Category: Industry News

Posted on

News You Can Use: 12/4/2019


Photo by Chris Ainsworth on Unsplash

  • People hate open offices so much that they create ‘fourth walls’ for privacy

    Remember that time companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on open-office layouts, only to discover that face-to-face interactions decrease by 70% in open-office plans? More fallout today: Ethan Bernstein, the Harvard researcher behind that finding, has taken to the Harvard Business Review to analyze why.

    He says that workers in open spaces quickly develop psychological fourth walls, the conceptual boundaries that protect their public solitude. For example, coworkers quickly learn that wearing headphones or appearing to work intently will stop interruptions. “Especially in open spaces, fourth-wall norms spread quickly,” writes Bernstein.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90430512/people-hate-open-offices-so-much-that-they-create-fourth-walls-for-privacy

  • How To Make 64 Pieces Of Content In A Day

    https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/how-to-create-64-pieces-of-content-in-a-day/

  • We Can Finally End The Myth Of The Lazy Millennial

    Hidden in this census data, BuzzFeed News found that 1.4 million American millennials (born 1981–1996) supported their parents in 2016, the most recent year for which data was available. That number was statistically indistinguishable from the number of boomers (born 1946–1964) supporting their adult children in the same year.

    “OK boomer” is not just a pithy retort; it’s totally valid. I’m giddy; maybe you are too. The same number of millennials financially support their parents as the number of boomers who support their grown children.

    All the headlines, and the jokes, all the (mis)representations about America’s deliciously hateable young adults, they’re f*****g fake, folks! A tale spread by a group of grumpy (and probably well-off) boomers that took on a life of its own, sapping a generation — their own children’s generation — of its dignity.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/venessawong/millennials-parents-stereotypes-boomers-data

  • The worst thing you can do for your college-bound teen is saddle them with student debt

    Don’t make a decision based on emotions. Parents are often so panicked about their children succeeding that it drives them to do whatever it takes to get them into their desired college, even if it means taking on gargantuan loans. But good decision-making involves a plan, not panic.

    Drop the dream. So many loans are the result of parents giving in to children who just have to go to their dream school.“The only dream school out there is the one that you can graduate from debt-free,” ONeal says.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/personal-finance/the-worst-thing-you-can-do-for-your-college-bound-teen-is-saddle-them-with-student-debt/2019/11/14/d0ef5e7a-06fb-11ea-b17d-8b867891d39d_story.html

Posted on

News You Can Use: 11/27/2019


Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

  • Can America ever rebuild its neighborhoods and communities?

    Across the country, Marohn sees evidence of what he dubs a “Municipal Ponzi scheme.” Cities — armed with economic development dollars and consultants galore — focus their energies and budgets on new housing subdivisions as well as far-flung, auto-dependent office parks and strip malls, all the while ignoring the long-term debt, maintenance costs, and municipal burdens they are transferring to future generations of residents. “The growth creates an illusion of wealth, a broad, cultural misperception that the growing community is become [sic] stronger and more prosperous. Instead, with each new development, they become increasingly more insolvent,” the author writes.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/09/can-america-ever-rebuild-its-neighborhoods-and-communities/

  • How a few flaky elevator buttons are tearing our office apart

    Shout out to my crew in Philly who have to deal with out terrible elevator experience.
  • New Study Debunks Age Bias in the Workplace. What Does That Mean for Your Business?

    The Addison Group survey found that 45 percent of respondents believe millennials receive preferential treatment at work. That’s still a significant number, despite the fact that the majority of people say preferential treatment isn’t happening. However, it doesn’t eliminate valid concerns that older generations might have about being replaced. I have heard that concern voiced time and again, and have been in roles where I’m even a bit nervous about being replaced by someone younger. A workplace where older employees think the younger ones are being favored can turn toxic quickly.

    In the research, 49 percent of respondents said millennials are the largest segment of their workplace, compared to 43 percent who said it was Gen X. Given the large numbers of millennials in the workforce, older generations might suppose that each new company initiative or process is targeted at appeasing those younger workers.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/341761

Posted on

News You Can Use: 11/20/2019


Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

  • Executives at Google are under investigation by the board for how they handled sexual harassment

    New York Times expose last October by noting that, at the time, 48 employees had been fired over the prior two years without severance and that 13 of those people were “senior managers or above.”

