Tag: Remote Work

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News You Can Use: 12/27/2017

  • Former Facebook exec says social media is ripping apart society

    Palihapitiya’s criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.”

    He went on to describe an incident in India where hoax messages about kidnappings shared on WhatsApp led to the lynching of seven innocent people. “That’s what we’re dealing with,” said Palihapitiya. “And imagine taking that to the extreme, where bad actors can now manipulate large swathes of people to do anything you want. It’s just a really, really bad state of affairs.” He says he tries to use Facebook as little as possible, and that his children “aren’t allowed to use that shit.” He later adds, though, that he believes the company “overwhelmingly does good in the world.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/11/16761016/former-facebook-exec-ripping-apart-society

  • The Services Procurement Machine is Broken — Here’s Why You Should Trade it in for a New Approach

    Engagements measured on cost and milestones alone fail to secure the best value for the business, as quality and innovation are often the first casualties to such an approach. What’s more, the structure of the machine has forced procurement to accept increased supplier rationalization and a narrow preference for larger services providers. Stuck working with big, “safe” firms, businesses have lost access to the high-performing talent and innovative solutions smaller firms can offer.

    But let’s not get all touchy-feely here: no gently swung process automation hammer is going to shatter an old system. What’s needed to creating lasting improvement is a root cause analysis of why the machine broke in the first place.

    Also:

    Second, the machine’s focus on cost and risk avoidance has led to increased supplier rationalization. This can be great for MRO, but the same strategy for safety supplies or lightbulbs is not necessarily the right one to tap specialized creative or strategic talent. The result is small and medium-sized suppliers that have the expertise and connections to drive greater success on a localized basis in a global world end up getting locked out of the process.

    http://spendmatters.com/2017/12/04/services-procurement-machine-broken-heres-trade-new-approach/

  • How Will the Web Look Without Net Neutrality? We Travel Into the Future to Find Out

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-will-the-web-look-like-without-net-neutrality-we-travel-into-the-future-to-find-out-1513369387
  • How A Flexible Work Culture Works For Everyone

    Reduce the barriers to attracting top talent: Work-life balance ranks as the number one career goal for all three major generations — baby boomers, Generation X and millennials — according to our research with Intel. Offering flexible work arrangements can help remove geographical barriers, ensuring that you can hire and retain the best candidates, regardless of location or other barriers. (I recently wrote more on generational workplace values.)

    Benefit the planet: Flexible work practices also help businesses to conserve natural resources and energy. With fewer people in the office and on the road, you’re helping reduce transportation-related pollution and can maximize office space usage. An internal Dell study in 2015 revealed that its Connected Workplace program in the United States alone helped reduce an estimate 25 million kWh of energy. Gallup data suggests that the U.S. workforce avoids 2.7 billion round-trips per year by telecommuting — a reduction of 30 million metric tons CO2e per year.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2017/12/08/how-a-flexible-work-culture-works-for-everyone/#201ae4373b7f

  • Estonia, the Digital Republic

    Today, citizens can vote from their laptops and challenge parking tickets from home. They do so through the “once only” policy, which dictates that no single piece of information should be entered twice. Instead of having to “prepare” a loan application, applicants have their data—income, debt, savings—pulled from elsewhere in the system. There’s nothing to fill out in doctors’ waiting rooms, because physicians can access their patients’ medical histories. Estonia’s system is keyed to a chip-I.D. card that reduces typically onerous, integrative processes—such as doing taxes—to quick work. “If a couple in love would like to marry, they still have to visit the government location and express their will,” Andrus Kaarelson, a director at the Estonian Information Systems Authority, says. But, apart from transfers of physical property, such as buying a house, all bureaucratic processes can be done online.

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-republic

Photo: Jaanus Jagomägi

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News You Can Use: 11/22/2017

  • For Tech’s Deepest Problems, Women Are The Canary In The Data Mine

    The book proposes this simple but radical solution: Women should not try to adapt to the male-centric corporate world, instead women should “lean out” and create their own companies. “I’ve figured out a way to create safe space for myself in tech,” wrote Shevinsky.

    In a recent conversation, we discussed how the culture of overwork contributes to the problem of misogyny in many companies, and about how the singular focus on growth and profit drowns out ethical concerns that in the long run ultimately ruins companies. We also spoke about how feminism has said all it can, and yet things don’t seem to be getting better. And we discussed how a hostile workplace for women often indicates that a company has other ethical issues as well.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40494460/for-techs-biggest-problems-women-are-the-canary-in-the-data-mine

  • The Surprising Thing I Gained When I Switched to a Remote Workforce

    One way that businesses are trying to stem employee turnover and are working to improve employee well-being is embracing the paradigm shift to a telecommuting workforce, aka “working from home.” A 2014 PGi survey of 1,000 workers found that 80 percent of their employers offered a telecommuting option, and about half of these employees exercised this option at least once a week. The millennial generation is all about this lifestyle, where 68 percent of millennials are more interested in a position that involves working from home and 64 percent would like the opportunity to work remotely.

