Despite an improving economy and jobs picture, the public is more pessimistic than it was after the 2008 financial crisis that it is possible to work hard and become rich, according to a New York Times poll. The poll, which explored Americans’ opinions on a wide range of economic and financial issues, found that only 64 percent of respondents said they still believed in the American dream, the lowest result in roughly two decades. (The New York Times)

The average American spends a lot of time at the office. According to the American Time Use Survey, Americans spend 8.7 hours at work on an average work day. Each year, Americans work roughly 1,790 hours, which is just slightly higher than the OECD average. But what happens during the 9 hours that are spent at the office? While every job includes some tasks that are not part of the job description, there's a discrepancy between a job titles and what workers spend their time doing at the office. (The Atlantic)

Aubrey Kelly, a former biology student, used to work at an Olympic training center in the US. Now she is a healthcare manager, working out of California for her employer Amgen, the world’s largest independent biotechnology company, helping to support the development of treatments for millions of sick patients. The pharmaceuticals industry has become increasingly reliant on biotech companies to lead its innovation. (Business Because)

Counteroffers are making a comeback after falling out of favor during the recession. Their resurgence highlights the hot U.S. market for executive talent. Not long ago, coming to your employer with a competing offer branded you as a flight risk and threatened your career. Yet some savvy negotiators now use counteroffers to land big new roles and thrive. (The Wall Street Journal)

Of all the productivity strategies out there, one of the most important is figuring out how long your optimum workweek should be. Up until a certain point, putting in a little extra time can boost your career, just as a runner might see benefits from adding a few drills. Past that point, you experience diminishing returns – sometimes as painful as a runner who goes 10 miles too far and winds up with shin splints. It’s good to get this number right. (Fast Company)

Getting lots of input on important issues is a good idea. It can help you be successful when, without expert help, you might fail. But it can turn into a problem if you're depending on other people's opinions because you have no confidence in your own. There's a fine line between the two – I know because I've crossed it more than once. If I have to make an important decision I tend to ask for advice and opinions from people who seem smarter than I am. Then I ask for a few more. By the time I finally settle on something, it's been crowdsourced. (Inc.)

Two years after becoming vice president of innovation at VF Corp., an apparel company based in Greensboro, N.C., Soon Yu was approached by one of his bosses, who quietly suggested that he do a 360-degree evaluation. Some of his co-workers were unhappy with his management style. The extensive review included Mr. Yu’s employees and bosses as well as a self-assessment. "It was a really painful process," says Mr. Yu, who was told that he could be overly critical and unilateral in his decision-making. "But all of these reviews gave me a better understanding of what was driving my bad behaviors." (The Wall Street Journal)

Plenty of investment banks and financial-services firms are, it would seem, great places for women to work – many boast a workforce that’s more female than male. But even companies that employ a high percentage of women tend to predominantly have men in positions of power, a new report finds. When women do climb to a leadership role, they’re often managers in the human resources or marketing department. (Businessweek)

Silicon Valley’s engineers are using homegrown technology to fix their industry’s lack of diversity, honing software to find, recruit and retain women and minorities. Entelo Inc., Gild Inc., Piazza Technologies Inc., and newer startups such as Textio and PowerToFly Inc. are collecting data, analyzing information and sifting through social networks to find and target diverse candidates. (Bloomberg)

Benchmark U.S. oil prices dropped below $60 a barrel for the first time since July 2009 as Saudi Arabia questioned the need to cut output, signaling its priority is defending market share. West Texas Intermediate crude slid 1.6 percent in New York. The market will correct itself, according to Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi. Global demand for crude from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will drop next year by about 300,000 barrels a day to 28.9 million, the least since 2003, the group predicted yesterday. (Bloomberg)

Asoka Wöhrmann is the trillion-euro man. That’s how much he’s in charge of in his job as chief investment strategist at Deutsche Bank, a leading European bank and one of the largest dealers of foreign exchange in the world. The money he’s in charge of belongs to small-time savers and big investors – such as foundations and retirement funds – alike. "You should never be afraid of zeroes," he quips good-naturedly on this visit to his office at the firm’s Frankfurt headquarters. Big numbers no longer make the 49-year-old uncomfortable. But low interest rates do. (Ozy)

Student loans are a popular way to pay for an MBA, but loans come with one major drawback – debt, which can take years to repay. Scholarships can relieve students of some financial burden, but knowing how schools award them, which non-academic institutions offer MBA scholarships and when to apply for this kind of aid can be a mystery. Even MBA admissions experts are sometimes stumped. (U.S. News and World Report)

Think back to your most recent GMAT practice test: Which three quantitative questions took you the longest to answer? For one student it may be an obtuse geometry question and two difficult word problems. For another it may be an impossible algebra problem and two truly puzzling data sufficiency questions. But no matter the exact types, these are the three questions that ruin your GMAT score. (Businessweek)

In 2001, Michelle Marie enrolled at Oregon State University. After two years of community college, and then another two years at home taking care of her baby, Marie was ready to complete her bachelor’s degree. But that meant she’d need to find someone to watch her daughter, who was nearly two years old, and both resources and information were scarce. "At the time nobody was asking me if I was a student parent. Nobody was saying, ‘Hey, we're aware that you're a member of a population that is perhaps not served by the services and resources that are available,’" Marie says. "I felt like I had to set aside my parent status in order to be a student." (The Atlantic)

Leadership traits; guiding or taking charge are attributes available to people of all ages, races and sexes. The National Black MBA Association, Inc. Pittsburgh Chapter is looking for people with such traits interested in becoming leaders. (New Pittsburgh Courier)

The General Motors Foundation today announced grants totaling $2.875 million to support 29 leading universities and organizations across the country in 2014 through its University/Organization Partner Program. The initiative provides funding to advance secondary education curricula in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, also known as STEM, information technology and other fields important to the automotive industry. Beneficiaries included the National Black MBA Association. (GM)

