The Baltimore County Police Department confirmed the identity of the sixth victim, 37-year-old José Mynor López, after salvage teams located his body Tuesday.
Republicans tried for the kind of headline moments they've scored in similar hearings with elite college presidents. But the testimony from K-12 public school leaders offered few surprises.
Why do video game workers offer labor at a discount? How can you design a video game for blind and sighted players? Does that design have lessons for other industries?
These and other questions about the business of video games answered in todays episode. The Indicator just wrapped a weeklong series decoding the economics of the video game industry, we're excerpting some highlights.
First, we meet some of the workers who are struggling with the heavy demands placed on them in their booming industry, and how they are fighting back.
Then, we check in on how game developers are pulling in new audiences by creatively designing for people who couldn't always play. How has accessibility become an increasingly important priority for game developers? And, how can more players join in the fun?
You can hear the rest of our weeklong series on the gaming industry at this link, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This episode was hosted by Wailin Wong, Darian Woods, and Adrian Ma. Corey Bridges produced this episode with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Kate Concannon, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Robert Rodriguez with help from Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.
A new analysis shows that students graduating from U.S. medical schools were less likely to apply this year for residencies across specialties in states with restrictions on abortion.
Back in 2019, The Indicator started checking in on with a Venezuelan economist Gabriela Saade. The economy was in freefall. The country was suffering from hyperinflation and a huge jump in poverty. Today, the U.S. faces a spike in migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, many from Venezuela. So we check back in with Gabriela. Venezuela is due to go to the polls in July. We ask Gabriela and two other Venezuelans: what are economic conditions like at the moment? How has life changed since the pandemic? Some of the answers surprised us.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
Remember the letter-writer asking whether there was anything they could do about their nightmare workload? The first update was here, and here’s the resolution.
Well, I certainly wasn’t planning to have another update after a week and a half, but I am no longer at this job! Things deteriorated really, really quickly.
Last Monday, my coworker and I realized our bosses were planning to fire her. After they found the new hire we knew they were looking for, they kept the posting up and continued the search — there were poorly disguised interviews all over the office schedule, with timestamps clearly indicating they were added after the new hire accepted the offer. At that point, I was done. It would have been bad enough for her to quit, but the idea that they were going to proactively get rid of my only coworker just when I had room to breathe for the first time in a year and a half … it was the point of no return. The only reasons I didn’t give my notice that day: I wanted to give my coworker space to figure out her own next move, and I didn’t want to burn the bridge until I had my April retention bonus in hand.
Tuesday my coworker gave her notice. They told her they didn’t need her two weeks — she could just wrap up the next day. They broke the news to me on Wednesday morning and told me it was for the best. Even though I knew it was coming and had been heated up about it all week, I still wasn’t really prepared for how it felt. Once she left it was like the past year and a half all came down on me at once, which was pretty crushing. Thursday and Friday I was standoffish with my bosses. I kept to myself — no pleasantries, a couple of petty little silences, and for the most part I sent emails for things I usually would have popped into their offices to discuss.
Monday was mostly back to normal, and then at the end of the day was my annual review. They acknowledged I’d done a lot of great work, but the focus of the conversation was my professionalism and attitude, and that I should really think about whether the company was a good fit for me if I couldn’t be comfortable with change. (There was also a section about how I needed to work on time management and prioritization, because I could “appear to get flustered and overwhelmed.”) I said we should go our separate ways and offered a little more than two weeks notice — I was about to take a few days off, so two weeks starting from my first day back. In the interest of getting a clean break and getting me out before the new hire started, they said they only needed one more day from me. (I do wonder what she’ll think, showing up for her first day only to find both of the team members she was introduced to are gone.)
So now I’m out! The last few weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster, but I’m weirdly happy this is how it shook out. My (former) coworker’s relieved to be out, I got the bonus, I didn’t have to stress myself out about how to break the news I was leaving, and one day was such a laughably short handover period that I barely thought about the million things I would have wanted to tie up if I’d had more time. Most importantly, I think I always would have believed on some level that if only I had done things differently, everything could have worked out. This made it really clear that it would have gone absolutely horribly if I’d ever tried to intervene on my coworker’s behalf, and there was never any salvaging this.
I’ll be applying to new positions here and there if they look really good, but I’ve been chanting “summer off, SUMMER OFF” in my head for a little over a week, so the real plan right now is just to enjoy a nice long break.
