#Ryo #RoninWarriors

Their presence highlights the movement of the ocean's current, but their origin hasn't been pinned down.

LOS ANGELES—Howling in terror upon observing the Supreme Ruler of the Galaxy in all of His uncovered glory, TikTok creator Alex Morris reportedly screamed Friday after barging in on a bathing Xenu during a speedrun of a Church of Scientology building. “Jesus fucking Christ—what the hell is that thing?” Morris said mid-livestream as the ancient, incomprehensible Progenitor of All Thetans arose from His porcelain tub with a loofah in His hand. “Holy shit. Guys, this is way more than I bargained for. I just wanted to film a harmless prank, but now I can’t move my legs. Agh! What is that noise? It’s like a drum is beating in my head, or a woodpecker is trying to break out of my skull. Make it stop! Please, make it stop! Oh, fuck. That thing just stepped out of the tub. It’s approaching!” At press time, Morris had clawed his own eyes out after Xenu flooded his mind with trillions of years of Thetan history previously unknown to mankind.

The post Church Of Scientology Speedrunner Screams After Barging In On Xenu Taking Bath appeared first on The Onion.

A study found that birds residing in cities consistently allowed men to approach almost a meter closer before flying away on average than women, with researchers unsure how they are able to determine sex or a reason for their behavior. What do you think?

The post Study: City Birds More Afraid Of Women Than Men appeared first on The Onion.

THE HEAVENS—In an effort to make the universe a more modern and efficient place, the Lord God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, confirmed Wednesday that He would be discontinuing the pebble. “Starting in the year of our Me 2026, I will be ceasing creation of the pebble so that I can turn My focus toward stones, rocks, and boulders,” said the all-knowing and all-powerful deity, who stressed that there were already 300 billion pebbles in circulation, the vast majority of which were no longer being used by humanity.

“It’s time to phase the pebble out. We all know they’re mostly just taking up space at this point. We might take My power for granted, but each time I say ‘Let there be a pebble,’ it actually takes up quite a bit of energy, much more than any of those pebbles are worth. And to anyone who’s worried they’re going to miss pebbles, don’t worry—you’re going to love sand.” God added that He would be setting up an FAQ on His website shortly for those seeking more information.

The post God Discontinues The Pebble appeared first on The Onion.

SADDLE RIVER, NJ—Saying “Down, down!” in an assertive voice and repeatedly spraying her with water, local man Justin Landry emphasized to reporters Thursday that his surrogate was not allowed on the furniture. “I feel bad, but this couch is expensive, and I don’t exactly know where she’s been,” said Landry, adding that as much as he loved the 28-year-old who had agreed to carry his unborn child for the next nine months, he didn’t want her scratching the fabric with her nails, shedding her long brown hair, or getting blood and amniotic fluid everywhere if she suddenly went into labor. “I guess we could put a blanket down, but it’s a slippery slope. She’s cute and everything—it’s just that she belongs on the floor, in her own bed, or in the backyard, not up here with us.” According to reports, Landry later got into a screaming match with his wife after he caught her repeatedly dropping bites of human food under the table for the hungry gestational carrier to eat.

The post Surrogate Not Allowed On Furniture appeared first on The Onion.

TAMPA, FL—Acknowledging that the organization’s famously clean-cut grooming standards had grown increasingly out of place in a league that has otherwise evolved to embrace personality and style, New York Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner announced Thursday that the team had amended its long-standing appearance policy to allow extreme body modification. “After soliciting feedback from many current and former Yankees, we have decided that, starting this season, dramatic physical alterations will now be permitted for any players or uniformed personnel who wish to sport forked tongues, pointed elfin ears, saucer-sized lip discs, or other forms of radical bodily expression,” said Steinbrenner, addressing the press alongside team captain Aaron Judge, who debuted subdermal horns, jet-black tattooed eyes, a surgically clefted cat mouth, and stretched earlobes as part of the new Yankees look. “Of course, players will still be expected to present a professional, team-first image on and off the field. They should avoid any looks that are in poor taste or don’t maintain the dignity of the pinstripes—cock mutilation, swastika scarification, that sort of thing. But if a player wants a zipper implanted across his abdomen or his teeth filed down into vampire fangs or any other similarly inoffensive modification, we believe that will help bring the team in alignment with the modern game of baseball.” Steinbrenner added that despite the update, players would still be reprimanded for unkempt facial hair.

