On March 26, 1987 during The Cosby Show, Nike first aired “Revolution,” a black-and-white, punch-in-the-face kind of commercial. Part music video, part sports ad, looking back you can see how big of a brick in the foundation of Nike’s brand image–and ad agency Wieden+Kennedy’s reputation–it really is.
It also changed advertising for good. Until then, almost all the songs used in ads were either jingles or covers of pop tunes. By using the Beatles’ “Revolution,” Nike paved the way for real songs, by the real artists, to be the soundtrack for everything from cars to computers, fashion to phones, and everything in between.
Of course, the Beatles weren’t thrilled, suing Nike, but it ultimately didn’t go anywhere. The spot was directed by Paula Greif and Peter Kagan, whose work included music videos for bands like Duran Duran, Cutting Crew, and Steve Winwood. But the idea for “Revolution” came from three Wieden+Kennedy creatives, including current executive creative director Susan Hoffman, an art director at the time.
Susan Hoffman
Looking back, Hoffman says it wasn’t exactly a slam dunk at first. “It was a bit of a fluke, but maybe not,” she says. “There were three of us (including Janet Champ and Kristi Myers Roberts) who got the brief together to do a Nike Air commercial. At the time, it was their revolutionary new product feature that was being used in all the shoes.
“As with all ideation, you keep banging your head against the wall until hopefully something makes sense. We needed to take a break so we went to lunch at the now defunct Dakota Cafe in Portland, and that’s where we hit on the idea. We had seen a new director’s reel with [Greif] and her partner [Kagan], and we thought with the song, the music video style, and sports, there seemed to be a winning combination. We quickly put our idea together and presented to Dan Wieden and David Kennedy. Their first comment was, ‘Are you kidding? A Beatles song?’ And they dismissed us. But a few hours later, after seeing all the other ideas, they called us back and said it was the most interesting idea they had seen. So we were off to the races.”
Landing the Beatles song was anything but a guarantee—there was a reason no real songs were being used in advertising at the time. Hoffman wasn’t all that confident it would work this time.
“No, not at all, but when a company’s motto is ‘walk in stupid everyday,’ this was walking in stupid,” she says. “And by that we mean not falling back on old habits and ideas or relying on what’s worked in the past—it otherwise leads to derivative work the people will filter out and ignore.”
The process behind and reaction to “Revolution” has two significant legacies within both W+K and Nike. First: “After the spot ran and it worked, Phil Knight decided to research it, and the ad tested poorly despite its real-world impact,” says Hoffman. “Since then, Nike has never put their advertising into research. Bravo!”
And second. “It broke the mold on what advertising could and should be, and inspired very different approaches to what ideas could be. I remember a journalist stated he didn’t like it and that it wasn’t an ad. A second bravo!”
This month Digit passed a major milestone: The money-saving app’s users have collectively saved half a billion dollars, all from setting aside a bit of extra cash here or there, as determined by the company’s algorithms.
Ethan Bloch
“It’s a shit-ton of money, but it’s still a small amount relative to the households in the U.S. and the amount they could be saving,” says founder and CEO Ethan Bloch. (It’s also small relative to major banks, the largest of which have deposit bases larger than $1 trillion.)
In its first year of operations, Digit helped users generate $75 million in savings. Since then, growth has accelerated and the startup saved users over $400 million.
Most of those dollars have gone toward emergency funds, with 61% of Digit users citing that goal as their primary purpose. (Half of Americans lack the savings to cover a $400 emergency expense.) Other Digit users are looking to travel or pay off debts.
Digit competes with startups like Acorns and Qapital. Qapital, while similar to Digit, is mobile-only and gives users greater control, thanks to a range of custom savings triggers. In contrast, Acorns directs users’ spare change into an investment portfolio. Acorns has also teamed up with brands to offer cash-back rewards that flow directly into users’ portfolios.
Digit, for its part, is betting on automation and simplicity. “Our goal is to make achieving and maintaining financial health effortless,” Bloch says of the product his team has built. After a user signs up, Digit works in the background to transfer funds from checking to savings, while managing the risk of overdraft. The dollars sit in a Digit savings account. “You’re being kept in the loop and can adjust things if you want, but it’s happening. You’re off living your life, and Digit is managing your money.”
Unlike a traditional savings account, Digit does not pay interest (it is not a bank). Instead, the company pays what it calls a “savings bonus” every three months, worth 5 cents for every $100 of the user’s average balance over that time frame.
Going forward, Bloch envisions becoming a central hub for users’ financial lives. “Every human should have their own badass sidekick AI in their pocket helping them navigate the complex financial world they’re in,” he says. “I think that works well when you have one thing managing your relationships, and on your side.”
It’s finally happened: one of the most innovative rappers in the game today has teamed up with one of the most innovative music video directors in recent memory–and the result is a visual banquet you can’t watch just once.
Kendrick Lamar recently dropped a clip for presumably his first single from his forthcoming album. “Humble” marries Lamar’s intricately stacked bars with director Dave Meyers’s eye for arresting imagery to chronicle (and temper) the rapper’s come-up. Throughout “Humble,” Lamar slips into references including the Pope, Jesus at The Last Supper, Steve Jobs, and Grey Poupon’s iconic 1988 commercial, all of which is filtered through the iconic lens of The Little Homies (Lamar and president of Top Dawg Entertainment, Dave Free) and Meyers whose hip-hop music video credits run deep.
Meyers has been a mainstay in the business for decades, but it’s his work with Missy Elliott that is probably his most recognizable. From her earlier classics like “Get Ur Freak On,” “Work It,” “Lose Control,” to her newest tracks “I’m Better” and “WTF (Where They From)”. Run Meyers’s reel and you can instantly see a creative through line in his videos, and here’s hoping that he’s found an additional muse in Lamar.
For someone who supposedly doesn’t “rush out” to see horror movies in theaters, Osgood Perkins has now directed two of the most unnerving and effective additions to the genre to come out in the last year.
Not that this should come as a surprise, given that his pedigree essentially foretold excellence before he began: he is the son of late actor Anthony Perkins, best known for playing Norman Bates in Psycho and its sequels. And for a time, Osgood (or “Oz,” as he prefers) tried following his father’s lead. As an actor, however, his roles in films such as Six Degrees of Separation and LegallyBlonde lacked the horror iconography that households eventually associated with this father.
But as a director, Perkins may have finally found his stride. Though Netflix released his ghost story I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House several months ago, The Blackcoat’s Daughter is actually his directorial debut—and a damn good one all around, famous father or not. Once called February during its festival run until A24 picked it up for distribution, the film centers on a pair of schoolgirls (Kiernan Shipka and Lucy Boynton) left behind at their empty upstate New York boarding school for winter break. Meanwhile, a third young woman (Emma Roberts) makes her way up to the school for unknown reasons. When the storylines finally intersect…well, it’s an impressive twist best experienced firsthand.
If you take Perkins’ films side by side, “observational” and “slow burn” might come to mind—precisely the words he used as guiding principles for directing. More atmospheric than sensational, the two films are less interested in jump scares than in ruminating upon the human condition and the inherent vulnerability of its central characters. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is especially humane, as much a sad story as it is a scary one by the time the credits roll.
Fast Company had a chance to speak with Perkins about The Blackcoat’s Daughter (available in select theaters and on demand starting today), as well as writing his first movie, the horror renaissance, and why he bothers adding more horror to an already-horrifying world.
Warning: mild spoilers below.
Fast Company:The Blackcoat’s Daughter came out second, but this is actually your first film. What inspired it?
Osgood Perkins: As simple as it sounds, I just wanted to write what I wanted to see. And it’s not that I’m especially a big horror movie person; I don’t rush out to see horror movies in the theaters. It’s more that I had a love for the more classical horror movies of the ‘60s and the ‘70s. I wanted to approach the genre from that place, with a little bit more of a humanistic, beautiful horror movie. I really started from there and the pieces started to fall in.
FC: This wasn’t the original title for the movie. How did the change come about and how do you feel about it now?
OP: The original title was February. I was thinking of this notion that a time can be a place, especially for people who have anniversaries or, in this case, negative anniversaries where you feel the approach of a time of year. But when A24 bought the movie at the Toronto Film Festival, they wanted to indicate genre a little more strongly than they could get out of that title. They suggested a couple titles that I couldn’t identify with at all. So I looked into one of the pieces of music that my brother [musician Elvis Perkins] wrote for the movie. It’s sort of a nursery rhyme and “the blackcoat’s daughter” was in there. And I liked the word “daughter” since this is about a child that’s abandoned and orphaned.
Kiernan Shipka in A24’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter. [Photo: Peter Maur]FC: Going off that: two years ago, A24 had a big success with The Witch. Other recent scary movies, such as The Babadook or It Follows, have been female-centric. In The Blackcoat’s Daughter, you focus on three women. What makes women such compelling leads for your movies?
OP: The two movies I’ve done have both been very feminine. Women, in general, have a heightened sophistication and contact with the invisible and what’s not tangible. Sometimes it’s called “feminine intuition,” but there’s a grounded sensitivity women possess that men just don’t. And if horror movies are all about what’s hidden and what we don’t know and what we can’t understand, I think the subtlety of the feminine is more . . . available. So I think it works better.
FC: Your last movie dealt with ghosts. Here, it’s the suggestion of demonic possession. Are those actual sources of fear for you? OP: Both movies are horror movies only in their presentation. In the case of The Blackcoat’s Daughter, it’s meant to be a portrait of grief and loss and the space that’s left behind when you lose big. Demonic possession—or the suggestion of it—is the shadow that’s cast over someone who’s lost everything or the thing that comes to take the place of what you’ve lost. That kind of metaphor is strong as an abstraction. It would be difficult for me to make a movie or tell a story about grief and loss and have it just be that. I would never want to be talking about what I’m talking about. That becomes a bit plain. One of the cool things about horror is that you’re able to code the information you’re presenting. And the horror genre is rich with so many archetypes, symbols, weird codes, alphabets, and recognizable imagery that lends itself to that.
