Category: Industry News

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News You Can Use: 10/4/2017

  • Tech Firms Find Washington Isn’t So Hands-Off Anymore

    It was already a tough year for Silicon Valley in Washington, where lawmakers have been pushing proposals that could roil the industry, including measures on net neutrality, privacy and liability. The industry’s standing suffered again in the past week when lawmakers laid plans for public hearings to examine whether Facebook and other social-media platforms were used by foreign governments during the 2016 campaign to manipulate the U.S. election. Lawmakers also signaled they are considering new legislation to address online spending by foreign adversaries—a potential blow to the firms’ cherished freedom from close government oversight.

    “This is a Wild, Wild West,” said Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, about the possible need for more controls on internet companies.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-firms-find-washington-isnt-so-hands-off-anymore-1505473201

  • How startups can avoid Bodega’s PR disaster

    The first article published about Bodega read almost like a Silicon Valley parody. It highlights a few things people feel is wrong with the tech community right now; Bodega comes across as a tone-deaf company that got the thumbs-up from some of the Valley’s most respected investors for a seemingly absurd idea with a culturally insensitive name. It represents a confounding and out-of-touch approach to disruption; if you missed the headline, it’s “Two Ex-Googlers Want To Make Bodegas And Mom-And-Pop Corner Stores Obsolete.”

    Just a few hours after launching, Bodega received a lashing on Twitter, and the headlines came to resemble this one from The Washington Post: “Bodega, an ‘unmanned pantry box,’ has already become America’s most hated start-up.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/how-startups-can-avoid-bodegas-pr-disaster/?ncid=rss

  • How to solve problems like a designer
  • Invited To Lunch With Your Boss’s Boss? Here’s Exactly What To Do

    Another smart move for lunch with a senior leader is to give an example of how the company is helping you grow. Don’t just share details about your job duties or favorite projects you’ve worked on, though. Discuss a highlight from a company “extra” that you felt was valuable, like a training program, an offsite event, etc.

    This can help you demonstrate that you appreciate what the company is doing to invest in your career, without taking a deep dive into the specifics of your role. Remember, your goal is to build a rapport, not deliver a scorecard. He probably doesn’t want that kind of detail, but he does want to know you. And above all, he wants to know that you want to know him. If you don’t give the impression that that’s the case, you’ll miss your chance at developing a potentially valuable mentor inside your organization.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40470150/invited-to-lunch-with-your-bosss-boss-heres-exactly-what-to-do

  • Is This Hotel an Airbnb Killer?

    A study last year from Morgan Stanley projected that 25% of leisure travelers and 23% of business travelers will have used Airbnb by the end of 2017, up from 12% for both groups of travelers in 2015. The report found Airbnb was a common substitute for hotels: 49% of Airbnb users said they had substituted Airbnb for a traditional hotel stay in the past year.

    With Public, Mr. Schrager said he aims to better compete with Airbnb on nightly rates and offer superior amenities such as bars and other places to socialize. While cutting staff costs for hotel operations, Mr. Schrager’s new concept fuses a sprawling bar and restaurant operation onto the property, deriving revenue and profits from amenities that are meant to attract a much larger crowd than just the hotel’s guests.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-this-hotel-an-airbnb-killer-1505473207

Photo: HB Mertz

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News You Can Use: 9/27/2017

  • Some Companies Are Reinventing Job Interviews In Weird (And Possibly Illegal) Ways

    Two recent examples come from the New York Times’s Corner Office series with columnist Adam Bryant. In their conversation, Don Mal, CEO of software firm Vena Solutions, tells Bryant that he asks candidates if they’d ever leave their families at Disneyland “to do something that was really important for the company.” This, Mal says, helps him understand applicants’ work ethic. Barstool CEO Erika Nardini shares that she texts candidates over the weekend to see how fast they respond. (Nardini tells Bryant that the acceptable response time, in her view, is within three hours.)