The post Yankees Appearance Policy Amended To Allow Extreme Body Modification  appeared first on The Onion.

The post Taylor Swift Fires Fixer Who Forgot To Kill Justin Baldoni appeared first on The Onion.

The family of Teresa Cox, 81, will hold a burial service for her this Saturday and then exhume the body a week later for an encore.

The post Teresa Cox appeared first on The Onion.

Well ... you know ... they don't need to use real cars. They could just get little models, put the camera up close.
What are ya talking about Cowboy Slim?
The cop show those kids are talking about.
We don't want them to do a cop show, do we? We want them to have fun right here at the corral.
#CowboyWho

I've always wanted to understand Sporadic Groups better, so I designed some physical twisty puzzles (like the Rubik's cube) to explore them and get a feel for how they work. I couldn't be happier with the results.

*Minor Correction: My definition for normal subgroups in the video was a bit too strict. It's only important that this identity holds for 'some' element S in S * g = g * S, the two S's don't need to be exactly the same element.

🔗 Links 🔗
M12 Puzzle: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4495636187/
M12 Puzzle digital files for printing: https://www.etsy.com/listing/4495659248/
M24 Puzzle: https://github.com/HackerPoet/M24-Puzzle
Permutation Group Visualizer: https://permutation-groups.netlify.app/

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🎵 Music (CC by 4.0) 🎵
Pamela Yuen - My Still Night, My Starry Night
Dyalla - Bump
Johan Vandegriff - Alien Sunlight
Joshua Moses - In Suspension
Anthem of Rain - End Of The Road (Instrumental)

Ten water projects received initial approval to split $1.28 billion in state money this year, but 13 others didn’t make the cut — including one that may supply drought-stricken Corpus Christi.

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. Our exit interviews are emailed to all managers

I work for a small company with a one-person HR team. When a team member leaves the company by choice, the HR person conducts an exit interview. The transcription of the interview is then emailed to the entire management layer of the company — about a third of the company headcount — without any edits or redactions. Details of personal circumstances, raw feedback about supervisors or coworkers, all of it just out there in the open with names attached.

Many of us middle managers are horrified by this practice and object both on privacy grounds and because there is no clear indication that anything is being done to catalogue, analyze, or respond to the feedback provided in the exit interviews. What are the best practices around exit interviews, and how would you recommend middle management at my company press for something better?

Yeah, this is weird and a bad practice.

You don’t blast out raw exit interviews to a third of the company. I doubt the people who gave that feedback in their exit interviews would appreciate it being used that way — and if word gets out that that’s how they’re handled, exiting employees are going to start being way less candid.

Someone needs to be charged with assessing and synthesizing the info from exit interviews and identifying trends and areas for further evaluation or change; without that, there’s very little point to doing them at all. Then, that should be shared with whoever has an actual need to know — generally HR and people in the management chain for whatever issues came up, not just “everyone gets to see all of it, all the time, regardless of relevance to them.” Often HR will share trends with the organization’s leadership quarterly, while addressing individual issues as they come up (such a manager needs more management training or a potential legal concern). But the best practice is to keep things as confidential as possible so that feedback can’t be connected with an individual person unless that’s unavoidable to get a problem addressed.

The way it’s being handled now is almost gossip-adjacent, rather than something being used constructively.

You and the other managers who are concerned should ask how the feedback is assessed and used beyond the email blasts you see, and then share the concerns above and propose more targeted use of the information. If you have some examples of sensitive issues that were shared far more widely than they needed to be, mention those and ask for the reasoning in doing that.

