It is time for my annual year in review post. If you're new here, or just don't have the minutiae of my blog committed to memory, this is where I pick a few posts from each month to recap. I pick based on fluid and inconsistent criteria. That's just how I roll.
If you want to know more than that, you can check the 2011 and 2012 versions.
Now, to the posts:
At the start of January, I was still struggling to get over my sadness and anger at what happened in Newtown, and tried to explain my thoughts on guns. The other site and Twitter feed I introduced were active for about 6 months, at which point the venom and nastiness of a subset of gun fans drove me away. I remain committed to the issue, though, and am trying to find other ways to work towards change. In much less traumatic news, my company announced a move to a less convenient area of San Diego, and I thought about what that meant for my career plans. The move has happened, the commute is almost exactly as I expected, and I still don't know what I'm going to do about it.
I whined about management, and am still amused by the idea of having people who insist on propagating a neverending and rather pointless technical argument settle it with a dance off.
In February, I started using the Amazon Associates earnings from this blog to send diapers to a local charity. I've sent roughly one box per month every month, except for one month around the time my books came out, when I had enough earnings to send several boxes. This makes me happy. Thank you all for buying things via my affiliate links and making it possible. It makes me less happy that I stumbled off the thin line of appropriate female behavior at work, and felt lost in the labyrinth. That has worked itself out OK in the short term, but I think there has been some long term damage to my prospects at this particular company. Time will tell if that is true, and also if I find that I care. I also wrote about why I don't like snark, which seems almost prescient given the given the current back and forth on snark vs. smarm. (For the record, I do not agree that the opposite of snark is smarm. And I think there is also the option to just be polite and straightforward in stating our opinions, even negative ones.)
March was smack in the middle of the hubbub surrounding Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" and Marissa Mayer's every decision as the newish CEO of Yahoo. I joined in and ranted about the discussions of Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer that were driving me a bit crazy. My children's book The Zebra Said Shhh was published. I have been delighted with how well it has sold. It will not, however, be funding an early retirement for me. I also expanded on my argument that weeding is an excellent metaphor for life, which remains one of my favorite posts of the year.
In April, we took the kids on their first ever trip to Disneyland. Petunia got sick, and that prompted me to realize that I am my children's refuge. I was (and still am!) of two minds about how to best steer my life, and I mused about what equal opportunity should really mean, and how I think we're falling far short of that goal.
May saw me start my Ask Cloud series with a question about handling an annoying co-worker.I tried out kanban methods at work and at home, and that was a successful experiment. I continue to use kanban in both places. Taming the Work Week, my short ebook about productivity, was released. It has also done fairly well. It is gratifying to read the notes from people who have liked it and found it helpful.
In June, I wrote about the joy of problem-solving, and the importance of looking away from hard problems even as you try to solve them. I also explored how I made some important decisions in my life and wrote about how much I love my Chacos.
We went to New Zealand at the end of June, and stayed through the first week of July. Not long after we got back, the verdict in George Zimmerman's trial was announced, leading me to write about how we white people need to figure out how to fix racism. Based on how the rest of the year went, I'd say we aren't making much progress on that.
August was a month for navel-gazing, in which I talked about why it is important to me to have a side project going at most times and why true leisure is also important. It wasn't all deep contemplation, though: I also wrote about the method I use to make meal planning relatively easy.
In September, Pax Dickinson said some remarkably stupid and offensive things, and I got some important things wrong in how I reacted to that. I dealt with a work dilemma (but didn't tell you the details) and named my pet peeve Pete. That work dilemma worked itself out quite nicely, and I am glad I took the time to really think (and seek out advice) before acting. The best part of the month, though, was that Tungsten Hippo went live. I'm still having fun with this project, but wish I could make more time for the next steps, both technical and content-related.
My posts in October were all over the place. I wrote about my difficult postpartum and weaning experiences. That post was hard to write, but I am really glad I finally wrote it. I also wrote one of my rare political posts, in which the madness in Washington DC called to mind the back stories of post-apocalyptic fiction. I am glad we stepped away from the brink, but can't shake the feeling that one of these times, we won't. In a much lighter vein, I wrote about how Auckland feels like a second home.
