smartphone, or buying a clothes dryer that saves money for you automatically during critically hot days, or simply getting some helpful customized hints on how best to save energy and money in your house or apartment.

Within a few months and after a small investment, we were among the first utilities to deliver a common standard for Green Button in California. Once the rest of the country adopted the format, more than 30 million households across the country can now download their detailed energy usage information online.

And Green Button has already made a tremendous difference in our customers’ lives. For example, PG&E customers Kelly and Jim live near San Luis Obispo. Like many Americans, they need to save money. Last year, they sold their house and moved into a modest rental home. But downsizing their home by 50% still didn’t drastically lower their electric bill. Kelly was determined to cut her energy expense, and she did. In six months, the family’s monthly bill went from $160 to $50, an annual savings of $1,300. Kelly contacted us to say that her family saved 70 percent on their bill, thanks to Green Button.

And what’s your IT organization doing to be greener?

On the topic of “green IT”, we’ve adopted energy efficiency best practices in the data center, procurement process and even at the individual level. We’ve achieved a greater level of efficiency in our data centers through energy efficient cooling (new chillers, convert computer room AC units to variable speed fans), cold isle containment pods (cool the IT equipment in pods vs. cool the whole room), energy & temperature monitoring sensors to optimize cooling (prevent over/under cooling), and server virtualization.

On the IT procurement front, we’re adding energy efficiency weighting in all IT product selections—servers, storage, etc.—and converting desktops toEPEAT standard. At the individual level, we are encouraging everyone to “think before you print”.

What’s the best part of your job?

Leveraging technology to truly make a difference for our customers. And developing talent—I love watching people grow and eventually have a huge impact on our business results.

Read any good books lately?

Yes: Wheat Belly. California has me hooked on CrossFit and Paleo. Both of them really help me balance the challenges of this role and my life outside of work.

Day I of IIT-Bombay placements sees top offer of Rs 80 lakh

Day I of IIT-Bombay placements sees top offer of Rs 80 lakh

By Hemali Chhapia & Yogita Rao, TNN | Dec 3, 2012, 01.51 AM IST

Twitter, a first-time recruiter on the campus, has also made two offers. LinkedIn has made three, while algorithmic trading firm Jump Trading has not hired a single student from the campus.

MUMBAI: Day 1 of placements at the premierIIT-Bombay on Saturday ended on a high note for many. It was evident from the status on Sriram Bhargav's Facebook page that read "placed at Samsung US/Korea". The firm is believed to have made the highest offer this year of around US $1,50,000 (Rs 80 lakh) per annum. Deepankar Reddy from the institute's computer science and engineering department was also hired with one of the highest packages at Rocket Fuel. Sagar Chordia and Saif Hasan, computer engineering students, will go on to join Facebook.

Hasan, who is from Kanodar in north Gujarat, and Sagar from Pune are both among the top rankers of the department. Hasan developed the Facebook photo downloaded which he developed in the Hack night competition. Sagar, who is also studying statistics at the Powai campus, went through 4 rounds of intense interviews by Facebook before they were hired.

On his Facebook page, Sagar noted "Day 1 of IIT-B placements ... 18 hours of interviews ... offer from five companies ... accepted Facebook's full-time job offer...happy life!"

The social networking company has offered students a base salary of $ 100,000 and a bonus and relocation bonus of $ 20,000 and stock options of $ 120,000 if they stick on for two years.

Twitter, a first-time recruiter on the campus, has also made two offers. LinkedIn has made three, while algorithmic trading firm Jump Trading has not hired a single student from the campus. Samsung India has taken at least half a dozen students from the campus. Around 160 offers have been made on Day 1 of the placements, up from last year's 140.

While 35 firms visited the campus on Saturday, 29 had come to hire on Sunday. If the salary offers made by the firms this year is anything to go by, IITs are not among the institutes to suffer.

This year, the number of registered students has increased. Last year, they had closed to 1,200 students, this year, around 1,300 have registered for campus placements. Avijit Chatterjee, professor-in-charge, of placements, said, "Not all are hired in campus placement. Some are hired off campus and some continue with their higher studies."

On the second day too, big firms continued to pour in at the campus placement's office. Yahoo, Barkley, Amazon, Adobe, Oracle, etc were some of the firms that hired students on Sunday. On Saturday and Sunday, interviews continued to take place till post midnight. The sessions will continue for the next two days.

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