Okay. I put a page up on my website where you can give me your email. I will only ever use this mailing list to invite you to wherever I might land on social media.
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Marco Rogers
@polotek
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I need to recover data from an old laptop hard drive. The drive might be damaged. Can anyone recommend a good service for this?
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Oh shit.
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The epiphany that explains the crypto boom, Andrew Tate, “passive income” strategies, dropshipping, finance influencers, executive training programs, meme stocks, etc is the commercial realization that American men are extremely susceptible to multi-level marketing schemes
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I will say the thing I am known to repeat often. The US has never addressed its pervasive white supremacy problem. It continues to haunt us. And it will continue to destabilize us until it is addressed.
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No I don't. It's an interesting question, but all it does is prompt nitpicking about the definition of "declining". We are facing some serious challenges. But this framing of decline is rooted in our tendency to see our past as some kind of pinnacle.
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Do you believe that the US overall is a declining society?
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We've learned this lesson before: Absent strict protections, any sensors that collect data and footage about people will eventually become a tool of police surveillance--even self-driving cars.
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It would be great if more white people took this moment to understand what white privilege actually means. Most non-white people simply aren’t allowed to be this egregiously fucked up and still remain in power. Only Whiteness does this.
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A literal domestic terrorist attack with collaboration from the White House, Secret Service, members of Congress and everyone is just free, employed, in office, running for office, getting concessions from the current speaker.
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Getting rid of books is hard.
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1. One in five US workers is bound by a noncompete clause, which restricts them from freely switching jobs, lowering wages and undermining fair competition.
Today proposed a rule to prohibit firms from imposing noncompete clauses on their workers.
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There’s no revelation here. The real problem is that everyone knew that those stories were fear-mongering lies, and yet local and national outlets parroted them, helping create an environment of fear to support backlash against progressive efforts and boost right-wing ideas.
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A top Walgreens executive conceded Thursday that pharmacy chain brass may have overstated the threat of organized retail theft last year, according to a report from CNBC. trib.al/pTKeoUD
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“Not since the Civil War have we seen this level of dysfunction”
Yes, because the central conflict is still over racism & whether the US will be a multiracial democracy.
It remains the unresolved conflict in the USA on the eve of the 2nd anniversary of Capitol attack.
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Anyway, I feel like a broken record. It just irks me every time a white person says "I don't know why this is happening!" We do. We know damn well what this is about. You can just say that. And maybe then we can start to address what needs to be addressed.
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What's funny to me is I bet this is a problem for Biden too. He is still that white guy. I bet he never imagined that he wouldn't be respected when he finally got his shot at the presidency. He has been paying his dues a long time and Obama singlehandedly fucked it up for him. 😂
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Again, a huge part of this is still a reaction to a Black president. Rather than allowing Blackness to be respected, instead Whiteness works to devalue the whole institution.
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On Days 1&2 of the #RepublicanHouseClownShow, I was amused. But deep sadness now reigns. What has happened to the dignity, honor, and duty to govern -- the fight is over House procedures, not the content of laws, policies, and budgets. This bodes ill for 2023. twitter.com/kylegriffin1/s…
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Turns out it’s still dirt simple to create fake verified Twitter accounts
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Plain html and css is good actually.
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My advice to people is to find a way to be adaptable and let your middle managers find the right balance of meetings for your org. Help them fix what is broken *without* fucking up your life too much. Because once it reaches the exec level, they care less how it impacts you.
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This is why re-orgs happen. Why they make up new policies that seem ridiculous to people on the ground. They're trying to fix something even though they don't know why it's broken. If you're not listening when your manager explains what's broken, you're gonna get blindsided.
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One more thing. Sometimes I fail to connect the dots explicitly. "Business productivity" is not a goal in itself. We have to maintain a certain level of productivity. Otherwise when execs don't like what they're seeing, they start fucking with things.
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Yes I think we are currently struggling with the perceived tensions between improving the environment for humans and the needs of business productivity. This is a transition period. But it's important to understand when what we're doing is not working.
twitter.com/rmurphey/statu
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And because The New Management Culture has set up middle managers as the people who magically fix productivity, when I bring up the obvious issue with this, I'm told that it must be my fault if people don't understand the work. I need to just manage better.
