Hello! Welcome back to On Tech: A.I., a pop-up newsletter that teaches you about artificial intelligence, how it works and how to use it. Last week, I told you how to use creative A.I. tools that generate and edit stunning images. Now let’s move on to automating some time-consuming, sometimes tedious, parts of many office […]
Read MoreTag: Workplace Environment
Remote Work Gives Amazon Workers a Common Cause
The company has more than 350,000 corporate and tech employees globally. More than 800 in Seattle and 1,600 globally have pledged to participate in the walkout. Some employees, particularly working parents, pin some of their frustration to the financial toll of returning to the office, especially the cost and pressures of child care. The vast […]
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Ambivalent Relationships May Be Hazardous to Your Health
It’s been two decades, but I still feel jittery when I think of an old boss of mine. One day she nominated me for an award for service to the organization. Then she threatened to fire me for raising a concern about a colleague being mistreated. “If you ever speak up out of turn again,” […]
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A Movement to Make Workplaces ‘Menopause Friendly’
In the last few years, managers at Nvidia, the global computer graphics company, began hearing a new kind of complaint: Some of their female employees were struggling with hot flashes, fatigue and brain fog — common symptoms of the menopause transition — and their regular doctors weren’t offering guidance or relief. “They came to us […]
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Uber Suspends DEI Chief After Employees Complain of Insensitivity
Uber has placed its longtime head of diversity, equity and inclusion on leave after workers complained that an employee event she moderated, titled “Don’t Call Me Karen,” was insensitive to people of color. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive, and Nikki Krishnamurthy, the chief people officer, last week asked Bo Young Lee, the head of diversity, […]
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Why Amazon’s Delivery Network Is Vulnerable to Labor Strife
Is there a more familiar sign of corporate dominance than the Amazon delivery van? As recently as four years ago, the blue-gray vehicle with the smiley arrow was a relative novelty among fleets of brown and blue-and-white delivery trucks clogging the streets. Today, the Amazon vans are almost inescapable. Between 2020 and 2022, their numbers […]
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Why Workplace Drug Tests Are Illogical
The email from my new job was not the welcome I was anticipating. I would “be required to complete a drug test within 72 hours,” it said. “Please be sure to check your email for instructions.” It was August 2018, and I had just accepted an offer as a faculty member to develop a research […]
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You Can Ignore the Bridezilla in the Breakroom
Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited. Mute Those Wedding Bells I work for a nonprofit and live check to check. My colleagues and I have a shared lunchroom and lunch break. One of my […]
Read More You Can Ignore the Bridezilla in the Breakroom
Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited. Mute Those Wedding Bells I work for a nonprofit and live check to check. My colleagues and I have a shared lunchroom and lunch break. One of my […]
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Why Some Companies Are Saying ‘Diversity and Belonging’ Instead of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’
Woodward is a 153-year-old aerospace company that required its male employees to wear bow ties into the 1990s. So Paul Benson, the company’s chief human resources officer, knew that creating a companywide diversity, equity and inclusion program would require a seismic shift. “Look at our org chart online, and we’re a lily-white leadership team of […]
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Covid Cautions Continue for Some, Even as Federal Emergency Ends
For millions of Americans, the Covid-19 emergency, that disorienting stretch of lockdowns, mandates, free-floating anxiety and exhaustion came to a muted end sometime during the past couple of years, brought about by vaccines and antiviral drugs. The expiration of the federal public health emergency on Thursday was a barely noticed formality. But signs remain everywhere […]
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Back-to-Office Battles Underscore a Change in Workplace Authority
A C.E.O. steps out of the corner office, stares into the abyss of a sparsely occupied floor, and only the abyss stares back. Disconcerting questions arise: What kind of a place is this, and what kind of a leader am I if so few people want to show up? What has happened to my authority? […]
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Goldman Sachs to Pay $215 Million to Settle Gender Bias Suit
Goldman Sachs said on Monday that it would pay $215 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the bank of systematically discriminating against thousands of female employees. The money will be divided among about 2,800 women, and the bank agreed to change some of its practices. The individual payout amount itself is less than it […]
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ChatFished: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People With AI
“I want to assure you that you can sleep peacefully knowing that your safety and security are not at risk,” my bot replied. “Take care and sleep well.” Given the amount of time I spend online talking to colleagues — about the news, story ideas, occasionally “Love Is Blind” — it was disconcerting stripping those […]
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Hochul Acknowledges She Didn’t Vet Adviser Accused of Sexual Harassment
Gov. Kathy Hochul acknowledged on Thursday that she had not scrutinized the background of a longtime political adviser when she hired him to run her 2018 re-election campaign for lieutenant governor of New York, just months after he was fired for sexually harassing colleagues at a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. Ms. Hochul said that she […]
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Hochul’s Ex-Adviser Has History of Sexual Harassment Complaints
