Tag: Open Office

Posted on

News You Can Use: 10/24/2018

The Source - No Attention Span

  • Facebook Isn’t Sorry — It Just Wants Your Data

    Weeks after the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal broke, Facebook announced at its annual conference that it would soon use its trove of user data to roll out a dating app to help pair users together in “long-term” romantic relationships. Later in the year, while Zuckerberg told Congress “I promise to do better for you” and pledged increased transparency in its handling of users’ data, the company admitted to secretly using a private tool to delete the old messages of its founder. This summer, just days after Zuckerberg assured “we have a responsibility to protect people,” reports surfaced that Facebook asked US banks for granular customer financial data (including card transactions and checking account balances) to use for a banking feature. Even the company’s good faith attempts to secure its platform feel ham-handed and oblivious, like last November when Facebook asked users in Australia to upload their nude photos to Facebook for employee review to combat revenge porn.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/facebook-isnt-sorry-it-just-wants-your-data

  • How WhatsApp is undermining Facebook’s war on election interference

    The problem, of course, is WhatsApp. As we were admiring the flags, Brazilian newspaper Folha published an investigation showing that media companies are buying large groups of phone numbers and blasting them with anti-leftist propaganda on the encrypted messaging app. While it’s often discussed as a chat app, WhatsApp has message-forwarding mechanics that strip away the identity of the sender and allow messages to spread virally with little accountability.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/19/17997516/facebook-election-war-room-brazil-whatsapp

  • The economics of immigration
  • Open offices have driven Panasonic to make horse blinders for humans

    “As open offices and digital nomads are on the rise, workers are finding it ever more important to have personal space where they can focus,” the company told Dezeen. “Wear Space instantly creates this kind of personal space – it’s as simple as putting on an article of clothing.”

    The device, which debuted as a prototype at SXSW earlier this year, is now the subject of a crowdfunding campaign. Early birds can snag one for around $260, but we’re going to say neigh on this one.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/open-offices-have-driven-panasonic-to-make-horse-blinders-for-humans/

  • Sorry, Goldfish: People’s Attention Spans Aren’t Shrinking, They’re Evolving

    The research, presented in detail in Prezi’s 2018 State of Attention Report, found that well over half — 59 percent — of business professionals feel they can give a piece of content their undivided attention more so today than they could just one year ago. Also, nearly half (49 percent) of respondents said they are more selective about the content they consume now compared to one year ago.

    The State of Attention study also found evidence that attention spans are not only intact across generations, but also expanding in younger generations. That’s important information for businesses: Many organizations struggle to communicate effectively with, and develop engaging content for, all groups in their multigenerational workforce — but that’s especially true with millennials. And millennials, according to Pew Research Center, are the largest generation in the workforce as of 2017.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/321266

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 8/29/2018

The Source: Gig Economy

  • It’s Not Technology That’s Disrupting Our Jobs

    Over these four decades we have seen an increase in the use of day laborers, office temps, management consultants, contract assemblers, adjunct professors, Blackwater mercenaries and every other kind of worker filing an I.R.S. form 1099. These jobs span the income ranks, but they share what all work seems to have in common in the post-1970s economy: They are temporary and insecure.

    In the last 10 years, 94 percent of net new jobs have appeared outside of traditional employment. Already approximately one-third of workers, and half of young workers, participate in this alternative world of work, either as a primary or a supplementary source of income.

    Internet technologies have certainly intensified this development (even though most freelancers remain offline). But services like Uber and online freelance markets like TaskRabbit were created to take advantage of an already independent work force; they are not creating it. Their technology is solving the business and consumer problems of an already insecure work world. Uber is a symptom, not a cause.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/opinion/technology/technology-gig-economy.html

  • Big ‘Epic Fails’ Can Feel Like a Punch in the Gut. What Should You Do After?