    Also:

    One of the aspects of telecommuting that I didn’t think of when we first started was the increase in quality hires I was able to make. Before the switch, we were pigeonholed into hiring from the localities surrounding our business, or hiring someone who was willing to make the long commute every day — something that weighs heavily on even the best of employees.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/304422

  • A pro wrestler’s guide to confidence
  • It’s Time to Tax Companies for Using Our Personal Data

    The data tax could be a minor cost, less than 1 percent of the revenue companies earn from selling our personal data, spread out over an entire industry. Individually, no company’s bottom line would substantially suffer; collectively, the tax would pull money back to the public, from an industry profiting from material and labor that is, at its very core, our own.

    This idea is not new. It is, essentially, a sales tax, among the oldest taxes that exist, but it hasn’t been done because assigning a fixed monetary value to our data can be very difficult. For a lot of internet businesses, our personal data either primarily flows through the business or remains locked within.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/business/dealbook/taxing-companies-for-using-our-personal-data.html

  • The Washington Post Is A Software Company Now

    Since 2014, a new Post operation now called Arc Publishing has offered the publishing system the company originally used for WashingtonPost.com as a service. That allows other news organizations to use the Post’s tools for writers and editors. Arc also shoulders the responsibility of ensuring that readers get a snappy, reliable experience when they visit a site on a PC or mobile device. It’s like a high-end version of Squarespace or WordPress.com, tailored to solve the content problems of a particular industry.

    By offloading the creation of publishing tools and the hosting of sites, media companies can concentrate on the journalism itself rather than the technical requirements of getting it in front of readers. Scot Gillespie, the Washington Post’s chief technology officer, says that Arc’s value proposition is “let us run the CMS [content management system] for you, the creation of circulation. You focus on differentiation.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40495770/the-washington-post-is-a-software-company-now

Photo: Felix Russell-Saw

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News You Can Use: 8/30/2017

  • DreamHost is fighting DoJ request for 1.3M IP addresses of visitors to anti-Trump protest site

    Web hosting service DreamHost is fighting a Department of Justice demand to scoop up all the IP addresses of visitors to an anti-Trump website. The website in question, disruptj20.org, organized participants of political protests against the current U.S. administration.

    Blogging about its objections to the warrant yesterday, DreamHost’s general counsel describes it as “a highly untargeted demand that chills free association and the right of free speech afforded by the Constitution”.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/15/dreamhost-is-fighting-doj-request-for-1-3m-ip-addresses-of-visitors-to-anti-trump-protest-site/?ncid=rss
    Department of Justice Uses Search Warrant To Get Data On Visitors to Anti-Trump Site

    The Department of Justice initially used subpoenas to DreamHost to seek subscriber information about who ran the site. That’s fairly straightforward. But then they doubled down. They obtained a search warrant for an extremely broad array of data related to the site, including all stored records of access to the site or communications with the site. As written, it seems to demand data including the IP addresses of everyone who ever accessed the site and the content of every site visitor’s question or comment submitted through the site’s comment form, as well as all emails sent to or through the web site. The Department of Justice has filed a motion in the DC court where charges are pending to compel DreamHost to respond, and DreamHost has filed an opposition articulating its objections to the warrant.

    https://www.popehat.com/2017/08/14/department-of-justice-uses-search-warrant-to-get-data-on-visitors-to-anti-trump-site/
    Government Prevails in Bid for Anti-Trump Website’s Subscriber Data

    A judge in District of Columbia Superior Court on Thursday ordered DreamHost LLC, the host of the website disruptj20.org, to comply with a government warrant seeking information about the site’s subscribers. The government says the site was used to recruit and organize hundreds of people who rioted in the city on Jan. 20, the day President Donald Trump was sworn in, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage over nearly two dozen city blocks.