Here’s a decent article you could share on how employers can assess the data from exit interviews.

Related:
should I tell the truth in my exit interview?

2. How can I ask about AI use in a job interview?

I’ve started looking for another job for many reasons, but chief among them is my company’s increasing push for everyone to use AI (it’s gone from “this is a helpful tool to use as needed” to “we expect you to use this as much as possible” alarmingly fast). No judgment to those who use AI when needed but I personally try to limit my use as much as possible due to the environmental implications (and a small fear that I may one day be replaced with a robot).

What is the best way to ask a new company about how they’re using AI while you’re interviewing, both for the specific role and company- wide? In case it’s helpful context, I work in an admin/support role.

You can ask pretty directly: “I know AI is changing the way a lot of offices operate. Is it having an impact on the work of this role, and in the company more broadly?”

But the problem is exactly what you saw at the company you’re trying to leave: it can go from “this is a helpful tool to use as needed” to “we expect you to use this as much as possible” alarmingly fast. So the answer you get in an interview might not still be the case a couple of months from now.

You can still ask! You’d just want to be aware that that’s the case.

3. Do employers really distinguish between part-time and full-time work for years of experience?

Have you ever known employers to distinguish between part-time and full-time when checking experience requirements? I’ve never been asked this, but one of my part-time contracting gigs was disproportionately valuable in accruing apparent experience when life didn’t allow me to go full-time. So four years at 10 hours a month counts as four years of experience.

Rather than dropping out entirely to raise kids / go back to school / do a medical thing, why do more workers not just scale way back? (Or do they?)

Yes, some employers do distinguish between part-time and full-time work when they’re calculating how much experience you have, but it depends very much on the role, the type of experience, and how part-time you were — as well as whether they even know it was part-time because they might not.

I wouldn’t count 10 hours a month for four years as being the equivalent of four years of experience, but I’m also not deeply invested in calculating years of experience for most jobs; I’m more interested in your overall expertise. Years of experience can be a decent stand-in for that to some degree, but not the extent that I’d prioritize it over things like how deep your subject knowledge expertise is, the range of challenges you fielded / got exposed to during that time, and what you actually achieved in that time period. Someone could work 40 hours a week for 10 years and still not be better at the work than someone really talented who worked half-time for three years.

To the extent that employers are deeply focused on years of experience as an early-stage screening tool, you mainly see it with more junior-level jobs. A job that says they want two years of experience is communicating something about the general profile of candidate they’re seeking and that it’s not a new grad who interned for four hours a week for their last two years of college.

As to why more people don’t scale way back rather than dropping out of the workforce entirely when they have other things going on: one large reason is because there aren’t nearly as many part-time professional jobs available as people who would likely want them (particularly when you narrow it to their specific field).

Related:
how to calculate how much work experience you have

4. Does the Equal Pay Act apply if you’re both women?

My coworker recently referred her friend to a job opening on our team, and she was hired. As friends do, they compared their compensation numbers and found that the new hire was going to be paid more. They will have the same title and the same responsibilities. My coworker then went to her manager to address this discrepancy and was told that her compensation would not be brought up to match the new hire’s. I know this would be a legal issue if a man was being paid more for the same job, but since the issue is between two women, does the Equal Pay Act still apply? Does my coworker have any recourse to this obvious unfairness?

The Equal Pay Act only prohibits paying men and women differently for the same work; it does not apply if the differently paid employees are the same sex. That’s because the law’s goal isn’t salary parity in general; it’s specifically about sex discrimination.

So your coworker doesn’t have legal recourse, but she can still make the case for a raise based on her own performance and the new info she has now about the value of the work to the company. That said, she should also look at whether there might be legitimate reasons for her friend to be bought in at a higher salary, like a different or more advanced skill set, more experience, different education, stronger track record of achievement previously, etc.

The post our exit interviews are emailed to all managers, how to ask about AI use in a job interview, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Actually, we’re not that busy. We go at a fairly relaxed pace.

