‘Culture of venting’: How agencies manage gossip in the workplace
This culture of venting is also driven by another, more difficult to pin down, force: the very ways people are working today. People are spending more time at work. For individuals who are just entering the workforce, the lines between “work” and “not work” are blurred. Work friends are also regular friends. That means that work-life discussions are also discussions between friends. This can be good for workplace bonding but potentially problematic if it leads to the rapid spread of misinformation.
Agencies have been doing more to detect and respond to problematic “gossip.” TBWA/Chiat/Day has purchased IBM’s Social Pulse software so as to monitor public channels and posts for potential red flags or specific sentiments. The Martin Agency uses a feedback survey tool called TinyPoll to ask employees quick anonymous questions to identify what exactly workers are concerned about. At another agency, its communications and PR teams peruse the app Fishbowl, as part of the morning routine.
At this year’s Golden Globes, Sacha Baron Cohen compared Mark Zuckerberg to the main character in “JoJo Rabbit”: a “naïve, misguided child who spreads Nazi propaganda and only has imaginary friends.”
That these attitudes are shared by undergraduates and graduate students — who are supposed to be imbued with high-minded idealism — is no surprise. In August, the reporter April Glaser wrote about campus techlash for Slate. She found that at Stanford, known for its competitive computer science program, some students said they had no interest in working for a major tech company, while others sought “to push for change from within.”
The Humble Office ID Badge Is About to Be Unrecognizable
Researchers are developing a technology called gait recognition, which uses cameras to identify people based on their body shape and how they move, and say it could one day be implemented in U.S. offices. In places with especially tight security, such as workplaces that handle hazardous materials or heavy machinery, several different ID technologies could be linked to repeatedly identify workers as they move around, says Vir Phoha, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Syracuse University. Video cameras might recognize people’s faces as they enter a building, and later analyze how they walk to identify them again. Software could assess an employee’s typing to verify whether it’s the same person identified earlier in the day.
In a recent Wired article (via BBC News), Mahabir Gill, the founder of the England-based company, StandardToilet, said that his company has created a toilet with a seat that slopes at a 13-degree angle, making it just uncomfortable enough to encourage sitters to vacate after about five minutes of use. Gill told Wired that there are many reasons a time-limiting toilet could be beneficial for people, but ultimately made no bones about it: The reason he and his team made this toilet is to cut down on the amount of time employees spend in the bathroom, and therefore improve a given company’s bottom line. (Insert “bottom line” pun here for all of you who can’t resist the urge.)
The sloping toilet works exactly as one would expect it to, essentially forcing its occupant into a mild crouch position, which puts a low-level strain on a series of their muscles, including those in their thighs, hips, and calves. As time moves on, the position becomes less and less comfortable, thusly compelling a user to finish their business and stand. Gill told Wired that the mildly uncomfortable position encourages workers “to get off the seat quickly,” although he also said that it’s not steep enough “to cause health issues.” He did note, however, that any seat sloped more than 13 degrees “would cause wider problems.”
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.”
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.
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.
Hitting goals is critical for a business, especially in the tech world. We are seeing companies trade their culture in order to hit business targets (see Google and Amazon). The media is coming down hard on Google for these shifts, but as we have seen with WeWork, the time of the unicorn darlings is over and the stock market is demanding profits once again.
SoftBank and Masayoshi Son are another root cause for this tonal shift. At the moment, many of SoftBank’s investments are performing poorly (again see WeWork and Uber). Son’s investment strategies enabled many of the wayward valuations over the last few years and a market course-correction was in order.
If a good idea doesn’t make a profit (somehow), it isn’t going to survive. Capitalism is cruel and wonderful beast.
Acquisitions/Investments
Here’s a Masayoshi Son Shopping List for 2020
The numbers are so bad, you have to laugh. Uber: down 37% since IPO. WeWork: valuation cut by 80%. Wag: sold back to founders at a loss. But Son will bounce back. He has to, because he has another Vision Fund to raise and run. Instead of being cowed into humility, it’s more likely he’ll double down and make even more fantastical bets with other people’s money. To help him out, I did a multivariate analysis(1) based on past SoftBank deals to come up with a list of investments he ought to consider.
