I have written about work a lot in my career, and I think it’s a topic I’m drawn to because there’s a constantly evolving balance of power between employees and employers that’s interesting to explore. I even wrote a (Loeb-nominated!) series a decade ago for the Los Angeles Times about the changing balance of power in the wake of the Great Recession. In the last few weeks, I’ve written a bunch of stories about work, so I’m sharing them here:
You’re Not Imagining It—Job Hunting is Getting Worse
Why Americans Want Part-Time Jobs Again
Companies Are Finally Designing Offices for the New Work Reality
Return to Office Full-Time is Losing
The story about how job hunting is getting worse published today. I know a few people who have been looking for a job for a few months now, and some of their stories made me want to shake my fist at the sky in frustration on their behalf. They go through multiple rounds of interviews and get ghosted by companies, have to perform timely “assessment” tasks for free, and, worst of all, have to do one-way video interviews in which they record themselves answering pre-set questions on camera.
This is a sign that employers are gaining more of an upper hand in what had been a historically tight job market. And some of them are being Aholes about it. It now takes 44 days for companies to fill roles on average, which is up significantly from 24 in 2017. Employers are doing more rounds of interviews, getting more people involved in the process, and worst, posting “ghost jobs” that they don’t actually fill. Read more here: https://time.com/6287012/why-finding-job-is-difficult/
I also wrote about people who got laid off and decided to freelance or work for themselves instead of finding another job. These people are my heroes, because it takes a lot of balls to freelance, and it’s something I’ve often talked about but never been financially daring enough to do. But some of them are making it work now, after realizing, during the pandemic, that the sad sack 9-to-5 job wasn’t working for them. read more here: https://time.com/6284414/part-time-jobs-report/
Then I did two stories about Return to Office policies and what some new offices designed for hybrid work look like (I am obsessed with the color of green that the company I profiled painted their walls. In case you are curious, it is Peale Green HC-121 by Benjamin Moore. (See all the extra information you get as a Substack subscriber?) You can see pictures of the lovely green walls in the story here: https://time.com/6280986/hybrid-office-return-to-work-design/
I also interviewed Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, who was very good at not answering my carefully crafted questions about the dangers of AI. The Q&A is here: Why Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Doesn’t Think Now Is the Time to Stop on AI and the story I did is here: Microsoft’s CEO Responds to Concerns About AI.
And to end, a recommendation for a book to fall asleep to (or BFAT, if you like abbreviations): Butts: A Backstory, by Heather Radke. I was skeptical when I downloaded this book because it looks like one of the many books on a specific topic like Salt that have come out in recent years, and they seem gimmicky, but it is really well done. Radke talks about biology and evolution and what humans’ butts mean about our past (humans have a ligament that makes their heads not bounce around as they run, which pigs, for instance, do not have), as well as some cultural ideas about butts, including talking to a company that makes fake butts for drag queens. I also learned that there is an annual race in Arizona every year between humans and horses. Please let me know if you stumble across a BFAT on that.