Tag: China

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News You Can Use: 5/8/2019

  • The push to break up Big Tech, explained

    A few years back, for example, Amazon essentially monopolized the market for e-books. Major book publishers fought back by teaming up to take on the bigger company and the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against them. Why? Well, Amazon was using its power in the marketplace to keep e-book prices low. The publishers, the government argued, were trying to form a cartel to force Amazon to raise prices. And, indeed, even though the publishers ended up settling with the government, the introduction of more competition into the e-book marketplace (primarily from Apple) has had the impact of making e-books more expensive than they were when Amazon ruled the roost. The standard, in other words, isn’t that one company dominating a market is bad. It’s that it’s bad if a company’s market domination leads to bad outcomes for consumers.

    Back to Facebook and Instagram. At the time, few observers saw how significant this deal was. But technology industry analyst Ben Thompson told the Code Conference audience last year that allowing this acquisition was “the greatest regulatory failure of the last 10 years” by allowing Facebook to entrench its dominance of social media. Yet under the contemporary antitrust framework, one might argue there’s no harm to consumers here — Facebook and Instagram are both free, so there’s after all no increase in prices. Yes, the fact that the combined entity is such an advertising juggernaut, pulling in $17 billion last quarter, is a big problem for other companies trying to sell ads (such as publishing companies that use ad revenue to fund actual journalism, for example) — but that’s not necessarily a problem for consumers.

    https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/3/18520703/big-tech-break-up-explained

  • Facebook Faces a Big Penalty, but Regulators Are Split Over How Big

    The F.T.C.’s five commissioners agreed months ago that they wanted to pursue a historic penalty that would show the agency’s teeth. But now, the members are split on the size and scope of the tech company’s punishment, according to three people with knowledge of the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    The division is complicating the final days of the talks.

    Along with disagreement about the appropriate financial penalty, one of the most contentious undercurrents throughout the negotiations has been the degree to which Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, should be held personally liable for any violation of a 2011 agreement, according to two of the people.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/technology/federal-trade-commission-facebook-mark-zuckerberg.html

  • ‘Resulting’: Don’t mistake a bad outcome for a bad decision
  • Ajit Pai admits FCC got broadband growth figures wrong

    The impressive broadband growth numbers the FCC reported in February were actually off by millions, and now the agency has admitted in a revised draft that its figures were indeed inflated. It was advocacy group Free Press that originally revealed (PDF) the inaccuracy in March, though commission chief Ajit Pai didn’t even mention its role in the discovery. The organization found that a new ISP called BarrierFree falsely told the FCC that it has started serving 20 percent of the country just six months after it opened.

    That mistake led the agency to announce that the number of Americans lacking access to a fixed broadband connection was down to 19.4 million by the end of 2017 from 26.1 million the year before. Turns out, the correct figure is 21.3 million — a big difference, for sure, but not big enough for Pai to backpedal on his declaration that the changes he implemented led to massive broadband growth.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/02/ajit-pai-fcc-broadband-growth-figures-error/

  • ‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It.

    Across the different groups, the basic strategy is to push, but not so hard that the Chinese government feels compelled to react.

    That means no strikes and no demonstrations. In one group on the messaging app Telegram, references to Marx and Lenin are forbidden. The philosophies of communism’s leading lights often run contrary to the way China is run today. The government cracked down against a labor rights movement in the tech hub of Shenzhen this year.

