Earlier this year, the Quartz at Work team decided to try a 30-minute exercise that we hoped would make us collectively less anxious and more productive.
Some people use Twitter to argue politics. Some use it to make jokes, report news, or advance social movements. The US president has in recent weeks used it to insult foreign leaders and promote an anti-muslim extremist organization. But on Friday, more than 1,000 people used Twitter to respond to a prompt that just asked them to be nice: “Who is a person (not counting family) that opened doors for you in your career when they didn’t have to? Anytime is a good time to show gratitude!”
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I know, I know, you didn’t know. The allegations are shocking and upsetting. You’ve known him for years as a colleague and a friend, and you never imagined he was capable of sexual harassment.
I learned that robots could do my job just as I was about to graduate from college, in 2010. My university’s computer science department had created a new class for journalists during my senior year, and I had enrolled in a last-ditch effort to acquire marketable skills.
Humans have condensed the world’s information into a device that fits inside a pocket, created cars that drive themselves, and are planning to colonize Mars. But we are still regularly challenged by remote meetings that start like this:
As a millennial person, I have often felt that my generation is studied as though it were a recently discovered exotic species. Management consulting firms plot our “shared values” and “international mobility.” Book after book after book informs our bosses how to deal with our need for constant feedback and our lack of loyalty.
In an attempt to demonstrate that “the President has many military options to defeat any threat,” US Air Force B-1 bombers and F-15 jets flew close to North Korea’s East Coast on Saturday (Sept. 23).
“Rocket Man!“
Facebook is nixing its plan to create a class of non-voting stock.
The latest Republican effort to dismember Obamacare seemed on the brink of failure, the US was recovering from not one but two massive natural disasters, and the White House was weighing North Korea’s warning that it may test a bomb over the Pacific Ocean. But during a campaign rally in Alabama on Friday (Sept. 22), Donald Trump wanted to talk about football.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is surely one of the most accomplished humans on Earth. He’s the CEO of its most profitable company and the first openly gay CEO of the Fortune 500. He made $145 million last year. But when asked about his legacy on Wednesday (Sept. 20), he didn’t mention any of his many achievements.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has openly campaigned for gay marriage, opposed “religious freedom laws,” and loudly criticized president Donald Trump’s immigration policy proposals, despite a tradition of US corporate leaders keeping political views to themselves. Speaking at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum today (Sept. 20), Cook explained why.
When Jim Dykstra became part owner of his family’s auto repair service business in 1994, mechanics diagnosed car problems by looking under the hood. Soon after, car manufacturers started to add computer controls to vehicles’ steering wheels, airbags, brakes, windows, mirrors, and just about everything else. Dykstra’s current Audi has around 75 computer modules in it, and employees at his three repair shops near Grand Rapids, Michigan, are more appropriately called “technicians” than mechanics.
When Foxconn announced last month that it would build a factory in Wisconsin, the state’s governor hopefully renamed the county where it would be located—Paul Ryan’s district—“Wisconn Valley.”
On Sunday, GoDaddy announced it would no longer house the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that promotes white supremacist and white nationalist views, giving it 24 hours to find a new provider for the domain. By Monday, the Daily Stormer had moved to Google’s domain-registration service, which forced Google to make a decision about whether or not to ban it. It didn’t take long.
American jobs are grueling, according to a newly published RAND survey.
Facebook’s apps are almost entirely banned in China. But the social network appears to have secretly authorized the release of one app in the country—minus the Facebook branding.
You may have heard about Chiara Ferragni, who started a personal style blog as a 27-year-old that now generates $8 million per year. Or Johnny Ward, who started blogging about his travels as a budget backpacker and ended up with a successful media company. Or the food blogger who earns $150,000 per year.
The “Humidity Fighting Duvet” looks a lot like a typical Kickstarter project. “I would definitely consider myself a Duvet nerd,” begins a three-minute video describing the invention, which also includes shots of someone holding a notepad, a discussion involving squares of wool and rolls of fabric, and a brief overview of variable humidity versus temperature.
In an effort to recruit more diverse workforces, companies have hired chief diversity officers, set solid goals, and installed new policies that aim to curb bias. One of the largest enterprise software companies in the world is making a case that technology can help, too.
On Aug. 2, Amazon set out to hire 50,000 people, with a dozen job fairs held at sites around the United States. So far it has received 20,000 applications.
Many of the nearly 100 “coding bootcamps” that offer full-time, in-person instruction in the United States and Canada boast close to a 100% success at placing students in entry level jobs as programmers, which can pay as much as $80,000 per year.
A US district judge dismissed a lawsuit on Aug. 1 that will keep alive the Teamsters’ effort to unionize Lyft, Uber, and other independent drivers in Seattle—at least for now.