Earlier this week, CalTech researchers proudly unveiled a new AI program that after years of careful design, development and updates, spoke its first words as a self-aware being… telling the assembled scientists, reporters, and California Governor Gavin Newsom, to “rip that blouse off and show me those fat titties before I bust a nut right […]
Need for opinion on whether or not the outfit looks okay.
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Question about whether unrefrigerated leftovers are safe to eat.
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Request to check childhood bedroom for an article of clothing that hasn’t been worn in at least six years.
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Indecision about what to order in a restaurant.
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Indignation when you don’t reply to a “MOM MOM MOM MOM” text within forty-five seconds.
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Sense of abandonment because you missed her call when she wanted to chat during her ninety-second walk between two buildings on campus.
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Annoyance at your poor boundaries when you try to call her back sixty seconds after you saw her call. Don’t you know she has class at this time?
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Desire to triangulate and gossip about another sibling’s text in the family group chat.
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Curiosity after she checks your location and notices you are not at home or work. Usually followed by texts in the family group chat asking other siblings whether they have heard from you.
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Anger that other siblings knew about your plans and location.
After reversing its position on remote work, Dell is reportedly implementing new tracking techniques on May 13 to ensure its workers are following the company's return-to-office (RTO) policy, The Register reported today, citing anonymous sources.
Dell has allowed people to work remotely for over 10 years. But in February, it issued an RTO mandate, and come May 13, most workers will be classified as either totally remote or hybrid. Starting this month, hybrid workers have to go into a Dell office at least 39 days per quarter. Fully remote workers, meanwhile, are ineligible for promotion, Business Insider reported in March.
Now The Register reports that Dell will track employees' badge swipes and VPN connections to confirm that workers are in the office for a significant amount of time.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. A patient threatened to hit me
I work as a dental hygienist. I see most patients several times a year and build a relationship with them while providing their care. I love my job and especially love winning over anxious patients who are worried about pain or have had previous bad experiences. I work hard to make sure my patients are comfortable.
Today I had a new patient who was very nervous. At the beginning of the appointment, they expressed how sensitive they are during dental visits and said, “I will scream if I you hurt me.” I 100% understand that anxiety often looks like rudeness, and I spent several minutes discussing options to make the visit as comfortable as possible, we settled on a plan, I applied a desensitizer, and proceeded to clean their teeth. The patient said how easy the cleaning was and that it didn’t hurt at all. Victory! It was time for the next step and I explained what I had left to do, saying that this part should be comfortable and we were done with the hard part. They became very nervous again and repeated, “If you hurt me I will scream,” only this time adding, “And I will hit you.”
I am not okay with this. It is never acceptable to threaten to hit a health care worker who is doing their job, even in a joking way. It felt especially egregious after spending the previous 30 minutes doing everything I could to make the visit comfortable and had already successfully completed most of the visit without causing any pain.
In the moment, I was shocked and I didn’t say anything. I let a long silence fall between us and finished the appointment with minimal further conversation. I am disappointed that I let the comment slide and wish I had conveyed how unacceptable it was, but I was stumped on a response that was firm and clear without escalating the hostility. Hours later, what I came up with was, “It is never okay to threaten to hit me. I am working with you to make this visit as comfortable as I can. If you need to reschedule for another time or another provider, we can do that. But if I am going to finish your appointment today, I need for you to treat me with respect and kindness.” This feels too long and I’m not sure it’s quite right. I’ve thought about some simpler options such as “what a terrible thing to say to me” or “it is never okay to threaten to hit someone.” But those don’t seem like enough. Any thoughts on a script future me can use should this ever happen again?
How about this: “If that’s a real possibility, we should stop here. I can’t continue to treat you if I’m at risk of being hit. Would you prefer to reschedule for another time or with another provider?”
That doesn’t get into respect or kindness, but it does convey the essentials: what they just said was unacceptable enough to bring the appointment to a halt.
It also allows for the possibility that they didn’t mean to be disrespectful but truly were worried about having a physical reflex response. You don’t want to be hit whether it’s by reflex or design, so the response works either way.
2. Should I have told my boss my coworker was job-searching?
A couple of weeks ago, I was on a call with a teammate when they excused themselves to take another phone call, but didn’t mute themselves. I couldn’t hear everything that was said but I quite distinctly heard the caller say, “I see you’ve applied for the position of…,” after which my teammate quickly hung up the call.
I had already expressed to my manager my concerns about their performance and skills. After this call, my manager followed up on this, and I reiterated my thoughts. However, I didn’t mention what I had heard on the phone.