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That's okay. People need those things. But it also means there's a lot less actually getting work shit figured out. What I observe is not only a lot of time dedicated to 1:1s, but also people being a lot *less* aligned around what work needs to happen.
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Here's just one example. One of the dynamics that makes this a challenge is that people aren't using 1:1s to actually get better at the work. They're using them to discuss interpersonal issues. Repair conflicts, create stronger relationships, socialize.
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Replying to @polotek
And no one ever writes anything down to share, so people are working from vibes and notes they take for themselves on post-its! We collectively need to get better at consistent and productive communication.
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I still haven't managed to get out all of my thoughts about The New Management Culture and the challenges with it. I don't think anybody wants to hear it anyway. It's gonna make a lot of people mad.
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If you're am anger, don't actually do that. I'm just being a little petty and facetious because I've been struggling with this imbalance for a while now. And it's because people assume these things can be easily reconciled when they can't.
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Let people have as many 1:1s as they want. But they still have to be accountable to producing the desired outcomes. And when they say they don't have enough time for things, remind them that this is what they asked for.
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Yes I think we are currently struggling with the perceived tensions between improving the environment for humans and the needs of business productivity. This is a transition period. But it's important to understand when what we're doing is not working.
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Replying to @polotek and @skamille
I know all of your points are empirically correct, but I've really struggled with the idea of taking away (non-mgr) 1:1s, especially in a remote world, and especially in places that are structured around influence/social capital.
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Psychological safety is an important aspect of workplace dynamics. But the fact that you may be uncomfortable does not automatically mean the environment is psychologically unsafe. You can't bend the whole workplace around your personal level of comfort.
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Psychological safety does not mean you should never have to speak up in an environment that you may be uncomfortable in. Many people have latched on to psychological safety as an excuse to not engage with co-workers in the way they should.
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Replying to @polotek and @skamille
"misrepresenting what psychological safety means"
can you say more about this?
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There's also this. People have different ideas in their heads about what 1:1s are for. For the record, here 1:1s refers to any meeting with just 2 participants so they can connect directly. A broader definition than the official meeting with your manager.
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Replying to @perfexcellent and @skamille
You should read the article. Managers having 1:1s with their direct reports is not the issue.
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I think this is exacerbated by the remote work environment. The "just send me a document" people are living their best lives right now. Some of them are also actively hostile towards group meetings. It has gotten harder to have high quality meetings for lots of reasons.
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The new management culture has been pushing more 1:1s as a solution for interpersonal tensions for a while now. Combined that with people misrepresenting what psychological safety means, and it has resulted in group meetings being way less effective.
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One of the things I spend a lot of time doing as a leader is trying to squash bad assumptions. I can't tell you how many people have been indoctrinated that having dozens of 1:1s every week is what's normal and expected.
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I plan to write another blog post on how to think about how many meetings/hours of meetings you should have (if I can come up with a good general answer, anyway), but I'm pretty sure of one thing: if you are spending 15-20 hours a week in 1:1 meetings, that is probably too many!
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The “alt-right pipeline” being posed as something that innocent but well-meaning people accidentally fall into rather than a values system that people act to protect and advance because it serves the interests of their power is an absolute gift to reactionaries.
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I keep threatening to write about management and leadership. But if I procrastinate long enough, does what I was gonna do.
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“Accessory building”
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It has been 20 years and I've worked with 1000s of other people. But the person with the most pronounced programmer slouch I've ever seen is still .
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I'm trying to maintain my commitment to better ergonomics. But if you aren't slouched way down in the chair, are you really programming?
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Most people don’t get what they want because they are incredibly blind to what’s behind the curtain, or do not know how to ask. But despite this I want to encourage you to always ask, then ask again, until you don’t have to.
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If you wanted an easy way to build a harm reduction practice without needing to think too hard about it, you could just listen to tech VCs and try to do the opposite of whatever they're trying to do.
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