    Instead of sit-ins, the tech workers are harnessing the power of memes, stickers and T-shirts. Some have pushed for a holiday to celebrate beleaguered software engineers. Mr. Zhuge is rallying workers to mail paper copies of China’s labor law to Mr. Ma of Alibaba.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html

Photo by Benjamin Combs on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 5/1/2019

  • The Devastating Consequences of Being Poor in the Digital Age

    Not only did Americans with lower levels of income and education have fewer technology resources and lower levels of confidence in their ability to protect their digital data, but they also expressed heightened sensitivities about a range of overlapping offline privacy and security harms. This helped to illustrate a critical dimension of digital inequality that is often overlooked; the poor must navigate a matrix of privacy and security vulnerabilities in their daily lives — any of which could dramatically upend their financial, professional or social well-being. For example, when someone who is living paycheck to paycheck falls victim to an online fraud or loses the ability to use his or her smartphone after it gets hacked, the cascade of repercussions can be devastating.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/opinion/privacy-poverty.html

  • A Post About China’s “996” Workweek Went Viral On GitHub. Now Microsoft Employees Want To Protect It From Censorship.

    The original statement they’re trying to protect, posted by Chinese developers about a month ago (here is an English-language translation), says overwork in the Chinese tech industry could be both a health hazard and violation of Chinese labor law. The phrase “996.ICU” is a joke, suggesting that a 72 hour workweek could land workers in intensive care.

    While the post is still accessible in the United States, the Microsoft employees say it has been the target of censorship on some Chinese browsers and are concerned Microsoft could soon come under pressure by the Chinese government to remove the pro-worker repository as well.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/microsoft-petition-996-icu-workweek-china

  • Ageism in the USA: The paradox of prejudice against the elderly
  • This Is What Makes You Stressed at Work, According to New Study

    When asked about the biggest stressor on the job, the top concern wasn’t a commute or bad management — those were tied for second place. Forty-one percent of respondents put “unclear goals” as the top reason for stress. Difficult co-workers were third, and then too-long hours came in last.

    A third of women respondents and nearly half of men reported that those undefined work goals created more stress than anything else they dealt with at work. And more than half of women and half of men reported feeling burnt out at work.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/332359

  • Why You Might Need to Fire Your Most Talented Employee

    And if you have toxic employees within your organization, you’ll have other employees who are scared to have meetings with them. You’ll have people who are spending time navigating discussions with those employees than actually executing.

    Your people will be spending time on politics. Not on execution.

    When you build a culture where people feel safe and excited to come to work, they won’t worry about dealing with other employees as much.

    https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/firing-employees-who-are-talented-but-toxic/

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News You Can Use: 4/24/2019

  • As China Hacked, U.S. Businesses Turned A Blind Eye

    In dozens of interviews with U.S. government and business representatives, officials involved in commerce with China said hacking and theft were an open secret for almost two decades, allowed to quietly continue because U.S. companies had too much money at stake to make waves.

    Wendy Cutler, who was a veteran negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, says it wasn’t just that U.S. businesses were hesitant to come forward in specific cases. She says businesses didn’t want the trade office to take “any strong action.”

    https://www.npr.org/2019/04/12/711779130/as-china-hacked-u-s-businesses-turned-a-blind-eye

  • Alibaba founder defends overtime work culture as ‘huge blessing’
    What is “996”?

    996 at a Chinese company means the workday starts at 9am, finishes at 9pm, with an extended 6 day week. The schedule is mandatory and there is no overtime pay or bonuses.

    Also:

    “I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing,” he said in remarks posted on the company’s WeChat account. “Many companies and many people don’t have the opportunity to work 996,” Ma said. “If you don’t work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996?”

    On Thursday, an opinion piece published in a state newspaper argued that 996 violated China’s Labor Law, which stipulates that average work hours cannot exceed 40 hours a week.

    “Creating a corporate culture of ‘encouraged overtime’ will not only not help a business’ core competitiveness, it might inhibit and damage a company’s ability to innovate,” the unnamed author wrote in the People’s Daily.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-tech-labour/alibaba-founder-defends-overtime-work-culture-as-huge-blessing-idUSKCN1RO1BC

  • China Is Scoring Its Citizens. And Evicting The Poorest.
  • A Microsoft exec shows how to handle an uproar at work without shutting it down

    There are several things worth highlighting in the executive’s response. First, she acknowledges that the other woman’s feelings of frustration and disappointment are valid, and promises to set aside time for a one-on-one to discuss the woman’s experience of being denied promotions. In this way, her email models the advice from Daena Giardella, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, on how managers should handle sexual harassment claims. “Learn to take stories about sexual harassment in your organization seriously,” she wrote in a May 2018 piece for Quartz. “Be careful about snap assessments that a certain story or comment ‘is not a big deal,’ or not ‘worthy’ of being further investigated.”