FC: A lot of recent horror films aren’t so much about just monsters anymore, not like Jeepers Creepers, for instance. Now, they’re trying to say something bigger: Take a look at The Babadook . . . did you see The Babadook?
OP: Yeah. I didn’t like it.
FC: But what it’s trying to say about motherhood—
OP: Yeah, I liked what it was trying to do.
FC: Why do you think this trend of metaphors and big messages seems to be coming back?
OP: When I wrote The Blackcoat’s Daughter, there was this feeling—it’s over now, but back then it wasn’t—this feeling that horror was this beleaguered genre, that it was getting kind of trashy and becoming a fast way to make money. And then the tide really turned. We’ve all kind of reconnected with the idea that horror movies are really about people and about death and all these big issues. And then you can have movies like Get Out, where it doesn’t even matter that it’s a horror movie. It has nothing to do with it. Get Out is not especially scary; it’s just fucking really clever. It’s really smart and it’s so deep. And it’s so great that the horror genre has sort of found its place again.
FC: For a while there, it was getting really meta. Maybe thanks to Scream.
OP: It got lazy. It got very popcorn-y, where you could guarantee that people would take their dates on opening weekend to go jump in their seats for a bit. And then the next weekend, no one would watch it. But these movies now have longevity.
Emma Roberts and James Remar in A24’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter. [Photo: Peter Maur]FC: So what movies influenced The Blackcoat’s Daughter, horror or otherwise?
OP: I became interested in this idea that good horror movies are sad people movies. Right around the time I first started writing this, I watched Let The Right One In and my friend Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers. And a movie as dark as The Strangers, there’s a darkness but there’s also a sweetness about life. Here are two people whose relationship is pretty much over, and they just want to spend their last night together….but they don’t get that. They’re going to die instead, and it’s a very sad thing. Let The Right One In is the same thing. Yeah, it’s a vampire movie, but it’s also young love that’s never going to work out. Those movies put together made me think, “Oh yeah, horror movies can be a sad thing.” Look at Carrie; she’s just a bullied girl.
FC: Most horror movies usually have vulnerable people at their center, going through some sort of profound sadness. OP: Yeah. And even ghosts are sad! Elementally, that’s just a sad state.
FC: In this movie, though, Kat’s ailment is left ambiguous. It could be possession or it could be a breakdown. Why leave it unclear?
OP: Horror movies are best when you’re holding back what’s happening, when you’re obscuring the real nature of things. That’s why we go to see horror movies. We know we don’t know: we don’t know how we’re going to die, or what happens after death. And we go in with this uneasy feeling of not knowing. And to complement that experience, you don’t want to tell everybody everything.
Emma Roberts in A24’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter. [Photo: Peter Maur]FC: Both your movies are pretty observational. They’re slow burns, rather than being full of jump scares. Why?
OP: For me, it’s more interesting and compelling. I don’t mean to force anyone’s attention, but one of the things that horror movies have going for them is that they really demand that the audience is present. Very few genres bring the focus of the audience to such a fine point. In the case of The Blackcoat’s Daughter, I wanted this quality of watching something happen, or knowing that something is going to happen, and knowing there’s nothing that you can really do to stop it. I didn’t want to rush into anybody’s face. I didn’t want to be too close to anybody while doing this. I wanted them to feel like they were watching something unfold. And there’s a certain undeniability to that, a non-negotiable quality that I find scary.
FC: How does your family history, your father in particular, affect the way you see horror? Does it make it more personal for you?
OP: My experience of my father was not uncommon for any children, or maybe sons of fathers. I didn’t feel like I knew him as well as I would have wanted to. He was a pretty secretive guy and my relationship with him was not a very rounded one. So like many people, when that parent dies, that becomes the time you start to wonder about them. And it’s this weird irony that as soon as they’re gone and can’t really be known in person, you start your work. For me, that really did happen. My second movie, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, that’s 100 percent about my relationship with my old man. It’s just about looking for someone who’s no longer there, trying to find out more than you can. So the fact that my father is known for being a horror icon, it’s shorthand. It’s the shortest line between me and him if any part of my work is going to be about trying to figure him out better.
FC: So, a little bit bigger picture: It’s far to say the world is going through a weirdly bleak time. What’s your motivation for adding more horror? What place does it have in our world right now?
OP: Look, times are grim. But times have always been kind of grim. If you really look at our life today, waking up today, it’s not like when they were bombing London or during the Black Plague—something that was actually awful. Yeah, we’re in a fucked situation and a lot of the world is in a fucked situation and the future of the planet is pretty grim. But I think that it’s always been important—useful, even—to be able to have an artistic representation of what we go through. Just because we struggle and just because shit is sad and people die, that doesn’t mean that it’s not also a nice day. These movies I’ve made, I’m trying to make them beautiful and engaging as opposed to gruesome and repulsive.
FC: That’s very true. Your movies aren’t particularly gory.
OP: I’m not trying to terrorize anybody. I’m trying to look at it in a non-ugly way.
Kiernan Shipka in A24’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter. [Photo: Peter Maur]FC: Now narrowing the scope, what kind of lessons do you hope people might learn from the sadness of The Blackcoat’s Daughter?
OP: It really comes down to the end of the movie, where the monster is broken. And the monster has lost everything; the monster is now officially alone. And the fact that people have responded to that with, “Wow, I felt a bit sad for her even after everything she did,” that’s what the movie is about. It’s about being able to sit and be with someone who’s awful and understand there’s a sadness behind why she’s awful, which is always the case. The worst people are just upset.
FC: Makes you wonder how upset Donald Trump is. OP: He’s really upset. He’s really afraid, obviously. FC: Say he watched your movie. What would you want him to take away from it? OP: Nope. I have no hope for that guy.
Experts have long warned that the nation’s power grid is potentially vulnerable to a cyberattack, with the Department of Energy saying that the grid faces “imminent danger” from potential digital sabotage.
Connecting geographically dispersed operating equipment to the internet has certainly made electricity generators and other industries far more efficient, “but it has also created dangerous vulnerabilities in the systems that keep the lights on and power the economy,” warned the report from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Center for International Studies, which called for greater federal efforts to secure critical infrastructure.
And if such an attack causes a widespread blackout in the United States, it will take careful coordination by the affected electrical generating and distributing companies to bring power systems back online. Some power stations are better suited than others to being started without any external energy from the grid, and authorities might prioritize bringing power to certain other vital infrastructure as rapidly as possible.
Earlier this month, defense contractor BAE Systems announced that it has been awarded an $8.6 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop tools to quickly isolate hacked systems from the internet—and quickly restore digital communication between power company systems so they can get back online after an attack.
“The first step is to isolate from the internet using several techniques that we are developing and at the same time provide alternate communication,” says Victor Firoiu, senior principal engineer and manager of communications and networking at BAE. “That’s mostly being done using ad hoc wireless radio networks that do not require any prior arrangements.”
Power company officials would likely first communicate by voice, using existing wireless tools or emergency capabilities provided by BAE, but ultimately their systems will need to exchange data to get back up and running, he says. In the 2015 Ukrainian hack, officials reportedly scrambled from plant to plant, manually flipping circuit breakers to restore power. Restoring the U.S. grid in the wake of an attack would be much more complicated.
“Once you get the different parties involved to agree and discuss the highest level of the plan, subsequent steps of the plan become quite technical and we need data communication,” Firoiu says.
That will require a variety of types of radio connections over different distances, from short-range tools similar to Wi-Fi to long-distance satellite uplinks, ideally all deployed within just a few hours. And each form of communication will need to be encrypted and secure against any further hacker attacks.
“There could be distances of tens or hundreds of miles—some larger operators actually have more than 1,000 miles across their territory,” says Firoiu. “In all these cases, we need to provide long-distance communication that has to be secure, reliable, and resilient.”
The project is part of DARPA’s Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation, and Characterization Systems, or RADICS, program, aimed at developing quick responses to digital attacks on the nation’s critical infrastructure. Firoiu says the project is expected to take four years to develop, though portions of the system could be ready sooner. The BAE Systems team plans to test portions of the system later this year as part of the GridEx power grid security exercise in November.
“We are going to use a simulation of the wireless radio network, but all the planning and all the upper-level software will be real,” says Firoiu.
I was walking near the creek behind my house with my 14-year-old daughter and her friend. Walking ahead of me they suddenly huddled together so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Giggling, they pointed to the trees, then the creek, then turned back to me to say “here dad, take our picture.” As my daughter handed me her iPhone I could see she had Instagram (or “Insta” as she calls it) open on the screen. So I knew this would be no ordinary photo.
Every single picture, and I do mean every single picture, my 14- and 12-year-old daughters put on Instagram is heavily produced. It is never random. They spend a lot of time planning the pose, the content of the picture, and how it is all laid out. Every little thing is planned out. There are no accidents in Insta shots. I’ve observed this pattern so many times now that I groan inside when they ask me to take a shot. I know it’s going to take a while since the picture has to be “perfect.”
So here I am behind our house for 20 minutes trying to get the perfect shot while they stand together with their hands carefully woven together in the shape of a heart, and placed in just the right spot so you can see a design in the tree in the background.