    Chief Judge Robert Morin ruled that DreamHost was obligated to turn over subscriber data, but that prosecutors would have to tell the judge which data it intended to seize. The judge said he would oversee the use of the data to make sure the government’s seizure was limited to individuals linked to the riots and not people who merely posted messages or communicated with others through the site.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/u-s-prevails-in-bid-for-anti-trump-website-s-subscriber-data

  • Not even remotely possible

    Quite apart from the time and rent saved, there’s growing evidence that remote teams can be more productive than in-person ones. Consider: “We found massive, massive improvement in performance — a 13% improvement in performance from people working at home.” Consider companies like Automattic, Gitlab, InVision, and Zapier, all of which thrive as fully remote companies.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/13/not-even-remotely-possible/?ncid=rss

  • What Kind of Thinker Are You? A Hiker or a Race Car Driver?
  • Tech’s Damaging Myth of the Loner Genius Nerd

    Early on, children who are less comfortable with social interaction — particularly boys, who are more likely to be socialized that way — are channeled toward science and engineering, he said. Teachers generally focus on the technical aspects and not the interpersonal ones. The result is a field filled with people who dislike social interactions and have been rewarded for it.

    Silicon Valley culture encourages it. Google calls engineers who aren’t managers “individual contributors.” Technical skills are valued above soft skills or business skills. “Anyone who deals with a human being is considered less intelligent,” said Ellen Ullman, a software programmer and author of a new book, “Life in Code.” “You would think it would be the other way around, but the more your work is just talking to the machine, the more valuable it is.”

    Also:

    Computer programming was originally considered a woman’s job. They were programmers of the Eniac during World War II and at NASA, as shown in the film “Hidden Figures.” That began to change when programming professionalized in the 1960s. The stereotype of an eccentric genius who would rather work with machines than people was born, according to Nathan Ensmenger, a historian at Indiana University who studies the cultural history of the software industry.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/upshot/techs-damaging-myth-of-the-loner-genius-nerd.html

  • Three things procurement executives should know about Generation Z

    Members of Generation Z have an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit – a mindset that can help procurement to deliver value beyond savings. Again, procurement executives should emphasize the fact the function works with suppliers as well as other divisions, such as research and development, to deliver new innovative new products when recruiting graduates.

    While attracting and developing the very best talent is one of procurement’s key challenges, the function needs to think carefully about the differences between the generations to ensure everyone is comfortable and moving forward in their own personal development. Fail to keep ahead of the changes and procurement will quickly find itself at the back of the queue for talent.

    https://www.procurementleaders.com//blog/rachel-sharp/three-things-procurement-executives-should-know-about-generation-z-680204

Photo: Anna Wangler

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News You Can Use: 6/28/2017

  • Has outsourcing lost its strategic relevance?

    Somewhere along this journey, global delivery of IT services grew less important and less strategic. Cost savings became the key criteria to measure success and service providers commoditized their offerings to meet market demand. But at what cost? Industry vets would likely point to a lack of innovation, poor delivery or the recent trend to repatriate services. Indeed, the desire for continued cost cutting has made functional CIOs and global IT service providers less and less relevant.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3201097/outsourcing/has-outsourcing-lost-its-strategic-relevance.html

  • The CPO is Dead

    By definition the title of Chief Procurement Officer is no longer accurate or reflective of the job’s responsibilities. The title doesn’t even sound strategic. So I say kill it and demand the correct and more strategic title: Chief Value Officer.

    The concept of CVO is nothing new. It has been suggested as a title for a senior level officer position for a number of years. I researched the title on Linked-In and found that there were actually quite a few people with that title across a number of industries and functions. Wikipedia’s definition “business value: is an informal term that includes all forms of value that determine the health and well-being of the firm in the long run.”

    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cpo-dead-michael-shaw
    There is an article every few months saying that the CPO has to evolve into something new (C#O, CVO) and yet there are companies that still don’t have proper procurement discipline. The title is just a title, the function of any good CPO is to bring value and reduce risk. How that is done as business evolves is what separates the good CPOs from the pack.

  • Comcast CEO Brian Roberts talk cord-cutting, customer service, net neutrality

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-06-14/the-david-rubenstein-show-brian-roberts-video
  • Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

    One reason for Karp and Tumblr’s silence? Last week Verizon completed its acquisition of Tumblr parent company Yahoo, kicking off the subsequent merger of Yahoo and AOL to create a new company called Oath. As one of the world’s largest ISPs, Verizon is notorious for challenging the principles of net neutrality — it sued the FCC in an effort to overturn net neutrality rules in 2011, and its general counsel Kathy Grillo published a note this April complimenting new FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to weaken telecommunication regulations.