November found me musing about having multiple online identities, and why I always use a pseudonym. Early in the month, Petunia broke her arm. It was not nearly as much trouble as I thought it would be when I wrote that post. She only had to wear the cast for about 3 weeks. On the plus side of that experience, I was able to post a picture of Petunia's nails, done up by a day care teacher to match her cast, in the Manicure Monday madness that swept the corner of Twitter that I frequent. Hope Jahren got a bunch of scientists (including me!) to participate in the Manicure Monday hastag started by Seventeen Magazine. That was fun, and also prompted some more serious thoughts. People are still tweeting out Manicure Monday pictures, and I may occasionally join in, particularly if I happen to have painted nails or something more interesting than typing on my computer for my hands to do on a Monday.
In December, I discussed how I need to work on giving myself permission to fail (another post prompted by Hope Jahren! Will this be an emerging theme? Perhaps I should start a new tag in my blog....) I also found myself writing about the 23andMe mess, which truly surprised me, but ended up leading me to some interesting things to read.
I intend to keep writing in 2014, so I hope you'll keep reading. See you next year!
Monday, December 30, 2013
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Exploring Alternatives
This week's Tungsten Hippo post is a list of 10 short ebooks to load on that new eReader you got for Christmas. Or to load up onto an old eReader if you just want to explore some new authors or subjects.
I've also been working on my annual year in review blog post. As went through my old posts to pick out my favorites for my roundup, I was struck by how the number of posts has tapered off toward the end of the year. I think the problem is that most of my spare cognitive cycles are currently going to unbloggable career-related decisions, so I am not coming up with topics I want to blog about.
Ironically, a tweet in my feed about careers has given me a topic I want to post about. @AstroKatie posted a link to her Storify about the advice grad students do (or do not) get about non-academic careers.
The details of the advice I got as a graduate student have receded into hazy memory- it was roughly 15 years ago, after all. But I do occasionally participate in career panels and other events set up to help grad students and postdocs find careers outside academia. I also recently hired for two junior-level positions in my group, positions that could have gone to new graduates (but did not- I'll talk about why later).
So I have a couple of thoughts on the transition to a non-academic career. Note that I did not say I have advice on non-academic careers. You could perhaps combine these thoughts with knowledge of an individual's specific background and interests to get some advice, but I will not try to do that.
Thought #1: Events organized to expose graduate students and postdocs to "alternative" careers tend to focus on a small subset of possible careers.
When I was in graduate school, a career in research in industry was presented as an "alternative," which struck me as a bit strange even then, since it was a career doing exactly what you'd trained to do, just in a different type of organization.
I still see industrial research represented in these career events, and I don't have a problem with that. There are indeed some great research jobs in industry. The people speaking about research jobs in industry also usually at least mention the lab-based jobs that are less like academic research, which is good, because those jobs can also be interesting and rewarding.
There are also a lot of great jobs in industry that are not lab-based. Sometimes, these are covered in career events, but I think their inclusion is spotty, depending primarily on what the people that can be found to participate in the event do for a living. I see project management covered more frequently these days. The events that include me on their panel have scientific informatics represented, since that is what I do. There are also careers to be had in regulatory affairs, manufacturing, alliance management, and business development. There are almost certainly additional careers that aren't coming to my mind right now, too.
And then there are the jobs that aren't in industry. Again, I think there are some "go to" careers that are usually represented on career panels. I generally see someone involved in patent law. University tech transfer offices are also well-represented. I don't often see science writers at the events, but someone always mentions that as an option in their remarks. They also mention the possibility of hiring on at one of the big management consulting firms, although I don't know a single science PhD who has done that (I do know some people with other backgrounds who have worked for those firms). Less frequently, the possibilities of working to develop science policy or doing public outreach in support of science are represented. Again, there are probably many additional careers that aren't coming to my mind right now.
My point is not to bash career events. There is no way that any one event could represent all of the possibilities. And that is my point. There are many, many things that people with science PhDs can go on to do. Almost all of the careers I've listed in this post benefit from a science background even if they do not require a science PhD. There are many, many more careers that would benefit from the other skills you develop while doing a PhD, such as critical thinking, problem solving, ability to direct your own work, but that is perhaps a topic for another post.
