#employment

In recent years, a new wave of peer-reviewed research indicates that launching a business can dramatically reduce stress and improve physical and mental health. That revelation first gained traction with a groundbreaking paper published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. In it, researchers compared a nationally representative sample of employees and entrepreneurs on various health factors, including blood pressure, physician visits, physical and mental illness, and overall well-being. The results overwhelmingly favored entrepreneurs, who evidenced significantly lower blood pressure and hypertension rates, fewer hospital visits, and reduced incidence of physical and mental illnesses. How can starting a business, which many justifiably consider a massive and nerve-wracking undertaking, possibly reduce stress?

In other words, the 1099 economy is almost perfectly calibrated to serve the needs of fast-moving start-ups — lower costs, less liability, the ability to grow and shrink the labor pool quickly — but is it good for the people doing the work?

In order to determine which employees would be asked to give stock back, Pincus and his executives tried to pinpoint workers whose contributions to Zynga--in the execs' eyes--didn't necessarily justify the potential cash windfall they could receive when the company went public, the Journal claims. One Journal source said that Zynga executives were especially concerned with not creating a "Google chef" scenario.

"We do not work for you. You do not work for us. We choose to work together."

"His client was a middle-aged novice training to become a nun in a Roman Catholic religious order in Toledo. She said she had been dismissed by the order after she became seriously ill — including a diagnosis of breast cancer."

"Why work? Why not play instead?"

"We're a pro-leisure and anti-wage-slavery group of people dedicated to exploring the question: why work?"