PurchaseBlack.com, an Amazon-style marketplace focused on Black products and businesses, wants to connect customers to Black owned businesses online. It is a website where customers can easily buy from Black owned firms, and companies can sell their products (not services) in their own free online shop. (BlackNews.com)

This was no Ocean’s Eleven. The hackers were not trying to empty a vault of cash, nor were they after customer credit card data, as in recent attacks on Target (TGT), Neiman Marcus, and Home Depot (HD). This was personal. The perpetrators wanted to punish the company, or, more precisely, its chief executive officer and majority owner, the billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Although confirming their conjectures would take some time, executives suspected almost immediately the assault was coming from Iran. (Businessweek)

One Friday afternoon in 2002, long before his company became a household verb, Larry Page walked into the office kitchen and posted some printouts of results from Google’s AdWords engine. On top, in big bold letters, he wrote, "THESE ADS SUCK." In most companies, this would be seen as cruel – an arrogant executive publicly humiliating his hapless employees for shoddy work – but not at Google. In fact, his unusual act was a show of confidence, defining a tough problem that he knew his talented engineers would want to solve. (Harvard Business Review)

A tiny startup called Docker, which launched a mere 19 months ago and gives its software away for free, has become a huge industry phenom. The biggest names in tech have been calling it up and asking it to be their partner. In the past few months Dell, HP, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, VMware and others have all asked to join forces with this 31-employee company. (Inc.)

Starting a business is one of the most exciting career choices you can make. There’s nothing quite like watching something you’ve built from the ground-up grow into a successful organization that provides true value to customers. It’s also one of the most difficult career paths, as there are so many factors that go into getting a business off the ground, from market research to funding to developing a market strategy and building a team. (Fast Company)

Americans are feeling more grim about their debt. Nearly one in five consumers with loans said they think they will never be able to finish paying off their debt, according to survey released Wednesday by CreditCards.com. That is double the nine percent who said they felt that way last year. (The Washington Post)

Peer-to-peer lender LendingClub is now an $8.9 billion company, after pricing its IPO last night at $15 per share and opening its trades this morning at $24.75 per share. But LendingClub was hardly a sure bet when it was founded in 2006, as a nascent financial-tech startup that was seeking to disintermediate a banking sector that was flying high. (Fortune)

On Black Friday, Kohl’s offered what looked like a terrific deal on the Jawbone UP24, a stylish fitness-tracking band the retailer ordinarily sells for $130. In honor of that hallowed national day of shopping, Kohl’s was cutting its price on the UP24 by more than 20 percent, to just $100. The Kohl’s price cut was heralded by dozens of websites that compile supposedly stupendous holiday discounts. (The New York Times)

Complete this to-do list by the end of the year and you’ll be in better shape for 2015. First, Max out your 401(k).You can contribute up to $17,500 to a 401(k), 403(b), 457 or Thrift Savings Plan in 2014, plus an extra $5,500 if you’re 50 or older. Contributions are usually made by payroll deduction, so ask your employer if you can increase them for the final paychecks of the year. You may also be able to contribute a year-end bonus to the account. Pretax contributions lower your taxable income and may have other benefits as well – for example, they may put your income below the cutoff to be eligible to make Roth IRA contributions or help you qualify for a bigger subsidy to buy health insurance on the exchanges. (Kiplinger's)

In the fall of 2001, Hewlett-Packard announced a momentous $25 billion merger with Compaq. "This is a decisive move that accelerates our strategy and positions us to win by offering even greater value to our customers and partners," declared Carly Fiorina, HP’s chairwoman and chief executive at the time, describing how the deal would "create substantial share owner value." Thirteen years later, just this fall, Meg Whitman, HP’s current chairwoman and chief executive, undid that deal, splitting the company in two. (The New York Times)

When Austin Grieb was a student, nothing motivated him more than an A-plus on a school paper and a note or cheerful sticker from his teacher telling him he did a "super" job. Now, as social media community manager at Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank, the 26-year-old still craves such recognition – and he gets it. Thanks to his company’s rewards program, any employee, not just managers, can heap on the praise. (BBC News)

With a midnight deadline to avert a government shutdown, the House prepared to vote Thursday on a $1.1 trillion spending bill, in a test of whether Republican leaders can contain late-blooming opposition to some contentious provisions. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) told reporters at his weekly news conference that he was confident the spending bill would receive bipartisan support and pass on Thursday, and then be sent to the Senate. (The Wall Street Journal)

More than a million retired and current truck drivers, construction workers and other union workers could see their pension benefits cut if Congress passes a proposal aimed at shoring up some of the nation's biggest pensions. Lawmakers are attempting to tack on the proposal to the government spending bill, which is expected to be voted on this week – although backlash over other add-ons could delay the bill's passage. (CNN/Money)

Leadership is not about who you know, or why you know it, or how much you are paid to lead. It's often about what you know and how you apply that knowledge. That's why I've decided to scour the best books on leadership that were published this year and distill the information down to the most useful tip with a quote from the book (in my opinion). (Inc.)

Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2014 is not one individual, but many. The magazine's editors announced Wednesday morning that the workers who have risked their lives this year to treat the largest Ebola outbreak in history would be honored on its annual marquee cover. In 2014, Ebola has claimed the lives of more than 6,000 people in West Africa. (The Washington Post)

If you’re kvetching online about being sick or subtweeting your sneezing co-worker, public health researchers would love for you to keep at it. You’re feeding a faster, better system for predicting flu outbreaks. It used to be that Google’s search trends were the best public tool for flu monitoring, but epidemiologists are increasingly looking to Twitter and other social media for better results. (Fast Company)