Some time ago, I discussed how the Resource Compiler defaults to CP_ACP, even in the face of subtle hints that the file is UTF-8.

After yet another incident of Visual Studio secretly changing the file encoding from 1252 to UTF-8 and breaking all non-ASCII strings, combined with Azure DevOps and Visual Studio simply ignoring encoding changes when showing diffs, a colleague decided to solve the problem once and for all by using explicit Unicode escapes \x#### to represent non-ASCII characters. That way, it doesn’t matter whether the file encoding is 1252 or UTF-8 because the two code pages agree on the common ASCII subset.

What used to be

IDS_AWESOME "That’s great!"

was changed to

IDS_AWESOME "That\x2019s great!"

Unfortunately, the resulting string that appeared on screen was

That 19s great!

What went wrong?

If you are encoding Unicode into your string, you have to put an L prefix on the quoted string. Otherwise, the \xABCD sequence is interpreted as an 8-bit \xAB escape sequence, followed by two literal characters CD. In this case, the \x2019 was interpreted as \x20 (which encodes a space) followed by the literal characters 19, resulting in the string That␣19s great!.

The correct conversion includes the L prefix.

IDS_AWESOME L"That\x2019s great!"

The post When you upgrade your resource strings to Unicode, don’t forget to specify the L prefix appeared first on The Old New Thing.

A reader writes:

I’m returning to the job-searching arena after several years and will be interviewing over the next few weeks.

A few years ago, I was interviewed by a panel who were quite hostile and clearly not impressed with my resume or my responses. Up until that point, I’d never come across any interviewer who was aggressive, disrespectful, or rude, so the nastiness directed my way was unexpected:

• belittling of my resume
• verbal expressions of frustration at my lack of specific experience (and then giving me a nasty look)
• patronizing remarks made about my responses to questions
• aggressive facial expressions, no smiles, and no basic civilities (not even hello, just a curt instruction to “sit down!”
• questions being asked in a hostile tone with a patronizing remark at the end
• I think I was told at one point, “You aren’t very good, are you?”
• Practically throwing a resume at me for me to refer to during the interview
• Eye-rolling and groaning at my responses

All of the above sounds like something from a movie, but it really happened.

Surprisingly, I was offered the job, and as I had few choices at the time, I accepted it. I think I lasted about eight weeks before leaving for a better opportunity.

If I were to be interviewed by a hostile, aggressive interviewer again, what is some wording I can use to quickly take myself out of the running and leave the interview with my dignity intact? Since my prior experience taught me that a hostile interviewer is indicative of employer culture, I’d rather give them a wide berth.

If an interviewer is just a little unpleasant but not openly hostile, much of the time it makes sense to stay and finish the conversation — since who knows, you might want to apply again there in the future for a job with a different manager and ideally you’d preserve the relationship with the employer generally (even if you’d never work for this manager).

But if an interviewer is openly hostile, you’re not required to just sit there and take it. If someone is flagrantly rude or antagonistic, there’s no reason you can’t say, “As we’re talking, I’m realizing this job isn’t quite what I’m looking for, and I don’t want to take up more of your time. I appreciate you talking with me, and I wish you the best in filling the role.”

If you think you’d have a tough time saying this, it helps to remember that your interviewer isn’t in charge of you — which I say because the power dynamics of interviews can make people forget that. While it’s true that the interviewer is deciding whether or not they want to offer you the job, that assessment is a two-way street: you are also deciding whether or not you’d want to work with them. You aren’t a supplicant waiting for them to bestow their blessing on you. Particularly once you’ve decided that you don’t want the job, you are peers in a business conversation, and you are allowed to decide to wrap up and leave. In fact, I’d argue the best interviews always feel like peers in a business conversation and that’s not a shift that should only come about after you’ve decided you don’t want the job.

Interview conventions tend to steer candidates away from feeling they can cut an interview short but you absolutely can, the same way an interviewer could also decide to do that if a you were clearly not the right match.

