The author is chasing his tail in so many different directions that it’s hard to respond. You should not write a looong post on “misinformation” without defining “misinformation.” For example, during COVID, a NY Times reporter said that getting a COVID vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting or spreading COVID. Our government labeled that as “misinformation” and coerced tech companies to ban the reporter from social media. Of course, now we know that statement to be true. I could go through more examples but the point is that labeling something as “misinformation” is arbitrary. Pending a definition, I’ll say that “misinformation” generally means “something I don’t want you to read or hear” and is protected speech. The author mentions hate speech. Hate speech is protected speech. Supreme Court precedent is very clear on this. The author mentions fraud. Fraud is the intentional act of deceiving someone to gain a benefit.… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: LinkedIn
Your Karma Ran Over Your Dogma
Brian Thompson is the United Healthcare CEO who was shot to death. Some of these comments on this post are really ghoulish. “Obviously murdering someone is inappropriate. However, . . .” I mean, where do we set the bar here? “Obviously murdering someone is inappropriate. However, I did pay $15 extra for express shipping and my package still arrived late.” Or “Who do I have to kill to get an online flight with this airline?” You can come up with more examples yourself. I hope your dogma gets run over by your karma. Read more →
I Know Why You’re Not Getting Hired
I can tell you why you’re not being hired but you know already. People like to hire people who look like themselves and fit in with the group. My experience with that was when I moved into the “white, male, over 40” group. I didn’t look like a typical software engineer anymore (a young person’s profession), I didn’t fit in with the group, and I wasn’t adding any diversity points. (Age doesn’t count as diversity, it’s just age.) The saving grace is that my profession is performance oriented so if you know things that others don’t know and you can solve problems that others can’t solve, which is demonstrable at interviews, you can get hired. I do not have a solution to your problem but I wish you the best. Read more →
Working Remote is Not All Good or All Bad
The posts I read on remote work are too black and white: remote work is good or remote work is bad. I’ve worked from home. I liked it and I understand why people like it. But it’s not without problems. Off the top of my head: decrease in corporate culture, cybersecurity issues, isolation, distractions, slower work, difficulties in onboarding and training, communication, work-life balance, people are burning out on Zoom calls. IMO, anyone writing a post on how great remote work is should be required to address the obvious problems. Thus spoke The Programmer Read more →
Employee Loyalty
This is deplorable conduct obviously, but I see a lot of “if companies continue to act this way, there will be no employee loyalty” posts and I always wonder if employee loyalty is a real thing. I have to admit here that while I’ve always tried to do my best work as a matter of personal pride, I’ve never made a decision in life based on my loyalty to a company, e.g., I’ve never said, nor can I imagine myself saying, something like “What you’re proposing would improve my financial situation, but I can’t do it because it would be disloyal to my employer.” Does anyone really do things like that? Read more →
Complacent Mental Laziness
I can’t find even one comment on this LinkedIn post from someone who went to X and did a search for “billie eilish donald trump” and discovered, as I did, that that video is all over the platform. It’s not deleted. Or forget the search. Even the phrasing is an obvious lie. How can you retweet something if it’s been banned? Complacent mental laziness is a national disease at this point. Read more →
The Three Nevers of Working With Recruiters
I recently read a LinkedIn post written by a recruiter, the gist of which was that recruiters are fully transparent with candidates, therefore candidates should be fully transparent with recruiters, and candidates who are not fully transparent about things like current salary are “cagey.” That was the word the author used — “cagey.” Multiple other recruiters added supportive comments. Full transparency is not a quality I associate with recruiters, even though I’ve worked with some excellent recruiters that I like a lot. Recruiters work for clients. They get paid by clients. When they submit you for a job, they also submit multiple other candidates to compete with you because that maximizes their chances of getting paid. I suppose everyone knows this but it’s never mentioned. It’s not something recruiters are transparent about. Never tell a recruiter your current salary. In some localities, like my state of California, asking a candidate’s… Read more →