It’s All About The Likes
Professional Instagrammers, professional photographers, artists, models, upstart brands, and large companies understand the like button is valuable social currency. Over the years YouTube videos and blog post how-to’s have showed up explaining the right way and wrong way to take an Instagram picture to maximize that currency.
But for my daughters, this form of social currency impacts the social dynamic in the real world of junior high school. As much as I hate the sound of it, Likes really do play a role in kids’ social status and popularity at school.
To put some science behind this view, our firm spoke to a dozen teens across the U.S. We continually heard how they frequently post a picture on Instagram, then go onto Facebook, Snapchat, and other social media outlets to ask their friends to like their photo on Instagram.
We also heard frequently in our interviews about teens deleting their photos from Instagram if they don’t get enough likes in a short amount of time. Apparently, it’s embarrassing to kids to have a photo on Instagram with just a few likes, so better to just delete. It made me remember all the stuff I did in junior high and high school that I wish I could have just deleted from the social consciousness of the school. Apparently, in the digital age, this is now possible.
The dynamic of social currency on Instagram, and how it translates into real-world social standing in junior high and high school, is unavoidable for kids. They either ignore the service entirely (to their social peril), or play the game and chase the likes. I thought I had it tough when I was a teenager in the 90s.
Snapchat Is Different
Despite all the criticism Snapchat takes, I appreciate its whimsical and fun nature. While teens do curate the content they put up for all their followers to see on Snapchat, there’s less social pressure and stress around the levels of engagement the content gets. And teens often choose to use Snapchat’s messaging/chat feature to share things with much smaller groups, instead of with all their followers.
So it’s easier for my daughters to express their creative and playful sides in their Snapchat posts, compared to the more serious and produced content they put on Instagram.
Teens, and everybody else, must know the social implications of the content they post on this social site or that. Millennials are well aware of the social horror stories in which their older peers lost a job after posting something embarrassing on Facebook. But they’re learning their own lessons, too. And the stakes can be high. Online bullying and shaming have become real problems.
Under Pressure
So the good news is that teens are becoming more responsible for the content they post to the public. The bad news is that they have to think about it. School life is already a high-pressure social situation for teens, and keeping up their image on social networks only adds to the stress.
Ultimately as parents raising this generation we need to help our kids navigate these uncharted waters. Parents should help their kids avoid getting caught in the trap of associating their value as human beings with their social media account.
Rather, my hope is that my girls will found their identities as women in their character, skills, quality relationships, and in their ability to accomplish their goals.
Ben Bajarin leads the behavioral analysis and research center at the analyst and consulting group Creative Strategies.
If you’re feeling angry about the issues of the day–from Trump’s immigration ban to moves to skirt internet privacy–here’s a new, more productive way to vent: Get paid to set up an activist group.
The nonprofit Fight for the Future, which works on keeping the internet free and open, recently announced a campaign to start “A-Teams” (Activism Teams). It’s prepared to offer $15,000 for a month’s startup capital. And it’s enlisting non-traditional types, including journalists, lawyers, advertisers, therapists, nurses, and designers.
“There are incubators and accelerators that every year fund companies that change the world. We want to do something like that for activism,” co-founder Holmes Wilson tells Fast Company.
[Illustration: Mike_Kiev/iStock]Fight for the Future has organized some of the internet’s most successful campaigns. In 2012, it helped strike down two bills in Congress–the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s Protect IP (intellectual property) Act (PIPA)–that activists say would have increased web censorship. Then, in 2014, its Battle for the Net campaign helped persuade four million people to contact the Federal Communications Commission to express support for new net neutrality rules.
Now Fight for the Future wants to tap into heightened post-election feeling. “I think a lot of people are reflecting deeply on their careers and thinking about making major life moves,” Holmes says. “I see that in my personal network and out there on the internet, and it’s pretty clearly a response to the election.”
Judged by the initial response to the campaign, there are plenty of willing activists out there. Holmes says he’s received 2,200 applications since posting the campaign page on March 16. “It’s really gone viral and we’ve only sent this to a small part of our [mailing] list,” he says.
Exactly how the A-Teams will be composed and organized is still open for discussion. But Holmes suggests teams of two to three full-time people. Fight for the Future currently has funds for up to three-month-long trials. But it hopes to raise more money and set up further groups. If the A-Teams prove successful during the initial period, Holmes says the organization can keep funding going for 18 months or more, while they build up their own network of donors. After that, the teams will hopefully have a “track record” of impactful campaigns making fundraising easier.
Applicants can choose what they want to campaign about, but Fight for the Future’s campaign page suggests issues like climate change, Trump’s wall, police reform, “ending the drug war,” and economic populism. Anti-campaigns are probably more likely than pro-reform campaigns, because they tend to be less challenging.
“It’s between 10 and 100 times easier to stop something than make it happen,” Holmes says. “That said, stopping things is a good power to have. There are aspects of the world that are working very well. If you’re having a political movement attacking that, and you can stop that [movement], you can make the world better.”
In the months since the election, some of the most surprising and impactful resistance to the Trump presidency has come from the tech sector. After Trump announced his travel ban against refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries in late January, the co-founders of Lyft pledged $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union; Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, said the company would house refugees for free. In March, the New York-based Meetup announced a partnership with advocacy groups like the Anti-Defamation League and Planned Parenthood to coordinate protests among activists already working to resist Trump.
The new magazine Logic, which takes an almost literary approach to describing and demystifying the tech sector, is producing a special-edition book to chronicle the efforts of the tech sector to disrupt Trumpism. The book, Tech Against Trump, is currently raising production funds on Kickstarter, and will feature interviews with a wide range of tech-industry employees—from software engineers to designers to cafeteria workers—who are involved in active resistance efforts. Ben Tarnoff, a writer and one of the founders of Logic, tells Fast Company that Tech Against Trump will both document these efforts, and act as a guide to inspire further action. Bay Area-based artist Gretchen Röehrs, who illustrated the travel-ban protests at San Francisco International Airport, will sketch portraits of each industry employee featured.
[Illustration: Gretchen Röehrs]Logic is “as new as it could be,” Tarnoff says. The founding team–a group of five writers, designers, and engineers–came together in 2016 with the idea that the tech industry has been underserved by the existing discourse around it. So much of tech-related conversation centers on innovation: what’s new, what could be broken apart and made better. Tarnoff and his co-founders, instead, wanted to focus on the narrative of the industry–the stories behind the new developments. As Logic’s founders write on their website: “Tech is magic. Tech lets us build worlds and talk across oceans. Whatever kind of freak we are–and most of us are several kinds–tech helps us find other freaks like us.”
The first issue, which came out at the end of March, is called Intelligence: It contains a deep dive into the gender gulf in coding and an examination of technology’s interference in emotional intelligence, among other subjects. “There are a lot of little magazines that we really admired that gave space for this longer, more thoughtful writing on a range of subjects–a place like The New Inquiry comes to mind–and we wanted to do something like that specifically for technology,” Tarnoff says, adding that while a print journal about technology might seem counterintuitive, they’re hoping to inspire a different way of thinking about the sector as a whole. Logic will publish three issues per year: Up next on the 2017 docket are Sex and Justice.
But much like the rest of America, the founders did not anticipate a Trump presidency. “As we were putting together the first issue of Logic, we noticed this upsurge of organizing and activism from tech workers,” Tarnoff says. “It really energized us; it felt like there was an opportunity there to get a lot of voices together of all different folks who were either working within the tech sector or using technology to fight Trump, and collect them into a single volume.”
[Illustration: Gretchen Röehrs]One of the people Logic spoke to for Tech Against Trump was David Huerta, the president of SEIU United Service Workers West, a coalition that represents around 8,000 of janitors and security guards on tech campuses throughout Silicon Valley. “The types of challenges they’re facing–low wages, difficult working conditions, high housing costs–all predated Trump, but Trump will make everything worse with his war on organized labor and immigration,” Tarnoff says. “They’re vulnerable in all sorts of new ways, but they’re also developing strategies to fight back.” Part of that, Tarnoff adds, will be fostering solidarity between blue-collar and white-collar tech workers; the pushback from high-level executives against Trump’s harsh immigration policies has already begun to build that foundation. “One of the things we’re trying to do is expand the traditional definition of what a tech worker is, and give all voices in the industry a platform to share and communicate,” Tarnoff says.
The authors are also interested in how tech itself is fueling a new type of resistance. In Tech Against Trump, Laurie Allen, the head of the Digital Scholarship Department at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses organizing DataRefuge, a massive data-rescue effort in which she and other organizers have been scraping information from federal websites that they believe are counter to the current administration’s policies–information on climate change and the environment spring to mind–that might be removed or made inaccessible. “It’s a fairly technical undertaking, and a good example of how tech is being mobilized in the fight against Trump,” Tarnoff says.
Tech Against Trump surpassed its Kickstarter funding goal within two days of launching its campaign, and the book will be available in June, Tarnoff says. “The momentum that was unleashed by the election was extremely encouraging,” Tarnoff says, “but the challenge becomes: How do you keep that train moving?” Through the book, Tarnoff says the Logic team hopes to provide one small piece of the answer to that question. “The folks we’ve spoken to have really useful lessons that they’ve drawn from this experience, even though it hasn’t been that long,” he says. “They already have knowledge about what works, what didn’t, and what comes next. Those are the questions we need to be asking.”
When it comes to immigration rights to civil liberties, several states are vowing to chart their own course—through legislation or in the courts—against what they consider the harsh agenda of the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress. The latest battleground is over Obama-era broadband privacy restrictions on internet service providers, which Congress voted to overturn this week. States across the country are stepping in to make sure that such protections are not completely discarded.