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40460395/some-companies-are-reinventing-job-interviews-in-weird-and-possibly-illegal-ways

  • Former Google Employees Allege Bias Against Women

    One plaintiffs, Kelly Ellis, alleged that she was assigned to a lower level than her similarly qualified male counterparts when she was hired as a software engineer on the Google Photos team in 2010. In the complaint, Ms. Ellis claimed she was brought in at a level typically given to new college graduates, despite her four years of engineering experience. She asked for a promotion after learning that she had equal or better qualifications than male engineers in a higher level, and after receiving “excellent performance reviews.” She said she was denied. According to the complaint, Ms. Ellis resigned from Google around July 2014 due to “the sexist culture.”

    The claims from the other two plaintiffs, Holly Pease, who managed software engineers, and Kelli Wisuri, a salesperson, follow a similar pattern where they felt their initial positions did not match their qualifications, then found it hard to catch up to male employees and move up the ladder.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-google-employees-file-lawsuit-alleging-gender-discrimination-1505411804

  • Will AI Result in Mass Unemployment or a New Middle Class?
  • The Second-Class Office Workers

    The contractor model offers companies lower costs, more flexibility and fewer management headaches. Workers get far less from the arrangement.

    Outside workers usually aren’t surprised when they get no paid holidays, sick days, employee-sponsored health insurance, 401(k) plan or other perks routinely offered to traditional employees at the same companies.

    What wounds more deeply are things taken for granted or barely considered at all by regular employees, outside workers often say. The work lives of contractors frequently feel like a series of tiny slights that reinforce their second-class status and bruise their self-worth. Even when contracting jobs are easy to get, they can vanish instantly, and turning contract assignments into a real career remains out of reach.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-contractors-life-overlooked-ground-down-and-stuck-1505400087

  • Growing Up with Alexa (thanks JD!)

    It’s a little worrisome. Leaving aside the privacy implications of kids telling an Internet-connected computer all kinds of things, we don’t know much about how this kind of interaction with artificial intelligence and automation will affect how children behave and what they think about computers. Will they become lazy because it’s so easy to ask Alexa and its peers to do and buy things? Or jerks because many of these interactions compel you to order the technology around? (Or both?)

    Some of that may happen. It seems more likely, though, that as with many technologies before this, the utility of digital assistants will outweigh their drawbacks. Already they’re making an incredible amount of data and computer-aided capabilities available directly to children—even those not yet in kindergarten—for learning, playing, and communicating. With Alexa, kids can get answers to all kinds of questions (both serious and silly), hear stories, play games, control apps, and turn on the lights even if they can’t yet reach a wall switch. And this is just the beginning of the kiddie AI revolution.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608430/growing-up-with-alexa/
    From personal experience, once the novelty has warn off, kids don’t care about them. The article’s point about kids being frustrated because the digital assistant can’t hear them is spot on. Other than to turn on a light every once in a while, my son completely ignores Echos we have in the house.

Photo: Bench Accounting

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News You Can Use: 9/20/2017

  • The Surprising Upsides To Getting Angry At Work

    So it’s no surprise that in measured doses, anger can prove a useful performance catalyst. Of course, this requires self-control and emotional intelligence. If you can tap into the driving and energizing force that anger provides, you may be able to produce better outcomes than you would trying to suppress those feelings. But the key is to feel a moderate amount of anger (or what psychologists call “arousal”–the mental stress or pressure that motivates people to act) that leads to higher performance than just being pumped with adrenaline on the one hand or being too bored, calm, and cool-headed on the other.

