Category: Industry News

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News You Can Use: 3/6/2019

  • When the Bully Is the Boss

    By nature, any study of group dynamics in a real-world setting is plagued by design limitations, including the lack of a control group and the hidden personal grievances of the employees. But the vast majority of findings point to the same conclusion: Bullying bosses tend to undermine their own teams. Morale and company loyalty plunge, tardiness increases and sick days are more frequent.

    “Productivity may rise in the short term,” Dr. Greenbaum said. “But over time the performance of the staff or team deteriorates, and people quit.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/health/boss-bullies-workplace-management.html
    How to Deal With Jerks at Work

    Remember that even the jerkiest colleagues rarely want to be jerks. Sometimes finding a way to work around their apparently clueless behavior can be easier than trying to get them to change their ways.

    https://lifehacker.com/how-to-deal-with-jerks-at-work-1832819304

  • China banned millions of people with poor social credit from transportation in 2018

    The government rolled out the travel ban on people with low social credit scores last May. According to a report from China’s National Public Credit Information Center from last week, people have been blocked 17.5 million times from purchasing airplane tickets, and 5.5 million times from buying high-speed train tickets. These people had become “discredited” for unspecified behavioral crimes. That’s up from only 6.15 million citizens being blocked from taking flights as of 2017, according to China’s supreme court.

    As part of the system, the Chinese government also employs a public blacklist of those who have been found guilty of crimes in court and punishes them partly by limiting their ability to buy plane and train tickets.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/1/18246297/china-transportation-people-banned-poor-social-credit-planes-trains-2018

  • Why the school-college-job pathway is about to go extinct
  • To Stop Worrying So Much, Deflate Your Own Ego

    Look for any subtle entitlement or self-absorption hidden in your ruminations. Do you expect things to always go your way? Do you tend to believe people are scrutinizing you when, in reality, they’re probably thinking about themselves? Do you spend time comparing yourself to business superstars or celebrities?

    In other words, if you’re being too hard on yourself, maybe it’s because you think way too highly of yourself. You don’t even have to think you’re wonderful to fall into this trap, you just have to think you’re important. Because you think everything you do has grave consequences, and that everyone is paying attention to you, you mentally magnify even your smallest mistakes into national emergencies.

    https://lifehacker.com/to-stop-worrying-so-much-deflate-your-own-ego-1832941435

  • These Microsoft Employees Think They’re Brilliant Heroes, But They’re Really Quite Foolish. Here’s the Brutal Truth They Simply Refuse to See

    But, those of who have actually served in the military, or have seen war firsthand and actually had to make hard decisions, know that the ability to “cause harm and violence,” is far more complicated than a Tweet would suggest.

    Fortunately, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella quickly rejected the MSW4G petition.

    “We made a principled decision that we’re not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy,” Nadella told CNN Business. “We were very transparent about that decision and we’ll continue to have that dialogue.”

    In other words, if the MSW4G crew don’t like working on HoloLens and benefiting the IVAS contract, they can find other projects within the company. Or, they can go work for another company.

    https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/these-microsoft-employees-think-theyre-brilliant-heres-brutal-truth-they-simply-refuse-to-see.html

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 2/27/2019

  • A digital gangster destroying democracy: the damning verdict on Facebook (UK)

    The scale of the report – it drew from 170 written submissions and evidence from 73 witnesses who were asked more than 4,350 questions – is without precedent. And it’s what contributes to making its conclusions so damning: that the government must now act. That Facebook must be regulated. That Britain’s electoral laws must be re-written from the bottom up; the report is unequivocal, they are not “fit for purpose”. And that the government must now open an independent investigation into foreign interference in all British elections since 2014.

    Cambridge Analytica was already on the committee’s radar when the scandal broke in March last year. But, over the ensuing weeks and months, it interviewed an extraordinary cast of characters to drill down into the underlying machinery of the new political power structures. And the result – a doorstopper of a report covering multiple interconnected issues – damns Facebook not just once or twice but time and time again.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/18/a-digital-gangster-destroying-democracy-the-damning-verdict-on-facebook

    I am no fan of Facebook, but this feels like scape-goating

  • It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town

    Skilled tech workers now flock to New York from everywhere. But the homegrown talent engine that city officials sought to jump-start a decade ago is also revving up. The new Cornell Tech graduate school campus on Roosevelt Island, a product of the city’s development plan, has 300 students, with expansion plans for a student population of 2,000 over the next two decades. And new courses, buildings and research institutes are underway at Columbia, New York University and the City University of New York.

    The Cornell Tech proposal fully embraced the Bloomberg administration’s priority of blending science and industry. Graduate students’ projects at local companies are a mainstay of the curriculum.