    Despite this, the on-going reports of sexual harassment have led to increased tensions with the company. 20,000 Google employees would go on to stage a walkout in response to the Times report on November 1st, 2018. Two of the organizers of that walkout, Claire Stapleton and Meredith Whittaker, later reported retaliation from Google earlier this year over that walkout. Stapleton announced in June that she had decided to leave the company entirely due to retaliation, while Whittaker left in July to focus on her work on AI ethics, saying “it’s clear Google isn’t a place where I can continue this work.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20952402/google-alphabet-investigation-handling-sexual-harassment-executives-andy-rubin-david-drummond

  • How I learned to curb my tendency to work too much

    Ask yourself, what’s the real root of your need to impress others? What is this weight of responsibility you feel? Who are you afraid of letting down? Answering these questions might feel like a therapy session, but you can’t fix the problem until you know what the problem is. So take the time to dig deep and understand what is fueling your workaholic nature.

    For me, it took a series of micro-moments to break my workaholic ways. Getting married was number one. Then, when my wife got pregnant, I worked harder than ever before: I had the sense of needing to be more responsible, and to me, that meant needing to provide. That was my “why”—and recognizing it was the first step toward finding balance.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90425678/how-i-learned-to-curb-my-tendency-to-work-too-much

  • Why Mike Rowe Says It Can Be Scary to Follow Your Passion

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/341433
  • Microsoft Japan’s experiment with 3-day weekend boosts worker productivity by 40 percent

    Last August, Microsoft Japan carried out a “Working Reform Project” called the Work-Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019. For one month last August, the company implemented a three-day weekend every week, giving 2,300 employees every Friday off during the month. This “special paid vacation” did not come at the expense of any other vacation time.

    And the results were pretty incredible!

    First off, the reductions. Employees took 25.4 percent fewer days off during the month, printed 58.7 percent fewer pages, and used 23.1 percent less electricity in the office (since it was closed an extra day). All of these saved the company quite a bit of money.

    Next, the increases. Productivity went up by a staggering 39.9 percent. That means even though the employees were at work for less time, more work was actually getting done.

    https://soranews24.com/2019/11/03/microsoft-japans-experiment-with-3-day-weekend-boosts-worker-productivity-by-40-percent/

Posted on

News You Can Use: 11/13/2019


Photo by Elijah O’Donnell on Unsplash

  • Facebook launches ‘news tab’ section with USA TODAY and other publishers: What to expect

    At a launch event Friday in New York, CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that while starting small, Facebook News could reach 20 to 30 million people in a “few years.”

    During the initial phase, Facebook plans to showcase original reporting from local properties in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington, Miami, Atlanta and Boston.

    “The fact that local news is part of this big Facebook rollout goes to the fact of how important trust is, and that local news is where that’s at,” says Steve Chung, chief digital officer for Fox Television Stations.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/10/25/facebook-launches-news-tab-usa-today-wsj-latimes-buzzfeed/2449387001/

  • Mark Zuckerberg makes the case for Facebook News

    Zuckerberg was also asked about how Facebook will deal with accuracy and quality, particularly given the recent controversy over its unwillingness to fact check political ads.

    He sidestepped the political ads question, arguing that it’s unrelated to the day’s topics, then said, “This is a different kind of thing.” In other words, he argued that the company has much more leeway here to determine what is and isn’t included — both by requiring any participating publishers to abide by Facebook’s publisher guidelines, and by hiring a team of journalists to curate the headlines that show up in the Top Stories section.

    “People have a different expectation in a space dedicated to high-quality news than they do in a space where the goal is to make sure everyone can have a voice and can share their opinion,” he said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/25/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-news/

  • Facebook launches dedicated news tab in U.S.
  • Facebook News launches with Breitbart as a source

    On Friday, Bernstein tweeted, “One way to think about Facebook naming Breitbart a ‘trusted news source’: my investigation two years ago contained revelations so damning Breitbart funder Robert Mercer stepped down as CEO of his hedge fund. But it’s good enough for Zuck & co.”

