Tag: Work Life Balance

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News You Can Use: 6/27/2018

The Source: Joey Lombardi: Job Interview

  • What if we killed the job interview?

    In addition to the information interviews should provide but don’t, there’s also a great deal of information they shouldn’t provide but do. The latter isn’t just “noisy” data in the sense of not improving predictiveness–it’s actually toxic, focusing interviewers’ attention on problematic traits. For example, it’s all but impossible to ignore (and make biased, misguided assumptions about) a candidate’s gender, age, race, appearance, or social class, even when the most conscientious recruiter or hiring manager strives to prevent these factors from influencing her decision making. In fact, the more we try to ignore these qualities, the more present they’ll be in our minds.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40579524/what-if-we-killed-the-job-interview

  • You gave your notice, and your boss gives a counteroffer. Now what?

    Ultimately, only you can decide whether you should stay or go when you’re presented with a counteroffer. However, many experts are quick to warn job seekers that accepting a counteroffer can be complex.

    First and foremost, you’ve already demonstrated to your existing employer that you’re on the lookout for greener pastures. The fact that you were strongly considering leaving could deem you as a flight risk. And, as terrifying as it sounds, there’s no guaranteeing that your employer didn’t just counteroffer to buy themselves some time to find your replacement.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40580163/you-gave-your-notice-and-your-boss-gives-a-counteroffer-now-what

  • How women and men approach money differently
  • Europe’s New Copyright Rules Will Be Devastating to the Internet as We Know It

    The EU proposal in question is an attempt to shore up existing problems with EU copyright law. But the poorly crafted nature of the effort could have a profoundly negative impact on everything from your ability to share hot memes to the survival of new startups.

    For example, Article 13 of the plan declares that any website that lets users upload text, sounds, images, code, or other copyrighted works for public consumption will need to employ automated systems that filter these submissions against a database of copyrighted works.

    Such automated internet filters (whether policing speech, porn, or copyrighted material) not only routinely don’t work very well, they tend to result in rampant collateral damage as legitimate content gets caught in the poorly-crafted automated dragnet.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3aa5b/europes-new-copyright-rules-will-be-devastating-to-the-internet-as-we-know-it

  • Yes, your employer is probably monitoring your Slack or email activity

    The survey was conducted by Alfresco, a digital business platform, which received responses from 307 IT professionals who work at U.S. and U.K. companies with over 500 employees. The results are both illuminating and alarming. They say that 98% of companies monitor their employees’ digital activity, while 11% of employees aren’t aware that their company captures digital activity at all.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40583634/yes-your-employer-is-probably-monitoring-your-slack-or-email-activity

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

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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

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News You Can Use: 12/20/2017

  • Jailed for a Text: China’s Censors Are Spying on Mobile Chat Groups

    In China’s swiftly evolving new world of state surveillance, there are fewer and fewer private spaces. Authorities who once had to use informants to find out what people said in private now rely on a vast web of new technology. They can identify citizens as they walk down the street, monitor their online behavior and snoop on cellphone messaging apps to identify suspected malcontents.

    Years ago, in the Mao Zedong era, people were sent to prison, labor camps and death for opinions expressed in private. In the decades since China launched economic reforms after Mao’s death, prosperity and social mobility created room for more personal freedom and expression. Now China appears to be reverting to old form, empowered by new digital surveillance tools.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/jailed-for-a-text-chinas-censors-are-spying-on-mobile-chat-groups-1512665007

  • Billionaire CEO Michael Dell tells employees, forget hierarchy: ‘Be willing to break things, make stuff happen’

    “At our company, if we want to get something done, we tell them: ‘Just get it done. If anybody gets in your way, just shoot them.’ Not actually shoot them, but like, we’re all from Texas, so we use colorful analogies like that,” says Dell. “Make sure everybody knows we’re not actually shooting” people, Dell says. (Dell is headquartered in Round Rock, Texas.)

    “Don’t let anything stand in your way. Look, if you’re gonna do something new, you have to be willing to break things, and sort of make stuff happen,” says Dell. “If you have a big company, there are a lot of people running around that tell you you can’t do stuff.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/07/billionaire-michael-dell-on-success-take-risks-make-stuff-happen.html

  • How to Rebuild a Relationship After a Difference of Opinion
  • Too Many Meetings Suffocate Productivity and Morale

    So, my appeal to all you entrepreneurs, don’t suffocate the life out of your companies with too many meetings. Hire smart people, trust them to do their jobs, and get the heck out of their way, so they can do the jobs they were hired to do. You don’t have to micro manage every single decision. Empower your team to make their own decisions in a flat organizational structure. Even if they make mistakes, that is fine, they will learn from them. But, the team will be moving twice as fast at getting things done, than if they were burdened with a bunch of meetings. Speed matters with startups.

    Challenge yourself and every employee in your company to cap their recurring weekly meetings at 20 percent of their time. That is one day a week, or eight hours in a normal working day. That is up to 16 thirty-minute meetings they can schedule, plenty of slots to working with.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/304610

  • Drone curbs overtime in Japan by blasting workers with music

    Japan has a culture that encourages overtime out of a sense of loyalty, and that’s a serious problem. It not only cuts into family and social life, it leads to entirely avoidable deaths. Taisei (the company behind the main Tokyo 2020 Olympic stadium) aims to fix that in an unusual way: having a drone nag you into going home. Its newly unveiled T-Frend is ostensibly a security drone that surveils the office with its camera, but its specialty is blasting workers with “Auld Lang Syne” (commonly used in Japan to indicate closing time) to force them out of the office. In theory, the music and the drone’s own buzzing make it impossible to concentrate.

    https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/07/drone-curbs-overtime-in-japan-by-blasting-workers-with-music/

Photo: Samuel Zeller