🎧 ‘The Daily’: The Rampant Problem of Pregnancy Discrimination | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: The Rampant Problem of Pregnancy Discrimination by Michael Barbaro from New York Times

A New York Times investigation finds that many pregnant women are systematically sidelined at work, passed over for promotions and fired when they complain.

👓 How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters | The New York Times

Read How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters (nytimes.com)
A look at how the professional world differs for men and women, and an implicit critique of a corporate culture that values long hours above all.

📑 How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters | New York Times

Annotated How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters (nytimes.com)
The result of this is easy to see: Those specifically requesting a lighter workload, who were disproportionately women, suffered in their performance reviews; those who took a lighter workload more discreetly didn’t suffer. The maxim of “ask forgiveness, not permission” seemed to apply.  

👓 How Social Media Became a Pink Collar Job | Wired

Read How Social Media Became a Pink Collar Job (WIRED)
When companies ask for sociable, flexible, compassionate workers, they’re silently signaling women to sign-on to an undervalued job that powers the digital economy.
As a country we’re killing ourselves and our economy by devaluing women like this.

👓 Internships at The Spectator for summer 2018; no CVs, please | Spectator

Read Internships at The Spectator for summer 2018; no CVs, please by Fraser Nelson (The Spectator)
Since we abolished CVs for The Spectator’s internship scheme, it has acquired quite a reputation. There are fewer than two dozen journalists here in 22 Old Queen St and we recruit people rarely – but when we do, we seek to recruit from our interns. We’re not the only ones. Our two best interns from last year (the ones asked back for Christmas) have both just been offered jobs by national publications. The best interns we’ve had recently have included a PPE graduate, former teacher and a mum-of-three whose kids are old enough for her to roll the dice and try a new career. In journalism, all that matters is flair, enthusiasm and capacity for hard work. We don’t care where, when or even whether you went to university. That’s why we recruit our interns from aptitude tests alone.
An interesting method for recruitment.

👓 Investing in Skills | Collin Donnell

Read Investing in Skills by Collin Donnell (collindonnell.com)
I’m pretty comfortable on the command line. I can move about, issue commands, edit my profile, pipe things around, all that. However — and I’m probably supposed to admit this with a little shame — I’ve never really learned how to write shell scripts. Usually I’d write a Python script, a small command line app, or hack something together with Automator. It did the same job, but not being able to write a bash script from scratch felt like kind of a blind spot.

👓 Excluded from Confoo Speaker Dinner – What Happened and How It Made Me Feel | Part of a Whole

Read Excluded from Confoo Speaker Dinner – What Happened and How It Made Me Feel by Nicolas Steenhout (Part of a Whole)

I was an invited speaker at the Confoo YVR conference in December 2017. I gave two talks, both on accessibility. I was the only speaker presenting accessibility-related topics. There was a dinner organized for all the speakers. I was precluded from attending that dinner because the organizers selected a venue on the second floor, with no elevators. There was no way for a wheelchair user to access the venue. I felt embarrassed, and angry.

Wow this was pretty shitty…

👓 Combating Sexism in Tech With Honesty: The Impact of Upload’s Silence| Medium | Danny Bittman

Read Combating Sexism in Tech With Honesty: The Impact of Upload’s Silence by Danny Bittman (Medium)
I was the Creative Producer at Upload until most of the Upload San Francisco staff and I quit after a sexual harassment lawsuit was filed…

👓 Americans would be shocked by common resumé practices in Germany | Quartz

Read Americans would be shocked by common resumé practices in Germany by Oliver Staley (Quartz)
Employers want photos, date of birth, marital status—even your parents’ occupations.

👓 “How Do I Get a Job at Automattic?” | Ryan Markel

Read “How Do I Get a Job at Automattic?” by Ryan Markel (Ryan Markel)
I get about a half-dozen emails a year via my contact form asking me this question or asking related questions, like how to craft a resume, or what it’s like to work at Automattic. I thought I’d jot something down so I can just send a link the next time this happens, as my advice hasn’t chan...

👓 Help! My Best Friend Wants to Fake Her Entire Résumé to Get a Better Job. | Slate

Read Help! My Best Friend Wants to Fake Her Entire Résumé to Get a Better Job. (Slate Magazine)
My best friend works in a job that she is grossly overqualified for but that pays better than most entry-level positions in her field.

‘The Strongest Guys Are Often the Worst Construction Workers’ | The Atlantic

Read ‘The Strongest Guys Are Often the Worst Construction Workers’ by Chris Bodenner (The Atlantic)

As a construction laborer, I find that one of the funniest misconceptions about my job is that Hollywood and pretty much all TV show producers seem to think that all construction workers have Brooklyn or Bronx accents from the 1950s. Even when they show construction workers in LA or Dallas, the workers all seem to have Brooklyn accents.

But more seriously, I’ve had people literally tell me that I do “unskilled” or “brainless” work because I’m in construction. Yes, the construction industry is one of the least credentialed industries; you literally do not need a high school diploma. But once you enter the industry, you are expected to learn on the job—and quickly.

This week, I’m putting in a concrete footer/foundation underneath a
120-year-old brick house. That doesn’t require academic credentials, but it does require skill. Guys in my neighborhood have been killed because they did the process wrong.

Many people seem to think that strength is the best quality for a construction worker to have. Actually, even when it comes to the hard laboring jobs, the biggest and strongest guys are often the worst workers. They often get outworked by older, smaller, and/or skinnier or fatter guys. A man who likes to work or has a good attitude towards work can easily outwork a lazy muscular guy.

I had a relative by marriage who ended up disabled after a number of years in construction after episodes of showing off how much he could lift. He’d show up all the other guys on the job site by carrying two of whatever everybody else carried one of, after bragging he could out-lift everyone on site. All this resulted in delays in work followed by multiple back surgeries. I’d bet that some of the men who refused to engage in his petty contests kept their jobs a lot longer than he did.