News You Can Use: 2/14/2018
- Our Obsession With Working Hard Is Ruining Our Productivity
Success is not about hard work. It is absolutely about focus and ensuring you use your time productively. But when we constantly talk about how hard we’re working, we perpetuate the idea that you have to work all the time to succeed in this world, and you just don’t.
What you should be doing is deciding what will really move the needle forward for what you’re trying to accomplish each day and week, and focus on that. Focus. If you get done what you decided you wanted to get done, you get to quit.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40527825/our-obsession-with-working-hard-is-ruining-our-productivity
- The House That Spied on Me
I (the smart home) had the same view of Kashmir’s house that her Internet Service Provider (ISP) has. After Congress voted last year to allow ISPs to spy on and sell their customers’ internet usage data, we were all warned that the ISPs could now sell our browsing activity, or records of what we do on our computers and smartphones. But in fact, they have access to more than that. If you have any smart devices in your home—a TV that connects to the internet, an Echo, a Withings scale—your ISP can see and sell information about that activity too. With my “iotea” router I was seeing the information about Kashmir and her family that Comcast, her ISP, could monitor and sell.
- The 2020 census is in serious trouble
- You can’t buy an ethical smartphone today
Smartphones, and consumer technology more generally, don’t just have the potential to harm the people building them. There is also the enormous environmental damage caused in the handsets’ production, through resource extraction, intensive manufacturing and transport. “If you’re wanting to buy a[n ethical] phone right now, your choices are limited,” says Greenpeace’s Gary Cook, “and Fairphone has done the most in terms of current manufacturers.”
The organization found there’s plenty of environmental blood that can be laid at the door of the smartphone. In the last decade, production of the devices has consumed nearly 968TWh, enough to power India for a year. In 2017, smartphones, and related products, made 50 metric tons of e-waste — discarded smart devices and their accessories — and it’s only going to get worse.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/06/ethical-smartphone-conscious-consumption/
- How To Transfer To Another Role Within Your Company
This goes beyond delivering excellent results–it’s important to maintain a positive attitude about what you’re currently doing, even when you’re not 100% excited about it. That being said, if you’re looking to move into a different function that requires an entirely different skill-set, you also need to show you possess those abilities already. How? Take on a couple projects that are relevant to your desired role to showcase what you can do.
Before I made the jump from customer service to business development, I took on extra work to help resolve customer issues related to our partnerships. I became an expert in the product and technical details of the product integrations we had with our partner companies. As a result, the business development team included me in their conversations with partners, and I helped negotiate and resolve the technical aspects of our partnership deals.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40520524/how-to-transfer-to-another-role-within-your-company
Photo: Mayur Gala
News You Can Use: 10/11/2017
- Supply chain professionals disagree about value of increased data collection
In IBM’s presentation on Watson and blockchain, the company said supply chains don’t have enough data and that they need more. But according to a presentation from JDA Software, everyone has plenty of data; what’s needed is the right tech for handling and understanding what it means.
- How To Tell Whether You Should Accept A Job Interview
Truth talk: Taking an interview is a chance to have more options, and while options are great, they can also be overwhelming. The “paradox of choice” is a real thing, and opening up the possibilities could toughen an already challenging search process.
If you’re someone who struggles with indecision–like if you’re already torn between other roles you’ve applied for–turning down the chance to dive deeper into something you aren’t even interested in can simplify things.
- John Oliver on the Ways We All Get Screwed by Mergers and Acquisitions (NSFW!)
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/300817 - Study reveals IT security and risk management need work at all companies
security and risk management practices dominate the list of the top five most-mature best practices. That’s good. However, what is not so good is the low percentage of IT organizations that have adopted these crucial security practices formally and consistently. Only about half or fewer of our respondents do so, which means the majority of organizations admit that their security and risk management practices are “informal” or “inconsistent.” In other words, there is a lot of room for improvement.
- U.S. Antitrust Law Is Not Broken
So the focus on consumers is too narrow for ambitious progressives. “We’re trying to agitate a move away from a consumer welfare approach … towards an approach that looks at a variety of factors that I would argue represents a more reality-based understanding of how competition works,” Lina M. Khan, the author of an influential Yale Law Review article on the subject, told the New Republic’s Brian Beutler.
As listed in the congressional Democrats’ new economics platform, those factors might include just about anything people don’t like: “whether mergers reduce wages, cut jobs, lower product quality, limit access to services, stifle innovation, or hinder the ability of small businesses and entrepreneurs to compete.” It continues: “In an increasingly data-driven society, merger standards must explicitly consider the ways in which control of consumer data can be used to stifle competition or jeopardize consumer privacy.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-29/u-s-antitrust-law-is-not-broken
Photo: Arnold Exconde
News You Can Use: 8/16/2017
- China’s Next Target: U.S. Microchip Hegemony
Today, the industry is riven by a nationalist battle between China and the U.S., one that reflects broad currents reshaping the path of globalization. Washington accuses Beijing of using government financing and subsidies to try to dominate semiconductors as it did earlier with steel, aluminum, and solar power. China claims U.S. complaints are a poorly disguised attempt to hobble China’s development. Big U.S. players like Intel Corp. and Micron TechnologyInc. find themselves in a bind—eager to expand in China but wary of losing out to state-sponsored rivals.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-next-target-u-s-microchip-hegemony-1501168303
- Does 99.5% planned uptime = 99.5% actual uptime?