Many of these careers are things that your average graduate student or postdoctoral fellow will have no way of knowing about. However, there is a good chance that at least one person who graduated from one of the institutions with which you have been affiliated is working in each of these careers. Most professionals are happy to talk about their career paths- particularly if they have, for instance, signed up with their alumni association and indicated that they are happy to talk about their career paths. If you are interested in pursuing a non-academic career but don't know what, exactly you want to do, you can use those alumni associations and your own LinkedIn network to find people who can tell you about a wide range of careers.
Oops, that sounded a lot like advice.
And professors who want to help your students and postdocs out, but don't know anything about non-academic careers? You can build up your LinkedIn network with people who have worked in your lab, and then link to your current students and let them search your network. Yes, I know that it is fashionable among academics to make fun of LinkedIn, but that is because academic networking is done in an entirely different way. Trust me, out in industry, LinkedIn can be a valuable tool.
Thought #2: People leaving academia tend to have no idea how to apply for a non-academic job
As I mentioned, I have recently hired two junior positions, either one of which could have gone to a recent graduate or a postdoc looking to make a transition away from the bench. In both cases, I wrote the job descriptions to require next to no experience and to emphasize my willingness to train. In neither case did I get many applications from people without industry backgrounds, and few of those that I did get could really be included in my "top ten" stack of resumes- the stack I use to set up phone interviews.
I received resumes with no cover letter and no indication of any interest in the field for which I was hiring. I received resumes with cover letters that plainly stated an interest in a different field. I received resumes that were strong in one of the areas I was looking for, but had no indication of any experience in the other areas (which I had called out specifically in the job listings) and which did not have cover letters noting an interest in growing in those areas.
I know that academic institutions don't always do a great job of explaining how to apply to a non-academic job, but you have emailed me your application. You presumably know how to use the internet. Avail yourself of the information available online and write a good cover letter!
In both cases, I ended up hiring people with industrial experience in a scientific field who were looking to transition into my field. They have been great additions to my team and I am happy I hired them, so it worked out well for me. But I worry about the people who did such a poor job of applying for my positions. I did not have the time to contact each and everyone and ask the obvious questions that their application materials failed to answer. Nor could I reach out to each one and offer personal advice.
I am interested in helping people navigate from academia into industry, and make it easy to network to me via the academic institutions that I attended. I go to career days and local networking events and issue blanket invitations to contact me for an informational interview. Very few people take me up on that, even though it is my policy to take the people who contact me for an informational interview out to lunch- and I say that!
So I do care about this issue- but when I am filling an open position in my group, I care more about finding a great candidate. I am almost by definition pressed for time, since I am usually hiring because we have more work to do than we can handle with our current team. When I am hiring is not when I can do outreach. That is perhaps unfortunate, but it is true.
Here again, is something that a professor who wants to help his or her students transition out of academia could do: make a list of links to posts like this one and other resources about how to apply for non-academic jobs, and share them with your students.
So, that ended up sounding a lot more like advice than I intended. Sadly, it is probably not specific enough to be truly useful. If any of that piques your interest, feel free to leave me a more detailed question in the comments, or reach out via email. I can't buy you lunch over the internet, but I will answer your questions.
I've also been working on my annual year in review blog post. As went through my old posts to pick out my favorites for my roundup, I was struck by how the number of posts has tapered off toward the end of the year. I think the problem is that most of my spare cognitive cycles are currently going to unbloggable career-related decisions, so I am not coming up with topics I want to blog about.
Ironically, a tweet in my feed about careers has given me a topic I want to post about. @AstroKatie posted a link to her Storify about the advice grad students do (or do not) get about non-academic careers.
The details of the advice I got as a graduate student have receded into hazy memory- it was roughly 15 years ago, after all. But I do occasionally participate in career panels and other events set up to help grad students and postdocs find careers outside academia. I also recently hired for two junior-level positions in my group, positions that could have gone to new graduates (but did not- I'll talk about why later).
