An early August batch of links
Since the last batch of links went out, paying subscribers have received a recommendation on take-home assignments, then a reflection on misunderstandings about therapy. This coming weekend, they will enjoy an essay about professional disruption.
Below, you’ll find a batch of links on the themes of this newsletter: career development, community building, and self care.
Listening to (Other) Experiences. This is a myth perpetrated by people who have a vested interest in describing straw men. Nobody is saying this: “Usually, it’s a senior executive—most often a CEO or former CEO—who proclaims that we need to get back to work, and what they mean is work the way it worked for them. In their view, they were successful because they sat next to the boss or a mentor who showed them the ropes when they were coming up in the ‘90s. They put in the hours, the sweat, they went to the happy hours and built the connections.”
We Need to Talk About Our Ex-Best Friends.
One thing is clear: feeling heartbroken over a friendship breakup is more common than it may seem when you’re going through it, reeling and grieving and wondering why it hurts so much—whether there was an official breakup conversation or not.
It’s Getting Harder for Companies to Keep Politics Out of the Workplace.
Where Do We Stand on Shorts at the Office? I wore shorts to work a few times in my 30s, and I don’t think I will again. I don’t think it led anyone on those days - always ahead of holiday weekends - to think ill of me, but I recall myself being uncomfortable with how I felt doing it. I acknowledge that nearly every day I see around Midtown women wearing shorts, which looks better as professional than men doing the same.
I got stood up. I refuse to let dating app culture break my spirit.
The surprising way leaders jeopardize their climb up the corporate ladder. This is correct: “Stevenson says professionals should think less about personal ambition and more about developing the expertise and capabilities that will enable them to become effective leaders and enhance the business’s future success.”
What happens when everyone decides they need a gun?
The Worst Feature Apple Ever Made. This article gets to something I had long felt but couldn’t put my finger on. It doesn’t help me to know a number when the areas of my life that contribute to that number are so vast and variable.
4 professionals share why workplace flexibility is so important.
How HR can make a strong first impression on new hires. This story misses the mark because it leaves out what HR types should know, but don’t, which is that there are three types of people who work at the organization: 1. People on your team, whom you must know. 2. People on adjacent teams, but who are stakeholders in your success short-term, whom you must know. 3. Everyone else. Most people only ever meet categories #1 and #2. HR should be pressing past the first few weeks to encourage the new hires to go after everyone else, in due time.
Johnny C. Taylor of SHRM: Navigating Leadership and Inclusion.
Sadness Among Teen Girls May Be Improving, C.D.C. Finds. This is what we’d hoped for, that a lot of the issues and incidents we saw and heard about over recent years were part of a particularly exhausting period, and that there’s be a regression to the mean thereafter, especially with more concern and consideration given to this cohort that even in better circumstances are very much going through it.
Meet The American Olympians With Corporate Jobs.
Future of work hinges on AI upskilling, say Indeed, Google and more. “Hearing once more that a skills gap exists may not be encouraging to HR — especially as the AI landscape evolves so rapidly. However, a recruiter at a major telecom company previously highlighted how HR can help: Hire talent not just because of their existing tech skills but their willingness to learn and ability to be coached.”