Phys .org: Study busts 9 to 5 model for academic work. “QUT’s Professor Adrian Barnett led the research which examined more than 49,000 manuscript and 76,000 peer review online submissions to The BMJ and The BMJ Open, measuring whether the submissions were made on weekends, national holidays or late at night.”
The Verge: Former Facebook manager calls out company for bad treatment of black employees. “Today, former Facebook partnerships manager Mark Luckie published an internal memo that was sent to his co-workers on his last day at Facebook earlier this month, calling out pervasive discrimination issues within the company. The note argues that Facebook has a ‘black people problem’ that involves the mistreatment of black employees. He cites incidents where managers or colleagues called their co-workers ‘hostile’ or ‘aggressive,’ and others where campus security gave extra scrutiny to black employees.”
Quartz: A new app flags the old tweets that could get you fired. “It is entirely possible that the words that will end your career prospects for the foreseeable future have been written already, and by your own hand. Plenty of promising job candidates have had their hopes scuppered by a potential employer’s discovery of their foul, ignorant, or otherwise offensive social media posts—posts that may have been written during a younger, more foolish phase, but that the candidates must still bear responsibility for. A wise job candidate is a vigilant curator of their own social media history. One web developer has created a tool to help them do it.”
Ars Technica: Low pay, poor prospects, and psychological toll: The perils of microtask work. “Microtask platforms recruit humans to do the rating, tagging, review-writing, and poll-taking work that can’t quite be automated with an algorithm yet. In the US, the most common such platform is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, but other platforms are prominent in other parts of the world. Proponents of this kind of work say that these quick, simple tasks allow people flexible hours to make money, or help ‘fill in the gaps’ for the un- and under-employed. But a new study (PDF) from the United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO) questions whether these platforms are as good for society as the Silicon Valley investors and digital evangelists claim.”
New to me, from The Next Web: This nifty tool can help you land a job abroad and relocate smoothly. “New year, new beginnings. But a large part of getting off to a good start is about finding the right opportunity – and perhaps the right place. This is precisely what Relocate.me can help you out with.”
Who are the workers behind Amazon’s Mechanical Turk? Actually, it’s kind of depressing. “Data collected by Pew from February of this year say that 51 percent of Mechanical Turkers have a college degree, compared with 36 percent of the adult U.S. workforce. Additionally, 52 percent of Turkers make less than $5 per hour on a job (the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour), and 39 percent earn between $5 per hour and $7.99 per hour.”
Now available: a directory of job boards focused on the United States (PRESS RELEASE). “This new directory contains links to over 1,000 job boards for every country, niche and state in the United States. In addition, the directory lists online resume tools that help you create a resume online, many of which are free.”
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