If you ever need to want to end an interview early and you’re worried about how your interviewer will react, it can help to put yourself in the headspace of other types of business meetings and how you would handle those: for example, if a prospective vendor was rude in a meeting, you’d probably have a much easier time ending the conversation. The power dynamics are different in interviews — but they’re not so different that you have to tolerate abuse.

The post how should I handle an openly hostile job interviewer? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

A large-scale study found no correlation between school cell phone bans and higher test scores, though the findings pointed to increased levels of well-being among students. What do you think?

The post Study Finds Cell Phone Bans Don’t Help Grades appeared first on The Onion.

run

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• journal
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TATAMAGOUCHE, NS – An event five years in anticipation turned to bitter disappointment this week, as a local census dweeb did not receive the coveted long form questionnaire. Local insufferable keener Dan Gallant, 35, says he was excited to get his government-issued letter from Census Canada in the mail this week. Gallant will not shut […]

The post Local nerd disappointed he didn’t get the long form census appeared first on The Beaverton.

WASHINGTON—Claiming that his signature dessert had garnered rave reviews from victims and co-conspirators alike, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Tuesday to share the recipe for his famous “Better than Pedophilia” cake. “This decadent, easy-to-throw-together cake will be the star of any child-trafficking meetup you bring it to, and just like pedophilia, once you get a taste, you won’t be able to stop,” Trump said in an instructional video posted to his social media platform, adding that anyone who baked his Better than Pedophilia cake would be compelled to go door to door to inform their neighbors of its deliciousness. “It’s a scandal how moist this cake is, and I won’t even have my Justice Department redact the secret ingredient: a dash of espresso powder, can you believe it? Your taste buds will think you’ve died and gone to the great Miss Teen USA dressing room in the sky. A friend of mine, I won’t say who, but a very talented financier I once knew used to leap up off the massage table and run right out to the kitchen still in his towel when he smelled this beauty coming out of the oven. It really is as sinfully sweet as sex with minors, folks. But I’ll warn you: Just like yours truly, it’s very rich, so you’ll have to do a lot of pedophilia to burn off those calories!” Trump’s post sharing the recipe follows a video last month in which he demonstrated how to mix his legendary “Pedophilia on the Beach” cocktail. 

The post Trump Shares Recipe For Famous ‘Better Than Pedophilia’ Cake appeared first on The Onion.

LOS ANGELES—In an effort to ensure his good deed did not go unseen and unappreciated, customer Angus Helms waited until the barista was watching to disarm a gunman at Highland Ground coffee shop, sources confirmed Tuesday. “Dammit, she’s still got her head down to empty out the cash register for this guy, and if I grab the gun when she’s not looking, she’ll have no idea I’m the one who did it,” Helms reportedly thought to himself as he coughed loudly to get the barista’s attention, breaking off his attempt to disarm the man mid-lunge when the barista turned around to open the café’s safe. “I know she’s busy obeying this guy’s orders, but suppose she doesn’t see me do it and thinks I’m one of those stuck-up customers who never intervenes to foil armed robberies. If I’m gonna go out of my way to smash the tip jar over this guy’s skull and heroically wrench the pistol from his hand, I think it’s fair that I get a little credit for it. Oh great, now she’s focused on the gunshot wound to her ankle. C’mon, just stop crying and look over here already!” At press time, witnesses reported that Helms had sighed and returned the gunman’s weapon after realizing the barista had looked away at the last second.

The post Customer Waits Until Barista Watching To Disarm Gunman appeared first on The Onion.

LOS ANGELES—In a desperate effort to get production of the animated film sequel back on schedule, Garfield Movie 2 director Mark Dindal reportedly begged lead voice actor Chris Pratt to stop ad-libbing Bible verses Thursday. “The line is ‘Is that lasagna I smell?’ not ‘A companion of gluttons shames his father,’ ” said Dindal, storming into the recording booth to confront Pratt after the 46-year-old actor went on a long, improvised tangent about how Garfield’s owner Jon Arbuckle should have dominion over the orange cartoon cat, who was “a beast of the field.” “Please, Chris, just stick to the script. If you feel the need to ad-lib something, you can throw in an ‘I hate Mondays,’ but none of that stuff about how Odie’s nakedness must be covered is making the final cut, okay? This is a children’s movie.” At press time, reports confirmed Dindal was at the end of his rope after Pratt suggested an alternate ending to the film in which Garfield burns in hell for his sins.