    Whether it’s a client, a boss or your team, don’t wait to reach out. The key is to learn all of the facts first. Together with your team, iterate a heart-felt and honest response before the end of the day via email or in preparation for a live conversation. It is important not to let more than a few hours pass so that your client and your team can see that you place a heightened yet thoughtful sense of urgency. Blame does not matter and there is no room to take a tit-for-tat approach, nor to overly explain the reasons for the perceived or qualified failure. Instead, take personal accountability for the negative experiences and/or outcomes expressed by your client. Thoughtfully respond with words that explicitly reflect the examples of failure relayed by your clients. Reiterate your company’s mission and your personal commitment to ensuring customer delight. If it makes sense, offer to refund a portion of the costs.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/316096

  • The death of America’s middle class: Sky-high rent, second jobs, and 1% TV
  • Sorry, Pal, I Don’t Want to Talk: The Other Reason People Wear AirPods

    Dave Luis, 44, head of marketing for a hospitality startup in Dubai, heard a friend complain about insouciant colleagues wearing AirPods during business meetings.

    “She found it incredibly rude and offensive,” Mr. Luis said. “I’d recently bought mine. Every time we met, she’d actually make a point of asking me to remove these from my ears.”

    Mr. Luis posted a poll on his Facebook page asking for opinions about wearing the devices during meetings. He said he was surprised to find that only 9% of his 80-plus friends found it acceptable.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/sorry-pal-i-dont-want-to-talk-the-other-reason-people-wear-airpods-1534949793

  • The secret to getting work done in an open office

    Where people sit is another consideration. “You can’t mix sales, which is naturally a loud process, with developers, designers, or writers,” says Fried. “They go at a different pace. Different jobs require different environments. People who need to make noises are special; we’ve made focus the primary default.”

    By making choices and implementing strategies, Basecamp employees can be focused and undistracted even though spaces are all out in the open. “You don’t have to feel like you have to hide to find quiet; quiet is the default here,” says Fried. “Noise is the exception, and it’s in isolated spaces.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90218546/the-secret-to-getting-work-done-in-an-open-office

Posted on

News You Can Use: 7/18/2018

Finding Happy: Joey Lombardi: The Source

  • Is insurance a rich enough game to disrupt?

    Tech innovation has long been a challenge for insurance incumbents. Old systems are difficult to displace in any industry, but the complexity of insurance, tradition of relying on the past to predict the future and silos of data can make it a Herculean effort. Tech giants, on the other hand, regularly cannibalize their own revenue with new products and can enlist tens of thousands of engineers to develop fantastic digital customer experiences and bring large-scale efficiencies to back-end insurance systems through better software and AI.

    So, yes, FAAMG has a number of major advantages over insurance incumbents. But for tech giants, new verticals and initiatives are also longer-term decisions around margins and market scope. It’s an obvious point, but if FAAMG wants to jump into insurance, they’ll want a decent return. Can they find that in insurance?

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/10/is-insurance-a-rich-enough-game-to-disrupt/

  • How to handle the job-search process when you just got fired

    Instead, go with something like, “For three years, my role involved analyzing market opportunities and then making recommendations to our product teams on potential new products and product enhancements. We worked incredibly well together and launched some amazing innovations. The firm recently reorganized and shifted leadership. My role was redefined, and much of the analysis work that I love was removed from my job. While I realized some key wins as my role shifted, the primary focus of the position was no longer centered on the things I do best, like [insert things you do well and know this company is seeking].”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90199718/how-to-handle-the-job-search-process-when-you-just-got-fired

  • Being happy has nothing to do with money (or drugs)
  • Why Corporate America is recruiting high schoolers

    Since 2011, more than 400 companies have partnered with 79 public high schools across the country to offer a six-year program called P-Tech. Students can enroll for grades 9 to 14 and earn both a high school and an associate’s degree in a science, tech, engineering or math related field.

    The companies offer input on the curriculum, bring students on site, pair them with employee mentors, and offer paid internships, or some combination of the above.