Also:
Saudi AramcoTo be frank, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company isn’t really the kind of thing SoftBank should be putting money into because oil is just not futuristic enough. Data is said to be the new oil anyway. But then, taking Saudi money is something many believe Son shouldn’t be doing at all in light of the murder of writer Jamal Khashoggi. Son has pledged not to abandon the Saudis — after all, they gave $45 billion to the Vision Fund — and so that commitment may as well include throwing support behind Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his nation’s largest asset. Riyadh ended up settling for a $1.7 trillion market cap at IPO, after previously assuring everyone that it was worth at least $2 trillion. While it hit that figure within days of listing, the shortfall at IPO is equivalent to three Vision Funds. After WeWork’s $40 billion drop in value, Masa will feel right at home.
IBM Bet Everything on an Acquisition in 2019. Now It Needs to Grow Again.
The Red Hat deal is just one in a decadeslong series of IBM moves to keep up with shifting technology trends. Keep in mind that IBM over the years built and later unloaded large businesses in desktop computers, laptops, printers, microprocessors, chip manufacturing, and typewriters. (Didn’t you once own an IBM Selectric?) The latest move will help IBM stay relevant in a world in which cloud-based services have come to dominate the information technology landscape.
While IBM over the last decade has made a lot of noise about Watson, the company’s cloud-based artificial intelligence software platform, the company has been slow to establish a leadership position in the public cloud, falling behind the market leaders: Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Azure, and Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google Cloud Platform.
Google AI Beats Doctors at Breast Cancer Detection—Sometimes
The model is the latest step in Google’s push into health care. The Alphabet Inc. GOOG 0.07% company has developed similar systems to detect lung cancer, eye disease and kidney injury.
Google and Alphabet have come under scrutiny for privacy concerns related to the use of patient data. A deal with Ascension, the second-largest health system in the U.S., allows Google to use AI to mine personal, identifiable health information from millions of patients to improve processes and care.
The health data used in the breast-cancer project doesn’t include identifiable information, Google Health officials said, and the data was stripped of personal indicators before given to Google.
Illinois says you should know if AI is grading your online job interviews
It’s not just that we don’t know how these systems work. Artificial intelligence can also introduce bias and inaccuracy to the job application process, and because these algorithms largely operate in a black box, it’s not really possible to hold a company that uses a problematic or unfair tool accountable.
A new Illinois law — one of the first of its kind in the US — is supposed to provide job candidates a bit more insight into how these unregulated tools actually operate. But it’s unlikely the legislation will change much for applicants. That’s because it only applies to a limited type of AI, and it doesn’t ask much of the companies deploying it.
Also:
“It’s hard to feel that that consent is going to be super meaningful if the alternative is that you get no shot at the job at all,” said Rieke. He added that there’s no guarantee that the consent and explanation the law requires will be useful; for instance, the explanation could be so broad and high-level that it’s not helpful.
Amazon Has Long Ruled the Cloud. Now It Must Fend Off Rivals.
Amazon’s success in the cloud, more recently, has suffered setbacks beyond the lost Pentagon deal. Last year, one of its biggest banking customers, Capital One Financial Corp. , had more than 100 million customer records stolen that were stored on Amazon’s cloud. And more big corporations are turning to other cloud vendors. Some are worried the online retail giant could become a competitor, according to people familiar with the matter. Many large multinationals have longstanding relationships with Microsoft or Oracle, but not with Amazon.
“What we’re seeing now is there’s another wave of late-adopter customers coming to market. These are customers that have never used cloud before, so they’re investigating,” said Raj Bala, research director at Gartner. “A fair number of these customers will certainly end up at [Microsoft’s] Azure, because they meet that profile: they run a lot of Windows, they tend to want to play it safe, and the decision makers in that camp tend to favor Azure to a large extent.”
