Yours Truly, featured in Cleo Magazine & Farrago

HOT & COLD
I had quite a hot and cold moment when both media approached me for an interview. Since the beginning I wanted Wanderbites to be less of me, more on food, travel, and whatever stories in between. But I also wanted it to be personal. That's why my food reviews are as if I were speaking to you in eye-to-eye.

In that spirit, I finally decided that it wouldn't hurt to come out of the shell once in a while, or more appropriately : come out of the green bowl that's been shadowing my profile picture for the past two years in the 'about me' page.

ME & YOU
I wanted you, Biters, to know that this guy right here is alive and human. The guy behind every drooling pictures and mouth-watering paragraph. Yes, when you're reading the stories, you are experiencing what I went through. And no, when you put comments you're not speaking to the giant W! logo, despite of its consistent appearance.

Speaking of comments, it is one of the things that kept me doing what I'm doing. For me it is your form of appreciation. I read every single line with a smile. I would be lying to say that I'm not happy when I got the copy of CLEO's January edition and  when I read the feature on FARRAGO. Thank you for the appreciation. It speaks to everyone in this profession.

FAQ
The question that's been asked frequently by Cleo & Farrago was:

Why food? 

I guess the only answer to that is passion. The same thing if you ask MJ: why basketball? or Awie from Axioo: why photographing wedding? It's built in. There's this inexplicable sense of being toward a certain subject or activity. That when I do it, I feel alive. Sure I get tired, but also energized emotionally.

That's what food photography do to me. I hope you discover your passion too.

GRATZIE
Although I've been writing since 2009, its not until the end of 2010 that I started posting food reviews religiously. And its not until mid 2011 that I had my first (paid) commercial photoshoot.

From a simple hobby to making a living out of it. Its a long journey and not one free from struggles of course. I had my ups and downs. This is one of the ups. While we're at that, I'd like to thank you Biters, everyone who's reading, fellow bloggers, foodies, photographers, and friends who have supported me in one way or another. =D

Here's a readable link to both article:
CLEO
FARRAGO

Cheers,

Fellexandro Ruby
Food / Travel Photographer & Storyteller

Snack on my Twitter at @wanderbites ;)

The Value of Paying Employees to Walk Away

I've always been interested in people, passion, and connecting the dots between the two. Here's a fragment of an interview by Peter Hopkins and HP with Tony Hsieh that took my attention. He is the CEO of Zappos.com (and a millionaire by the age of 24). You'll find here one of his most original way to screen out passionate people and keep them as valuable assets in your company.

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Peter Hopkins: Go to the first question here, Amy Nichols and she writes, “This is in reference to a very interesting and much discussed aspect of your hiring practice where you have employees do a training, a rigorous training where they learn everything about the company, and then at a period you give them a bonus to potentially walk away where you pay them you through that time, but then a bonus on top of that.” And she asks, “How often do new hires take advantage of this $2,000 offer to quit Zappos?”

Tony Hsieh: Yeah, on average it’s about 2 or 3% of people take it, so there are some classes where each class is 20 to 40 people, so some classes nobody takes it, and some classes 2 or 3 people might take it. And we started this a few years ago, and it actually started out at $100 dollars, and we keep actually upping the offer. It’s at 2,000 now, and actually at the end of the training, which is four weeks, we up it to $3,000 and extend it beyond that. And we keep upping it because we feel like not enough people are taking it, and the original motivation was to get people that…We don’t want people at Zappos that are there just for a paycheck, and we’re headquartered out of Las Vegas. Starting pay is $11.00 an hour for a call center, so it’s a pretty significant chunk of money, and our thought was we want people that really believe in the company and really want to be with the company for the long term.

And the biggest surprise was actually from the people that didn’t take the offer because they still had to go home after their weekend and talk to their friends and family and ask themselves, Is this a company that I really believe in, that I really want to commit myself to? “Is this a company whose culture I want to be a part of and contribute to?” And when they decide to turn down the easy money, when they come back to the office on Monday, they’re that much more passionate and engaged and committed. And that has been, by far, the biggest benefit.
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The way I see it, losing those 2 - 3% candidates and the couple thousand dollar per person is worth more than having the mess later on. The mess of having unenthusiastic worker with no passion, that might snowball into numerous unsatisfied customer and explode later on with bad word-of-mouth. And by then it's already too late. Pay in advance, or pay it later. The latter in most cases are worse.

In other words, I'm on the same page with Tony. Let me know what you think. 

Cheers,

Fellexandro Ruby