I Don’t Think the Jobs Report Was Good
I don’t think the jobs report was good. I don’t think the economy is good. I just read a series of comments on the story linked above and commenters were euphoric. Why do we see one sunny report after another on jobs, unemployment and the economy while Forbes reports that 40% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and 29% are doing even worse, i.e., their income doesn’t cover their expenses? Why has the sentiment on LinkedIn been so dismal? The jobs numbers are illusory. The jobs are all part time. Last month’s jobs were all part time. Full-time employment actually went down. We’ve added 6.2 million jobs since May 2022 and full-time employment has gone up by only 263,000. Number of jobs “created” has gone up much faster than number of people employed, I suspect because a single person working multiple jobs counts as multiple jobs. The unemployment numbers… Read more →
I Got Mine
I read a post today on LinkedIn that started out like this: “Your salary increase will be 2%,” I told her. It was one of my worst moments as a people leader. She was my star performer, my right hand person. 1000% business critical to our team. Yet 2% was the best our company would give her. It was far beneath her value, and we both knew it, and I couldn’t do better for her. The author goes on to say that he advised her to look for a new job that would pay what she’s worth, which she did. And the moral of the story is that you can’t complain when employees leave if you don’t give them reasons to stay. Surprisingly to me, the poster got a lot of recognition and praise for his handling of this tale of woe. I don’t like the story myself. As I… Read more →
Something is Really Wrong
I just read another LinkedIn post from a person who lost her job and wanted to say farewell to colleagues. I’ve read a lot of posts like this. Probably you have as well. This one was the last straw. I’ve begun to feel like I’m watching something terrible happening right in front of me without saying anything about it. My dad graduated from the Naval Academy, served his country, got his first civilian job and worked at that company his entire life. It wasn’t uncommon for men of that generation to work their whole career at one company. It’s not possible that those companies never had a bad quarter or a bad year, but they managed downturns without layoffs. Workers weren’t acquired and disposed of like potted plants. This was before human dignity was replaced by managerial elites with no interest in the development, prosperity, security, freedom or well-being of… Read more →
Morality of Student Loan Debt
I saw a post on LinkedIn in which the poster shared that his son got a college acceptance letter, but the son felt guilty about how it might affect the family finances. The poster shared the following question: Parents and Students – how have you managed this experience, dealt with any guilt, and yet maintained your excitement for the incredible experience ahead of you? My answer: How did we manage the experience? We always emphasized education in the Epps household. My son worked very hard in high school, got admitted to his dream college. What would we say at that point? “Congratulations, son! As a reward for your efforts, we’re going to allow you to take on student loan debt that will haunt you for the rest of your life”? Maybe “immoral” is too strong a word for that but I have a deep negative feeling about parents letting kids… Read more →
Asking for Help
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals — I saw a post on LinkedIn from a woman who just lost her job at Google. There are lots of layoffs happening in the US economy. Joe Biden says the American economy is “stronger than hell” but I can assure you that the economy in Hell is much stronger than the Biden economy in the US. No layoffs here, ever. The LinkedIn poster said, “I feel God’s grace in this transition and know He has greater things ahead.” I can’t help noticing that people who believe that God is going to make good things happen in their life have a lot of bad things happen in their life. Check back in when you lose a limb, honey. See you in Hell . . . Read more →
Ukraine Needs Missiles!
Don’t Believe Your Eyes, the Economy is Strong!