    Second, the executive declares that while she doesn’t want anyone to feel that it’s impossible to advance in this particular area, she knows that Microsoft has more work to do. And while she highlights the career resources and training programs that are underway in an effort to improve advancement opportunities at the company, she does not suggest that they will offer a silver-bullet solution.

    https://qz.com/work/1590779/an-email-from-a-microsoft-executive-is-a-case-study-in-crisis-management/

Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 3/27/2019

  • Workplace tracking is growing fast. Most workers don’t seem very concerned

    The single area that worries watchdogs the most is, perhaps, wellness. A majority of large companies and a significant percentage of smaller ones have programs today that, in the name of encouraging their workers to be in good physical and mental shape, seek out personal health information. This can include questions about whether workers are anxious or depressed, drink alcohol or use drugs, or take medication.

    The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act are supposed to ensure that an employee’s sensitive details are held close. Yet there are gaps in these laws, experts say, and companies may not always adhere strictly to the regulations that are on the books.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90318167/workplace-tracking-is-growing-fast-most-workers-dont-seem-very-concerned

  • Amazon is aggressively blocking ads for unprofitable products as part of a plan to bolster its bottom line

    In recent months, Amazon has been telling more vendors, or brand owners who sell their goods wholesale, that if Amazon can’t sell those products to consumers at a profit, it won’t let them pay to promote the items. For example, if a $5 water bottle costs Amazon that amount to store, pack and ship, the maker of the water bottle won’t be allowed to advertise it.

    The added stringency, which CNBC learned of from conversations with vendors and emails they received from Amazon as well as from outside experts, reflects a broader push to squeeze earnings out of a historically low-margin business. In its most recent quarter, Amazon posted $3 billion in net income, the highest in company history, while profit for the full year more than more than tripled to $10 billion.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/20/amazon-aggressively-suspending-ads-of-unprofitable-products-as-focus-on-the-bottom-line-grows.html

  • The colossal problem with universal basic income
  • No sleep, no sex, no life: tech workers in China’s Silicon Valley face burnout before they reach 30

    “One thing Chinese founders or unicorns haven’t figured out is how to become a sustainable business. If you continue those [long hours] for 10 years, people will have no personal life any more, they will have no kids, they will go crazy,” Wingender said.

    Yang is pondering what comes next. With more than 10 years of experience, he now holds a mid-level position at a top-tier internet company but has reached a career ceiling. He compares himself to a construction worker, who can earn good money due to high work intensity but can easily be replaced by younger, cheaper labour.

    https://www.scmp.com/tech/apps-social/article/3002533/no-sleep-no-sex-no-life-tech-workers-chinas-silicon-valley-face

  • The New Social Network That Isn’t New at All

    Newsletters could be a more reliable means of increasing readership for major publishers whose relationships with social networks have soured. Remember when Facebook moved away from promoting videos on the platform? Or when it decided to show more posts from friends and family, and de-emphasize content from publishers and brands? With every shift, big media companies had to adjust.

    Also

    “You don’t have to fight an algorithm to reach your audience,” Casey Newton, a journalist who writes The Interface, a daily newsletter for the technology news site The Verge, told me. “With newsletters, we can rebuild all of the direct connections to people we lost when the social web came along.”

    It can be more than just a creative endeavor: Newsletters can make a fine one-person business. Writers can charge readers to a monthly fee for their newsletters. Substack takes a cut of that fee; Revue charges writers using a tiered-pricing system based on the size of newsletter’s subscriber base.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/technology/new-social-network-email-newsletter.html

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

Posted on

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