Minnesota’s state house voted Friday to require ISPs to provide an opt-out opportunity to subscribers before collecting and selling their information. Democratic Senator Ron Latz managed to add the amendment to an economic development budget bill and, despite a GOP attempt to remove it, the body OK’d the amendment 66-1. The overall budget bill passed 58-9.
The surprise move comes just after the House of Representatives in Washington D.C., followed the Senate in repealing FCC rules that also require ISPs to give subscribers a chance to opt out of having their personal data collected and sold. The rules were slated to take effect later this year. The president is almost certain to sign the resolution, which would formally remove the privacy rules and prevent the FCC from enacting similar ones in the future.
Democrats in the Illinois state house are considering their own set of privacy protections for internet users, reports the AP. An Illinois House of Representatives committee has now considered two new online privacy measures, with more discussion on the legislation set for next week.
One bill guarantees consumers the right to know what information internet companies like Facebook and Google have collected on them, and to what third parties the information has been sold. California added similar language to the law back in 2005.
The other bill guarantees that internet companies can’t track the physical location of mobile users without asking for permission. California proposed an amendment to more narrowly define the definition of geotracking, but the measure died in the Senate during 2016.
“People are looking to us now to provide protections for consumers,” state representative Arthur Turner (D-Chicago) told the Associated Press. Turner proposed the “right-to-know” bill.
Business groups oppose the bill, saying it classifies too much user data as “sensitive,” putting an undue burden on businesses that must collect some user information.
The big internet companies are present in the debate, too. Illinois senator Michael Hastings, who proposed a Senate companion to the Assembly’s right-to-know bill, told the AP that lobbyists representing Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft have already visited his office to discuss the legislation.
Hastings doesn’t sound like he was swayed by the lobbyists’ arguments about the value of collecting consumer data. “It may be good for the Apples, the Amazons of the world, but it’s not good for people,” Hastings said.
If and when Trump signs the resolution rolling back the FCC broadband protections, we may see more state houses jump into action with their own bills.
Finally, it’s happened. My company commander has at last acknowledged the pink elephant that’s been following me around since I first enlisted in the Army in 2007: I just don’t belong here.
“Uhhh . . .” I stammered. “To serve my country, sir.”
“Bullshit!” the captain fires back. “You don’t want to be here, and we both know it. So shit or get off the pot!” (This, of course, was said with many more expletives than just these two.)
To make a long story short, I got off the pot. But I spent the next several years floating around aimlessly before settling on something I actually enjoy, which also happens to pay the bills. Now I’m a full-time freelance writer and I couldn’t be happier. After a few false starts, I’ve found a field where I do want to be and built a career where I do belong. There are no elephants, of any hue, following me around anymore. Here’s how I did it.
Discharged, Enrolled, Dropped Out
I’m fully discharged by 2009. At 19 years old, I’m a freshly minted Army reject, and as far as I’m concerned, I’ve got a failure streak that dates back to my parents’ divorce when I was 12. With no higher hopes to aim for than a low-wage job and maybe a girlfriend, I spend the next couple years cycling through variations of both without substantially revising my goals. After each failed professional dalliance, I’m safely deposited back onto my mom’s couch.
Suddenly I’m 21 and my peers are graduating from college. Some are even taking out mortgages. Meanwhile I’m arguing with my little sisters over who cleans up after the dog this weekend. I decide this has to end, so I start applying to colleges. I’m accepted, and when I finally start my first semester, I breathe a sigh of relief: Maybe I’m beginning a little late, but I’m finally on the right track.
Cut to age 23. I’m enrolled in college and steadily racking up credits. But I’m also racking up tens of thousands of dollars in student-loan debt. I made the Dean’s list in my freshman year, but now I’m feeling some nascent pangs of that whole “purpose” thing, and I’m starting to wonder whether I’m ever going to find it on campus.
As I watch my debt climb past the $20,000 mark, I have an epiphany: The only reason I’m going to school is to write. If I’m being honest with myself, my only real motivation week-to-week is to debate other students in class and argue with my professors about their grading practices. This isn’t what I came here for. Why keep racking up debt when I can try to make money?
So I drop out. It’s 2015, and I’m back at Mom’s. Ugh.
My First Days As A Writer
Still, I call myself a writer because I’ve read Peter Bowerman’s The Well Fed Writer and have earned my first $1,000 with just my keyboard. That feels great, but aside from the few flashes of inspiration I sometimes get at 3:00 a.m., I’m only writing when I’ve got work. And I rarely have work.
In my inexperience, I thought a freelance career would be automatic. But the only automatic part is rejection: “Thanks, but you suck. Try again never.” “Don’t ever pitch us again.” “We appreciate the effort, but we can’t imagine anyone paying you to write.”
No one put it quite that way, but it’s how the results of 98% of my queries from 2015 sounded in my own head. Meanwhile I’m working on and off on a book about relationships, which I self-publish in May. By August, I’ve racked up all of 10 sales—mostly by coercing family members. In certain moods, I consider putting my writing career out of its misery. In other moods, I think, “What in the ever-loving hell is wrong with people? Why aren’t these mental pygmies gushing over my genius!?”
Then I realize something: Every single best-selling author is working to woo the same audience as I am—the English-reading public—yet they’re selling bushels of books, while I can’t even sell an article.
I devote the month of August to incremental improvements, which involve studying my craft for two hours a day and implementing the lessons I learned into daily articles. I stick with the program. And by September, I’ve landed my first full-time freelance writing gig with a time-management and lifestyle site called The Cheat Sheet. The job application required a bachelor’s degree, but I leveraged my freelance portfolio, which included articles I’d published on some large websites, and it worked!
Now I’m writing four articles a day, making what I consider to be “real” money—around $1,000 a week at least. It’s December, and I’ve racked up several grand in the bank. Now I’m searching for my own place.
Then I’m fired.
I’m not given a reason why I was let go, but looking back, I have to admit to myself that my quality slipped in the last few months. Nearing burnout, I was producing hacky articles that were bad enough to be embarrassing (see for yourself). Plus, writing lots of articles a day wasn’t leaving me enough time to keep polishing my writing skills or have fun doing it.
It’s probably a blessing in disguise, but it doesn’t feel too great. In retrospect, I might’ve been able to prevent it had I learned to make the “love-to-do lists” that I stick with these days.
But the firing teaches me not to put all my eggs in one basket and to dust myself off quickly. Losing a contract or a client is just part of the freelance experience. It happens–sometimes it’s your fault, and sometimes it isn’t. So after quickly grieving my loss, I begin pitching my ass off. If I write for three hours a day and spend four pitching new clients.
From Fired To Hired (By Fitbit)
Now it’s March. I’ve got my own place, but my savings are shrinking—almost at the same rate as my confidence. But the law of averages works in my favor: Of the hundred or so carefully crafted pitches I’ve submitted over the last three months, I hit a home-run: my first dollar-per-word gig. I’m writing and editing for a corporate wellness company called Nuvita. Just in time, too. Had the offer come a week later, I wouldn’t have been able to pay my rent. I’m discovering that the freelance game is equal parts faith and persistence.
It’s now August of 2016, and Nuvita has just dissolved. Poof—gone. But by now I’m disciplined enough in my pitching to have other prospective clients on deck. I’m still scared, though. I’m waking up most days with high anxiety. And money is crazy tight–so much so that I’m not buying food as much as I probably should be. Then another gig comes rolling my way, except this time it’s a giant: I’ve just landed Fitbit.
Apparently Fitbit liked the health and wellness articles I’d written for places like Entrepreneur and mindbodygreen. And since I’ve stuck with my pitching regimen, I cold-clocked them with an awesome query letter. I’m the only non-credentialed journalist on Fitbit’s roster.
Writing at an average of $400–800 an article, I’m beginning to feel security for the first time since I’d left my parent’s house half a year ago. It’s September. I’m finally independent. And I’m doing what I love.
Flash-forward to today, April 2017. I’ve pitched and pitched (and pitched) my way into top-tier publishers with great audiences. (As an aside, I sent seven submissions to Fast Company before my first one was accepted; lots of writers cut their losses and quit after the first couple of rejections, but I was persistent!) These days, I rarely have to pitch for work because companies come to me. I spend one or two hours a day drafting unpaid articles and guest blogs, in order to get my name out there and build my reputation, and the rest writing on a paid basis. I’ve created a virtuous circle this way; business owners who read my articles often contact me directly to see how I can write content that helps them make money.
In fact, my story ends here, because I have to get to work on a $2,400 article that just plopped onto my desk.
I effing love my job.
Daniel Dowling is the founder of MillennialSuccess.io, where he shares action steps and inspiration for millennials and their employers. You can find more of his work on Entrepreneur, mindbodygreen, and Fitbit.com.
Like most operating system upgrades, Google’s upcoming Android O has plenty of incremental improvements, such as picture-in-picture for video, autofill for forms, and optimizations for battery life.
But beyond those useful tweaks, the update introduces some weirder ideas about how we might interact with Android in the future, not just on phones and tablets, but on PC-style devices and possibly wearables. Although Android O won’t launch until later this year–and probably won’t be widely adopted by phone makers until much later–the current developer preview provides a lot to think about in the meantime.
Windows That Float
Though it barely got a mention in Google’s introductory blog post, one of Android O’s most intriguing changes is a feature called “app overlay windows.” This is basically a way for apps to show pop-up windows on top of whatever the user is currently doing.
Pop-up windows aren’t entirely new to Android. Facebook’s Android app, for instance, introduced floating messages tabs called “Chat Heads” four years ago, and the Brave browser lets users hide web pages in circular icons, which can be dragged around the screen while using other apps. But the feature was never well-documented, and Google discouraged its use for anything besides system-level interactions (such as a low battery warning).
