EppsNet Archive: Work

Purpose in the Workplace

by  on 
 

There was a Harris Poll survey years ago that asked employees how connected they were to the purpose and core values of their company. 37 percent of these US workforce employees clearly knew their company’s purpose. 20 percent were enthusiastic about the purpose of the company. 20 percent could see how they as an employee could support the purpose of the company. 15 percent felt enabled to work toward the purpose 20 percent fully trusted the company that employed them. Is that a good set of statistics or not? It’s not unexpected when you look at the US workforce right now. What if that were a football team? So what if you’re the quarterback on this football team and on this football team, on the offensive side, there are 11 players and you find among all 11 players that only four of them know which goal they’re going to. That… Read more →

Now Here’s a Guy Who Gets Me

by  on The Programmer
 

I teach programming classes for a living. The classes are 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 12 weeks. I put a lot of preparation into it because I want students to have the best, most up-to-date and relevant instruction. It’s a good job for me. Programming seems to me like an important, valuable skill . . . it’s allowed me to make a living doing (for the most part) things I like and things I’m good at. It gives you a lot of options. You don’t have to work for a tech company. Almost any field of endeavor now uses software and data and they hire programmers. You can work in education, healthcare, finance, sports, whatever energizes you. So it’s good to have a job where I feel like I’m helping people. The downside is that the students can’t really tell good instruction from bad instruction. Yes,… Read more →

Cyber Liability Insurance

by  on 
 

“Does your company have cyber liability insurance?” an insurance agent asks me. “It protects you against hacking.” “No one I work with is smart enough to hack into anything,” I reply. “Do we still need it?” Read more →

Why is Sexual Harassment the Only Workplace Malfunction That Merits National Attention?

by  on The Programmer
 

Many workers in Silicon Valley have said tech companies aren’t doing enough to promote women and minorities, or to stamp out misogyny and harassment. — wsj.com “Not doing enough” . . . I remember last year a female engineer at Uber wrote in a blog post that she was being harassed and mistreated and Uber actually hired the former attorney general of the United States to launch an investigation. One woman! The assertion that Uber in particular and Silicon Valley in general are cesspools of misogyny is based on confirmation bias and small sample sizes. Uber has more than 16,000 employees in 600 cities and 65 countries. If you’re inclined to believe that women are more virtuous and vulnerable than men, then the reported experience of one person out of 16,000 may be enough to confirm you in your view of the world. A man (or woman) hears what he… Read more →

How Our Careers Affect Our Children

by  on 
 

Mothers spending time on themselves — on relaxation and self-care — and not so much on housework, was associated with positive outcomes for children. It’s not just a matter of mothers being at home versus at work, it’s what they do when they’re at home with their non-work time. If mothers were not with their children so they could take care of themselves, there was no ill effect on their children.  But to the extent that mothers were engaged in housework, children were more likely to be beset by behavior problems. — “How Our Careers Affect Our Children”, Harvard Business Review We’re studying the effects of working mothers, mothers spending time on themselves, mothers engaged in housework . . . I wonder what is the effect of mothers actually spending time with their children? Read more →

Daily Affirmation

by  on 
 

I start my daily commute by saying “OK Google, drive to work” into my phone, and Google responds by showing me the fastest route. This morning, Google thought I said “have to work”: Read more →

Amazon Has Good News and Bad News for You on the Minimum Wage

by  on 
 

Good News: We are raising the minimum wage for all U.S. employees to $15 an hour. Bad News: We’re replacing all of you with robots. Read more →

Company Picnic

by  on 
 

A highly placed manager at work shows up next to me in the men’s room. “You going to the company picnic?” he shouts. He’s a boisterous guy. “Yes!” I reply. “Looking forward to taking a few throws at you in the dunk tank.” “Dunk tank?!” he says. “There’s not going to be any dunk tank.” “Oh . . . in that case I’m not going.” Read more →

Life Gets Better After 50?

by  on 
 

About 15 years ago, economists made an unexpected finding: the U-shaped happiness curve. Other things being equal – that is, once conditions such as income, employment, health and marriage are factored out of the equation – life satisfaction declines from our early 20s until we hit our 50s. Then it turns around and rises, right through late adulthood. — The Guardian So once you factor out all the things that make life miserable, it turns out older people can be just as happy as anyone else! Read more →