The post ‘Garfield’ Director Begs Chris Pratt To Stop Ad-Libbing Bible Verses appeared first on The Onion.

The bride and groom spent Sunday under the impression that they were cementing their union in the eyes of God, who unfortunately was busy watching a Frasier rerun at the time.

The post Delaney Airhart and Jack Trusler appeared first on The Onion.

While the Apple IIgs could connect to a composite display, Apple released a high-quality color RGB monitor specifically designed for the IIgs. This monitor was called the Apple Color RGB Monitor, A2M6014. It was the only color monitor Apple ever released which could accept full analog RGB video signals at the standard 240p/480i resolution (using a 15.7KHz horizontal line frequency). I have recently acquired a full Apple IIgs setup, and while the IIgs needs some repair to its mainboard the monitor works. Even though this monitor has a connector only used by Apple, with a converter it is possible to use it with a variety of game consoles. In this short blog article I will detail how I got it working with my Analogue consoles and MiSTer.

Read more »

Yup. Coupla motors. 2.5L engine. All that jazz.
Main channel vid: https://youtu.be/oEruzTKteRE

Do not deny yourself the pleasures of life! Beauty is pain!
Main channel vid: https://youtu.be/KnUFH5GX_fI

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I don’t want employees to give me gifts

I’ve just switched employers and am now heading up a company’s legal division. I value your advice to gift down, not up, but do you have any scripts on how and when to communicate this expectation to subordinates? I don’t want to sound like, “Listen up, peons! Spare me your humble offerings.” Nor do I want to say it so early that it feels like I was expecting them to shower gifts at my feet if I didn’t say something. And if someone ignores me and gives me a gift anyway, how should I handle that? I’m working remotely for a region of the country that’s very different culturally from my own, and I don’t want to inadvertently insult people or harm relationships with my excellent team in a place where gifting seems to be a part of the culture. For what it’s worth, I’m coming from government, where no-gifting-up expectations are clearly set in policy.

Are you mostly worried about this happening with year-end holiday gifts? If so, speak up in late November or early December and say something like, “This is the time of year when people think about holiday gifts, so I want to say up-front that just doing your jobs well is enough of a gift for me. Please spend your money on your family or yourself, and know that I’m grateful to have each of you on our team.” (It’s less weird if you can say this in the context of some other holiday-related announcement, so that it’s not its own stand-alone declaration.)

If you’re seeing a culture around things like birthday gifts, talk to whoever seems to organize them and explain that you don’t want them to organize something for you — and it’s okay to explicitly say, “I feel strongly that no one should feel even minor pressure to buy a gift for anyone in their chain of command.”

But if you do receive a gift from an employee despite this, it’s okay to accept it graciously as long as it’s not extravagantly expensive. You don’t want to make anyone feel bad (which will happen if you refuse to accept a gift); you just want to ensure no one feels obligated to buy you presents. If it is extravagant, you can say, “This was very kind of you! I feel really strongly that managers shouldn’t accept gifts because it can lead to people feeling pressured to provide them — I know you didn’t, but I worry about creating that culture. So I’m going to give this back to you so you can give it a loved one or use it yourself. The only gift I need from you is your good work, and I already have that!”

Also, aside from gifts to you, be alert for signs that anyone might feel pressured to contribute to gifts for others. If gifting is a big part of this office’s culture, I can almost guarantee that there are people who would prefer to keep their money — and that they’d be grateful if you worked to shift that piece of the culture once you’re more settled in.