I then went on leave a couple of weeks, and when I came back, my teammate had resigned. Should I have told my manager that I had heard my teammate take a phone call about applying for different positions?
No. People deserve to be able to job search discreetly. It’s not something that rises to the level of “our manager needs to know this.” (In fact, in this case, it sounds like a good thing! Your coworker was in a job they weren’t doing well in, so they looked for and found a new one. That’s good for everyone.)
This does get murkier if you’re in a management position and learn someone is actively working on leaving while you’re planning a major new initiative around their hard-to-replace skills or you suspect they’d stay if they knew about the promotion being planned for them, or similar. Even then, though, it’s an ethical landmine and you need to remember employees can always be thinking about leaving (or have an amazing opportunity fall in their laps), whether you have advance knowledge of it or not. More on that here:
How can I express concerns if top leadership won’t meet with me? I am a director at a nonprofit. There are three tiers of leadership above me. I feel heard by the first two tiers but not the top leadership. I brought my concerns about the workload, employee morale, and overall organization culture to Human Resources, and the VP stated they would attempt to set up a meeting with top leadership but I never heard back. That was two weeks ago and I sent a follow-up email.
They might not be willing to meet with you. If they’re not, then you probably need to be satisfied with having given your feedback to the two levels of management above you.
Whether it would be reasonable for them to decline to meet depends on things like the size of the staff overall, their investment in the topic you want to meet on, what else is competing for their time (a lot, usually), how much capital and influence you have (a long-time, highly valued employee will get a meeting with top leadership more easily than someone new or without much capital), and how much they trust the managers below them to flag feedback they need to hear. Since you’ve already met with two tiers of leadership above you, they could reasonably conclude that’s sufficient; large organizations have layers of management because the people at the top don’t have time to deal with every issue that arises. They might see it as squarely someone else’s job to meet with you on topic X, deal with anything that needs to be dealt with, and pass on to them anything they should be aware of.
That said, I wouldn’t conclude any of that after only two weeks. It can take time to get on a busy exec’s calendar if the issue isn’t time-sensitive. Give it another two weeks and then check back with HR. When you do, ask if the meeting is likely to happen or not; it’s better to know than to be strung along.
4. Should you tell someone they have an error on their resume?
We are hiring for a position on our team, and our manager has asked me and my coworker to review resumes and do short interviews with people who get past an initial interview with the manager.
We just received a resume from someone who says they are good at “building repertoire” with customers. It’s obvious they mean “building rapport.” This role requires very high attention to detail so it stands out.
They also mix tenses in their descriptions of their past jobs — “I do such and such” combined with “I did such and such” on the same former role. That one is not as noticeable and is likely because when they no longer had that job as the most current one, they never went back and updated all of the tenses.
He’s not the strongest candidate for this position but appears to be succeeding pretty well in his current role. I can tell because he’s an internal candidate and I know he received some not insignificant recognition for it. Part of me really wants to help him out by pointing out that he’s using the wrong word but would it be appropriate to do so? More embarrassing than helpful? Does it matter that he’s an internal candidate vs an outside one?
For an external candidate, I wouldn’t. You’ll see a ton of mistakes when you’re hiring and it’s not your role to be people’s job coach. But for an internal candidate — i.e., a coworker — sure. Wait until the process is over, and at that point, reach out and say, “By the way, I noticed these two things that I thought you would want to fix.” (Don’t do it mid-process though. Let things play out first.)
5. People with more accrued vacation have to take more mandatory vacation days
We received notice from management that due to poor forecasted results, mandatory vacations will be required for May, June, and July. Mandatory vacation applies to all employees with over three years of employment:
May – all employees over 100 hours accrued take one day vacation
June – all employees over 150 hours accrued take one day vacation
July – all employees over 200 hours accrued take three days vacation
Is the above legal? I understand the financial benefits, and those employees with the higher balances and over three years employment are probably in the higher end of the salary ranges. But this seems really unfair to the faithful, long-term employees — “thanks for sticking with us, now we’re going to stick it to you.”
Yes, it’s legal. Their reason for doing it is undoubtedly that unused vacation sitting on their books is a financial liability if they have to pay it out when people leave.
Boy Scouts of America announced that it is changing its name to Scouting America in an effort to be more inclusive, with the organization’s president Roger A. Krone saying, “This will be a simple but very important evolution as we seek to ensure that everyone feels welcome in Scouting.” What do you think?