    Now, multiple sources tell The Verge that employees are concerned that Karp has been discouraged from speaking publicly on the issue, and one engineer conveyed that Karp told a group of engineers and engineering directors as much in a weekly meeting that took place shortly after SXSW. “Karp has talked about the net neutrality stuff internally, but won’t commit to supporting it externally anymore,” the engineer said. “[He] assures [us] that he is gonna keep trying to fight for the ability to fight for it publicly.” Karp did not respond to four emails asking for comment, and neither Yahoo nor Tumblr would speak about the matter on the record.

    https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/21/15816974/verizon-tumblr-net-neutrality-internet-politics-david-karp

  • Why WordPress’s Parent Doubled Down on Remote Work

    Simply put, Automattic’s remote-working policies are just that popular. At a time when companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard are calling employees back to the office, Automattic’s success with remote working is striking. The remote-working criticism–that it’s harder to get people to move in the same direction when they’re dispersed–just doesn’t seem to apply at Automattic.

    In fact, says Mullenweg, it’s actually been a big benefit to the company. “I used to be very conflicted,” he told Quartz. “All I hear from my friends in San Francisco is how hard it is to hire. Should I not tell them this secret? I decided it’s a great idea and everyone should do it. I’ll keep shouting from the rooftop because everyone should do it.”

    https://www.inc.com/kaitlyn-wang/automattic-wordpress-remote-work.html

Photo: Korney Violin

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News You Can Use: 6/21/2017

  • Why Remote Work Can’t Be Stopped

    Despite these moves by big companies, data indicates that the remote-work trend in the U.S. labor force is inexorable, aided by ever-better tools for getting work done anywhere. Surveys done by Gallup indicate that in 2016, the proportion of Americans who did some or all of their work from home was 43%, up from 39% in 2012. Over the same period, the proportion who only work remotely went to 20% from 15%. Amazon.com , American Express , UnitedHealth Group , and Salesforce.com allow employees to work remotely at least some of the time.

    Regarding tools used:

    For remote workers, the communications tools they use daily are the equivalent of these common spaces. The canonical example, owing to its explosive growth and creeping ubiquity, is the group-chat service Slack. It’s designed to make it easy for employees to communicate in ways that aren’t so different from the way they would around a water cooler or a conference table. Slack’s playful features, like on-demand animated GIFs, make it good for collegial interaction, while its library of chatbots and integrations with other enterprise software make it useful as a hub for communicating about and controlling many aspects of a business.


    https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-remote-work-cant-be-stopped-1496577602?mg=prod/accounts-wsj

  • After London Attack, Tech Firms Urged to Do More to Fight Extremists

    Mrs. May said Britain must work with other democracies to “reach international agreements” to regulate cyberspace to prevent terrorism planning. Her statement ratcheted up already critical remarks her cabinet members made in the wake of a March attack, also in London, that killed five people near Parliament. Saturday’s London attack came 12 days after a suicide bomber killed 22 people outside a concert in Manchester, England.

    Also

    Many tech companies say they already work hard to police their platforms for terrorist content, and cooperate with judicial and police investigations. When it comes to propaganda, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft Corp. all agreed last year to create a common database of identifiers of terrorist images to speed up flagging and removal of propaganda videos.

    Twitter said it suspended 376,890 accounts in the second half of 2017 for promoting terrorism. Twitter said it identified almost two-thirds of those itself, with less than 2% of accounts shut down because of government requests.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/british-leaders-call-on-silicon-valley-to-do-more-to-combat-extremists-1496598615?mg=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People
  • Why “I’m Just Not Technical” is No Longer an Excuse in the C-Suite

    Acknowledge that investing in a partnership with experts, needs to be discussed. When it comes to securing your organization, it’s not about whether your internal team has the aptitude, it’s about the time. It’s not uncommon to hear that IT departments have roles that “wear many hats.” So you need to consider whether they have the time and resources to dedicate to maturing the cybersecurity posture of your organization? Be warned though: you get what you pay for from a partnership with a cybersecurity firm. This should not be the same team that is selling you hardware and/or assisting in the configuration and implementation process.

    http://www.cio.com/article/3199906/security/why-im-just-not-technical-is-no-longer-an-excuse-in-the-c-suite.html

  • Is Your Boss Getting Ready To Quit? How To Tell And What To Do

    Next, look at the landscape and think about what your options are, says leadership expert Susan Fowler, author of Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work . . . and What Does: The New Science of Leading, Energizing, and Engaging. There is the potential for great change ahead. Think about what you want to happen next, she says. Are you ready to move up? Are you still motivated to be with the company? Is there an opportunity for you ahead? These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself, she says. Once you have a vision for your next goal, you can begin to formulate a plan.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40426129/is-your-boss-getting-ready-to-quit-how-to-tell-and-what-to-do

Photo: Johannes Plenio