    “In New York, people are driven by real-world problems that can be solved with technology,” said Daniel Huttenlocher, the dean of Cornell Tech, who has also worked in Silicon Valley and is an Amazon board member. “In Silicon Valley, the heritage is much more to build cool technology and then figure out how it can make money.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/technology/nyc-tech-startups.html

  • How health care quietly powers the U.S. economy
  • ‘You need a thick skin’: Ad agencies grapple with workplace bullying

    A Society of Human Resource Management study found that 51 percent of organizations report incidents of bullying last year, with 62 percent reporting gossip or lies and 50 percent reporting threats. Another survey, sponsored by the Workplace Bullying Institute in 2010, found that 35 percent of U.S. workers have experienced or witnessed bullying. The survey also found that men bully other men more, while women bully other women.

    Workplace bullying and verbal harassment, although related, are a little bit different. Bullying is not illegal — mostly because no laws really exist to protect people from being bullied. Unlike race-based, gender-based or other forms of discrimination, those who are bullied aren’t considered a protected class unless that bullying spills over into harassment that is targeted because of race, gender, sexual orientation or another reason.

    https://digiday.com/marketing/need-thick-skin-ad-agencies-grapple-workplace-bullying/

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 2/20/2019

  • We Reject the Side Hustle

    Maybe this was all true, but what was also true is that working outside of work quietly became a major drain on my energy levels, negatively impacting my mental, emotional, and even physical health. I also started spending money more stupidly (some might say compulsively) as a response to rising stress, which had the perverse effect of making me feel that I needed that extra cash flow even more. Rather than acting as a financial security blanket, my outside income became a specter that I kept in my life mostly out of fear. When I finally bit the bullet and focused on having just one job at a time, unsurprisingly, all that extra stress and anxiety dissipated almost immediately. I slept more, I took fewer overpriced cabs, I was better at my actual day job.

    https://lifehacker.com/we-reject-the-side-hustle-1832566443

  • We need to stop striving for work-life balance. Here’s why

    Balance is a limiting concept, and if we set the bar too low, we won’t demand enough of ourselves, our leaders, and our companies. Right now, too many companies are still operating in an either/or mentality (though thankfully, it’s starting to change). That’s why there are still workplaces that penalizes parents who choose to take parental leave or assume that employees who don’t put in as much “face time” aren’t committed to their jobs.

    I always like the mantra that “you can have it all, just not all at once.” There are seasons of life where you’ll have less time for yourself and will devote more to school or family or work. This is part of the normal ebb and flow of life. When you think big and expect that you can have a positive experience with all that work and life have to offer, you’ll be more likely to make that happen.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90308095/why-you-should-stop-trying-to-achieve-work-life-balance

  • Alexa, are you exploiting me?
  • Taxed out: Here’s why your refund may be smaller or nonexistent in 2019

    So far, the average refund paid to taxpayers is down 8.7% to $1,949, from an average of $2,135 this time in filing season last year, according to the IRS.

    Some taxpayers actually do owe more under the new tax law, which capped deductions for state and local taxes, especially affecting homeowners in high-property tax coastal states, and eliminated some deductions, such as those for unreimbursed expenses incurred as an employee.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90308731/tax-refunds-2019-heres-why-yours-may-be-smaller-or-why-you-may-owe

Photo by Alekzan Powell on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 1/30/2019

  • How Companies Secretly Boost Their Glassdoor Ratings

    In the Journal’s analysis, five-star ratings collectively made up 45% of reviews in the months where the number of reviews jumped, compared with 25% in the six months before and after. While it isn’t possible to determine from the data alone what caused each spike, a statistical test shows the likelihood that so many would skew positive by chance is highly improbable.

    Well-known names with large spikes included messaging-app developer Slack Technologies Inc., professional-networking site LinkedIn, health insurer Anthem Inc., household-products maker Clorox Co. and Jack Daniel’s maker Brown-Forman Corp.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-manipulate-glassdoor-by-inflating-rankings-and-pressuring-employees-11548171977

  • It’s Now Clear None of the Supposed Benefits of Killing Net Neutrality Are Real

    In the months leading up to the FCC assault on net neutrality, big telecom and FCC boss Ajit Pai told anybody who’d listen that killing net neutrality would boost broadband industry investment, spark job creation, and drive broadband into underserved areas at an unprecedented rate.

    As it turns out, none of those promises were actually true.

