News You Can Use: 1/15/2020


Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

  • Even 4-year-olds dislike freeloaders

    Children from ages 4 to 10 were presented with scenarios in which they had to give up chocolates in order to get a cake or plant seeds in a garden to get tomatoes. All children expressed dislike for those who did not contribute and were even willing to give up stickers to punish them. The youngest subjects exhibited a stronger aversion to free-riders than 9- and 10-year-olds.

    However, when a freeloader has a good excuse for not contributing — e.g. her pet ate her chocolate — the aversion was greatly reduced, the researchers report.

    “Even young children expect cooperation and are willing to work to sustain it even at cost to themselves,” Dunham said. “I find this very positive. The seeds that sustain cooperation seem to emerge early on, and while as a society we need to sustain and nurture these values, we may not need to instill them in the first place.”

    https://news.yale.edu/2018/07/23/even-4-year-olds-dislike-freeloaders

  • Hiring hack: How to better evaluate your candidates | Simon Sinek
  • This Japanese Company Charges Its Staff $100 an Hour to Use Conference Rooms

    At the heart of the program is a compensation system that meticulously tracks how much every person and team contributes to earnings. Workers receive a base salary, which they augment by earning Will for completing tasks. Quarterly bonuses can rival a year’s pay for top performers, says Naito. “It’s enough to buy a foreign-brand car every year,” he says. “We call it the ‘Will Dream.’ ”

    Earning virtual currency begins at the team level, where bosses allocate a portion of the group’s Will budget to each task they must complete. Team members then use an app to bid in an auction for those jobs. Assignments that don’t attract any bids often turn out to be unnecessary, Naito says. And managers who’ve misused or abused the system have been abandoned by their workers, who are free to move to other teams.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-20/charging-employees-for-conference-rooms-helps-disco-boost-profit

  • How to write the best résumé for 2020

    Whether it’s accounts won, servers maintained, leads gained, or warehouses managed, all of our activities in our professional careers can be quantified. By sharing your specific high scores rather than vague duties, you give your future boss the ability to understand how far you can run, how high you can jump, in your career.

    When you start to think in high scores, you’ll banish boring phrases such as “seasoned executive,” “responsible for,” and “managed.” And you’ll recast your experiences to include the most exciting and impressive outcomes you’ve achieved in each area of your job. Share your high scores attained, achievements unlocked, and badges won to attract your future boss’s attention in 2020.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90446884/how-to-write-the-best-resume-for-2020

News You Can Use: 1/10/2018

  • The Worst Job in Technology: Staring at Human Depravity to Keep It Off Facebook

    The well-being of content moderators “is something we talk about with our team members and with our outsourcing vendors to make clear it’s not just contractual. It’s really important to us,” says Mark Handel, a user research manager at Facebook who helps oversee content moderation. “Is it enough? I don’t know. But it’s only getting more important and more critical.”

    Former content moderators recall having to view images of war victims who had been gutted or drowned and child soldiers engaged in killings. One former Facebook moderator reviewed a video of a cat being thrown into a microwave.

    Workers sometimes quit on their first or second day. Some leave for lunch and never come back. Others remain unsettled by the work—and what they saw as a lack of emotional support or appreciation—long after they quit.

    Shaka Tafari worked as a contractor at messaging app Whisper in 2016 soon after it began testing a messaging feature designed for high-school students. Mr. Tafari, 30, was alarmed by the number of rape references in text messages he reviewed, he says, and sometimes saw graphic photos of bestiality or people killing dogs.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-worst-job-in-technology-staring-at-human-depravity-to-keep-it-off-facebook-1514398398

  • How To Deliver Your Presentation In Half The Time You’d Allotted

    Layering. This approach simply means designing your presentation from the inside out. The inner “layer” is your key message–the most important takeaway you want your audience to leave with. The next layer consists of your other major points that directly support that key message. Then you have the details that support those key points–which together make up a third layer. Think of it kind of like dressing for cold weather: If you get too warm, you can always take off a layer. Similarly, if you get short on time, you can take off one of the outer layers. What’s really important is that you communicate your inner layers effectively.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40513468/how-to-deliver-your-presentation-in-half-the-time-youd-allotted

  • Oneplus and Tencent: Exploring China’s technological revolution

    This is a nice follow up to SourceCast Episode 101
  • Four Reasons Resumes No Longer Work