    “There’s a war for talent across all our competitors. We know we’re going to need a lot of different pathways to bring talent in,” said Jennifer Ryan Crozier, president of the IBM Foundation.

    https://www.clickorlando.com/education/why-corporate-america-is-recruiting-high-schoolers

  • Yes, open office plans are the worst

    In the study, researchers followed two anonymous Fortune 500 companies during their transitions between a traditional office space to an open plan environment and used a sensor called a “sociometric badge” (think company ID on a lanyard) to record detailed information about the kind of interactions employees had in both spaces. The study collected information in two stages; first for several weeks before the renovation and the second for several weeks after.

    While the concept behind open office spaces is to drive informal interaction and collaboration among employees, the study found that for both groups of employees monitored (52 for one company and 100 for the other company) face-to-face interactions dropped, the number of emails sent increased between 20 and 50 percent and company executives reported a qualitative drop in productivity.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/yes-open-office-plans-are-the-worst/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage

Photo by Maxim Medvedev on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 4/25/2018

She bought those lights on Amazon

  • Big Tech May Be Monopolistic, But It’s Good for Consumers

    In short, by the standards of consumer welfare — providing a variety of high-quality products, innovation, low prices — big tech is one of the best things to happen in the economy in decades.

    A more subtle argument against big tech involves the future: Yes, many new and innovative products are given away free today. But what effect is big tech having on tomorrow’s prices and innovation?

    This argument assumes that big tech is stifling the competition today that tomorrow would lead to innovation or lower prices. I’m not sold. It is certainly true that consumer welfare can be harmed by the absence of products that might have been created if a market had had more competition. But look at what is actually happening: Big tech firms plow revenue into research and development in order to continue creating new and better products. These companies are innovation powerhouses, and there are no signs that that will change.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-20/google-and-amazon-antitrust-fears-are-misplaced

  • Why My Open Office Feels … Walled Off

    Open offices have been the trend in workplace design for a while now — as of 2014, some 70 percent of office layouts were open — and despite some backlash, they don’t seem to be going anywhere soon. Proponents tout the upsides: collaboration, flexibility, bottom-line savings, attracting millennial workers. But even the biggest fans know all of this comes with a loss of privacy. (New reality: booking a conference room to make a doctor’s appointment.) And though sharing is nothing new to us in 2018 — see: communal tables at restaurants; car rides with strangers — it can feel at odds with how increasingly individualistic and aesthetic-driven our culture has become. Sharing is about more than giving up your personal space — it’s about not being able to personalize your space, either. Designed-for-all means one-size-fits-all, so the shared spaces we exist in — like the offices we spend so much time in — become uniform. The modern office lives and dies by 50 shades of gray.

    https://www.phillymag.com/articles/2018/03/17/open-office-personalization/

  • How to detect baloney the Carl Sagan way
  • Fired FBI director James Comey reveals how Apple and Google’s encryption efforts “drove me crazy”

    When Apple and Google announced in 2014 that they would be moving their mobile devices to default encryption, by emphasizing that making them immune to judicial orders was good for society, “it drove me crazy,” he writes. He goes on to lament the lack of “true listening” between tech and law enforcement, saying that “the leaders of the tech companies don’t see the darkness the FBI sees,” such as terrorism and organized crime.

    But Comey understood it was an unbelievably difficult issue and that public safety had to be balanced with privacy concerns. Towards the end of the Obama era, the administration developed a technical plan to show it was possible to build secure mobile devices and still allow access to law enforcement in certain cases. During one Situation Room discussion on the issue, Obama acknowledged, “You know, this is really hard.” Comey’s first reaction was “No kidding” but he also appreciated the former president’s humility.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40559334/fired-fbi-director-james-comey-reveals-how-apple-and-googles-encryption-efforts-drove-me-crazy

  • Amazon warehouse workers skip bathroom breaks to keep their jobs, says report

    Workers who pick up products for delivery at a warehouse in Staffordshire, UK use bottles instead of the actual toilet, which is located too far away, Bloodworth reported. They are afraid of being disciplined for idling and losing their jobs as a result, he added. Bloodworth told The Sun in an interview that the warehouse resembled a prison or an airport, with high security scanners that check workers for banned items like hoodies, sunglasses, and phones, and other employees who pat down workers to check for stolen goods.