So I have a couple of thoughts on the transition to a non-academic career. Note that I did not say I have advice on non-academic careers. You could perhaps combine these thoughts with knowledge of an individual's specific background and interests to get some advice, but I will not try to do that.
Thought #1: Events organized to expose graduate students and postdocs to "alternative" careers tend to focus on a small subset of possible careers.
When I was in graduate school, a career in research in industry was presented as an "alternative," which struck me as a bit strange even then, since it was a career doing exactly what you'd trained to do, just in a different type of organization.
I still see industrial research represented in these career events, and I don't have a problem with that. There are indeed some great research jobs in industry. The people speaking about research jobs in industry also usually at least mention the lab-based jobs that are less like academic research, which is good, because those jobs can also be interesting and rewarding.
There are also a lot of great jobs in industry that are not lab-based. Sometimes, these are covered in career events, but I think their inclusion is spotty, depending primarily on what the people that can be found to participate in the event do for a living. I see project management covered more frequently these days. The events that include me on their panel have scientific informatics represented, since that is what I do. There are also careers to be had in regulatory affairs, manufacturing, alliance management, and business development. There are almost certainly additional careers that aren't coming to my mind right now, too.
And then there are the jobs that aren't in industry. Again, I think there are some "go to" careers that are usually represented on career panels. I generally see someone involved in patent law. University tech transfer offices are also well-represented. I don't often see science writers at the events, but someone always mentions that as an option in their remarks. They also mention the possibility of hiring on at one of the big management consulting firms, although I don't know a single science PhD who has done that (I do know some people with other backgrounds who have worked for those firms). Less frequently, the possibilities of working to develop science policy or doing public outreach in support of science are represented. Again, there are probably many additional careers that aren't coming to my mind right now.
My point is not to bash career events. There is no way that any one event could represent all of the possibilities. And that is my point. There are many, many things that people with science PhDs can go on to do. Almost all of the careers I've listed in this post benefit from a science background even if they do not require a science PhD. There are many, many more careers that would benefit from the other skills you develop while doing a PhD, such as critical thinking, problem solving, ability to direct your own work, but that is perhaps a topic for another post.
Many of these careers are things that your average graduate student or postdoctoral fellow will have no way of knowing about. However, there is a good chance that at least one person who graduated from one of the institutions with which you have been affiliated is working in each of these careers. Most professionals are happy to talk about their career paths- particularly if they have, for instance, signed up with their alumni association and indicated that they are happy to talk about their career paths. If you are interested in pursuing a non-academic career but don't know what, exactly you want to do, you can use those alumni associations and your own LinkedIn network to find people who can tell you about a wide range of careers.
Oops, that sounded a lot like advice.
And professors who want to help your students and postdocs out, but don't know anything about non-academic careers? You can build up your LinkedIn network with people who have worked in your lab, and then link to your current students and let them search your network. Yes, I know that it is fashionable among academics to make fun of LinkedIn, but that is because academic networking is done in an entirely different way. Trust me, out in industry, LinkedIn can be a valuable tool.
Thought #2: People leaving academia tend to have no idea how to apply for a non-academic job
As I mentioned, I have recently hired two junior positions, either one of which could have gone to a recent graduate or a postdoc looking to make a transition away from the bench. In both cases, I wrote the job descriptions to require next to no experience and to emphasize my willingness to train. In neither case did I get many applications from people without industry backgrounds, and few of those that I did get could really be included in my "top ten" stack of resumes- the stack I use to set up phone interviews.
I received resumes with no cover letter and no indication of any interest in the field for which I was hiring. I received resumes with cover letters that plainly stated an interest in a different field. I received resumes that were strong in one of the areas I was looking for, but had no indication of any experience in the other areas (which I had called out specifically in the job listings) and which did not have cover letters noting an interest in growing in those areas.
I know that academic institutions don't always do a great job of explaining how to apply to a non-academic job, but you have emailed me your application. You presumably know how to use the internet. Avail yourself of the information available online and write a good cover letter!
