A late February batch of links
Since the most recent batch of links went out, paying subscribers received a meditation on five years since the pandemic set in, then an essay about dealing better with pressure. This coming weekend, they’ll enjoy a reflection on the difference between tolerance and acceptance.
Below, you’ll find a batch of links that represent the themes of this newsletter, which are career development, community building, and self care.
Gen Z battling with phone anxiety are taking telephobia courses to learn the lost art of a call.People are bound to make fun of these sessions, but if someone come of age not knowing how to politely and properly do something, then they will require guidance on it. In another generation, people needed sessions to learn how to boot up a computer program they were unfamiliar with. This is the other end of that same idea.
In national DEI dismantle, corporate charity efforts could be next.
Gen Z has turned against taking middle management roles. This is the new way of work, not to attach yourself to traditional career-building practices, to always be thinking about growing as an individual contributor - and to remain a doer, not a manager. It’s going to make for better companies in the long run, but the transition will be rocky for a few years as people adjust to what to do with these born contributors.
In an RTO world, who gets to WFH?
How to learn to work with your new AI coworker. The example that the agency head interviewed here gives about Davos made me laugh so loudly. Ask everyone how they use AI, not just if they do. They tell on themselves when they reveal the old processes they depended on to do their work. Just a ridiculous example given there for how to maximize efficiency post-Davos.
The men's loneliness epidemic might not exist. This is a fascinating discussion that works against the popular narrative that men are struggling. I will say that even if the data might not support the narrative, my experience has been over this past year that some men indeed are going through it, seeing therapists for the first time, and other men might just be usually unusual, neglecting to do the internal work as always. I doubt most men are actually okay right now, though.
The surprising theory that explains modern American life.
It’s hard to leave a bad job because it’s still a job, and switching industries or taking risks is tough. We know sharp interventions help people break habits, and physical relocation resets habits. If you leave a declining industry and move to a new town, you’ll likely take a job in a growing sector, speeding up the [economic] transition.
What comes after the DEI backlash?
The revolt of the ‘low performers’.
This is something we haven't seen before in the professional world: Employees sticking up for themselves in public, and calling out their former employer for misrepresenting their work. When LinkedIn introduced the #opentowork feature during the early days of the pandemic, it was a tall order to get people to announce that they'd been laid off. In the past, people usually kept their dismissal private, fearing the stigma would prevent them from getting another job.
Talking Money—And Taxes—At Work.
How HR Can Respond to Rising CEO and C-Suite Turnover. “He also shared that a shrinking market of willing executives is a rising problem that he sees in this level of the labor market, and he noted that product, engineering and go-to-market functions have seen increased turnover, though he does not attribute it to recent trends.” This sounds right to me, that people aren’t sticking around in roles that aren’t well-suited for them, that a subset of them don’t want to be executives because they’ve been paying attention this whole time.
How Young Financial Advisors Can Overcome Age Bias.
After claiming remote workers are actually golfing, Trump again hits the links in Florida. Only because this headline made me laugh aloud. For thee, but not for me.