The Brave browser lets you hide web pages within floating bubbles.
With Android O, developers believe Google is warming to the pop-up concept, adding some user-friendly elements such as automatic resizing and positioning of windows to reduce clutter and manage resources. This could make phones and tablets more useful as productivity machines. (Thankfully, the feature will still require permission from users, presumably to prevent its abuse.)
Adaptive icons display in a variety of shapes across different device models.
“While this has been possible on Android before … the implementation was a bit of a hack,” says Rastislav Vaško, the head of Android development for Todoist, in an email. “O brings ‘official’ support for this, so we’ll surely think about possible use cases for Todoist, although we don’t have any concrete plans yet.”
“As Android expands onto every device imaginable, it’s only logical that it will eventually find its way back to the PC/laptop form factor,” Sarazan says. “Free floating windows are the first step to accomplishing that.”
More Screens
Floating windows aren’t the only way Google could be thinking beyond the phone. Android O also adds official support for multiple displays, letting users move apps between screens and resizing the window to fit.
Todoist’s Vaško notes that this is a natural extension of multi-window support, a feature of last year’s Android Nougat upgrade that lets two apps run next to one another on the same screen. Apps that support multi-window today should automatically work with multiple displays under Android O, Vaško says.
It’s unclear what types of multi-screen devices Google has in mind, but Samsung did just announce a dock for its Galaxy S8 smartphone that effectively turns it into a lightweight PC. Although Samsung’s version runs on the current version of Android, multi-screen support in Android O could allow any device maker to launch something similar.
Samsung’s DeX Station turns the Galaxy S8 into a desktop PC.
Steve Cary, Slack’s senior engineering manager for Android, says he has no idea what Google is up to, but he’s intrigued either way.
“As our pocket devices become more and more powerful, it’s easy to think of a future where, for many job functions, you’d no longer need to carry a laptop around, but could just take your device out of your pocket and plug into an external monitor, mouse, keyboard, et cetera,” Cary says via email. “I’d use that!”
Other possibilities include dual-screen smartphones or tablets. Or proper dual-monitor support for Chrome OS computers. Or, Vaško says, Google might just be putting the technology out there to see what happens.
“They’re adding this capability, because it’s a natural extension of multi-window, added in N,” he says. “And they’ll let the partners and OEMs figure out interesting form factors.”
A New Approach to Notifications
Android O is also taking a stab at fighting notification overload with “Notification Channels.” This allows app makers to separate alerts into categories that appear under Android’s notification settings. A sports app like ESPN, for instance, might have separate alert toggles for news and score updates, while a messaging app could let users turn on notifications only for a specific conversation group. Essentially, Google is trying to expose granular notification controls that today are buried within each app’s own settings menu.
“To me, the added controls simply make what was a big hammer (completely turning off all notifications from an app) into a selection of smaller hammers (completely turning off notifications of a particular type),” Slack’s Cary says.
Android O introduces the concept of groups of notifications.
While Notification Channels may not seem like a radical change, it could have a profound impact on smartwatches, which largely serve as fitness and notification machines. The Android Wear companion app already includes a way to silence an app’s notifications, but it’d be a lot more useful if people could decide exactly what types of notifications to get. That would only be possible if Android has granular controls at the system level.
To speculate a bit more, Google could go further and add attributes that are common across multiple apps. A user might decide, for instance, to only receive notifications that are work-related, or to only get alerted about direct mentions from social media apps like Facebook or Twitter. While that’s not possible in Android O, moving more notification controls to the system level could be a step in that direction.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Although Android O is due out in the third quarter of this year, phone makers tend to dally on supporting new versions of the software. The most popular version of Android right now is Marshmallow, which arrived in 2015, and the most recent update, Android 7.1 “Nougat,” is only on 0.4% of devices. It’ll be a while until most app makers start supporting the wild ideas that Google has laid out.
I paused while filing my taxes this year to peek at my returns from years past. My 2012 filing in particular left me almost speechless: I’d only grossed $23,244.
This is my sixth year living in New York City, and it’s already easy to forget how much of a financial struggle it was to scrape by in the first and second year. In 2016, I grossed over four times what I did four years prior, so you can imagine my surprise at realizing that I’d not only managed to survive on such a small entry-level salary, but had also put away some money in the process.
How did I do it? It’s not exactly a sexy story with an epic twist, but here goes.
Setting Goals From The Outset
For starters, it’s important to share a little about my overall financial picture: I intentionally chose a college that offered me enough scholarship money to graduate debt free. But I’m also both privileged and grateful that my parents were able to cover the remaining 50% of tuition costs. So entering the job market without the crushing debt loads that so many others in my age group aren’t as fortunate to avoid was a huge help.
From that point forward, I established some clear goals right away. Financial goal setting is something I’ve always done, even as a little girl. I used to have a candy tin where I stashed what I earned from pet sitting the demonic cat that lived next door. I kept a notebook in there with a ledger of all the money I’d saved, along with a crude, childish drawing of a red Mitsubishi Eclipse—my then dream car.
This habit translated into wanting to graduate college debt free and then, later, to aggressively saving as an undergrad so I could eventually move to New York with a small nest egg. I worked throughout college and during my summers to meet that goal.
Then, as soon as I actually moved to New York, just three weeks after graduating, I set three new goals:
Save $500 by May 2012 for travel purposes.
Avoid credit card debt.
Don’t touch the nest egg.
Here’s how I set about meeting all three of those goals, despite my meager salary:
1. I Budgeted Income From Working Three Jobs
I moved to New York to work as a page for the Late Show with David Letterman. While fun, it didn’t pay much above minimum wage and usually averaged out at 25–30 hours per week. Because Letterman filmed midday to early evening, I had to get creative about other jobs I could work to make up the difference. I ended up as a Starbucks barista most weekday mornings, plus some weekend evening shifts, and picked up some babysitting gigs for a few different families.
Thanks to tips from Starbucks and income from babysitting, I ended up with a decent amount of cash, so I started using the “envelope system” to keep a budget. You might have heard of this approach before. It’s a popular method that’s as simple as it sounds: You just store money in physical envelopes dedicated to spending categories. My envelopes were:
Rent
Money for Anna (in other words, utilities, which were in my roommate’s name)
Fun stuff
Savings
The “fun stuff” envelope usually stayed empty since I aggressively prioritized “savings” first. Because I often got paid in cash, I liked the tactile, visual practice of putting 50% of what I’d earn each payday into the “rent” envelope, 25% into “money for Anna,” and 25% into “savings.”
I now realize that I shouldn’t have been storing that much loose cash in my apartment, but fortunately nothing ever happened. I didn’t budget much for food—but we’ll get there.
2. I Accepted Leftovers And Tucked Away Unexpected Windfalls
“Windfalls” is a generous term, but every bit of unexpected income I received would go into my “savings” envelope. Usually these came in the form of tips, either from being a barista or babysitting. Upper East Side parents were quite generous tippers and occasionally paid my cab fare if they returned home after midnight. I’d pocket the additional $20 or so and hop on the subway to get home—no shame in that.
I also had no shame about snagging leftovers. I’ve eaten more Starbucks scones, pumpkin bread, “bistro boxes,” and paninis than you probably will in a lifetime. As a barista, I sometimes had the privilege of working the closing shift. This meant clearing out all the “expired food,” none of which had ever actually gone bad—it had just passed its sell-by date. After once watching a coworker stuff all this perfectly good food into a black trash bag and toss it outside, I asked if I could take some home. She shrugged and said she didn’t care.
That was all I needed to start stocking up on anything that would be getting thrown out. I started bringing tote bags to work during closing shift nights and going home with pastries, breakfast sandwiches, and paninis galore. My freezer got stacked with meals, which shrunk my grocery bill and helped add more to my “savings” envelope.
Today, the fact that my heart didn’t explode from the sodium intake is nothing short of miraculous.
3. I Very Selectively Said “Yes” And Sought Out Free Fun
That’s basically just a nice way of describing how I said “no”—a lot. And truthfully, this strategy became more about saying no more often than I’d even have liked. Earning $23,000 a year meant I had to be extremely judicious about spending money.
Each invitation to a brunch, happy hour, a friend’s improv show (it was my first year out of college after all), the movies, or even thrift-store shopping all demanded careful evaluation—and not only in terms of how much it might cost me, but how much I stood to lose in income by doing something fun instead of working. Babysitting gigs were usually at night, and agreeing to a Friday night party could mean passing up $80 to $100 in pay.
Admittedly, I found that after saying “no” enough times, some people would eventually stop asking. So looking back, I’d advise anyone in a similar position to try and say “yes” sometimes, for the sake of preserving important relationships.
Still, this period of my life did make me a master of finding very frugal or free fun things to do, and it taught me how to counter a friend’s invitation with a cheaper alternative. These are actually now some of my fondest memories from those early years. For instance, I figured out how to see off-Broadway shows for free (volunteer to usher) and participated in Improv Everywhere’s “MP3 Experiment.” I also routinely scored $30 rush tickets to Broadway plays, found free tours of iconic New York City landmarks, and after realizing that several museums were donation-based, stopped paying $20–$25 for entry (those that weren’t usually had free admission hours once a week). I also just took time to get lost walking around new neighborhoods.
Whenever a friend invited me to an expensive, boozy brunch, I’d say “yes” on occasion, but often countered with a more budget-friendly option. This tactic usually worked quite well, but I shrugged it off and didn’t hold any resentments if my friend wanted to stick to her original plan.
These days, I’m still an aggressive saver, but there’s far more flexibility in my budget. I’ve hung onto that “savings” envelope as a reminder of what I managed to accomplish in my early adult life. From time to time I’ll look at it and reflect on the cuts I was willing to make in the short term for a long-term financial gain.