In both cases, I ended up hiring people with industrial experience in a scientific field who were looking to transition into my field. They have been great additions to my team and I am happy I hired them, so it worked out well for me. But I worry about the people who did such a poor job of applying for my positions. I did not have the time to contact each and everyone and ask the obvious questions that their application materials failed to answer. Nor could I reach out to each one and offer personal advice.
I am interested in helping people navigate from academia into industry, and make it easy to network to me via the academic institutions that I attended. I go to career days and local networking events and issue blanket invitations to contact me for an informational interview. Very few people take me up on that, even though it is my policy to take the people who contact me for an informational interview out to lunch- and I say that!
So I do care about this issue- but when I am filling an open position in my group, I care more about finding a great candidate. I am almost by definition pressed for time, since I am usually hiring because we have more work to do than we can handle with our current team. When I am hiring is not when I can do outreach. That is perhaps unfortunate, but it is true.
Here again, is something that a professor who wants to help his or her students transition out of academia could do: make a list of links to posts like this one and other resources about how to apply for non-academic jobs, and share them with your students.
So, that ended up sounding a lot more like advice than I intended. Sadly, it is probably not specific enough to be truly useful. If any of that piques your interest, feel free to leave me a more detailed question in the comments, or reach out via email. I can't buy you lunch over the internet, but I will answer your questions.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Weekend Links: The End of the Year Edition
OK, so really, this is just another random collection of links, but it is the last random collection of links of 2013! Unless you could my year in review post, which I plan to write sometime next week.
Anyway, I've got an interesting mix for you this week.
First up, some science, with two stories reporting progress in two baffling diseases. Narcolepsy has been confirmed as an autoimmune disorder, which helps to explain why there was a spike in new cases associated with the 2009 swine flu outbreak. And epilepsy has been confirmed as part of the very baffling "nodding syndrome" that has been affected children in Uganda and South Sudan. When I read stories like these, I am in awe of the fact that our bodies function as well as they do, really. And I hope that these advances can be translated into treatments for the affected patients, but realistically, that may still be a long way off.
In tech news: there is now an ebook StackExchange. I plan to spend sometime checking it out soon.
Badmomgoodmom sent me a link to this video, in which someone has sorted midday traffic on one of the San Diego freeways by color. One thing I conclude from this video is that you don't want to buy a forest green car in San Diego. They all get the paint discoloration that I call the mange. (We had a forest green Subaru Outback before we bought our Mazda 5, and it did indeed have the mange by the time we sold it.)
And this video is just fun.
Finally, Mr. Snarky found these instructions on how to do contemporary dance, and find it amusing. Even if the dude can't spell hilarious.
Anyway, I've got an interesting mix for you this week.
First up, some science, with two stories reporting progress in two baffling diseases. Narcolepsy has been confirmed as an autoimmune disorder, which helps to explain why there was a spike in new cases associated with the 2009 swine flu outbreak. And epilepsy has been confirmed as part of the very baffling "nodding syndrome" that has been affected children in Uganda and South Sudan. When I read stories like these, I am in awe of the fact that our bodies function as well as they do, really. And I hope that these advances can be translated into treatments for the affected patients, but realistically, that may still be a long way off.
In tech news: there is now an ebook StackExchange. I plan to spend sometime checking it out soon.
Badmomgoodmom sent me a link to this video, in which someone has sorted midday traffic on one of the San Diego freeways by color. One thing I conclude from this video is that you don't want to buy a forest green car in San Diego. They all get the paint discoloration that I call the mange. (We had a forest green Subaru Outback before we bought our Mazda 5, and it did indeed have the mange by the time we sold it.)
And this video is just fun.
Finally, Mr. Snarky found these instructions on how to do contemporary dance, and find it amusing. Even if the dude can't spell hilarious.
Monday, December 23, 2013
A Post in Search of a Topic
I feel like writing a blog post, but can't seem to pull together a coherent topic.
First of all, I wanted to tell you all that this week's Tungsten Hippo post is about camels.
There's pretty much nowhere to go from that, so I'll talk about something completely different instead.
I was going to try to ask for help on my latest workplace conundrum, but it has taken such a weird turn that there is no way I can blog about it. If I'm still blogging in 10 years, I'll have some stories to tell. Until then, there is beer.