Not everybody will have to comply with the law. The CCPA only applies to companies that earn more than $25 million in gross annual revenue, collect personal data on more than 50,000 users, or make more than 50 percent of their revenue selling user data.
It’s also worth highlighting that while the bill technically took effect on January 1, California’s Attorney General has stated enforcement isn’t likely to begin until sometime this summer, giving lawmakers some additional time to work out some early kinks, clarify murky language, or water down existing requirements upon lobbyist request. Already we’re seeing that some companies aren’t complying with the law.
Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation say they spent the better part of 2019 trying to keep lobbyists from numerous industries from weakening the bill, since empowered, informed consumers will inevitably opt out of data sales, costing companies billions.
Former Google human rights chief says he was ‘sidelined’ over censored Chinese search engine
As Google pushed for deals in authoritarian Saudi Arabia and launched the Google Center for Artificial Intelligence in Beijing, LaJeunesse says, he pushed for a company-wide human rights program that would bring new oversight to product launches. But Google rebuffed the idea, and eventually brought in a colleague to oversee policy issues related to Dragonfly.
“Just when Google needed to double down on a commitment to human rights,” LaJeunesse writes in the blog post, “it decided to instead chase bigger profits and an even higher stock price.”
The issues extended to the broader culture within the company as well, according to LaJeunesse. He says, at one point, during an all-hands meeting, his boss at the company suggested Asian employees “don’t like to ask questions.”
Google has little choice to be evil or not in today’s fractured internet
Google used to have a lot of agency, which is unfortunately declining very, very rapidly.
I’ve talked about the fracturing of the internet into different spheres of influence for quite literally years. Countries like China in particular, but also Russia, Iran and others, are seizing more and more exacting control of the internet’s plumbing and applications, subsuming the original internet’s spirit of openness and freedom and placing this communications medium under their iron fists.
As this fracturing has occurred, companies like Google, or Shutterstock, or even the NBA, have increasingly faced what I’ve called an “authoritarian straddle” — they can either work with these countries and follow the local rules, or they can just get out, with serious ramifications for their home markets.
Amazon threatens to fire critics who are outspoken on its environmental policies
Amazon’s external communications policy “is not new and we believe is similar to other large companies,” company spokeswoman Jaci Anderson said in a statement. In response to whether Amazon was trying to stifle workers, Anderson said employees are “encouraged to work within their teams,” including by “suggesting improvements to how we operate through those internal channels.”
Tech workers have recently become more outspoken about concerns over their employers’ policies. During a Sept. 20 protest, thousands of Amazon employees walked out and criticized the company’s climate policies and practices. In November 2018, thousands of Google employees walked off the job to protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment claims. Workers at Google, Amazon and Microsoft have spoken out in criticism of facial-recognition technology from their companies, fearing misuse by law enforcement and other government agencies.
The Old Internet Died And We Watched And Did Nothing
The internet of the 2010s will be defined by social media’s role in the 2016 election, the rise of extremism, and the fallout from privacy scandals like Cambridge Analytica. But there’s another, more minor theme to the decade: the gradual dismantling and dissolution of an older internet culture.
This purge comes in two forms: sites or services shutting down or transforming their business models. Despite the constant flurries of social startups (Vine! Snapchat! TikTok! Ello! Meerkat! Peach! Path! Yo!), when the dust was blown off the chisel, the 2010s revealed that the content you made — your photos, your writing, your texts, emails, and DMs — is almost exclusively in the hands of the biggest tech companies: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or Apple.
The rest? Who knows? I hate to tell you, but there’s a good chance it’s gone forever.
Brand warriors! Instagram gurus! Here are the most ridiculous job titles of 2019
Jobs platform Indeed analyzed one million postings to reveal which of the weirdest terms appeared in either the title or the description of a job over 12 months. The top five (“ninja,” “rockstar,” “genius,” “hero,” and “guru”) all retained their popularity from last year.
