Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 2618: Hidden Work

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“You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.”

When I was growing up the most visible part-time job was to work in McDonald’s.  Lots of kids wanted to do so, but not that many were accepted.  It was the best job and if you were hired there, it meant you had done something right. The McDonald’s job was visible.  Today, the most occupied part-time jobs are invisible, almost hidden.  While McDonald’s is not the power of a community like it once was, replaced by Starbucks kind of, they still represent a large employer with sales of over $21B annually.  Their number of employees today is roughly 210,000. That’s a lot of people.  However, our more less-seen jobs are way bigger. Uber, with $11B of revenue has employees of 3.92 million people and a third of those are in the United States. Only a fraction of that number are full-time, with most being 1099 contractors, but they still must pay them, communicate with them, regulate them and send them a 1099 versus a W2 at the end of the tax year.  And, we many times forget that we are competing with Uber and Lyft and other gig economy jobs as people who would have once come to work for us as full-time or part-time are now finding freedom and flexibility in their less visible jobs. They also forego much of the security and perks that we might think they desire, but they don’t.  It is hubris to sit back and think that nearly 4 million people from one company are only doing what they are doing because they must or can’t find something else.  Some might, but a large number are making choices about the new kind of work they want to do.

Jesus called the Disciples to a work that at first must have appealed to them as they considered the power and authority that Jesus had and would earn as He became more and more well known. As He stood at the base of a hillside and spoke to over 5000 people, the Disciples had to be giving each other high fives for the size of the crowds that Jesus could bring.  They were becoming very visible and were on their way in their own roles to becoming popular. And then it changed and their work became something else.  They were all of a sudden on the other side of the public opinion and their status was lost.  But, this is where we can learn.  They did not stop just because their status changed.  They worked differently, but they carried out what Jesus had commanded them to do.  We might be feeling “hidden” today in our work, our role or our career.  But, let us not feel hidden in our purpose, because God has given us what we are to do for Him within our work and each and every time we respond and step up to His calling, we are making Him visible to others.

Reference:  Matthew 5:14 (New Living Translation)