    Bloodworth’s findings are in line with first-hand accounts collected in the survey by worker rights platform Organise, which reported that 74 percent of workers avoid using the toilet for fear of being warned they had missed their target numbers. Rising goals have also taken a toll on employees’ mental health, as 55 percent of them report having suffered depression since working at Amazon. Over 80 percent of workers said they would not apply for a job at Amazon again.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse-jobs-worker-conditions-bathroom-breaks

Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 3/14/2018

  • China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

    Chinese police theorists have identified specific “extremist behaviours, which include if you store a large amount of food in your home, if your child suddenly quits school and so on,” she said. Train a computer to look for such conduct, and “then you have a big data program modelled upon pretty racist ideas about peaceful behaviours that are part of a Uyghur identity,” she said.

    The report “adds some pieces to the puzzle” over what is happening in Xinjiang, where it became clear over the last year “that tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were disappearing without having done anything illegal,” said Rian Thum, a historian at Loyola University in New Orleans who has travelled extensively in Xinjiang.

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/china-using-big-data-to-detain-people-in-re-education-before-crime-committed-report/article38126551/
    The dark side of “big data” and “AI” need to be reported on and discussed.

  • This One Aspect of Your Office Design Is Wasting a Lot of Time and Money

    Meetings are expensive — the rent of the office space combined with the wages of each attendee — but a lot of that investment is wasted. A UCLA and University of Minnesota study finds that executives spend up to half of their working hours in meetings and that as much as 50 percent of that time is unproductive. With 17 million business meetings in the United States every day, there are a lot of frustrated workers: 88 percent of people are annoyed by technology problems in meeting rooms, and 20 percent of meetings run late due to those issues, wasting 2.83 working days a year for the average employee.

    Also:

    Making meeting rooms more interactive and easier to navigate is part of a movement to upgrade our office spaces to better reflect how we work today. Real estate executives acknowledge updating is needed with 86 percent saying they are remaking or adapting offices and another 51 percent are planning to reinvent shared workspaces this year, according to the CBRE’s 2017 Americas Occupier Survey. Employing technology to more efficiently use meeting space is a vital part of those efforts and can make a big impact on a company’s bottom line.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/309625

  • Can DIY Solar Panels Solve Puerto Rico’s Power Crisis?
  • Everyone on LinkedIn is a “passionate, experienced, motivated” leader

    While it’s awesome that we’re all so “experienced,” “passionate,” and “creative,” these labels won’t help any of us stand out. Slinging around the same generic language as everybody else is among the worst strategies for getting ahead.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40538110/everyone-on-linkedin-is-a-passionate-experienced-motivated-leader
    4 Signs You’re Trying Too Hard On LinkedIn

    The number one sign Marco Montinari, a recruitment consultant at Mason Frank International, sees repeatedly is LinkedIn users trying to be philosophers or motivational speakers. “It usually involves reflecting on their own successes while also advising people to stay humble,” Montinari says. While there’s nothing inherently bad about trying to deconstruct common professional issues or trying to uplift people through motivational words, unless you actually are, you know, a philosopher, what you think is deep or uplifting often comes across as simply trite or self-congratulatory. As Montinari points out: “A lesson in self-awareness is often needed for people who spend time telling others how to live their lives.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40523265/4-signs-youre-trying-too-hard-on-linkedin

  • Science Says Money Does Buy Happiness If You Spend it the Right Way

    The reason that money demonstratively increases happiness levels up until a point is that it takes a certain salary to feel financially secure.

    Having enough money means no anxiety when shopping at the grocery store, going out to eat or paying your rent. This type of security is overlooked when you are used to it.

    Remembering and being appreciative of the fact that you are free to purchase things, though, will make you happier even after it has settled in as normal amount of your finances. Fundamentally, having enough money to buy these basic necessities will no-doubt increase your happiness levels.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/309814

Photo: Brooke Winters