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GM's dress code is only two words
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Kandice LeveroSenior Art Director at Valtech_
Sleeveless has always been a gray area for women. Many companies have a no sleeveless policy, but most woman wear tasteful sleeveless tops and dresses anyway and they look quite professional. Fox News certainly muddies the waters with their fully suited male anchors and half naked female anchors!
💡Made me smarter13
Allison Baum
Managing Partner at Fresco Capital
I appreciate the simplicity, but "appropriate" can be very subjective and biased by personal beliefs about how people should behave. That said, I don't know what would be better, except perhaps "Dress appropriately, given your business goals."
I do like her point, "What I realized is that you really
I do like her point, "What I realized is that you really need to make sure your managers are empowered—because if they cannot handle 'dress appropriately,' what other decisions can they handle?"
💡Made me smarter9
Babette AudantAssistant Dean, Institutional Effectiveness at Hostos Community College, CUNY
Smart move. She's right - let employees figure it out. We're all grownups, and the rules - no matter how detailed - rarely define "appropriate" in a way that can't be tested/torqued (think Catholic school uniforms!).
Patrick McGinnisGlobally-minded VC & Creator of FOMO. at Author, The 10% Entrepreneur
Mary Barra is such an effective leader. I get the sense that she is somewhat more low profile than other CEOs - or perhaps just a bit overlooked - but that should change. She has lots to share.
Tony HasekKeeping your digital stuff safer than anyone else at Goldilock™️ - Remote Automated Airgap Security RAAS™️
Sounds like a cop-out to me. I have run companies in various stages of development in various countries. Leaving people's work performance to their own recognizance is advisable - but sometimes leaving determinations of propriety to them is in advisable.
Max LockieDeputy News Editor at Quartz
"Fire Resistant"
Jasmine FujisawaIengar yoga
Office attire.
We need to think " what purpose does this clothing serve?"
...UGG classic short boots have a purpose for the beach walking!
Gary Belsky Chief Content Officer at Elland Road Partners
Nordstrom's employee manual was for years (and still may be) limited to something along the lines of "Use good judgment in all situations." Think about how empowering that is.
Ken Sonenclar Managing Director at Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips
Asking people to think for themselves is empowering, as noted by others. It's also a way to weed out the fringe players who probably don't know what is appropriate means in many areas. As for dress, the old saw of "dress for the job you want, not the one you have," is worth considering.
Adaora Udoji
10 Page dress code. Seriously? Management can't be dictated in a memo as she points out; unless you want zombie employees. In the day and age anyone who wants to win can't want that.
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Zack Rosebrugh
The EU may ban facial recognition for five years. Use of the tech on security cameras has raised concerns of abuse, and the European Commission has proposed a five year brake-pumping that will result in better-researched regulations that aim to protect privacy.BBC News
💬+
Where have all the US jobs gone? November showed the steepest drop in job openings in four years, although hiring had a slight uptick. It could mean that the job market's momentum has finally slowed.Reuters
Brace yourself for self-flying planes. Airbus's A350-1000 XWB took off from a French airport on Wednesday night, entirely on its own—well, with the help of a couple of test pilots who made sure everything was pointed in the right direction.Tech Insider
If you've seen one impeachment…
Trump's impeachment is only like Clinton's if you ignore all the facts. The scandals, their implications, and the times, are different. It's disingenuous to cite the precedent and gloss over key distinctions.Quartz
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Ephrat LivniSenior Reporter at Quartz
Everyone on both sides of the aisle agrees that ours are uniquely divided times. Politicians just don't party like it's 1999 in 2020.
But some of the characters look awfully familiar. Trump is expected to name Kenneth Starr, the prosecutor whose investigation led to Clinton's impeachment, to his legal defense team, along with Starr's successor Robert Ray and Jeffrey Epstein defender Alan Dershowitz, among others.CNN
Plaid demonstrates the future of finance
For all the hype, many fintechs act a lot like regular financial firms. But Plaid, the Silicon Valley startup that was just acquired by Visa, is different. It doesn't take risk or hold capital. Instead, it builds the electronic pipes that connect financial companies to each other. Understand how Plaid makes money in the latest edition of the Future of Finance newsletter.Quartz
Your worst office romance was never this bad
Today's technology can push a workplace breakup to breathtakingly bad places. Over the course of a year, an amateur hacker digitally terrorized his ex-girlfriend, manipulating the criminal justice system, confounding police, and forcing her into an alternate reality of his own design.Quartz
Justin RohrlichReporter at Quartz
The defendant in this case, Ahmad Kazzelbach, pleaded guilty today: https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/pasadena-man-pleads-guilty-federal-charges-cyberstalking-and-causing-intentional-damage
Some details came out that we didn't previously know:
Something not mentioned in the original complaint was
Something not mentioned in the original complaint was the fact that, amidst all the insanity, Kazzelbach managed to get JK's health insurance canceled.
We also now know he began making false reports to Baltimore County cops *after* Anne Arundel County prosecutors became suspicious of the fact that he wouldn't let them download the complete contents of his iPhone.
Kazzelbach is facing a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for cyberstalking and 10 years for intentional damage to a protected computer. Sentencing is set for May 1.
Kathy Gong
Co-founder & CEO at WafaGames
This is barely a hacking case in terms of the technical skills required for Kazzelbach to manipulate. The tools, such as spoofing, are nowadays accessible to anyone with a smartphone or personal computer demanding no coding skills.