But sometimes I just look at it to remember how painful it can be to make ends meet as just one person, even without any debt and subsequently in a very privileged position. And I’m reminded that not everyone is so lucky.
When the HBO show, Veep, premiered back in 2012, it was an election year, so it probably seemed like a good time for a Ginsu-sharp political satire. Now, as the multi-Emmy Award-winning show returns for its sixth season, it’s tough to say whether it seems more essential than ever, or if reality appears to have the market cornered on political satire these days. Perhaps the show that will prove to be more vital as commentary on the times is the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopiannovel Handmaid’s Tale, which also premieres this month. Worry not, though, there’s also plenty of escapist fare premiering soon that’s completely uninformed by or relevant during our current political climate. Have a look below for Fast Company’s guide to the best movies, shows, music, and books out in April.
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah, out April 4.
Void Star by Zachary Mason, out on April 11.
Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard, out on April 11.
Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke, out on April 18.
The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch, out on April 18.
The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron, out on April 25.
Startup by Doree Shafrir, out on April 25.
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout, out on April 25.
[Photo Mash Up: Adriana C. Sánchez for Fast Company; Source Photos: Going In Style: Atsushi Nishijima, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures; Mimosas: courtesy of Rogue International; Mine: courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: Quantrell D. Colbert, courtesy of HBO; The Leftovers: Ben King, Van Redin, courtesy of HBO; Veep: Justin M. Lubin, courtesy of HBO; Girlboss: Karen Ballard, courtesy of Netflix; Genius: Dusan Martincek, courtesy of National Geographic; Doctor Who: Simon Ridgway, courtesy of BBC America; iZombie: Jack Rowand, courtesy of The CW; Fargo: Chris Large, courtesy of FX; The Handmaid’s Tale: Take Five, courtesy of Hulu]
Can best friends and roommates succeed in business–and still want to speak to each other?
TheSkimm’s founders, Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, met when they were in college and reconnected several years later while working as news producers for NBC. Zakin and Weisberg sent out their first daily newsletter to a small group of their friends, family, and friends of friends on a Tuesday, in July 2012.
For a while, the pair worked on their own to build the startup that quickly became an essential daily news digest for millennial women (and men). Today, the ranks have swelled to over 40 staffers, and the subscriber base is now more than 5 million, boosted by a network of over 20,000 “Skimm’bassadors,” a community of passionate members who regularly join social chats on Facebook and other channels and help test new products and marketing initiatives. Last year, informed by this group, the iOS app Skimm Ahead launched to help members stay in the know about future events.
Here, Zakin and Weisberg share how they started theSkimm, and how they’ve engineered successful growth.
No Need For An A-Ha Moment
Contrary to some founders’ stories, Weisberg and Zakin maintain that they didn’t have a titular epiphany that sparked the idea for theSkimm. “It probably would be a much simpler story if there was,” Weisberg says. She adds that the foundation was laid well before the concept. “We grew up as news geeks, loved storytelling,” says Weisberg, “and always wanted to work at NBC News.” From there, she says, they were inspired by friends who basically asked the pair of news producers to skim what was going on in the world each day and deliver the highlights.
“At the same time, we were working in an industry trying to strategize ways to get female millennials’ attention,” Weisberg says, “but the way they were going about it didn’t really make sense, given modern news consumption and modern routines.” If anything provided the kindling to fire up the business, it was identifying this void. “We knew we could start something that gave [millennials] information every day in a way they trust, and in a way that fit into their routines.”
Risky Business
Everyone was telling them email was dead, but Weisberg maintains that there was a voice that was always in their heads cautioning them not to overlook the beauty in the simplicity of what could be created using that channel. “It’s something we use every day,” she says, not to mention that it had a low entry barrier. “It wasn’t just a good idea, there was a need for it,” she says. And at a certain point, Weisberg says, her parents got sick of hearing her talk about it and urged her to just give it a shot.
“I think the best thing that ever happened to us is that we were roommates first,” Zakin says. Neither of them were making a lot of money working in media, she admits, but they managed to save about $4,000.
“We did have a lot of conversations about credit card debt and what we were willing to do,” Zakin says. “We pushed each other off the ledge,” Weisberg says. (They tell Fast Company they just paid off their credit card debt, but didn’t say how much was owed.)
Starting theSkimm with a shared vision–from their shared couch–was the ultimate bonding experience. “It’s hard not to put a ton of hours in,” says Weisberg, “with a product that goes out at 6 a.m.” She recalls that for the first six months, they worked around the clock and slept in shifts.
They made a lot of progress during that time, in part because they were “feeding off the other’s enthusiasm and belief,” says Zakin, likening it to an out-of-body experience. It paid off. Previously, Fast Companyreported that the startup had hit 100,000 subscribers “very early on” and built additional traction through word of mouth.
The other part was their commitment to what the company could be. “There’s been so much reported about how open we’ve been about all the things we didn’t know [about starting a business],” she continues, “but not about how much we did know. We really knew the audience.”
As for their friendship, Zakin contends that the roller-coaster ride of starting a business served only to cement the bond. “Honestly,” says Zakin, “you become family, your families become family.”
Weisberg is quick to point out that the reason their partnership and friendship could coexist was that they didn’t jump into it; it took years to develop. “We wouldn’t recommend eloping with someone you met the day before,” she says. In business, as in marriage, the two made a contract and a promise to each other, Weisberg says. And if you ask them what accomplishment makes them proudest, Zakin says it’s a tie between building theSkimm’s culture of transparency, authenticity, and “no bullshit,” and their special partnership.
No Management Experience, No Problem
One of the things that surprised the pair was how long it took to hire the first employees. The two did the bulk of the work for the first year and started to bring people on after they raised a seed round of $1 million in 2013. From there, thoughts naturally turned to culture and management. “We asked people what we didn’t know,” says Weisberg, noting they were fortunate to have a great network of founders and people who built brands to tap for management advice. “Our earliest employees helped to shape us into the managers we are today,” says Weisberg.
Building A ”Zero-Drama” Culture
When theSkimm was ready to add staff, Weisberg says they spent a lot of time and effort on finding people who could communicate clearly. “We are running a business, not a sorority.” Adds Zakin, “We get shit done.” She points out that one of the company values is: “We are confident and humble: Nobody is too senior to do something, nobody is too junior to do something.” The team is very collaborative, she says, and this keeps drama at their office to a minimum.
With that in mind, theSkimm has a chore chart for its staff. “Everyone takes out the trash,” Zakin says. As for hiring, she says potential candidates need to show that they can check their ego at the door. “We like to bring candidates back for repeat visits,” Zakin explains. “We have them sit with as many [employees] as possible, and try to mix it up across teams. It often slows down the hiring process, but we want to make sure we get it right.”
They say they recently hired a head of HR now that the company’s staff has grown. And they’ve implemented something called Skimm’cademy to onboard new staff. The goal is not only to teach new employees the mission and values of the company right away, but also to ensure that everyone knows what others do. For example, they wrote in a Medium post: “Every single person should know what each person actually does at the company. It’s not enough to say ‘sales’ or ‘engineer,’ but actually what they do and how it affects you.”
We know that it can be good for productivity to have BFFs at work. And we also know that it can be a bad idea to be buds with your boss. But what happens when the founders are so close? Says Weisberg, “You don’t have to be best friends with your coworkers, but everyone wants to work in an environment where they feel respected and heard.” That’s especially important in a startup, she says, where it’s rarely just a job, especially not a nine-to-five one.
To ensure that, Weisberg points back to their hiring process and the importance of culture fit. “We also set aside time to bond in social settings,” she says, “whether it’s all 40-plus employees sharing weekly highs and lows at Friday Sip ‘n Skimm [weekly drinks and a catchup], or coming together to celebrate milestones with champagne and Skimm’aoke [team karaoke].” Zakin says the team can sometimes spend too much time at work. “We’re glad they love it here,” she says, but there have been times when someone has been told to take some time off to stave off burnout.
“It took us a while to be able to put intent into work-life balance,” Weisberg admits. But she says it was important to incorporate it for themselves as well as to model for their team. “You have to be a person” outside of work, she says she’s learned. “Sometimes the most creative thing you can do is take time for yourself,” she adds, because it keeps you healthy and keeps the creativity flowing. Zakin notes that Weisberg takes team members to spin class to encourage that healthy balance a bit more.
Building Out
“We took the biggest risk of our lives and started the company from our couch,” Weisberg muses, recalling the trouble they had raising money initially because they weren’t able to articulate their vision. Indeed, for the first 15 months, they weren’t sure how they were going to keep it up and running. But Weisberg says that what started as a daily newsletter aimed at capturing millennials’ attention first thing in the morning wasn’t the only thing they were hoping to create. “The intention was always to create a much larger company,” she says, “focused on making it easier for (both millennial women and men) to be smarter.” The pair plan to add video this year and are working on some other initiatives that they aren’t yet ready to discuss, but are excited to grow.
But if they’ve got one lesson they want to share with future entrepreneurs now, it’s this: “Go take a vacation before you start your business.” Weisberg says they didn’t take any time between working at NBC and sending out the first Skimm email. “And that was it, we were off to the races.”
Self-help advice isn’t exactly in short supply. There are research-backed tips out there for boosting confidence, resilience, risk taking, and adaptability. The message is pretty clear: Feel better about yourself or change your beliefs about what you’re capable of, and you’ll excel. Indeed, ample scientific evidence supports each of these claims.