Then I thought I'd try to write about why watching Pumpkin grow up is delighting me lately, but I could not find the words. It is something to do with how I can see her gaining maturity and learning the hard lessons about when something isn't worth the fight. And also watching her learn to modulate her emotional reactions but still be unabashedly loving towards her little sister. I don't know. Like I said, I can't figure out how to describe it.
Watching her gain this maturity is heartening, though, as I come to terms with the fact that we're rapidly running out of the time that the Spanish immersion school bought us, and we'll soon have to find ways to either accelerate or augment her schooling. If she has more maturity, perhaps she will be more patient as we try to figure this out. So far, she does not complain about being bored in school, but she says she is bored in her after care program, even though the after care program seems quite good to me. We're going to add in an after school Chinese lesson once a week and see if that helps.
I haven't really processed my thoughts on Pumpkin's academic performance enough to write about that topic, though.
So maybe I'll tell you about some of the delightful things Petunia has been doing lately.
She tells me that when she grows up she's going to have a Yo Gabba Gabba bedroom, complete with Yo Gabba Gabba linens on her bed.
She's at that cute age where she's started to pick up adult mannerisms and try them out, but she wears the awkwardly. Except the "awww, dammit" phrase she still says whenever something doesn't go her way. She has that one down perfectly.
And of course, she still has a bunch of cute mispronunciations. Here are some of my favorites (or, as Pumpkin still says sometimes, "fravorites")"
"chopstick" for chapstick
"checkup" for ketchup
"lello" for yellow
"megry go round" for merry go round
"candle" for Kindle ("can I play with the candle, Mommy?")
She also does this thing where if something has a two part name, she puts the consonant of the second part at the beginning of both words, giving us "Pinnie Pooh" instead of "Winnie the Pooh" and "Gubble Guppies" instead of "Bubble Guppies."
So basically, I think my kids are awesome. Big surprise there.
Maybe I can get you guys to help me out with one of my Personal Fun List items. Not surprisingly, I am not going to make it through the entire list this year (I'll claim that if you hit 100% of your goals you aren't aiming high enough or something like that), but I am halfway to being able to create a mix CD of new to music. I have 35 minutes, and I need 70. So... tell me what music you love right now! Go ahead, I won't judge you.
To help convince you of that, I will tell you that this is one of my favorite songs right now, even though I agree it is super schmaltzy.
I think it is the line about "there's nothing but empty sheets between us" that gets me.
I'm such a sap.
So go on, give me some new songs or artists to check out in the comments.
And that probably wraps up my last post until after Christmas. Merry Christmas!
First of all, I wanted to tell you all that this week's Tungsten Hippo post is about camels.
There's pretty much nowhere to go from that, so I'll talk about something completely different instead.
I was going to try to ask for help on my latest workplace conundrum, but it has taken such a weird turn that there is no way I can blog about it. If I'm still blogging in 10 years, I'll have some stories to tell. Until then, there is beer.
Then I thought I'd try to write about why watching Pumpkin grow up is delighting me lately, but I could not find the words. It is something to do with how I can see her gaining maturity and learning the hard lessons about when something isn't worth the fight. And also watching her learn to modulate her emotional reactions but still be unabashedly loving towards her little sister. I don't know. Like I said, I can't figure out how to describe it.
Watching her gain this maturity is heartening, though, as I come to terms with the fact that we're rapidly running out of the time that the Spanish immersion school bought us, and we'll soon have to find ways to either accelerate or augment her schooling. If she has more maturity, perhaps she will be more patient as we try to figure this out. So far, she does not complain about being bored in school, but she says she is bored in her after care program, even though the after care program seems quite good to me. We're going to add in an after school Chinese lesson once a week and see if that helps.
I haven't really processed my thoughts on Pumpkin's academic performance enough to write about that topic, though.
So maybe I'll tell you about some of the delightful things Petunia has been doing lately.
She tells me that when she grows up she's going to have a Yo Gabba Gabba bedroom, complete with Yo Gabba Gabba linens on her bed.
She's at that cute age where she's started to pick up adult mannerisms and try them out, but she wears the awkwardly. Except the "awww, dammit" phrase she still says whenever something doesn't go her way. She has that one down perfectly.