The problem is not today's technical tools have made "hacking" a common
The problem is not today's technical tools have made "hacking" a common Joe act, but that our justice systems have no ability to handle, process, and verify digital evidence. Sometimes they have no willingness either.
I had gone through similar sabotage recently myself. Only my case involves a crazy former employee instead of a mad ex-boyfriend, and it happened in Beijing, China, instead of Maryland, U.S.
Last month I was stopped at the boarding gate when I was about to fly on a business trip. The reason was that I was under a court's restraining order of high spendings, which includes taking air flights, high-speed trains, dining at expensive restaurants, etc...
At the moment, I was shocked and clueless and had to cancel my trip. Then I phoned a public number of the court that issued the order. After 50-minutes on hold, finally, someone was able to check my case in their database.
Zonghe Sui, a former employee in my company, who was fired from conducting a series of serious sexual misbehaviors against 1 of our female interns in 2017, has been filing an unlawful layoff act against us ever since. Sui submitted a letter to the court recently stating that I sent him text threats and had been moving company money to personal accounts; therefore requested a restraining order on me. In this case, he didn't even need to provide 'fabricated' evidence, because according to the judge whom I spoke to, the court has insufficient resources and manpower to neither process nor verify data.
Hence, the court would take any claims from a litigant as true until it's proven untrue by the opposite party.
The next day I went to present my exported telephone records and bank statements to the judge to prove Sui's claim false. 2 days after, the restraining order against me was lifted.
All in all, I was shocked by the 'causal style' of the legal system, and the 'guilty until proven innocent' approach of handling evidence, due to so-called insufficient resources and manpower.
It is certainly an 'amusing' experience for me and a bit of taste on something that's not quite right. I think the symptom is much deeper than a simply put 'the wheels of justice turn slowly.'
P.S.: when I went to see the judge and to prove myself innocent. He asked me the reason to fire Sui, and I explained the sexual misbehaviors. The judge looked at me and asked, 'is the intern pretty?'
Alex OssolaDeputy special projects editor at Quartz
Actually the stuff of nightmares.
If you found the story interesting allow me to recommend the Netflix show called "You". It has very little to do with work or business but it's about a stalker boyfriend and it's crazy addictive.
The good and the bad of faster drug reviews
The US Food and Drug Administration is greenlighting drugs faster than ever. It's also approving more drugs on average than in previous decades. Patients benefit from a speedy process, but reviews could be getting hasty, and missing dangerous side-effects.Quartz
Pink slip culture is India Inc's new normal. Startups and legacy companies have made layoffs a part of their strategy. Despite the emotional turmoil, this may not be all bad news.Quartz
The changing blue-collar workforce
Detroit automakers will spend $1 billion more on labor by 2023. The increased costs for workers forecast by the Center for Automotive Research may put American brands at a disadvantage compared to non-union foreign companies like Toyota that also build cars in the US.CNBC
"Upskilling" will cost manufacturers $26.2 billion this year. A tight labor market means there aren't enough skilled workers to fill open jobs, so manufacturers are turning to internal and external training to prepare new and existing employees.CNBC
Davos starts noticing the melting snow
Davos is waking up for climate change. More than a thousand participants of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland were surveyed this year about the biggest global risks facing the world. For the first time, climate change occupied the top five spots.Quartz
Michael Corenreporter at Quartz
Climate is business risk now -- perhaps the business risk for some companies. Just as investors assess companies' legal, operational and competitive risks, climate will now be among them.
Ghanaian officials and their families can travel freely to the US again. The US has agreed on a process for identifying, validating, and issuing travel documentation to Ghanaian citizens to be deported, nearly a year after implementing visa restrictions.Quartz
Tech bosses give each other advice
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey asked Elon Musk for tips. In a video call at a Twitter company meeting, the Tesla CEO said he thinks the platform could do a better job of identifying bots and trolls.CNET
A Chinese podcaster goes public in the US
Lizhi debuts on Nasdaq. One of China's biggest audio content apps, Lizhi plans to use its IPO cash on product development and investments in its AI technology. Competitor Ximalaya is expected to go public in the US later this year.TechCrunch
Virginia's state of emergency
Some suspected white supremacist agitators are in custody. The FBI has arrested suspects that may be associated with neo-Nazi groups, which—the concern goes—are using a Jan. 20 rally in Richmond over Virginia's proposed gun conrol legislaltion as an excuse to start a race war.The New York Times
But it's still not shaping up to be a great scene. The governor issued a temporary order to make firearms (and all weapons) illegal on capitol grounds on Monday, the day of the rally. On Friday, the group filed an emergency appeal on a ruling that upheld the order.TheHill
Is the space business just a big money suck?
SpaceX is going to blow up a rocket. It's part of the abort maneuver test for the Dragon spacecraft, the final obstacle for SpaceX to fly astronauts to orbit. If all goes according to plan on Saturday, NASA will have confidence that the Dragon can safely transport people, even in a worst-case scenario.Quartz
The $1 trillion space economy doesn't seem so farfetched. For all the hype around the space sector (and, boy, is there hype), it seems like expectations today are more reasonable and in line with both technology and markets than they were during the 1990s tech boom.Quartz
The rise of Taika
Taika Waititi may make a Star Wars movie. The "Thor: Ragnarok" director is riding high after an Oscar best picture nomination for "Jojo Rabbit" and a fan-favorite final episode of season one of "The Mandalorian," the Disney+ Star Wars series.The Hollywood Reporter
Taika break, then come back
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