2. My employee doesn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom

I am the head of a small organization. I have two in-office employees. We do work in-office most days, and our office space has a bathroom. All of us can hear when the toilet flushes, sink is running, etc. One of my employees clearly does not wash his hands after using the restroom — he’s in there only briefly, and the toilet flushes mere seconds before he emerges from the bathroom. This is gross.

If I put up a “wash your hands” sign, it will be awkward, given there are only three of us here and we work closely together and a new sign would be very pointed and unusual. I’m not sure a sign would change the behavior anyway. Do I need to have a personal conversation with the employee about this (also awkward)? Do I need to resign myself to vigorous hand sanitizing and Lysol spraying? How do I get over the thought of touching the copier, the stapler, the doorknobs, after my employee has, while knowing what he previously touched?

I am sorry to deliver this news because it is gross, but a significant portion of the people walking in around in the world don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom, and you are touching things they have touched all the time when you’re out in public. Signs won’t stop it. You just need to know that’s how people are, and adjust your own behavior accordingly.

(It would be different if you were in food service; then you’d have an obligation to talk to him.)

3. Resumes that include info about gender identity or sexual orientation

This is admittedly, less of a question, and more of something I get concerned about as a manager reviewing resumes. I was advised by a peer to submit this to you in hopes that some hopeful applicants might see it and be more cautious.

I often have resumes from younger individuals that specifically advertise their gender identity or sexuality. While we are a progressive workplace, with many in-house accommodations and built-in support structures that allow team members to present as the gender and be open about the sexuality they are most comfortable with as they are comfortable expressing. That being said, we are located in a less progressive state, where it’s becoming increasingly fraught (while still illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ+ folk in the workplace).

It’s not my place to coach applicants who aren’t my staff, but I wish sometimes I could advise them to be a little more cautious about openly sharing this information — especially at a stage of the hiring process where a less scrupulous person could still choose to discard their resume under the guise of a more “acceptable” reason.

Most often, candidates who do this are doing it intentionally because they want to screen out employers and hiring managers where it’s more likely to be an issue. It’s a way to screen for inclusive workplaces. It’s not infallible, of course, but it’s better than doing no screening and hoping for the best.

4. How much notice should I give before retiring?

How much notice should I give before retiring? Is a standard two weeks enough?

For context, I just got a big promotion in December and I have been leading a newly formed team since January. I am only 54 so I think this move is going to be a surprise, and I feel bad about leaving the team at a formative time. I also have a great relationship with my boss and I hate to put her in a difficult position. But for a variety of reasons, I’ve determined that retiring in September is the right thing for me to do.

Given the circumstances, is it better to give my boss a heads-up well in advance, or should I just stick with the standard two weeks?

It comes down entirely to this: do you trust your boss and your employer not to push you out earlier than you want to leave? And if they did, how much of a problem would it be for you?

If you think that they’ll be grateful for early notice and won’t push you out earlier than September (or if you wouldn’t mind much if they did), go ahead and give them a couple of months of notice if you feel comfortable doing that. But if you don’t trust them on that, or if it would be disastrous if they did, stick with two weeks. You’d be giving two weeks for other types of departures, so it’s not a terrible crime to do that here too.

Keep in mind, too, that “push you out earlier than September” doesn’t have to mean something dramatic like they blow up and tell you to leave immediately. It can look more like initial gratitude for the heads-up, followed a few weeks later by, “We found the perfect replacement but she would need to start immediately so let’s set your end date for sooner” or, “Since we’re about to launch a bunch of new projects, it doesn’t make sense to have you start them and then leave soon after, so it makes more sense to move your ending date up.” I would be particularly concerned about those since you’re still pretty new in the position and, in their eyes, may still be getting acclimated to it.

Related:
how much notice should you give when you resign?

5. Interviewing in the third trimester of pregnancy

I’m currently job searching for a fall start date. Job searching in the spring for a fall start is normal in my industry, although some companies will make offers in March and others might not make offers until June. I find myself in a sticky situation with timelines, because I am in my third trimester of pregnancy, and due in six to eight weeks. I look pregnant, but most people who see me think I am five or maybe six months pregnant — so I seem earlier in the pregnancy than I am.