    Likewise, anger can help you become more aware of your values and motives, highlighting your inner compass and system of beliefs so you can realize how much you actually want something–and why. Conversely, the Zen-like ability to eliminate both anger and its sources will also extinguish any passion or desire to achieve. No wonder, then, that exceptional achievers–entrepreneurs, athletes, artists, and even scientists–are often motivated by an intense sense of dissatisfaction, frustration at their past performance, and even anger. They’re rebels with a cause, always work hard to create change.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40464734/the-surprising-upsides-to-getting-angry-at-work

    Yeah… measured doses

  • Blockchain In The Supply Chain: Too Much Hype

    In summary, blockchain is an interesting technology. But it may be the least mature of all the technologies described in this report. On the other hand, because blockchain is a back-end technology, most companies don’t need to proactively invest in exploring its value.  We will know the technology is mature when people don’t even use the term “blockchain,” much as people don’t use the term TCP/IP when talking about their use of the Internet. If the technology does mature, the providers of Public Cloud supply chain solutions will be adversely impacted.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2017/09/01/blockchain-in-the-supply-chain-too-much-hype/#53715b4e198c

  • What moral decisions should driverless cars make?
  • Japan Is No Place for Single Mothers

    Women in Japan tend to struggle economically following divorce. That’s because traditionally in Japan, men work, and women stay home to take care of the children. About 62 percent of women drop out of the workforce when they have their first child, according to Kingston. When couples divorce, women have often been out of the workforce for a long time. Many institutions incentivize this arrangement: Japanese corporations often give husbands whose wives stay home a bonus, and the Japanese tax system punishes couples with two incomes. When women do try to return to the workforce, they usually can only find low-paying part-time work, if they find a job at all. And women who do work earn 30 percentless than men who do.  “In both the U.S. and Japan, you have a situation where women are forced to work, but if the economy doesn’t allow women to feed a family with 40 hours a week, you have a very difficult economic situation,” Ezawa said.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/09/japan-is-no-place-for-single-mothers/538743/?utm_source=feed

  • Stop Calling It ‘Coaching’ When All You’re Really Doing Is Scolding Your Team

    Unfortunately, when someone is “coached” they are typically being criticized. The overuse of criticism leads to a host of problems from escape and avoidance to the elimination of related, desirable behaviors. But what’s most damaging is get a dressing down for something that bothers someone but really isn’t that big a deal. If I get an earful (does it still count as an earful if the feedback is given via email?) about the content of my emails I am likely to say “okay fine, I won’t send any emails at all.” If I get blasted for using less-than-professional language on an internal message board, I am more likely to stop reading and posting altogether than I am to watch my word choice in the future.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299804

Photo: Andre Hunter

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News You Can Use: 9/13/2017

  • Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

    It’s true that networking can help you accomplish great things. But this obscures the opposite truth: Accomplishing great things helps you develop a network.

    Look at big breaks in entertainment. For George Lucas, a turning point was when Francis Ford Coppola hired him as a production assistant and went on to mentor him. Mr. Lucas didn’t schmooze his way into the relationship, though. As a film student he’d won first prize at a national festival and a scholarship to be an apprentice on a Warner Bros. film — he picked one of Mr. Coppola’s.

    Also

    And don’t feel pressure to go to networking events. No one really mixes at mixers. Although we plan to meet new people, we usually end up hanging out with old friends. The best networking happens when people gather for a purpose other than networking, to learn from one another or help one another.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/sunday/networking-connections-business.html?mcubz=0&_r=0

  • To Get Along With Difficult People, Try This Research-Backed Approach

    When coworkers consider how someone is perceived, or how they perceive themselves, they can highlight certain traits to a group that others may or may not be aware of, potentially finding new ways for co-workers to connect and work together.

    Crucially, says Solomon, considering perceptions can give you a special edge, especially in negotiations, possibly helping you be more persuasive. “The person who has greater insight into an opponent’s identity can, of course, leverage that information in various ways to win.”

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299595

  • The Surprisingly Practical Career Advice From a DJ That You Need to Hear
  • How AI is revolutionizing recruiting and hiring

    “If we’re really trying to find the best candidate, though, then you’re excluding people with those searches. Doing it this way means you’re actually looking only for the best of the easiest candidates to find. And that’s hard to admit, right? But that’s what is happening here,” he says.

