Good To Know: December 2021 🧑💻
A monthly round-up of things happening in hiring, D&I, and humanity.
I’m Moving
You’re reading Lying to Ourselves on a platform called Substack. While Substack is a great tool - it’s not the best for Lying to Ourselves.
During January, we’ll be migrating over to our domain: lyingtoourselves.com (it’s still under construction).
You’ll still receive my emails as usual, but now you’ll have access to a more robust, easily searchable site that’s better equipped to support all the things I have coming in 2022.
As always, thank you for reading, sharing, sending feedback, and generally supporting. I’m very excited about what’s to come!
Hey Everyone,
Welcome to Good to Know! If you are new here, I publish Good to Know on the last Tuesday of every month.
Unlike most posts, Good to Know is a round-up of things going on in hiring, D&I, and humanity with some of my comments. Its purpose is to showcase some of the great work that others are doing and learn from them.
Happy (almost) New Year,
Ben
🤓This week we have🤓
A Prediction 🔮
Web3 is still people (and their biases)
The Economist wrote about The Great Resignation and had an awful take
1 in 250 and 24 weeks👎 - Depressing HR/recruitment stats
Zoom layoffs
Slack’s Future Forum is helping companies adapt to the Great Reshuffling
Solid Tweets
✍️What I wrote this month✍️
I went pretty deep on inclusion this month, and rightly so, it’s foundational. More to come.
Are You Flexible? 🤸 - Hiring managers (still) vastly underestimate the value of worker flexibility.
The Opportunity in Front of Us 🤩 - Remote work is an incredible opportunity to create shareholder value, so why are so many titans of industry opposed to it?
“Remote jobs,” Google Trends, and Supply Intent 🧑💻 - Google searches for “Remote jobs” are up threefold since 2019. So what?
A Prediction 🔮
"In 2022, the labor market will be even tighter... The roles of HR and recruiting, which in the past have been cost centers, will become strategic as a function of the strained labor market. Any companies that have held off on hiring an HR person or team might pay the price."
-Mark Woods, Cathay Capital
Web3 is still people (and their biases)
The tech crowd loves to talk up the utopian potential of Web3. The problem? People bring their biases online too.
CryptoPunks are one of the most popular NFT collections (NFTs are a crucial part of Web3), but the price of a dark-skinned male CryptoPunk lags significantly behind their paler counterparts.1
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🤦♂️The Economist Blew It🤦♂️
It pains me to admit it, but The Economist (my favorite publication) whiffed on its “Evidence for the “great resignation” is thin on the ground” piece - a few things:
The article argues that the Great Resignation is happening in the US and UK, but not everywhere - therefore, it’s not substantial.
The author treats the entire labor force (including in the US and UK) as a monolith and ignores that whole industries are seeing near-catastrophic quits (specifically those that lack worker flexibility).
For some reason, the article is married to the “Great Resignation” idea rather than acknowledging that the actual shift is to more flexible-friendly jobs. It’s more of a Reshuffle. No one is quitting not to work.
1 in 250 and 24 weeks👎
Here’s a truckload of HR stats that prove your HR department doesn’t understand that they’re operating in the most competitive labor market we've seen in decades.
Twenty-four weeks to hire someone. Really?
Boss announcing mass layoffs over zoom
At least it’s an improvement over the better.com debacle.
Slack’s Future Forum is the help you need to take advantage of The Great Reshuffling
From their announcement:
The Future Forum is dedicated to the concept that companies need to make a comprehensive shift in how they operate. The upside is phenomenal: diverse teams of talented individuals working together toward a common purpose, able to move fast to capture opportunity and be resilient in the face of challenge.
And here’s their first graph:
How does remote work affect the experience of work?
🐤Solid Tweets🐤
I love a good visualization of job skills.
Nice work Cornhuskers!
“Growing our engineering team” is easier said than done.
If your response to remote work is to google “how to monitor employees working from home,” you’ve already lost.
Quick hits💥
Apple delays a return to the office (I guess they won’t be able to innovate now😥).
Everyone loves hybrid work, but Gen Z wants back in the office.
The Washington Post’s “Quitters” podcast series is an excellent listen.2
My post on “The Opportunity in Front of Us 🤩” went mildly viral on TikTok.3
The state of California is investigating Google’s possible discrimination against black women.
And Finally📈…
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Two things you can do to help:
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That’s it for me. We’ll be back next week. Thanks again for reading!
If no words in that paragraph made sense to you, that’s OK - you’re probably better for it.
I’m as surprised as you are.