Werk, werk, werk, werk, werk
This week is all about how we work together. Coronavirus be damned.
Intersections is published by Junction House - the home for today’s leading thinkers working across business, government, and technology. We explore the myriad ways in which these spheres overlap and impact society. If you’re interested in learning more about Junction House and how to join, subscribe to stay in the know.
Enjoying the read? Share our newsletter with friends.
Tech x Society
🥾Fears of an epidemic highlight what some call the new digital underclass. Future of work evangelists are reveling as we hit peak telework (and teleschool). More businesses are sending employees home and asking them to work remotely amid Coronavirus fears, but going virtual at this scale is a step into uncharted territory. Not only does the situation create a high-stakes stress test of the tools we love to hate, but it also highlights the dichotomy between knowledge workers and hourly employees, whose work can’t be done virtually.
With the help of major tech companies, the gig-economy has grown to encapsulate over 57m workers from Lyft drivers to Postmates deliverers, who all now grapple with lost wages or risking their and others’ health. Virginia Senator Mark Warner wrote to gig-economy companies urging action, stating “a health emergency for which they bear no responsibility should not place an undue financial burden on workers and their families.”
📈PS: If you’re going to cash in on the telework rise in the stock market, make sure you invest in $ZM, not $ZOOM. Shares of Zoom Technologies ($ZOOM) skyrocketed as traders mistook the Chinese mobile phone parts manufacturer for the intended Zoom Communications ($ZM) video conference company.
Also: Jack Dorsey’s liquid diet won’t save him from Elliot. Reddit traders are killing it. Why Google gets away with so much. Verge’s annual tech survey.
Government x Tech
💼The government of today is not ready to be the government of the future. It will have to learn how to work with itself first, according to a new report. We’re going future of government work here. The Partnership for Public Service and EY highlighted how much of the federal government works in silos, duplicating work and investment as well as missing critical information. Breaking down silos has long been the chorus of a government working to be better, but promises often stop at broad generalizations. Agencies are notoriously protective of their budgets, creating an adverserial mindset. In this vein, one representative called for rethinking budgeting agencies together in their entirety rather than as individuals.
🎙️As the creator economy grows, so too do the tools available to the rising creative class. But Spotify, a platform that has become a discovery outlet for budding artists, may become a new anti-trust target for Federal foes of big tech. The company just announced a new product requiring musicians and artists to pay Spotify for prominent places on the app. Spotify certainly has the power to do this, as the company owns 36% of the market. Seemingly harmless, but this announcement is already beginning to ruffle feathers on The Hill. Artists claim Spotify is taking advantage of its market power by forcing them to pay the platform or be buried beneath the millions of alternatives. While Spotify’s play may be frowned upon, it will likely be difficult to claim monopoly-like actions. In any case, this can add another arrow in the quiver of those aiming at big tech.
Also: The Pentagon adopts ethical AI principles. The first presidential campaign websites came into this world in 1996, and they’re amazing. Tech companies are helping us secure our elections, but nobody’s helping secure them.
Business x Society
💁What holds women back at work is not the common work/family narrative, but a general problem of overwork that prevades corporate cultures. So says an HBS professor and a sociologist who were asked by a “global consulting firm” why their female employees weren’t advancing...which also then unceremoniously ended the engagement when the data revealed this answer.
It’s common in corporate culture to oversell and overdeliver. The assumption that 24/7 work schedules are unavoidable compels employees to overperform (see short hours article below). In an attempt to accomodate family life, employers allow mothers to take inward facing roles or work from home. But with a culture of overwork, when only one group is offered opportunity to slow down, that group gets penalized. Perversely, in an attempt to solve their problem, the firm was perpetuating it. This affects fathers as well. When women are given the opportunity (and expected) to make family priority and work secondary, men are forced to prioritize in the opposite order. In their study, these academics recount heartbreaking stories of fathers emotionally torn when prioritizing work over family.
The data-driven conclusion that the firm didn’t want to hear? “For the firm to address its gender problem, it would have to address its long-hours problem. And the way to start would be to stop overselling and overdelivering.” See why humans are hardwired to reject imperical fact in “What we’re reading” below.
🕔 We’re once again finding that shorter hours make stronger businesses (WSJ $). A report outlines steps that companies take to make the transition, such as developing cultural norms and letting employees help guide the process. If done right, employers get higher productivity, better retention, and lower utility costs. Employees find more cameraderie, more independent thinking, and….less gender disparity.
Also: This is what happens when you put everybody on a $70k salary. The Wing traded one type of discrimination for another.
The dinner table: We welcome discourse and feedback. The nature of the intersections we explore means friction and disagreement exist. The only way forward is through constructive conversation, and we want to facilitate that.
We’re happy to engage in a conversation, facilitate connections, or publish your opinions and work if that’s what you’d like. Our community doesn’t have soap boxes, only dinner tables. Simply reply to this email.
Thanks to Jessie from Bethesda, MD for writing in response to businesses’ CO2 promises! “I appreciate the efforts that companies like BP and Delta make to offset carbon emissions, and I think they do have this responsibility. But simply offsetting rather than actually changing the way the company operates is a band-aid. Are they just going to plant a million trees for every flight? We don’t have that much space, Delta! Offsetting is better than nothing, sure. But as far as I’m concerned, a company using money from a polluting business to do something good is really just a way for the them to feel better about themselves without actually changing.”
How do you all feel about offsetting v. changing the core business?
What else we’re reading
Humans are hardwired to reject facts that don’t fit their worldviews. In fact, they’ll unconciously manipulate them to reinforce their worldviews.
FiveThirtyEight surveyed 1,110 Americans and found that the Impeachment didn’t change anybody’s mind, but it did erode trust.
A century ago there was 1 dog for every 100 people, today there’s 1 for every 4 people. QZ tells us to stop coddling them (no thank you) because they’re not our children.
The Doritos Locos Taco was harder to make than you think (throwback article).
We leave you with this: view from @whotelDC