My current job is a one-year position ending in September, but I will be able to take my full maternity leave at this job. My plan is to return to it for one month before moving to a new job, should I land one. I have had some great first round virtual interviews, with two different kinds of responses — some companies want me to come in ASAP for in-person interviews, and some want to wait until late May or early June for in-person interviews (when I will likely be giving birth/freshly postpartum).

For companies that want to interview me ASAP, I am considering volunteering information during the interview about completing my leave at the current job and not needing a delayed start or maternity leave from the new job, because people may not realize that is my timeline based on my appearance. Is this a good idea? I know there is no way to avoid implicit bias now that I’m visibly pregnant, so I’m hoping to get ahead of the timeline concerns that may pop up. And for companies that seem inclined to take things slow, is there anything I can say without disclosing my pregnancy that would help them realize I cannot wait that long to interview? I did not say anything in the interviews when I was told this because I did not know how to respond, so I’m afraid I will now look panicked or unprofessional.

I’m fairly junior in my field and many women in the field choose to delay pregnancy for 5+ years beyond where I am to avoid being thought of as unserious. But I do love my career, I am incredibly serious about it, and it is my passion. I am afraid that my otherwise strong candidacy will be overlooked due to my pregnancy.

Yes, for the companies interviewing you in-person, it’s smart to share your plans and timeline because they’re going to be reluctant to ask (since they can’t legally factor your pregnancy into the hiring decision).

For the companies moving more slowly, since you know you won’t be able to interview in late May/early June, you might as well put it on the table now: share that you’re pregnant and when you’re due and that you’re planning to finish your leave before you’d be starting with them. They might not be willing or able to interview you any earlier, but they might.

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Years ago, I used to do occasional round-ups of things I like, just for fun. I haven’t done one in years, so here’s a new one.

1. Alyssa Limperis’s mom videos. Hilarious.

2. Riki Lindhome’s take on So Long Farewell from the Sound of Music. Also hilarious.

3. Catalog Choice. They unsubscribe you from catalogs and I love them.

4. This chicken and her kittens.

5. The charity Undue Medical Debt, which buys and erases the medical debt of people who can’t afford to pay it.

6. This illustrator.

7. The Bloggess’s mortification series.

8. Alley Cat Allies, which is an excellent charity helping cats without homes.

Feel free to share your own random sources of joy in the comments.

The post things I like appeared first on Ask a Manager.

I’ve written in the past about the cultural mismatch between Microsoft and IBM during the collaboration on OS/2, with the Microsofties viewing their IBM colleagues as mired in pointless bureaucracy and the IBM folks viewing Microsofties as undisciplined hackers.¹

One of many points of mismatch was the organizational structure.

A colleague recalls that while he was assigned to the IBM offices in Boca Raton, Florida, there was a dispute over what key should be used to move from one field to another in dialog boxes. The folks at IBM were not happy with my colleague’s decision to use the TAB key, so they asked him to escalate the issue to his manager back in Redmond.

My colleague’s manager replied, “The reason you are in Boca is to make these decisions so I don’t have to be in Boca.”

My colleague rephrased this reply in a more corporate manner before passing it on to IBM: “Microsoft supports the use of the TAB key for this purpose.”

Unsatisfied, the IBM folks escalated the issue up their organizational chain for several levels, and replied that their VP (who was around seven levels of management above the programmers) was absolutely opposed to the use of the TAB for this purpose, and they wanted confirmation from the equivalent-level manager at Microsoft that Microsoft stands by the choice of the TAB key.

My colleague replied, “Bill Gates’s mother is not interested in the TAB key.”

This apparently ended the discussion, and the TAB key stayed.

Note: This upcoming Sunday is Mother’s Day in the United States. You probably shouldn’t ask her for her opinion on the TAB key.

¹ There was probably merit to both arguments.

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