    The New York Times’ Charlie Warzel wrote in a tweet that Breitbart “being in Facebook’s trusted partners is clarifying.” Why? Well, he pointed out “it’s the same principle as dinner” with people like Fox host Tucker Carlson. Which is to say, “FB’s perspective seems to be that if you achieve a certain [amount] of scale and influence, the company will engage earnestly with you.” Warzel said “it’s an outdated idea of media power.”

    At Friday’s Paley Center event, the New York Times’ Marc Tracy asked Zuckerberg about the decision to include Breitbart. Zuckerberg said he believes “you want to have content that represents different perspectives.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/26/media/facebook-news-breitbart/index.html

  • Why the Facebook News tab shouldn’t be trusted

    But what’s not central to Facebook’s survival will never be central to its strategy. News is not going to pay the bills, and it probably won’t cause a major change in its hallowed growth rate. Remember that Twitter, which hinges much more on news, is 1/23rd of Facebook’s market cap.

    So hopefully at this point we’ve established that Facebook is not an ally of news publishers.

    At best it’s a fickle fair-weather friend. And even paying out millions of dollars, which can sound like a lot in journalism land, is a tiny fraction of the $22 billion in profit it earned in 2018.

    Whatever Facebook offers publishers is conditional. It’s unlikely to pay subsidies forever if the News tab doesn’t become sustainable. For newsrooms, changing game plans or reallocating resources means putting faith in Facebook it hasn’t earned.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/24/facebooks-news-not-yours/

Posted on

News You Can Use: 11/6/2019


Photo by Mario Azzi on Unsplash

  • Stuck In a Rut? Here Are 15 Ways to Pull Yourself Out of a Bad Situation.

    As Leo Babauta correctly writes, “You cannot maintain energy and focus (the two most important things in accomplishing a goal) if you are trying to do two or more goals at once.” The solution? Pick “one goal, for now, and focus on it completely.”

    Personally, I would start with your meatiest goal and save the rest for later. If you’re deciding between several different options, zone in on the one that relates to your top priorities and make sure that it’s a SMART goal. Once you choose to focus on that goal, put the goal in writing and develop a realistic action plan with steps to achieve it.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/340618

  • Is asteroid mining and space colonization legal?
  • As Marc Benioff Calls For A Better World, Salesforce Lawyers Are Doing The Opposite

    Benioff’s opposition to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — which allows technology platforms to moderate their services without being held liable for the content their users post there — is puzzling. “Facebook is a publisher,” Benioff said in a tweet on Wednesday. “We need to abolish section 230 Indemnifying them.” Without Section 230, Facebook might succumb to death by lawsuit‚ but Salesforce might too.

    On Wednesday, as Benioff was sending his tweet, Salesforce lawyers were citing the piece of legislation in their defense of a lawsuit against the company. “Salesforce objects to the Requests on the ground that it is entitled to federal immunity from suit under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230, with respect to the claims in this action,” Salesforce’s lawyers wrote in a response to a discovery motion in a case in Harris County, Texas, one of seven lawsuits it’s dealing with regarding Backpage. In all seven cases, Salesforce has claimed protection under Section 230, Annie McAdams, the lead trial lawyer for the plaintiffs, told BuzzFeed News.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/as-marc-benioff-calls-for-a-better-world-salesforce-lawyers

  • Tech workers backing candidates looking to break up their employers

    Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who has called for breaking up Facebook, Amazon and Google, raised more than $173,000 from tech industry employees in the third quarter, according to Bloomberg News’s analysis of public data on political contributions from employees at 10 large tech companies.

    Many of Warren’s largest tech donations come from software engineers at low-profile companies like Twilio, MongoDB, Adobe, and Mailchimp. But prominent names in tech like Andy Dunn, the co-founder of Bonobos, Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic, Jennifer Pahlka, executive director of Code for America, and Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, all cut checks for Warren.

    https://www.baltimoresun.com/sns-tns-bc-tech-campaign-money-20191019-story.html