There are 744 hours in a 31-day month. Without digging further into how the vendor calculates the uptime percentage, it would be natural to do simple math and quickly determine that .005 downtime equals four hours per month. This seems very reasonable, on the surface, but remember math is tricky and the vendor controls the math. Some vendors calculate their uptime percentage as:
Actual Hours System Up divided by (Hours in the Month minus Planned Downtime)
The key question to ask is “how much planned downtime do you have in any given month?” You will find a wide array of answers to this question. For example, one leading vendor plans for 40 hours of planned downtime a month to apply patches, fixes, and general system maintenance. The very reasonable four hours of allowed downtime in their marketing equation equals 44 hours, or almost two days, of actual downtime a month. Very tricky!
http://www.cio.com/article/3209041/cloud-computing/does-995-planned-uptime-995-actual-uptime.html
- Kristi Hedges: “The Inspiration Code: How The Best Leaders Energize People
- This is how Travis Kalanick is plotting his comeback as Uber CEO
Some company executives are concerned that Mr. Kalanick could use a SoftBank investment to dilute other shareholders’ stakes while he continues to buy stock back from employees in a bid to amass power. And aligning with Masayoshi Son, the founder and chief executive of SoftBank, could provide Mr. Kalanick with a key ally, especially if Mr. Son seeks to appoint new board members who favor Mr. Kalanick’s return as chief executive as part of an investment.
https://www.fastcompany.com/4045787/this-is-how-travis-kalanick-is-plotting-his-comeback-as-uber-ceo
- Supply chain’s continuing image problem
And this is making recruitment a challenge. DHL surveyed over 350 supply chain and operations professionals in the five major regions of the world as a basis for its research. Fifty-eight percent of the companies surveyed said that it is hard to find potential employees who possess the right combination of tactical/operational expertise and professional competencies such as leadership and analytical skills.
Although supply chain managers are aware that their jobs require taking on a more strategic role, that perception does not seem to be shared by job candidates or even internally at managers’ own companies. According to the DHL report, almost 70 percent of surveyed companies said that their search for supply chain talent is hampered by a “perceived lack of opportunity for career growth” and the “perceived status of supply chain as a profession.” This same misconception is also an internal problem, according to the survey. Only 25 percent of survey participants agreed that their own companies view supply chain as equally important as other disciplines.
http://www.supplychainquarterly.com/news/20170728-supply-chains-continuing-image-problem/
Photo: Bryan Minear
News You Can Use: 5/24/2017
- Former Google worker barred from Uber’s self-driving division by court
A judge has ruled that Uber can keep working on its autonomous vehicles with one key condition: autonomous vehicle lead Anthony Levandowski must be removed from any of Uber’s LiDAR-based efforts. Prior to joining Uber, Levandowski worked for Google’s Waymo division and allegedly took some 14,000 documents pertaining to LiDAR and other self-driving tech on his way out the door. He’s still employed by Uber according to TechCrunch, and has voluntarily removed himself from the autonomous division as of late last month.
TC also reports that the presiding judge ruled that information from Waymo essentially made its way into Uber’s tech by osmosis, “regardless of whether any documents were actually found on Uber computers and devices.”
https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/15/uber-google-waymo-anthonylevandowski/
- Supply chain toolkit: How managers prepare for the next crisis
A tremor hit Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture last year. Hundreds of buildings fell, thousands of people were injured, and, for days, the world watched as a city destroyed picked itself back up. But the ripple effects of the quake spread beyond the island nation to global stores and dealerships as companies like Toyota and Sony halted production due to inventory shortages. Sony later reported the event cost the company over $1 billion.
http://www.supplychaindive.com/news/crisis-management-supply-chain/442273/
“The first thing to do is go out there and get some education,” Schlegel says. “There’s a huge body of knowledge out there, a huge, emerging body in supply chain risk management.”
Step two, Schlegel says, is building that always-hot supply chain buzzword: visibility. And that’s where mapping and monitoring come in. “Most of us don’t have it, whether upstream or downstream.” It’s not just about who suppliers are, or the price, but where they are located, he says. “You have to know where your suppliers, customers, DCs and contractors are. What you don’t know in the global supply chain will hurt you.”
http://www.supplychaindive.com/news/operations-crisis-management-supply-chain/442218/#
- Net Neutrality Update: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (NSFW)
- How To Decline An Opportunity At Work That You Might Want Later On
The message you want to get across is that you’d like to say yes, but unfortunately, this isn’t the best time for you. The tricky part is: That’s the same thing people say if they want to decline, but think punting comes off nicer than a flat no.
To separate yourself from them, keep in mind that you have a totally different motivation. Their goal is to be nice–and hope the other person forgets about them. Your goal, on the other hand, is to share that you’re interested, but genuinely can’t make it work.
- The working dead: IT jobs bound for extinction
“Previously, job seekers with high-demand technical skill sets and expertise were mainly hired into IT departments,” he says. “Nowadays, traditional IT skill sets are in demand across a wider variety of departments—from engineering and product management, to business intelligence and even design.”
Instead of lurking around the server room, many sys admins can be found in marketing or sales departments managing their companies’ CRM implementations, notes CompTIA’s Stanger. But he adds that IT admins can still remain relevant by attuning their skills for the cloud-mobility-IoT era.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3196022/it-careers/the-working-dead-it-jobs-bound-for-extinction.html
Not sure if I agree with everything on this list, but an interesting conversation starter.