BREAKING Spokesperson for Hell disputes Biden’s claim that the U.S. economy is “strong as hell” Quote: “Data shows Hell’s economy is currently much stronger than America’s” pic.twitter.com/czwnQAMGCn — News That Matters (@ThatmattersNews) October 17, 2022 According to LinkedIn, here are some of the companies doing layoffs so far in February: Convoy Tackle DocuSign KPMG Wix The RealReal DigitalOcean Bank of America Criteo Sprinklr PICO ServiceTitan Vicarious Surgical Betterment Divvy Homes Neiman Marcus Group Udemy iRobot LinkedIn Terminus Showtime HackerEarth Channel Advisor United Talent Agency Electric Collective Health TripleLift Rigetti Computing Twilio Daily Harvest Dandy Bark Olive AI News Corp Yahoo GitHub GitLab Disney GoDaddy JPMorgan Chase Affirm Medly Gusto Nomad Health Zoom Magic Eden Protocol Labs Bittrex Chainalysis Prime Trust CoinTracker VinFast Gong EBay Secureworks Boeing Dell Technologies Clari Workato Drift Kyruus Desktop Metal Getir Salesforce Highspot Getaround Autodesk Tilting Point Mindstrong Athenahealth Genesys Replica Sendoso Articulate MediaMath Dialpad Wheel… Read more →
LinkedIn Recommendation, First Draft
One of the most distinguished and highly reputable dignitaries in our national economy. Not only an inspired and enthusiastic creator of material assets but he is also an outstanding figure, a national benefactor, author of good deeds, in fact a patron commanding nationwide gratitude: aere perennius, full of good deeds and charitable activity, unprecedented in the annals of our more recent past, an exemplary and significant figure, meritorious public worker and pioneer. Too much? Read more →
An Open Letter to My Former CEO
Today is my last day with Company X. I’ve really enjoyed working with my colleagues. That said, the events of two weeks ago really made me ill. To call an all-hands webinar, announce that the company is losing too much money, as a result of which 80 people will have their jobs taken away, then boom, meeting over. Not even the decency to take a comment or question. I feel like those 80 people probably did not lose the money, probably just did what they were told to do to the best of their ability. The responsibility for losing the money lies with whoever told them what to do, starting with the CEO. There’s a law of the sea, I think it’s a good law, that the captain goes down with his ship. Not that he grabs hold of 80 people and throws them overboard, then follows up with a… Read more →
How Long Does it Take to Get Hired?
From LinkedIn News: How long does it take to get hired? That depends on the field of work you’re in, according to a new analysis by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team looking at confirmed hires on the platform from June 2020 to March 2021. The data shows that technical positions take the longest time to fill (the median turnaround in engineering is 49 days). By contrast, everything moves faster in non-technical fields, such as sales (38 days) and customer service (34 days). I’m a software engineer. I did a phone interview with Company A, two managers on the call, we did a tech screen and the gist of it was, “Great job, we’ll set you up for the next interview a week from tomorrow.” Meanwhile Company B did one Zoom call and was ready to make an offer the next day. Top candidates are not going to stay on the market… Read more →
Minimum Wage: $33.58/hr?
Here’s a factoid someone posted on LinkedIn: If the minimum wage had kept up with CEO pay since 1978, it would be $33.58 an hour now. Assuming that’s true, it’s also true that a lot of people do not have skills worth $33.58/hr and it would therefore be illegal for those people to have a job. Also, no one is required to work for minimum wage. If you want to make $33.58/hr, get a job that pays that. If you can’t, then be happy that $33.58/hr isn’t the minimum wage and you can still get a job that pays what your skills are worth. Read more →
Girls With Working Moms Fare Better?
Via LinkedIn: Girls who grow up with working moms are more likely to have careers themselves and to have higher paying jobs in the future, according to a report in Fortune, citing study data. The research found that, “daughters of working mothers in the U.S. make about 23% more than daughters of stay-at-home mothers.” This article is headlined — inaccurately, in my view — Girls with working moms fare better. Shouldn’t the headline stay with the facts and say “Girls with working moms make more money” instead of “Girls with working moms fare better”? “Fare better” seems to reflect an inappropriately narrow obsession with money as the only metric for measuring life outcomes. misrepresents facts to promote an opinion, i.e., “working moms are good for society.” Read more →