“Rockstar” nabbed the top spot, boasting a 31% year-over-year increase and a whopping 209% lift since the company started ranking in 2015. “Genius” had a 26% year-over-year lift but rose 416% over the four years. The news was not so positive for ninjas or gurus whose popularity declined by 9% and 15% respectively.
According to Indeed’s analysis, wacky job titles are now more prevalent outside of tech hubs like Silicon Valley. Now you’re much more likely to locate rockstars in Arkansas, geniuses in Oklahoma, and ninjas in Hawaii. Vermont takes the crown away from New York for having the largest number of hero job openings this year.
Here is why you should swear at work, according to science
On a personal level, people who swear often lie less frequently, have higher levels of integrity and emotional intelligence, possess a larger vocabulary and are linked with having higher IQs. Cursing conveys feelings and opinions not captured by everyday language so people are able to glean more about the other party from conversations and end up making stronger connections leading to greater trust. Choosing the appropriate kind of word (mild or strong) demonstrates that you understand the mentality of the person that you’re speaking to so they’re more inclined to believe you.
In the workplace, cursing can actually help you get ahead. Research indicates cursing increases the effectiveness and persuasiveness of an argument. The most cohesive and productive teams in sectors like manufacturing and IT joke with each other using lots of profanity and trust each other more for it. For sales, swearing can translate into more wins when both sides do it, 18% more to be exact, based on analysis from Gong of more than 73,000 of its sales calls.
Big Tech is trying to make good on promises like leaving acquisitions alone and not using your personal data for evil things. But when the pressure to earn rises to unbearable levels, will those words still hold true?
California is trying to hold these companies responsible and give consumers more control over the data collected about them, but will these laws help or confuse an already complicated situation?
Finally, since we are on the topic of privacy, you might want to think twice before sending your cheek swab to one of those DNA companies… there isn’t much governance on what they are (and what the authorities) are doing with that data.
Acquisitions/Investments
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner: ‘Satya Has Made Good’ On Microsoft’s Acquisition Agreement
One of the biggest reasons why Microsoft is taking its time on pushing integrations is to avoid making mistakes. LinkedIn is Microsoft’s largest acquisition to date so it has to move with caution.
Microsoft wants to avoid making integration mistakes that it made in the past. In 2012, Microsoft had written off the $6.2 billion acquisition of digital ad company aQuantive. And Microsoft also saw a quarterly loss in 2015 due to $8.3 billion in charges related to the restructuring of its phone hardware operations following the $9.5 billion acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services business.
Microsoft CFO Amy Hood pointed out that one of the goals of the LinkedIn acquisition was to accelerate the growth of the professional social network along with Office 365 and Dynamics 365.
A cursory look at this year’s batch of companies doesn’t find any story quite as spectacular as last year’s big Theranos flameout, which gave us a best-selling book, documentary, podcast series and upcoming Adam McKay/Jennifer Lawrence film. Some, like MoviePass, however, may have come close.
And for every Theranos, there are dozens of stories of hardworking founders with promising products that simply couldn’t make it to the finish line. There’s also room for debate about what is and isn’t a startup. For our purposes, we’re focusing here on independent startups, not digital initiatives from larger companies — though in at least one case, the startup was acquired by a larger company before shutting down.
GDPR was just a warmup. CCPA will arrive with a bang.
“We’ve already talked to some companies who either have decided or are considering to pull their marketing programs from California. So there may be some fallout. It might just be a temporary thing for them to see where the cards fall,” said Rachel Glasser, global chief privacy officer at Wunderman Thompson.
Even if only temporarily, advertiser pullback would put publishers’ and ad tech companies’ businesses in a bind. But those companies are also facing more permanent predicaments.
Any company that sells California residents’ personal information under the law’s broad definition of sale is required to put a “clear and conspicuous” link on its homepage titled “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” for people to request the company to stop selling their information.
“Companies have different interpretations, and depending on which lawyer they are using, they’re going to get different advice,” said Kabir Barday, the chief executive of OneTrust, a privacy management software service that has worked with more than 4,000 companies to prepare for the law. “I’ll call it a religious war.”
