Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
In corporate America, the most persistent refuge of outright charlatanism is “branding.” The only thing more offensive to honesty than a “rebranding” campaign is a breathless feature story about a rebranding campaign. What do we have in Wired today… ah, it’s a breathless feature story about a rebranding campaign! “The Inside Story of Uber’s Radical…
Photo Gregory Anderson’s lawsuit provides a peek inside Yahoo’s controversial quarterly performance review system. Credit Laura McDermott for The New York Times SAN FRANCISCO — One of Marissa Mayer’s signature policies as chief executive of Yahoo has been the quarterly performance review, in which every employee at the company is ranked on a scale of…
FRESNO, Calif. — Harlan Elrich is a high school teacher in California, and that means he must pay about $970 a year to a labor union. He teaches math, and he said the system did not add up. “I get to choose what movie I want to go see,” Mr. Elrich said. “I get to…
Today we are launching a national, coordinated campaign to win fair contracts with wage increases for the nearly 1,000 Guild-represented employees of Digital First Media. The campaign will build on the strength of our 13 bargaining units at DFM publications and online news sites across the United States, united by a central theme: News Matters….
Paul Graham is Still Asking to be Eaten An Obviously Critical Response to “Economic Inequality” by Paul Graham robotorgy.tumblr.com I’ve been asked by a bunch of people today to comment on this essay “Economic Inequality,”penned by self-described “essayist” Paul Graham, the subject of a poem I recently wrote entitled, “Paul Graham is Asking to be…
On the executive team at Tim Cook’s Apple Inc., everybody’s equal. Except for Cook himself. The CEO aside, the company awarded its top five executives about $25 million each last year, including $20 million of stock awards and $5 million in salary and cash bonus, according to a proxy statement filed Wednesday. Cook received a…
For-hire drivers gather at a Seattle City Council meeting in December in support of a new law that paves the way for drivers to unionize. (GeekWire File Photo) Updated below with comments from Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is challenging the city of Seattle’s decision to give Uber, Lyft and other “for…
U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen recently issued a final class action certification in O’Connor v. Uber. Judge Chen expanded the class to include drivers bound by 2014 and 2015 arbitration clauses, finding that those clauses were unenforceable on public policy grounds. Since the issuance of the order, Uber has sought to delay the trial and…
FRANKFURT — Uber is rapidly expanding its ride-hailing operations across the globe. But here in this city of 690,000 — less than the population of San Francisco, Uber’s hometown — the company recently did something unusual: It retreated. In early November, Uber shut its small office in Frankfurt’s centuries-old city center after just 18 months…
Last fall, I became a barista in a small, “socially responsible” coffee company. A few months later, I got a temporary paralegal position at one of the world’s biggest multinational, corporate law firms. The two companies had little in common, but both told me one thing: Don’t talk to your coworkers about your pay. At…