And of course, she still has a bunch of cute mispronunciations. Here are some of my favorites (or, as Pumpkin still says sometimes, "fravorites")"
"chopstick" for chapstick
"checkup" for ketchup
"lello" for yellow
"megry go round" for merry go round
"candle" for Kindle ("can I play with the candle, Mommy?")
She also does this thing where if something has a two part name, she puts the consonant of the second part at the beginning of both words, giving us "Pinnie Pooh" instead of "Winnie the Pooh" and "Gubble Guppies" instead of "Bubble Guppies."
So basically, I think my kids are awesome. Big surprise there.
Maybe I can get you guys to help me out with one of my Personal Fun List items. Not surprisingly, I am not going to make it through the entire list this year (I'll claim that if you hit 100% of your goals you aren't aiming high enough or something like that), but I am halfway to being able to create a mix CD of new to music. I have 35 minutes, and I need 70. So... tell me what music you love right now! Go ahead, I won't judge you.
To help convince you of that, I will tell you that this is one of my favorite songs right now, even though I agree it is super schmaltzy.
I think it is the line about "there's nothing but empty sheets between us" that gets me.
I'm such a sap.
So go on, give me some new songs or artists to check out in the comments.
And that probably wraps up my last post until after Christmas. Merry Christmas!
Friday, December 20, 2013
Weekend Reading: The I'm Too Busy to Organize These Edition
Clearly, I didn't get around to writing either of the posts I wanted to write on Sunday. I am not surprised. I celebrate Christmas and I have young kids. This is a very busy time! I'm on track to get everything done- the Christmas cards are mailed (thanks to my "drink beer and then it is easier to write them" method), the gifts are all bought, and I've even wrapped a couple. The plans for this weekend include more wrapping and baking some Christmas cookies with the kids. Blogging takes a back seat this time of year.
Still, I've got lots of good links for you this week, even if I don't have the time to organize them.
So, straight to the links:
A nice reminder that not everyone can "lifehack" in the same way.
A reminder not to trash talk your body in front of your kids. I give myself a B- on this one. I try very hard, though.
Penn and Teller take down antivaxers and it is awesome:
And a woman who was raised by parents who didn't vaccinate tells her story.
I don't know if you saw the flare up in discussion about R Kelly this week. If not, you can Google and get the back story. But you might have missed this powerful piece that reminds us: it shouldn't be up to little girls to police the behavior of grown men.
Utah is on pace to end homelessness. I wonder if this policy will work elsewhere, or if it will even be tried. So I was feeling sort of happy about Utah even before their Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. Can we stop stereotyping Utahans (Utahites? Utahers?) now? It is more than Mormons, and Mormons are not all the same.
Moving on... I really liked Bill Moyers' piece about inequality. Maybe I should have called this the "reminders" edition and called this one a reminder that we get a voice in the rules of our society. We don't have to accept ever increasing inequality as "just how it is."
I don't play videogames, but I completely get this cartoon's point about being gender neutral in your online presence. I was carefully gender neutral when I set up an account to talk about gun laws, going as far as to change some of my writing style and word choice.
Slate published a piece from a software engineer arguing that the tech leaders you read about in the tech press are not representative of tech workers. It makes me think it would be interesting to see real data on the beliefs and opinions of the engineers in Silicon Valley. I suspect those data are out there, but I am too busy right now to go find them.
Sticking with the tech world for awhile.... I rather liked this piece in Wired. It reminded me of how I can agree that tech is not a meritocracy and still think that the tech world is more meritocratic than many others.
I'll say a couple more things about those last two pieces:
1. The tech world is not Silicon Valley. Sure, Silicon Valley is a large part, and is very influential, but it is not the totality. I'd go farther and say that you can work in tech and not work for a tech company.