Sarah Driscoll was out for drinks with colleagues one evening in early 2017 when a veteran political operative she worked with, Adam C. Sullivan, cornered her at a Washington bar. They were both directors of the Hub Project, a small Democratic advocacy group leading a pitched fight against Donald J. Trump’s new presidency. But rather […]
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Must Love Dogs Was Not in the Job Description
Rock and a Hard Place About a year ago, I left a large nonprofit where I’d worked for seven great years. When the pandemic hit, we lost a lot of funding, and I had to split my time over three different teams (and three different bosses), and take on work that was not very interesting […]
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Requiem for the Newsroom
WASHINGTON — I don’t want this to be one of those pieces that bangs on about how things used to be better, and they’ll never be as good again. But, when it comes to newsrooms, it happens to be true. “What would a newspaper movie look like today?” wondered my New York Times colleague Jim […]
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Remote Work Brings Hidden Penalty for Young Professionals, Study Says
At least 10 times a day, Erika Becker, who works as a sales development manager at a technology company called Verkada, turns to her boss with questions. “Did I handle that correctly?” she asks. “What could I have done better?” Ms. Becker, 28, comes into her office in San Mateo, Calif., five days a week, […]
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Barbara Lynch, a Leading Boston Restaurateur, Is Accused of Workplace Abuse
During her 25 years as one of Boston’s most acclaimed chefs and one of the most renowned restaurateurs in the country, Barbara Lynch has told and retold her origin story: how she rose above her poor and violent childhood in South Boston, and fought sexism as a line cook to reach the top of her […]
Read More Barbara Lynch, a Leading Boston Restaurateur, Is Accused of Workplace Abuse
During her 25 years as one of Boston’s most acclaimed chefs and one of the most renowned restaurateurs in the country, Barbara Lynch has told and retold her origin story: how she rose above her poor and violent childhood in South Boston, and fought sexism as a line cook to reach the top of her […]
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The Thrill of the Office Crush
A crush is a healthy thing, so try not to overthink this. At the end of the day, if you really, really like this person, why not shoot your shot? The worst he can say is that he’s not interested, which will hurt, yes, but you will handle it, and have new information about how […]
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Supreme Court to Consider a Postal Worker’s Claim of Religious Freedom
LANCASTER, Pa. — On a blustery morning last month, Gerald Groff drove through rolling farmland in Amish country, slowing to pass the occasional horse-drawn buggy and pointing out some of the hundreds of mailboxes that used to mark his postal route. Mr. Groff, a soft-spoken evangelical Christian and former missionary, said that delivering the mail […]
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Shoot Your (Carefully Aimed) Shot
A crush is a healthy thing, so try not to overthink this. At the end of the day, if you really, really like this person, why not shoot your shot? The worst he can say is that he’s not interested, which will hurt, yes, but you will handle it, and have new information about how […]
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Your Email Does Not Constitute My Emergency
One morning last summer, I sent a rough draft of a speech to a colleague for feedback. Even though it was a long read and she was away at a conference, she sent me her initial comments that very evening. “Sorry for the delay,” she wrote. I hadn’t expected to hear back from her that […]
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Mass Layoffs and Absentee Bosses Create a Morale Crisis at Meta
“Raise your hand if you know who is getting fired?” a Meta employee wrote in an online chat group for the company’s engineers this month. “Fire emoji if you think it’s a dumpster fire.” In response, his colleagues posted dozens of tiny flame emojis. “I’m already fired,” added a former Meta employee who worked in […]
Read MoreMeet the Return-to-Office Whisperers
Third, in Tsipursky’s view, are the so-called quiet quitters. Like the Great Resignation, “quiet quitting” is a term as disputed as it has been deployed, with many describing it as a way for managers to put a label on unfounded worries that workers at home are slacking off. Tsipursky, though, turned the term on its […]
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R.I.P. W.F.H.? Not So Fast.
A new LinkedIn study of job postings on its website confirms that the energy behind working from home is very much coming from employees, not employers. In February, only 12.2 percent of paid job postings on LinkedIn were for positions offering remote work, yet those listings attracted 51.9 percent of applications, the study found. “There’s […]
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Work From the Office, Get Laid Off at Home
This week, McDonald’s asked corporate employees, who usually work from the office at least three days a week, to do the job from home. The plan was to lay off hundreds of employees, DealBook hears, and the company preferred to deliver its news virtually. McDonald’s isn’t the only company to tweak the layoff playbook. In […]
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Noncompete Clauses Get Tighter, and TV Newsrooms Feel the Grip
Beth Johnson, a television talent agent, says she had to move from exclusively representing clients to more training and consulting, since newsroom employees were no longer able to move around enough to negotiate significant pay raises. The rapid consolidation in local news, with major companies like Nexstar and Sinclair buying out smaller ownership groups, has […]
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Knitters Say Stitching Helps Them Follow the Thread in Meetings
Is it rude to knit at work? Recently, a county councilor in Wales was accused by a colleague on Twitter of bringing the body “into disrepute” for knitting during a virtual public meeting. The criticism has touched off a debate about whether it is appropriate to pull out knitting needles in video huddles. Knitters say […]
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