The new law has national implications because many companies, like Microsoft, say they will apply their changes to all users in the United States rather than give Californians special treatment. Federal privacy bills that could override the state’s law are stalled in Congress.
The California privacy law applies to businesses that operate in the state, collect personal data for commercial purposes and meet other criteria like generating annual revenue above $25 million. It gives Californians the right to see, delete and stop the sale of the personal details that all kinds of companies — app developers, retailers, restaurant chains — have on them.
What You’re Unwrapping When You Get a DNA Test for Christmas
But is using one of these kits also opening the door to letting the police use your DNA to arrest your cousin? The answer in this rapidly evolving realm depends largely on which sites you join and the boxes you check off when you do. And even if you never join any of these sites, their policies could affect you so long as one of your 800 closest relatives has.
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To identify a suspect’s blood, for example, investigators do not need to find the person who cut his hand smashing through a window. They just need to match to a couple of his second or third cousins in a DNA database. From there, a genetic genealogist can puzzle out how these cousins are related to one another and the suspect by building out a series of family trees. Often this leads to an arrest.
IBM is essentially announcing a potential alternative to lithium-ion batteries – and not just an alternative to some of the main ingredients. What’s more, IBM states the batteries perform even better than current lithium-ion batteries. Citing greater efficiency, faster charging, as well as higher power and energy density. These batteries are not just environmentally sound, but are also more capable in general. Further adding to their appeal, IBM states they are cheaper to produce thanks to their lack of heavy metals.
The issue is that they are currently far from being in a finished state. IBM’s announcement does not even suggest the company intends to build the batteries itself. Instead, the collaboration with the other vested companies is intended to flesh out the technology and create an environment where it becomes easier for other companies to produce the seawater-sourced batteries in the future.
Huawei reportedly got by with a lot of help from the Chinese government
Huawei reportedly had “access to as much as $75 billion in state support,” according to a piece published by The Wall Street Journal on Christmas Day.
That massive figure is culled from poring over various forms, including grants and tax breaks. Huawei, for its part, isn’t denying any government support, but said in response that what it received was “small and non-material,” in line with the usual variety of grants awarded to tech startups and companies.
Per WSJ’s accounting of public records, Huawei got around $46 billion in loans and other support, coupled with $25 billion in tax cuts used to accelerate tech advances.
Accenture: Remaining Bullish And Raising Target Price Post Earnings
Per our industry-wide analysis and Accenture’s favorable fundamentals, and given the company’s strong top-line growth, we believe that ACN shares merit ~29x P/E multiple on 2019 earnings. When we apply it to our 2019 EPS estimate of $8.65 (up from $8.49), we get the target price of $251 (up from $245). We note that this P/E multiple is contingent on the S&P multiple of ~18x, and may expand/contract together with the multiple.
Risks:
While Accenture strives to make the pricing structure attractive to its core clients and, henceforth, attract greater business, we see a number of Indian players, such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy, and Wipro, potentially lowering prices in the foreseeable future. In addition, there are smaller players that are threatening Accenture in Europe, such as Epam and Luxoft.
The company heavily relies on H1-B and L-1 visas; over the last several years Congress attempts to heavily regulate the number of visa works each company can hire. Should the H1-B and L-1 visas become even more limited, there could be a 40-60 bps negative impact to Accenture’s margin.
Uber Co-Founder Travis Kalanick Departs Board, Sells All His Shares
The exit punctuates a decade in which Silicon Valley investors pumped startups with extraordinary sums of money and granted their founders vast power and a mandate to grow at breakneck speeds.
Uber and Mr. Kalanick were the archetype of this model, as Mr. Kalanick raised over $14 billion in equity and debt from outside investors who bought into his expansive vision and energetic approach. At its peak, Uber was the most valuable startup in the U.S., with a valuation of about $68 billion.
The move by Mr. Kalanick to sell his shares was set in place multiple months ago, said people familiar with the matter, and called for him to sell shares daily until his holdings wound down to zero.