Nevertheless, most self-improvement strategies focus too much on the person who’s trying to do the improving. Much of the time, the same outcomes you’re trying to achieve by changing your own habits, attitudes, and behaviors depend on how you view other people.
It can be difficult to believe that others generally have the best intentions; that just isn’t many people’s default assumption. We’re socialized from a young age to be critical of others’ motives, if not downright suspicious. Parents tell their children for their own protection to beware of strangers. And it’s not hard to find evidence in daily life that expressions like “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” has some truth to it. In an era of fake news, taking anything at face value seems potentially foolhardy.
But these societal impulses may actually arise from deeper cognitive ones. Negative past events loom larger in our memories than positive experiences. As psychologist Roy Baumeister famously put it, “Bad is stronger than good.” This makes adaptive sense: To survive in a treacherous environment (especially social ones), early humans needed to recall the times their trust was ill-placed, when they were betrayed or misled and wound up getting hurt. By comparison, all the times when their trust led to good outcomes weren’t as critical to hang onto.
In addition, people have an unyielding desire to see themselves in a positive light. This can cause us to develop less favorable views of others. Research shows that we tend to think we’re better than average at almost everything, meaning that others are worse—including less trustworthy. As part of this process, Stanford behavioral scientist Chip Heath found that we tend to think our own motivations are intrinsic (“I work hard because I love my job”) whereas others’ are extrinsic (“They work hard only because they’re getting paid to do so”).
Finally, while research on optimism—including assuming the best of others—almost universally shows its benefits for success and satisfaction in both work and life, people tend to fear being seen as an unrealistic “Pollyanna.” Just think of how many words there are in English to describe the experience of too-readily trusting others: gullible, ingenuous, credulous, unwary; imbecile, dimwit, stooge, dunderhead, idiot, fool; beguiled, duped, tricked, betrayed, fleeced, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed, deluded, swindled, conned, rooked, cozened, hoodwinked, bamboozled, flimflammed . . . you get the idea.
Research suggests when we perceive someone as innocent and nice, we tend to view them as less competent, a label we ourselves avoid at all costs. As the novelist Laurell K. Hamilton has said, “Never trust people who smile constantly, they’re either selling something or not very bright.”
The Self-Help Approach That’s Not About You
To be sure, there are risks to assuming the best in others, but the benefits may far outweigh the potential costs, especially in the workplace.
Conflict is a difficult but often inevitable part of our work lives. According to Harvard Business School professor Chris Argyris, a top cause of workplace discord is the “ladder of inference” (basically what he sees as a more precise metaphor than “jumping to conclusions”). Climbing up the ladder means that a person takes in neutral information but assumes bad intentions, which results in less favorable beliefs and bad behavior.
For example, when you receive an ambiguous email from a coworker you have a turbulent relationship with, you’re more likely than not to react defensively. In fact, there’s research to suggest that we interpret all emails more negatively than their writer meant them to be. So perhaps it’s no surprise that PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyisays the best piece of career advice she’s ever gotten is “assume positive intent.”
One of the biggest opportunities for growth at work comes from the way you solicit feedback and what you do with it afterward. Research demonstrates that while employees who speak up tend to improve how well teams function, many tend to be afraid to do so, worrying that their input won’t be well-received. Simply assuming the best in others can lay the foundation for managers and their team members alike to learn and improve without wounding egos.
It’s also no secret that the ability to influence others is a crucial job skill. Research shows that when we think others are capable of changing their attitudes, we’re more likely to advance our own views. But when we think others’ beliefs are fixed, we don’t try too hard to persuade them—what would be the point? This can have personal costs, though, since it limits our own potential sphere of influence.
And that, in turn, creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: Assume the worst in other people, and they’ll prove it every time (“confirmation bias,” anyone?), closing off one opportunity after the next to shore up those crucial relationships that your own happiness and success depend on. Sure, self-help books are a great way to better your work life. But their typical focus on you may have the unintended result of limiting your ability to wring more value out of the social world around you, which is teeming with people, while you’re just one of them.
Last year, Ann Herrmann, who heads up a talent management firm, made her entire workforce remote. They now rely on a combination of videoconferencing tools and chat platforms, with an annual face-to-face retreat. So far, she says, she’s “actually gotten to know my employees better in the process of going 100% virtual.”
By beaming into countless home offices for video-based meetings day in and day out, and encouraging employees to share aspects of their home-based work, “Surprisingly, working remotely gives me a chance to really know our employees on a personal level, because we often disclose more about the world we live and work in than we did when we were colocated,” says Herrmann.
Herrmann might be onto something. In a recent study by the communications company Polycom, which covered over 25,000 workers across 12 countries, 66% said their favorite colleague isn’t located in their own office but in another one far away.
Long-Distance (Working) Relationships
How come? As Herrmann points out, when you’re working remotely with no one else around, there’s often an impetus to make more personal connections. And with digital technologies facilitating the interaction, there may be less anxiety about sharing the more private side of your life with somebody you don’t see in the flesh. We already know through other research that authenticity matters in the workplace, and that it’s something people tend to struggle with. So it’s not hard to see how remote conversations can sometimes fulfill that need more readily.
Remember the recent viral BBC video of that professor’s live interview from his home office getting crashed by his two young kids? It’s not just that we’re often sharing more intimate details verbally with remote colleagues, it’s that we’re seeing a more personal side, too. As Herrmann notes, videoconferencing into team members’ home offices lets her “see what’s important to our employees, from a banjo prominently displayed near an employee’s desk, to photos of family and pets.”
Plus, so much of what we communicate is nonverbal—often more than we realize. And body language and facial expressions tend to come across just as powerfully on video as they do in person, so just because you’re speaking to a colleague remotely doesn’t mean there’s automatically more social or emotional distance between you.
There is a fear of remote-work tools and policies, though. Many companies don’t implement them well, and wind up building virtual fences that hurt their projects’ success and limit accountability. When that happens, many employers think twice about going remote. Yahoo, in perhaps the best-known example, scrapped its remote-working policy in 2013 and maintained years afterward that that was the right move.
To be sure, every company is different. But in the drive to maximize productivity, employers shouldn’t overlook the human element. Relationships matter, and there’s ample evidence that those between colleagues can be just as strong—if not stronger—across time zones and continents as they can across a cubicle wall. If you like someone, you’re more likely to work well with them and pull together in a crisis, no matter where they are.
Jeanne Meister is a founding partner in Future Workplace, an HR executive network and research firm. She is the author of numerous books on workplace issues and a recipient of the Distinguished Contribution in Workplace Learning Award from the Association for Talent Development.
That line alone is innocent. However when it’s asked after you very well know that your resume’s sitting somewhere on that person’s computer, it is maddening.
So, why does it happen? Why does it sometimes feel like recruiters go out of their way to make the interview process harder?
The good news is that they don’t. I can promise you that 9 out of 10 don’t do anything with the intention of making you frustrated. Which brings me to my next point (and really the point of this entire article)—that behind every annoying move is a legitimate reason. Let me explain.
1. When We Ask For Additional Copies Of Your Resume
Before I became a recruiter, I just about lost my mind anytime I was asked to send an “updated” resume.
“I sent this application to you three days ago,” I’d think to myself. “My resume is not going to be much different now!”
However, once I was on the other side of the table, I learned why this happened. And it’s actually good news for you because I typically only asked when I wanted to pass it along to the hiring manager. You see, most hiring managers I worked with preferred hard copies. So while I figured this would inconvenience the candidate, I also knew it would move the process along more quickly for them. (Okay, I also didn’t always want to dig through my inbox to find it, if we’re being completely honest.)
2. When We Don’t Follow-Up As Promised
I used to lean on my “unforgiving” calendar as an excuse for not providing next steps to applicants in a timely fashion. But it wasn’t just that. Putting together next steps in an interview often involves coordinating lots of schedules and discussing a few things about the candidate (for example, what to do if the person’s awesome, but seeking a higher salary than what was originally budgeted for).
That doesn’t mean you’re stuck sitting at home, just waiting. If a recruiter goes silent for a couple weeks, don’t be afraid to send an email to check in. But instead of placing blame, ask additional questions related to the job. Let’s say you’re interviewing for a marketing role, you might say something like this:
“Hope you’ve been well! I did some research on using GIFs in marketing tweets after our interview and was curious to hear if your team has experimented with them as well.” Nothing makes a recruiter feel guilty—and follow up faster—than a candidate who’s on top of their game.
3. When We Reschedule Your Interview At The Last Minute
The unfortunate truth is that while recruiters coordinate the interview process, there’s only so much they can control. Sometimes the hiring manager gets pulled into a last-minute meeting. Other times, an interviewer comes down with a cold. Sometimes things just come up, right? The only problem is that the person it impacts most is you.
If (or, when) this happens to you, don’t default to moving mountains to reschedule your interview with a recruiter. Take an honest look at your calendar, and if their proposed time doesn’t work for you, let them know that and offer a couple alternative times that you are available. (And if they can’t make it work, this is probably a good sign that they’re a bit too disorganized.)
4. When We Don’t Understand The Role You’re Interviewing For
There were countless times when a candidate asked me a question about the job they were up for that I simply could not answer. I knew how frustrating it was for them, but at the same time, there were little nuances of many gigs that I did not understand myself—which led me responding often with, “That’s something you should feel more than welcome to ask the hiring manager.”
I’ve given you a little bit of freedom to call out recruiters on their nonsense to this point, but here’s where I think it’s worth cutting them some slack. Of course, if someone clearly tries to make something up, go ahead and roll your eyes as hard as you want.
But if someone is honest with you and says they don’t have that information, don’t worry—you’ll meet with plenty of other people on the team who will know the answers.