    Technology has changed the marketplace, and HR is the only vertical that hasn’t seen a rapid transition, says Carisa Miklusak, CEO of the algorithmic hiring platform tilr. “Right now tech isn’t giving people a fair opportunity to compete,” she says. “Before you blame the resume, you need to understand that they’re a byproduct of old employer values. Titles and years of experience are no longer a person’s number-one currency.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40512551/4-reasons-why-resumes-no-longer-work

  • Mark Zuckerberg Resolves to ‘Fix’ Facebook in 2018

    Last fall, Facebook lurched into crisis mode after disclosing that Russia-backed entities used its platform and advertising tools to spread divisive messages to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. The admission sparked a rare set of congressional hearings where lawmakers grilled officials from Facebook, Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

    More recently, several former Facebook executives and employees have expressed remorse for helping build a platform that they said was designed to foster dependence on Facebook. Those comments eventually prompted Facebook to acknowledge that certain types of social-media use could be harmful to users’ mental health.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-zuckerberg-resolves-to-fix-facebook-in-2018-1515104645
    This is a nice sentiment, but how? Details would be nice. Zuck should have a plan before he made a comment about it.

Photo: Jeremy Bishop

News You Can Use: 10/21/2015

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  • A FORMER GOOGLE RECRUITER REVEALS THE BIGGEST RESUME MISTAKES
    I will point out this one since I get into a disagreement almost every time I mention removing it…

    OBJECTIVE STATEMENTS ARE OBJECTIVELY BAD
    “These are a bit old school and are generally pretty generic,” Bacon explains. He believes they’re also typically too focused on what the candidate wants for themselves instead of what they can do for the company to which they’re applying.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3052371/hit-the-ground-running/a-former-google-recruiter-reveals-the-biggest-resume-mistakes

  • Should Vendor Executives Be Held Personally Liable For Failed Implementations?

    What if company executives had to personally guarantee that they had performed a “capability audit” before entering into a contract, verifying that they could indeed deliver a working solution within the appointed time and for the agreed upon cost. This capability audit would then become the basis to hold not only the company, but the executives themselves, personally liable if said implementation did not occur has promised.

    https://procureinsights.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/should-vendor-executives-be-held-personally-liable-for-failed-implementations-by-jon-hansen/

  • China to consume nearly 30% of the world’s flash, 21% of DRAM

    “Increasing shipments of Chinese-branded PCs and smartphones in recent years have contributed to the overall DRAM demand,” said Avril Wu, assistant vice president at DRAMeXchange. “China’s top PC maker Lenovo and the global PC market leader HP are neck on neck on shipments, and this is an indication that the Chinese brand vendors’ purchasing power in the DRAM market is getting stronger every year.”

    http://www.cio.com/article/2994112/data-management/china-to-consume-nearly-30-of-the-worlds-flash-21-of-dram.html#tk.rss_all

  • Why You Might Want to Hold Your Next Business Meeting on a Boat
    Somebody needs to share this with the big boss… officially a trend setter.

    “It’s a perfect place to close a deal,” says Adrian Gradinaru, co-founder of Sailo, an online peer-to-peer boat rental marketplace where you can compare and book a boat for a day or even part of a day. “You tend to be a bit more open to things when you are really happy, so people tend to be happy on the water, looking at New York. You tend to be a little bit more cooperative when you are on the water.”

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/video/249693

  • 3 Tips to Develop a Balanced Supplier-Vendor Relationship

    While there is always room for caution, never approach a new partnership as if you are going to be cheated. Instead, remember that a bit of humility and humanity can go a long way. Even when negotiations do not go as well as expected, remaining positive can preserve partnerships for long-term success.

    http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251578

  • Office “treehouses”…
    I am not big on the “resting places in the office” fad, be it a cocoon or a tree house or even a heavily pillowed area.  I don’t care how “cool” the work place environment is, if an owner or executive walks by and sees someone taking a powder… game over.  (But they are kinda cool)
    http://www.fastcoexist.com/3051747/open-office-getting-you-down-maybe-you-need-an-office-treehouse

Productivity Bulletin: 3/13/2015

Photo: Sean MacEntee, Flickr

Photo: Sean MacEntee, Flickr