The 'Happy Warriors' in Your Office

Welcome back. In this edition, we explore this year's career hack, an explosion of interest in M.B.A. degrees and the househusbands behind many powerful women on Wall Street.

This is a condensed version of WSJ’s Careers & Leadership newsletter. Sign up here to get the WSJ’s comprehensive work coverage in your inbox each week.

This Year's Career Hack: Be the Happy Warrior at Work

They smile even when work is a slog, but fierce ambition lies behind their sunny dispositions. They’re the happy warriors in your office. While others try to impress the boss by working late or developing hard-to-find skills, this army of relentless optimists is determined to outwork everyone else and smile while doing it.

Applications to M.B.A. Programs Soar

Workers, frustrated by an extended cool-down in the white-collar job market, are applying to business school in numbers not seen in years.?The rebound in interest, which reverses two years of declines, was most pronounced for full-time, in-person degrees , according to a new survey of schools by the Graduate Management Admission Council.

There's a Doting ‘Househusband’ Behind Many Powerful Women on Wall Street

More men are staying home to facilitate the complex juggle of family life and their wives’ high-powered careers. “The prototype of the person you are competing with, the people in nearly all of the successful positions, have a stay-at-home partner ,” says Suzanne Donohoe, an executive at a private-equity firm whose husband stays at home.

Best of the Rest

• Forced Fun at Business Conferences: Hard Pass or All In? (Read )
• The Pension Perk at Stake in the Election (Read )
• It’s Time to Bring 401(k)s Into the 21st Century (Read )

This is a condensed version of WSJ’s Careers & Leadership newsletter. Sign up here to get the WSJ’s comprehensive work coverage in your inbox each week.

This newsletter was curated by Lynn Cook, WSJ's Careers and Workplace Bureau Chief. Reach her on LinkedIn .