Philadelphia Archives

If We’re Going to Break Up Big Tech, We Shouldn’t Forget Big Telecom

In recent years, telecom giants like Verizon have been repeatedly caught covertly spying on customers and selling your private location data to a long chain of dubious middlemen, often with little oversight. Giant ISPs often help scammers rip off their own customers, earning them the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any business sector in America.

Telecom presents a unique problem in tech. ISPs like Comcast and AT&T not only enjoy vast media and broadcast empires, but a clear monopoly over access to the internet itself thanks to limited broadband competition.

This domination of both the conduit and the content creates unique anti-competitive opportunities ISPs are starting to exploit in a variety of sneaky ways. For example, telecom giants convinced the FCC in 2017 to neuter itself at lobbyists’ behest, demolishing numerous widely popular consumer protections like net neutrality along the way.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbwjvy/if-were-going-to-break-up-big-tech-we-shouldnt-forget-big-telecom
Philadelphia Bans ‘Cashless’ Stores Amid Growing Backlash

The new law, signed by Mayor Jim Kenney last week, takes effect on July 1 and could lead to fines of up to $2,000 on businesses that do not take cash.

But many transactions will be exempt, including those at parking lots and garages; businesses that sell goods through a membership model; rentals that require security deposits; online, telephone or mail-in transactions; and goods sold exclusively to employees.

The bill amends the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance, which is administered by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. Mike Dunn, a spokesman for the city, said on Thursday that the commission would have to set the penalties before the bill takes effect.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/business/cashless-stores-philadelphia.html
This is the same city that makes it ever more difficult to use cash for public transportation. Philly – if you are making laws like this, you have to eat your own dog food.
Taxing the rich
Hip offices are part of our mental health crisis, here’s why

Even with all the mental health days and in-office lounges, many employees still feel an inability to disconnect from the office mindset, which makes them feel overworked and exhausted for prolonged periods. Job-induced anxiety is on the rise as technology blurs the lines between work and home life. The idea of work-life balance has all but disappeared.

According to a 2015 study put out by NAMI Massachusetts, one can attribute 64 percent of absenteeism from work because of poor mental health. And 81 percent of productivity loss occurs as a result of presenteeism, where people work when they’re sick (and should be resting).

https://www.fastcompany.com/90313990/why-cool-offices-do-nothing-to-mental-health

Photo by Master Wen on Unsplash

Whatever Happened to Generation X?

That’s partially why, collectively, no one’s ever thought much of us. The boomers have for the most part ignored us, treating us like hapless little kids. And when the millennials came along — a group just as large and self-obsessed and overly dramatic as their parents — we became the forgotten middle children. We weren’t the “me” or the “me, me, me” generation. We were more like the “meh” generation, stuck between two cohorts who never stop talking. Lately, our sense of invisibility has felt particularly acute in Philly, a town still run by people in their 50s and 60s — but being remade to suit the tastes of people in their 20s.

http://www.phillymag.com/news/2018/01/27/generation-x-philadelphia/
Comcast may force us to rethink the definition of “cord-cutting”

For the fourth quarter, Comcast said it lost 33,000 traditional pay-TV subscribers while gaining an impressive 350,000 high-speed internet customers. All told, the company ended the quarter with a net increase of 243,000 new customers. For the full year, that number was up by 777,000 customers.

Comcast further boasted that it has signed up more than 1 million high-speed internet customers for 12 consecutive years. In other words, a lot of cord-cutters still need that cable cord–even if they’d rather watch Netflix than channel surf through an old-fashion cable TV lineup.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40521015/comcast-may-force-us-to-rethink-the-definition-of-cord-cutting
The hidden role informal caregivers play in health care
HR has lost the trust of employees. Here is who has it now

A superior has made a pass at a subordinate, and an executive of the company asks that the subordinate be fired to “clean up” the situation. An employee repeatedly makes homophobic, racist, or sexist remarks to their colleagues, but the company has deemed the individual critical to the functioning of the sales team, and so is merely given a warning. Company morale is suffering and complaints are showing up on online sites like Glassdoor, so HR is charged with “fixing” the company’s rating. A well-performing employee is repeatedly given poor performance reviews to make their firing tidy.

All of these examples are hypothetical, but they are archetypes for the near daily news of HR abuses that are now been regularly published around the world.

Independent Apps are becoming a solution:

Clearly, people want to talk about the problems at their workplace. But venting to anonymous colleagues is about the least effective approach to ameliorating the underlying conditions making workers unhappy in the workforce. That’s why other apps are exploring how to handle difficult conversations at the workplace in a better light, often with the blessing of HR departments themselves.

Bravely is one such app. The company, based in New York, was founded by Toby Hervey, Sarah Sheehan, and Rasesh Patel as a platform to facilitate the kinds of hard conversations that need to happen for a workplace to thrive. Their concept is to connect workers who might be struggling bringing up a matter at work with expert “Pros” who are trained executive and life coaches who can help a worker think through their options and how best to raise their voice at a company.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/10/hr-has-lost-the-trust-of-employees-here-is-who-has-it-now/?ncid=rss
Conversation Topics That Should and Shouldn’t Be Discussed in the Office

Despite the strict views that some people and industries have about what’s appropriate office conversation, talk is talk and people are going to do it either way. So what’s the hottest topic of conversation? Politics. Seventy-four percent of people agree that politics is the most common subject, and that’s likely due to the rocky 2016 election and the current state of American politics right now.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/308815

Source: InsuranceQuotes (click the link to see the whole infographic)