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Tag: Bloomberg

1 June 2021

Quitting instead of returning to the office

I’ve worked from home since 2012, and what was once unusual was becoming more normal even before the pandemic. Now that remote working has been proved to work, I can’t see why anyone (other than those who perhaps enjoy office politics and after-work drinks a little more than they should) would want to go back full-time…

While companies from Google to Ford Motor Co. and Citigroup Inc. have promised greater flexibility, many chief executives have publicly extolled the importance of being in offices. Some have lamented the perils of remote work, saying it diminishes collaboration and company culture. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon said at a recent conference that it doesn’t work “for those who want to hustle.”

But legions of employees aren’t so sure. If anything, the past year has proved that lots of work can be done from anywhere, sans lengthy commutes on crowded trains or highways. Some people have moved. Others have lingering worries about the virus and vaccine-hesitant colleagues.

And for Twidt, there’s also the notion that some bosses, particularly those of a generation less familiar to remote work, are eager to regain tight control of their minions.

“They feel like we’re not working if they can’t see us,” she said. “It’s a boomer power-play.”

Source: Return to Office: Employees Are Quitting Instead of Giving Up Work From Home – Bloomberg

26 November 2020

He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them

🎺 What Time Feels Like When You’re Improvising — “A great example of flow state is found in many improvised art forms, from music to acting to comedy to poetry, also known as “spontaneous creativity.” Improvisation is a highly complex form of creative behavior that justly inspires our awe and admiration. The ability to improvise requires cognitive flexibility, divergent thinking and discipline-specific skills, and it improves with training.”

💼 SEC proposes rules for giving gig workers equity — “The five-year pilot program would allow gig companies to issue equity as long as it’s no more than 15% of a worker’s compensation during a 12-month period, and no more than $75,000 in value during a 36-month period (based on the share price when it’s issued).”

🧠 Your Brain Is Not for Thinking — “Your brain’s most important job isn’t thinking; it’s running the systems of your body to keep you alive and well. According to recent findings in neuroscience, even when your brain does produce conscious thoughts and feelings, they are more in service to the needs of managing your body than you realize.”

✊ Social Unrest Is the Inevitable Legacy of the Covid Pandemic — “Like turpentine on flames, Covid-19 has rekindled older divisions, resentments and inequities across the world. In the U.S., Black Americans suffer disproportionately from police brutality, but also from the coronavirus — now these traumas merge. And everywhere, the poor fare worse than the rich.”

👣 A new love for medieval-style travel — “We might today think of pilgrimage as a specifically religious form of travel. But even in the past, the sightseeing was as important as the spirituality. Dr Marion Turner, a scholar at Oxford University who studies Geoffrey Chaucer, points out that “it was a time away from ordinary society, and allowed for a time of play.”

Quotation-as-title by Dr Johnson. Image via xkcd.

xkcd: cellphone functions

11 October 2019

Friday fawnings

On this week’s rollercoaster journey, I came across these nuggets:

  • Renata Ávila: “The Internet of creation disappeared. Now we have the Internet of surveillance and control” (CCCB Lab) — “This lawyer and activist talks with a global perspective about the movements that the power of “digital colonialism” is weaving. Her arguments are essential for preventing ourselves from being crushed by the technological world, from being carried away by the current of ephemeral divertemento. For being fully aware that, as individuals, our battle is not lost, but that we can control the use of our data, refuse to give away our facial recognition or demand that the privacy laws that protect us are obeyed.”
  • Everything Is Private Equity Now (Bloomberg) — “The basic idea is a little like house flipping: Take over a company that’s relatively cheap and spruce it up to make it more attractive to other buyers so you can sell it at a profit in a few years. The target might be a struggling public company or a small private business that can be combined—or “rolled up”—with others in the same industry.”
  • Forget STEM, We Need MESH (Our Human Family) — “I would suggest a renewed focus on MESH education, which stands for Media Literacy, Ethics, Sociology, and History. Because if these are not given equal attention, we could end up with incredibly bright and technically proficient people who lack all capacity for democratic citizenship.”
  • Connecting the curious (Harold Jarche) — “If we want to change the world, be curious. If we want to make the world a better place, promote curiosity in all aspects of learning and work. There are still a good number of curious people of all ages working in creative spaces or building communities around common interests. We need to connect them.”
  • Twitter: No, really, we’re very sorry we sold your security info for a boatload of cash (The Register) — “The social networking giant on Tuesday admitted to an “error” that let advertisers have access to the private information customers had given Twitter in order to place additional security protections on their accounts.”
  • Digital tools interrupt workers 14 times a day (CIO Dive) — “The constant chime of digital workplace tools including email, instant messaging or collaboration software interrupts knowledge workers 13.9 times on an average day, according to a survey of 3,750 global workers from Workfront.”
  • Book review – Curriculum: Athena versus the Machine (TES) — “Despite the hope that the book is a cure for our educational malaise, Curriculum is a morbid symptom of the current political and intellectual climate in English education.”
  • Fight for the planet: Building an open platform and open culture at Greenpeace (Opensource.com) — “Being as open as we can, pushing the boundaries of what it means to work openly, doesn’t just impact our work. It impacts our identity.”
  • Psychodata (Code Acts in Education) — “Social-emotional learning sounds like a progressive, child-centred agenda, but behind the scenes it’s primarily concerned with new forms of child measurement.”

Image via xkcd