    Despite the FCC voting to kill the popular consumer protections late last year, Comcast’s latest earnings report indicates that the cable giant’s capital expenditures (CAPEX) for 2018 actually decreased 3 percent. The revelation comes on the heels by similar statements by Verizon and Charter Spectrum that they’d also be seeing lower network investment numbers in 2018.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gyab5m/its-now-clear-none-of-the-supposed-benefits-of-killing-net-neutrality-are-real

  • The experience economy is coming
  • Everyone hates open offices. Here’s why they still exist

    For as long as these floor plans have been in vogue, studies have debunked their benefits. Researchers have shown that people in open offices take nearly two-thirds more sick leave and report greater unhappiness, more stress, and less productivity than those with more privacy. A 2018 study by Harvard Business School found that open offices reduce face-to-face interaction by about 70% and increase email and messaging by roughly 50%, shattering the notion that they make workers collaborative. (They’re even subtly sexist.) And yet, the open plan persists–too symbolically powerful (and cheap) for many companies to abandon.

    This is about saving money, not about work culture:

    Of course, one of the main reasons that business leaders default to open plans is simply that they’re inexpensive. According to commercial real estate association CoreNet Global, the average space allotted to individual employees globally fell from 225 square feet in 2010 to 176 square feet in 2013, and is projected to keep decreasing. This adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars–or more–in savings per year at the country’s largest companies, according to calculations from Erik Rood, an analyst in Google’s human resources department who examines corporate financials on his personal blog, Data Interview Qs.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90285582/everyone-hates-open-plan-offices-heres-why-they-still-exist

  • How to Declutter and Organize Your Personal Tech in a Few Simple Steps

    Pick somewhere in your home where your various wires will live, like a closet, cabinet or drawer. From there, categorize the wires and give them compartments. I separate my different types of wires — earbuds, phone chargers, miscellaneous USB cables and computer chargers — into Ziploc bags and label them with a label maker. All the bags live in a drawer in my TV stand.

    There are different approaches to organizing your power cables. Families with children could give each member a compartment. For example, put your son Joe’s iPhone charger, laptop charger and earbuds into one Ziploc bag and label it “Joe’s tech.”

    This step is a must. “If you don’t have a dedicated place for your items, then you’re wasting your time finding them,” said Keith Bartolomei, a professional organizer for Zen Habitat.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/technology/personaltech/declutter-organize-personal-tech-few-simple-steps.html

Photo by Artem Bali on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 1/23/2019

  • We Are Living in the Begging Economy

    In this new paradigm, workers still have to work, but they don’t get paid at all. Instead, they beg for money on social media. It’s like replying to your viral Tweet with a link to your Soundcloud, only if you don’t go viral you have to ration your insulin (one third of GoFundMe’s campaigns are already for medical costs). This has been the case for many government employees for the entire duration of the shutdown, including the TSA employees who are supposedly there to prevent the next 9/11. It’ll be the case for the thousands more starting soon, so the Interior Department can continue to sell oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3m59p/we-are-living-in-the-begging-economy

  • Microsoft pledges $500M to create affordable housing around Seattle

    The money will be used in three ways: $225 million will be loaned at below-market interest rates to developers building units for households making between $62,000 to $124,000 a year; $250 million will be used for market-rate loans to support the construction of affordable housing for people making up to 60 percent of the local median income, or about $48,150 for a two-person household; and the rest of the money, $25 million, will be donated to services for low-income and homeless people. Loans will be made over a period of three years and any profit will be put back in the fund.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/16/microsoft-pledges-500m-to-create-affordable-housing-around-seattle/

  • How tax brackets actually work
  • Sorry I Forgot Your Birthday, I’ve Stopped Checking Facebook

    Michael Haber had been at his cousin Jasmine’s house for nearly two hours—chatting, playing with her children—when she brought out a fluffy chocolate sponge cake with a whipped-cream filling. “What is this for?” asked Mr. Haber, 26, a web designer in Beirut, Lebanon.

    Jasmine explained that it was for her. It was her birthday.

    “It was pretty awkward. But how would I have known?” said Mr. Haber. “I quit Facebook . ”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-quit-facebook-now-you-dont-know-anyones-birthday-11547652709

  • Receipts are secretly really bad–why are we still using them?

    “We started looking into this idea of receipts and whether we should move people towards electronic receipts,” says Phil Ting, a California assembly member from San Francisco. His staff calculated the amount of paper and water wasted to create receipts that often end up in the trash seconds later, and then learned about the health issues that receipts also pose. “As we did more research, we found out the receipts aren’t just printed with regular inkjet ink, which is recyclable. It’s [coated] with BPA which is not recyclable, and actually toxic.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90292886/receipts-are-secretly-really-bad-why-are-we-still-using-them

Photo by Kat Yukawa on Unsplash