NEW YORK—Discovering a new strategy to help him get through his hush money trial, former President Donald Trump reportedly draped his jacket over his head Wednesday so that nobody could tell he was sleeping in court. “It’s the perfect plan—people will assume I went under the jacket just to think a little bit more…
LOS ANGELES—Trying to blend in among a group of friends who wore homemade T-shirts expressing their enthusiasm for the program, Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly played hooky Thursday as she sat in the Price Is Right studio audience and waited for taping of the game show to begin. “I hope no one from work…
DENVER—Finding it an adequate substitute for the alcohol she used to consume during an evening of social drinking, local woman Candice Cooper told reporters Thursday that an $18 mocktail helped her satisfy the craving she still had to waste money. “It’s nice to have a drink that gives me that same experience of…
Citing their concerns about citizens’ privacy, a bipartisan group of senators is pushing to limit the use of facial recognition technology in airports, a rapidly expanding part of the check-in process. What do you think?
Florida has passed a restrictive law that bans abortions after six weeks from a woman’s last menstrual period, before most women know they are pregnant. The Onion breaks down the numbers behind the state’s war on reproductive rights.
"We were united in the way that women had to be in order to thrive in a man's world, through mutual respect, intellect and collaboration," Wonder Woman star Lynda Carter posted in a tribute.
Two-bedroom townhouse only 15 minutes from downtown and, Jesus Christ, what was I thinking trying to sell this all by myself? It’s too late to go get a realtor now because I know my wife will be all smug about it, after I insisted I could do this myself and save a ton of money. God. I think we’ll just not move.
EVANSVILLE, IN—After finding several messages the father of three had sent to women online, members of the local Branson family admitted Wednesday that they couldn’t even be mad at their dad after seeing his heartbreaking attempts at cheating. “I know I should be upset, but it’s hard to feel anything other than pity…
Shaking off rumors of his retirement, 82-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) declared his plans to seek reelection, saying in his announcement video that the 2024 election “is the most consequential election in our lifetimes.”
NEW YORK—Earning $2,200 per appearance, former president Donald Trump has begun paying his legal bills with a new gig as a CNN contributor, sources confirmed Wednesday. “We are pleased to welcome Donald Trump to CNN’s talented roster of experts and insiders,” CNN chairman and CEO Mark Thompson said of the former…
CHICAGO—Dismissing concerns that funds were being mismanaged, the Chicago Police Department vigorously defended its decision this week to buy an entire fleet of 1967 Ferraris. “We will use these babies to keep the community safe, and we will look badass while doing so,” said Chicago Police Superintendent Larry…
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
Am I crazy or is this a red flag?
I’m working a temp to perm job, and was just let in on a departmental secret. Apparently, when our supervisor is deciding who to keep on permanently, she will figure out which car is yours and walk out to it on a break to inspect the inside. If it’s messy, she doesn’t hire you on full-time.
This is insane, right? I feel a little bit like my privacy is being violated, honestly. I know people can see into my car, of course. But I don’t expect anyone to be actively snooping.
Is this a sign I don’t want to work here? I like all my colleagues and the work I’m doing. This is the first red flag I’ve seen, and I want to make sure I’m not blowing things out of proportion.
As a hiring test, this is insane.
Plenty of people have messy cars for reasons that have nothing to do with how they’ll perform on the job. Maybe they had a hectic weekend and their car ended up messy and they haven’t had a chance to clean it. Maybe they’re neat in every other area of their life and their car is the one spot they don’t care much about. Maybe they share the car with a slob. Maybe they’re a generally messy person but they’re still awesome at their job. It means nothing.
It’s particularly silly as a hiring test for people she already works with. It’s one thing to look for proxies when you don’t have much other data to go on — but when she works with people every day, she has loads of direct information about their work and how they operate. She doesn’t need to go looking for hidden meaning in their cars.
All that said … is it a sign you don’t want to work there? Eh.
It would be easy to say “anyone with ridiculous tests like this is a bad manager who you don’t want to work for.” But I’ve worked with people who have silly pet hiring theories, and they were perfectly fine to work for.
For example, I used to work with a woman who was absolutely lovely — a good manager and a good person. And she believed that she could tell things about candidates by how they handled the offer of a beverage. I asked her about it for this very old post and she said, “It’s a measure of politeness extended, politeness rejected or accepted, and how it’s done. I don’t care if they accept the drink or not, but I do pay attention to how they respond to the offer. Also, I pay attention to whether they dispose of the cup themselves (these were paper cups that would tossed in the trash) or leave it for me to do myself. Tells me so much about what kind of person they are.”