2. The tech world is far from meritocratic, but it is more meritocratic than some other fields. For instance, in science your educational pedigree can matter more than your talent. The tech world at least has some tools that can help people hire on skills more than pedigree (or race, or gender, or any number of other things that trigger our biases). I'm thinking of things like giving prospective employees code tests, or asking for sample code. Sadly, we don't use these tools as much as we should, and we often apply them AFTER we have let our biases filter out a bunch of good candidates. But the potential is there, at least at the lower levels where people are still writing code and not managing people who write code. Think about how other industries hire and then see if maybe you might agree that the problem of embracing diversity in hiring processes is not unique to tech.
That is not to let the tech world off the hook- not in the least- but to remind people that a lot of the things people point at and hate about tech are really just reflections of our society as a whole.
Yes, I saw the whole Justine Sacco thing go past on Twitter. Some people said some smart things in amongst all the jokes and snark, but I did not think to grab them and have way too much laundry to fold tonight to go and find them now, so you're on your own.
I always like to end on a positive note, so here is What If? answering the question of when it became impossible for one person to read all the books.
And here is a functioning car made out of LEGO.
I hope those of you who celebrate Christmas aren't too far behind on the holiday to do list, and that all of you have a happy weekend!
Still, I've got lots of good links for you this week, even if I don't have the time to organize them.
So, straight to the links:
A nice reminder that not everyone can "lifehack" in the same way.
A reminder not to trash talk your body in front of your kids. I give myself a B- on this one. I try very hard, though.
Penn and Teller take down antivaxers and it is awesome:
And a woman who was raised by parents who didn't vaccinate tells her story.
I don't know if you saw the flare up in discussion about R Kelly this week. If not, you can Google and get the back story. But you might have missed this powerful piece that reminds us: it shouldn't be up to little girls to police the behavior of grown men.
Utah is on pace to end homelessness. I wonder if this policy will work elsewhere, or if it will even be tried. So I was feeling sort of happy about Utah even before their Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. Can we stop stereotyping Utahans (Utahites? Utahers?) now? It is more than Mormons, and Mormons are not all the same.
Moving on... I really liked Bill Moyers' piece about inequality. Maybe I should have called this the "reminders" edition and called this one a reminder that we get a voice in the rules of our society. We don't have to accept ever increasing inequality as "just how it is."
I don't play videogames, but I completely get this cartoon's point about being gender neutral in your online presence. I was carefully gender neutral when I set up an account to talk about gun laws, going as far as to change some of my writing style and word choice.
Slate published a piece from a software engineer arguing that the tech leaders you read about in the tech press are not representative of tech workers. It makes me think it would be interesting to see real data on the beliefs and opinions of the engineers in Silicon Valley. I suspect those data are out there, but I am too busy right now to go find them.
Sticking with the tech world for awhile.... I rather liked this piece in Wired. It reminded me of how I can agree that tech is not a meritocracy and still think that the tech world is more meritocratic than many others.
I'll say a couple more things about those last two pieces:
1. The tech world is not Silicon Valley. Sure, Silicon Valley is a large part, and is very influential, but it is not the totality. I'd go farther and say that you can work in tech and not work for a tech company.
2. The tech world is far from meritocratic, but it is more meritocratic than some other fields. For instance, in science your educational pedigree can matter more than your talent. The tech world at least has some tools that can help people hire on skills more than pedigree (or race, or gender, or any number of other things that trigger our biases). I'm thinking of things like giving prospective employees code tests, or asking for sample code. Sadly, we don't use these tools as much as we should, and we often apply them AFTER we have let our biases filter out a bunch of good candidates. But the potential is there, at least at the lower levels where people are still writing code and not managing people who write code. Think about how other industries hire and then see if maybe you might agree that the problem of embracing diversity in hiring processes is not unique to tech.
That is not to let the tech world off the hook- not in the least- but to remind people that a lot of the things people point at and hate about tech are really just reflections of our society as a whole.
Yes, I saw the whole Justine Sacco thing go past on Twitter. Some people said some smart things in amongst all the jokes and snark, but I did not think to grab them and have way too much laundry to fold tonight to go and find them now, so you're on your own.
I always like to end on a positive note, so here is What If? answering the question of when it became impossible for one person to read all the books.
And here is a functioning car made out of LEGO.
I hope those of you who celebrate Christmas aren't too far behind on the holiday to do list, and that all of you have a happy weekend!
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