Girls With Working Moms Fare Better?

by  on 
 

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 →

Is Sustainability Sustainable?

by  on 
 

We had a Sustainability Fair at work today . . . ironically, sustainability is a topic that I’m not able to sustain an interest in . . . Read more →

Diversity in Tech Efforts Self-Defeating?

by  on The Programmer
 

Panelists at the Inclusion in Tech summit lamented that we can’t tell if tech is doing better on diversity because the data stinks. My advice would be don’t worry about it. A lot of the noise around diversity in technology is self-defeating. If you’re a member of an underrepresented group, all you hear is that technology fields are hostile and awful and unwelcoming, you won’t be treated fairly, etc. And you wonder why certain groups are underrepresented? You’ve answered your own question. Why would anyone who wants to have a happy life pursue a career beset by unfairness and hardship? Why not instead be a meeting planner or a flight attendant? Asians are overrepresented in technology jobs but that’s a relatively recent development in the history of these fields. I don’t remember, when this transition from underrepresented to overrepresented was happening, hearing a lot about how technology fields were hostile… Read more →

The More We Rely on Technology . . .

by  on 
 

We had a brief network outage at the office, during which Mr. Frick walked over to Mr. Frack’s desk and said, “The network’s down. We can’t do the screen share,” i.e., they can’t see each other’s computer screen over the network because it’s down. I was waiting for one of them — Frick or Frack — to say “Let’s just sit together in front of the one computer here like they used to in olden days” but neither of them ever did . . . Read more →

More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Work Hard, Play Hard

by  on 
 

You work hard? Is that a boast? Maybe you have to work hard because you lack talent and finesse. You play hard? Are you a bad loser? Are you an even worse winner? How do those two words even go together — “play” and “hard”? Read more →

A Man Combing His Hair in Public

by  on 
 

A man in the men’s room at work this morning pulled out a comb and started combing his hair. No, it wasn’t Edd “Kookie” Burns. I mentioned this to a couple of co-workers, neither of whom found it striking, but I haven’t seen a man comb his hair in public since Happy Days went off the air . . . Read more →

Camille Paglia on #MeToo and Damsels in Distress

by  on 
 

The big question is whether the present wave of revelations, often consisting of unsubstantiated allegations from decades ago, will aid women’s ambitions in the long run or whether it is already creating further problems by reviving ancient stereotypes of women as hysterical, volatile and vindictive. My philosophy of equity feminism demands removal of all barriers to women’s advancement in the political and professional realms. However, I oppose special protections for women in the workplace. Treating women as more vulnerable, virtuous or credible than men is reactionary, regressive and ultimately counterproductive. Complaints to the Human Resources department after the fact are no substitute for women themselves drawing the line against offensive behavior — on the spot and in the moment. Working-class women are often so dependent on their jobs that they cannot fight back, but there is no excuse for well-educated, middle-class women to elevate career advantage or fear of social… Read more →

Some Links on Effective Communication

by  on 
 

Busting myths on gender differences in the brain (Article) Nora Caplan-Bricker, “The Idea of a ‘Male Brain’ and a ‘Female Brain’ Is Likely a Myth,” Slate, November 2, 2015. Challenges and strategies for creating safe communication spaces at work (Article) James R. Detert and Ethan R. Burris, “Can Your Employees Really Speak Freely?,” Harvard Business Review, vol. 94, no. 1 (January/February 2016): p. 80-87. Communication comes in all shapes and sizes (Video) Nancy Lublin, “Texting That Saves Lives,” TEDvideo, 5:24, February 2012. Do men and women communicate differently? (Article) Deborah Cameron, “What Language Barrier?,” The Guardian, October 1, 2007. Find out the meaning behind emojis (Website) “Emojipedia.” Game-changing communication developments (Article) Amber Leigh Turner, “5 Trends Disrupting Communication,” TNW News. How the medium of communications can change what we say (Article) “Tweets From Mobile Devices Are More Likely to Be Egocentric,” International Communications Association press release, October 1, 2015. Leaders can change their power… Read more →

« Previous Page — Next Page »