Notices by Max Leibman (maxleibman@mastodon.social), page 3

@msbellows I don't know the OP's intent, but I hear it not just in the context of blocking Threads (fine, whatever, do or don’t; I don't like Meta, either). Rather, what I see reflected there is the complete asshattery of people who've said, “We need to block any instance that doesn't block Threads!” (or even further). Which is a burn-the-village-to-save-the-village sentiment if I've ever seen one.

“Get your head in the game. Feet on the ground. Eyes on the prize. Nose to the grindstone.”

–Motivational speakers playing Twister.

@bright_helpings Jokes/memes I actually find to be the easiest to add alt text to, because there’s a clear solution to the “How much detail is enough?” Namely, at the absolute minimum, what would someone need to get from the image to get the joke?

@MattHatton @scrumm Microsoft Teams is a critical tool that I use to get a huge amount of work done every day, and I do not recommend it to anyone for any purpose.

If you are requiring 5+ years of experience at anything, then the job you are hiring for is by definition NOT "entry level."

#hiring #FairPay #JobDescriptions

EDIT: I'm getting some pushback on this, so let me make the following clarification:

If you are requiring 5+ years of experience at anything, then the job you are hiring for is by definition NOT "entry level," YOU STUPID ASSHOLE.

A discounted price doesn’t always save you money.

If you already decided to buy the item and it happens to be on sale, you saved money.

If you already decided to buy the item and you waited until it went on sale, you saved money.

If you already decided to buy something from this category, and picked this one because it was on sale, you saved money.

If you saw that it was on sale and THEN decided to buy it BECAUSE of the sale, YOU DID NOT SAVE ANY MONEY.

@cstross @danjac This moving of goalposts is the real innovation—if AGI or the Singularity really are just around the corner, the breakthrough that will bring them about is convincing the public that “AGI” and “the Singularity” mean something else.

Boss: Why haven't you done any of the work I gave you?

Me: What work?

Boss: From my emails!

Me: Oh, I deleted those.

Boss: WHAT?!

Me: I thought they were phishing attempts.

Boss: Why?

Me: The IT security training said typos and unexpected requests were clues to spot phishing.

#infosec #email #phishing

Why did these articles keep showing up?

The media isn't a shadowy conspiracy run by a cabal, but the big players in business and politics do, I think, like to encourage certain useful narratives. Return-to-office is a big one now. Quiet quitting was all the rage this time last year. And I think “Millennials want meaning, not money” was in fashion ten to fifteen years ago.

And why would anyone care? Because it's a belief that helps justify not bothering to increase wages.

When did these articles about Millennial values start to appear? After a decade of economic carnage that started with the Dotcom bubble and 9/11 and ended with the Great Recession.

Do Millennials actually value meaningful work and flexibility more than the generations before? How do you know? NOBODY EVER TRIED PAYING THEM. There weren't droves of Millennials giving up great-paying jobs with lots of advancement opportunities by choice. These things weren't being offered to them at scale.

I worked in survey research during the Great Recession (started in February 2008, in fact). We did customer sat and a few compliance-sign-off projects, because they could run on the same infrastructure, but our bread and butter was employee engagement surveys.

And for most of my five-plus-year career there, across hundreds of companies in a dozen industries, those employee surveys mostly boiled down to one question: “What could we do—OTHER THAN PAY YOU—to make you work harder and/or not quit?”

And, to bring it back around to my original toot above: I am not an expert in media literacy, but I think it's important to ask "Why?” Why are the people quoted in this article saying that? Why is this story being published? And—not to go all red-yarn on you, but—who benefits?

Narratives that pit groups against each other (including generations), and those that reinforce the status quo, are generally not to be taken at face value.

Many stories that have been told about Millennials are both.

None of which is to say I am against meaningful work. BY ALL MEANS, work somewhere that fits your values, if you have the option. Do good in the world.

But, for Pete's sake, DO NOT ever let the assholes who make REAL MONEY off of your labor PAY YOU IN MEANING.

That's the environment that Millennials faced when they said autonomy and family and personal growth and mission and whatever the hell else was more important than money.

Of course they chose those things, and put value on them. That's all they had.

And that's a story that industry was happy to hear, because it meant that's all they had to offer.

I thought about this point in particular as I was musing about the narratives that drive reporting on business, the job market, the economy, etc.

We’ve seen a spate of flimsy articles about the costs and downsides of remote work during the same year that commercial real estate interests have really started to freak out about empty offices.

I doubt this is coincidental, but the whole pattern also has me thinking about another economic narrative push: Millennials and their values around work.

Something tonight reminded me of an old Twitter rant (sorry, no citation—I am *not* logging in) to the effect of “GenX is middle aged now. Your 50-something asshole landlord is Generation X, not a Boomer."

I believe the OP's point was about our stereotypes of generations becoming ossified, but I also recall some people taking it as "It’s not just boomers—all the olds are bad!”

But Millennials aren't magic. In another ten years or so, they will be 50-something asshole landlords, too.

For much of the previous decade, I would periodically see articles touting how Millennials thought differently about work. That they prioritized flexibility, the opportunity to learn, family, values, and meaningful work over salary.

To which I say: bullshit.

I don't doubt a lot of Millennials were saying they valued these things, because *everybody* values these things. The reason it seemed like Millennials “preferred" them, though, was because *it was all they could get*.

The modern corporate obsession with data is beyond incorrect, it's obscene.

If I order a pizza, there's no universe where the social contract should include a follow-up email about a survey. IT'S A PIZZA. And moreover, I PAID FOR IT WITH MONEY. You are not entitled to 5 minutes of my time to fill out your fucking survey.

Any marketer or data scientist who tells you that every pizza that gets ordered should also generate a survey request email IS FULL OF SHIT and is ABUSING YOUR CUSTOMERS.

Comedy is Elon Musk thinking he’s a genius. Tragedy is other people believing him.

If you access corporate email on a personal device that can be unlocked with FaceID, you must change your face at least once every sixty days.

You may not reuse any of your most recent 12 faces.

#infosec #PasswordExpiration #BYOD