Tag: Hacking

Posted on

News You Can Use: 10/2/2019


Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

  • Team Productivity: Striking a Balance Between Being a Boss and Friend

    “All strong relationships are built on honesty,” writes Tamara Luzajic for Humanity. “And just like a good friend would tell you when you are doing something wrong no matter how much it hurts, a good manager will use open communication to help employees become better at what they do.”

    “Honesty is one of the best principles you can use to establish a healthy balance between caring your employees and leading them professionally,” adds Luzajic. “The closer you get to someone on a personal level, the harder it becomes to give them honest feedback as employees.”

    Additionally, build trust with each of your employees. For example, grant them autonomy and flexible schedules. Trust in your employee builds resilience — shows you rely on them enough to work where, when, and however they prefer. As a result, this will create a more positive and productive culture.

    And, if someone needs to take a day off because they’re attending to a sick family member, don’t freak out on them. Give them the day off without penalizing them.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/338651

  • The hackable technology that worries even a legendary con man
  • How is Meritocracy Damaging Our Economy?

    Interesting podcast about how high-achieving workers are stuck on a treadmill that they can’t get off of. If you are reading this blog, this probably hits home. Not a bad way to spend 30 minutes.

    https://beta.prx.org/stories/291960
    Thanks LJP!

  • For millennials, unlimited vacation isn’t always a perk

    But unlimited vacation policies can be a Trojan horse, particularly for young people who are newer to the workforce and less likely to take time off in the first place. On the surface, the offer seems generous, even altruistic; it implies employers trust their employees and encourage work-life balance. In practice, however, “unlimited vacation” is a misnomer. Employees often take fewer vacation days if their company has an unlimited policy, since there’s no framework for how many days they can—or should—take off.

    Managers can decline to approve time off, especially if there’s an implicit assumption that nobody can take more than two to three weeks of vacation per year. And when they leave the company, employees can’t cash out on the paid time off that they have accrued (which is required by law in a number of states). For workers in their twenties who are more likely to job hop and let vacation time go unused, that can mean foregoing a sizable chunk of cash.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90398810/for-millennials-unlimited-vacation-isnt-always-a-perk

Posted on

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/

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