I think that’s reading way too much into it (especially in an interview situation where people are nervous and may simply forget to throw away their trash), but my point is: she had a silly test that she had convinced herself she could learn from, and she was still a fine person to work for.
Would she be better at hiring if she got rid of that test? Yes. Should interviewers move to more evidence-based forms of hiring that more objectively assess the must-have characteristics and skills for the role? Yes. Was her test an indicator of what she was like to work for? No.
Just as your manager should be focusing on the more substantive things she sees from you every day, the same goes for you: Pay attention to the substantive things you see about her. Does she set clear and realistic expectations, give useful feedback, resolve roadblocks, and ensure you have the space and tools you need to do good work? Is she fair, transparent, and even-keeled? Do other people seem generally happy working with her? If all those things are good, her car test may be a fluke. On the other hand, if some of those things are bad, the silly car test doesn’t really matter; she’ll be a problem to work for regardless.
QUEEN’S PARK – During a press conference at the Ontario Legislature, Doug Ford made it clear that pro-Palestine encampments in universities across the province were unacceptable and shouldn’t be tolerated, after accidentally mistaking the encampment tents for affordable housing units. “Listen, folks, I am just not in favour of these young, tax paying citizens of […]
Columbia University canceled its commencement ceremony after weeks of pro-Palestinian protests that have shaken the campus, despite the fact that other universities have held their ceremonies with few disruptions. What do you think?
I did a video about Seoul last year, and one of the elements that I think is most interesting is how many “people movers” — really automated light metros and frequently locally-called “light rail” — exist across the region.
Seoul’s Sillim Line. (Credit: JR Urbane Network)
As I’ve talked about before, people movers often feel like they are used by cities as a crutch, connecting places that should be on the rapid transit network but were missed for one reason or another, be it a rapid transit line that didn’t stop where it should have, or a major development sited off of the transit network.
Acknowledging that people movers often exist to try and mitigate problematic conditions, I think it’s interesting to ask what we could do if we had more! While I certainly would rather major universities, hospitals, airports, and shopping centres be directly served by rapid transit, if they are not, a people mover could still be a serious improvement on the status quo.
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No American city seems poised to highlight this more than LA, which is in the process of building two different people movers, one connecting LAX to the LA “Metro” light rail system (it’s worth noting that rail to airport is a very common people mover typology in America), and another connecting SoFi stadium and other destinations with another light rail stop. While in both cases I think the people mover is a band-aid solution for poor planning (like putting an event venue the size of SoFi away from rapid transit — many cities most impressive stations are at major stadiums), the connections will be much better that what could have been offered by buses, and arguably higher capacity than the light rail service, since people movers should be able to operate at extremely high frequency.
Rendering of an Inglewood People Mover station. (Credit: City of Inglewood)
Now, what I think makes Seoul’s “people movers” particularly interesting is that they are not all strictly there for the purposes of connecting remote destinations. These such routes (like the Everline) do exist, but many of the lines actually act as infill urban transit, operating like a light subway line in an area that is poorly connected or dense enough to justify even more service. Since Seoul is extremely dense and hilly, this kind of role would be a struggle for trams, and while the city does do buses at an almost unbelievable scale (Seoul is easily the most underrated BRT city), once you experience a constant stream of diesel buses along a street you realize it is an imperfect solution.
And to be clear, cities in Asia in general have a lot of people movers. Bangkok has its Gold Line (nicely incorporated into the BTS system), I can think of loads of examples in Chinese cities (often using bespoke domestic tech), Singapore has its suburban “LRT”, and more than any other country, cities in Japan have all manner of monorails and people mover lines augmenting the conventional heavy rail and subway systems (it’s also one of the few places where these systems have been running long enough and have become busy enough that multiple generations of rolling stock have been introduced). In Asia, people movers feel like less of a crutch and more a flexible tool that can bring fixed guideway transit to places where it would be challenging for conventional rail. Of course, while a people mover is less convenient or capacious than a direct high-capacity rail link (likely delivered by shifting an alignment to hit a major destination), they still do offer a big boost for transit as a lightweight connecting service that can provide high frequency, and thanks to automation usually has low operating costs.
To some extent, the role played by these lines is similar to the “shuttle” lines in some traditional metro systems like Paris, London, New York, and Madrid — it’s just that like with light metro, people movers let you emphasize frequency instead of vehicle size, creating a better system — especially for inevitable transfers.
In a series of future posts, I am going to talk about how we can design and plan people movers to improve as opposed to simply fill in gaps in our transport systems, and I might even include some concepts for places in various cities where one (or several) might be of use.