    But using AI and machine learning can help unearth candidates missed by traditional screening, sourcing and recruiting methods. Once these “dark matter” candidates are unearthed, recruiters can focus on the human element of the recruiting process and dig deeper; even if a candidate’s résumé doesn’t appear to be relevant, perhaps they have incredible soft skills, leadership experience or other valuable skills your organization needs, Cathey says.

    https://www.cio.com/article/3219857/hiring-and-staffing/how-ai-is-revolutionizing-recruiting-and-hiring.html

  • Hurricane Harvey Demonstrates Progress In Enterprise Risk Management

    Yet even from a logistics point of view, it would appear that Houston’s largest petroleum and chemical companies (America’s largest) had their workarounds well figured, as unaffected ports are now buzzing with re-routed shipments, and with little to no fanfare. Sure, we consumers are bound to experience some fallout (flooded refineries have already impacted gasoline futures), but most shippers and carriers hedge against events like Harvey, so they won’t be the losers.

    Shippers and carriers also successfully safeguard themselves from potential litigation and surcharges resulting from natural disasters. How do they do it? They apply the force majeure protocols of their supply agreements. Simply put, if it’s a contractual claim stemming from missed deadlines, production goals, deliveries, etc., and it’s due to a natural disaster (nowadays, even terrorism), they’ve got it covered.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmartyn/2017/09/01/hurricane-harvey-exposing-progress-in-enterprise-risk-management/#4aaa2d271949

Photo: Štěpán Vraný

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News You Can Use: 9/6/2017

  • Tech Censorship of White Supremacists Draws Criticism From Within Industry

    The EFF said “states and malicious actors” often turn to denial-of-service attacks when they try to silence voices. Cloudflare’s decision to deny security against these kinds of attacks to Daily Stormer signals that they can pick and choose clients, making it more difficult for them to fend off external pressure in the future, the EFF said.

    The censorship of Daily Stormer was decided by behind-the-scenes actors that are little known to the general public, rather than players like Facebook and Twitter, the ostensible windows of the internet that are in direct contact with users, making the moves more unsettling, said Mr. Prince.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-censorship-of-white-supremacists-draws-criticism-from-within-industry-1503144003

  • Would You Be Thankful or Horrified If the Emails You Got While on Vacation Disappeared?

    “While you’re on vacation, people who email you get a message, letting them know when you’ll be back. And then — the most important part — the tool deletes the email,” she wrote.” If the email is important, the sender can always send it again. If it’s not, then it’s not waiting for you when you get back, or even worse, tempting you to read it while you’re away.”

    While most companies likely won’t implement an office-wide system like Huffington’s, it’s a helpful reminder that if you don’t respond to that email right away, the world won’t come to an end. And as a business owner, if you want your employees to stay healthy and productive, it’s on you to encourage them to actually take that time away for themselves — and leave their inboxes behind.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299268

  • Bryan Cranston: One Thing All Young People Should Do While They’re Still Young
  • To Succeed You Must Become a Knowledge Junkie

    Selling is hard if you haven’t made a commitment to it, but the truth is anything is hard without a commitment. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, if you aren’t committed to it, you will suffer. Being committed means you write down your goals and train daily to be better at whatever you do.

    Anytime I am having trouble getting what I want in my life, in my career, in money or in my relationships, I ask “What is it that I do not know?” It doesn’t matter if it’s more quality time with my kids, more income, more freedom, security, confidence or whatever it is I want, the first thing I look for is to become clear about my desire and then look for what I don’t know.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299105

  • How to Run a Remote Startup Across Time Zones

    The water cooler effect has both positives (shared theories about what happened on Mr. Robot last night) and negatives (creates fertile ground for office gossip). But, overall it’s a good thing, and the remote team needs a chance to bond, too.

    Thankfully, there are some excellent ways to create a virtual space where everyone is included but no one needs to wear pants. The two most popular options are HipChat and Slack, with Slack edging ahead of the competition. The virtual communication tools connect team members and offer messaging sub channels, direct messages, customized calendars, task assignments and so on. You can start a channel dedicated to awesome high-five gifs or unexpected animal friendship videos. This can be instrumental in building a company culture for people to become invested in.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/291919

Photo: Ryan Wong