Job hunting can be incredibly frustrating—I know. I’m telling you that as someone who’s been on both sides of the process. However sometimes, having a little insight into what’s going on can be incredibly helpful.
So I’ll leave you with my number one tip for getting through this with your sanity intact: Remember that recruiters are people, too. And just like any other person you know, they’re not perfect. That doesn’t excuse them, but it might make the annoying moments easier to deal with.
A version of this article originally appeared on The Daily Muse. It is adapted and reprinted with permission.
One of Donald Trump’s loudest–and likely most impossible to fulfill–promises is to bring back coal jobs. He has made this appeal to people whose factory skills aren’t in demand anymore and likely don’t have the secondary education necessary to enter into other industries.
Whether or not more coal jobs are created, this need has started a conversation about laborers with different educational backgrounds. Silicon Valley should be a leader in this conversation. For years, the tech pipeline has been fed mostly from the same elite universities. This has created a feedback loop of talent and a largely homogenous workplace. As a result, tech continues to stumble when it comes to diversity.
The technology industry is now trying to figure out a way to attack its cultural and demographic homogeneity issues. One simple initiative is to begin to recruit talent from people outside of its preferred networks. One way is to extend their recruiting efforts to people who don’t have four-year degrees.
New Initiatives
IBM’s head of talent organization, Sam Ladah, calls this sort of initiative a focus on “new-collar jobs.” The idea, he says, is to look toward different applicant pools to find new talent. “We consider them based on their skills,” he says, and don’t take into account their educational background. This includes applicants who didn’t get a four-year degree but have proven their technical knowledge in other ways. Some have technical certifications, and others have enrolled in other skills programs. “We’ve been very successful in hiring from [coding] bootcamps,” says Ladah.
For IT roles, educational pedigree often doesn’t make a huge difference. For instance, many gaming aficionados have built their own systems. With this technical grounding, they would likely have the aptitude to be a server technician or a network technician. These roles require specific technical knowledge, not necessarily an academic curriculum vitae. “We’re looking for people who have a real passion for technology,” says Ladah. He goes on to say that currently about 10% to 15% of IBM’s new hires don’t have traditional four-year degrees.
Before becoming a front-end engineer at IBM Design, Randy Tolentino worked as both a hip-hop artist and after-school program educator. He had dropped out of college as a sophomore and got a two-year IT degree as well as attended a coding bootcamp in Austin called MakerSquare (which is now HackReactor). This helped him land his job at IBM, where he’s been since 2015. Most of the people on his team now, he says, have more linear career trajectories than he does. “I’m very humble that they took a risk on bringing me in,” he says. “A lot of startups and companies won’t even give me a chance.”
Intel has also been looking to find talent from other educational avenues. One program gave people either enrolled in or recently graduated from community colleges internships with the company. Similarly, the company has been trying to get a foothold in high schools by funding initiatives to boost computer science curricula for both the Oakland Unified School District and an Arizona-based high-school oriented program called Next Generation of Native American Coders.
“Through focused initiatives in education, investment, and internship programs for high school and community college students, our aim is to attract a diversified talent pool to technology careers like engineering and computer science,” says Danielle Brown, VP of human resources and chief diversity and inclusion officer, in a statement. The program is still very small–only 10 students got community college internship spots.
The most prominent way that tech companies now try to seek out these new pipelines is through other organizations. Intel, for example, invests in the program CODE 2040, which aims to build pathways for underrepresented minority youth to enter the technology space. Likewise, GitHub has partnered with coding-focused enrichment programs like Operation Code, Hackbright, and Code Tenderloin.
It’s More Than Altruism
This, however, is just scratching the surface. In 2015, President Obama introduced a plan called TechHire with the intent of creating ways for more people to gain the skills to enter the technology space. At the time of its announcement, Obama said there were over 500,000 unfilled technology positions (a statistic that was criticized at the time). But a more recent statistic from the Department of Labor says that as many as 1 million programming jobs will be unfilled by 2020.
In short, organizations shouldn’t seek out new talent pools just because it’s the “right” thing to do; they should do it because it’s the best thing for their business.
Gary Burtless, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institute, explained this last year. He believed that the best way to create more labor opportunity was to develop skills-based programs that let people fill these technology sector vacancies. “There are tons of occupations out there for which you do not need a college degree,” he said. And what could make things better would be certificate programs that have direct connections to employers.
With programs like IBM’s new-collar initiative and the partnerships at Github and Intel, we’re beginning to see the ways companies can begin to address this issue. And as the industry continues to be pilloried for poor diversity showings and a noninclusive culture, more of these initiatives would be a good thing.
Correction: An earlier version of the article misspelled Danielle Brown’s name. We apologize for the error.
Between 2011 and 2013, ambient electronic musician Yoko K. Sen spent time in a local hospital receiving treatment. She didn’t like what she heard. The incessant stream of jarring noises—slamming doors, beeping medical equipment, blaring televisions in neighboring rooms—wasn’t exactly conducive to a restful recovery. When she learned that some believe hearing to be the last sense we lose before death, Sen began wondering: Is this really what terminal patients should hear during their last moments on Earth?
Now, Sen is on a mission to use sound design to make hospitals calmer, more soothing places to stay. Conducting extensive research on the needs of health care providers and alarm fatigue—a condition that occurs when people become desensitized after being exposed to too many alerts—Sen is currently prototyping sound environments that help patients and providers cut through the clamor, potentially improving both patient health and medical care in the process.
[Photo: amoklv/iStock]
One Alarm Every 11 Minutes
“The incredible thing we’re learning, and the very beginning of the dawn of human-centered design in health care, is how little attention we’ve paid to most things that aren’t clinical,” says Nick Dawson, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Sibley Innovation Hub, a group that’s working with Sen and other partners to use design to improve patient experiences at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. “It’s not just that [medical sound design] has been done poorly, it’s that it’s never been done.”
Hospital cacophony is so constant, doctors and patients stop noticing it’s there. Just a few days in a hospital means hearing thousands of alarms. Research presented at the Acoustical Society of America’s 2016 spring meeting found that the average hospital racks up 135 alarms per patient per day, about one every 11 minutes. There are blood pressure and cardiac monitors that beep in tandem with patients’ heartbeats, ventilators that sound when patients cough or shift in bed, and IV machines that trip every time medication is delivered, just to name a few.
But none of these are critical alarms, and neither are many of the other alerts patients hear on a constant basis. The Joint Commission, a nonprofit health care accreditation and certification organization, estimates that 85% to 99% of hospital alarms don’t require any clinical intervention, leaving patients nervous that there’s something wrong and health care providers scrambling to sort false alarms from real ones.
“One of the things that we know from the literature is if a clinician believes an alarm to be valid 90% of the time, they’ll answer it 90% of the time,” says JoAnne Phillips, co-chair of the Alarm Safety Committee at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
The reverse is true, too. When clinicians know that false alarms are common, they’re substantially less likely to answer, raising the risk of missing a major medical emergency. The Joint Commission found that between 2010 and June of 2015, 138 people died in events related to alarm system failures. Even when life or death isn’t on the line, alarms still take a toll. For patients, hospital noise has been linked to sleep difficulties, higher stress levels, increased blood pressure, and longer healing times and hospital stays.
[Photo: amoklv/iStock]
From Silence To Dissonance
It wasn’t always this way. Back in the 1800s, silence was considered crucial to a patient’s recovery. Hospitals were considered public quiet zones. A speed limit was imposed in the surrounding area and straw was put down on nearby streets to prevent patients from hearing noise from horse-drawn carts and pedestrians. Early nurses went so far as to wear moccasins to quiet their footsteps to help patients get the maximum amount of rest. That changed with technology. With the advent of devices ranging from intercoms to the steadily growing barrage of monitoring systems, hospitals became louder, more dissonant places with patients and health care providers dealing with the consequences.
In an effort to keep as close an eye on patients as possible, monitoring devices have proliferated, and, as they’ve grown more sophisticated and increasingly automated, they’ve also become more sensitive and include more and more alert-heavy features. Many are designed for the average person, JoAnne Phillips says, which means that cardiac monitors will often continually go off if a patient naturally has a slightly irregular heartbeat, even if nothing is truly wrong. Health care practitioners can turn these alarms off, but many don’t.
“The fear for clinicians that are potentially less knowledgeable is that they’ll miss something. ‘I can’t touch that, I’ll miss something,’” Phillips says. “One of the biggest initiatives right now is how do we teach nurses to customize the alarms so that they feel they’re safe, so they feel that they’re going to get called to the monitor for the right things?”
[Photo: amoklv/iStock]
Creating Tranquility
As part of her work to calm the cacophony of the hospital environment, Sen converted one of Sibley Memorial’s patient rooms into a tranquility area to provide a place for hospital staff to escape the noise and mentally reset. After entering an antechamber where Sen herself brewed and served green tea, weary staff were greeted with reclining chairs, soothing music, lavender scents, and moving projections on the walls, which Dawson describes as reminiscent of the northern lights. The project was originally intended to be temporary, but it proved so popular that Sibley’s executive board has approved making a permanent tranquility room. Members of the Sibley Innovation Hub are also investigating bringing the concept to patients through “tranquility boxes” stocked with a noise machine and a small projector that health care staff could use to quickly transform a patient’s room into a simulated forest or beach scene.
One challenge to creating purposeful sound design that works in shared patient rooms and communal hospital spaces is that hearing perception varies between people, says Sen. What sounds soothing to one person isn’t always to the next.
[Photo: amoklv/iStock]“We always ask what kind of sound environment might be ideal for a patient, and not everyone said ‘I like quiet and silence,’” Sen says. “We are actually hearing complaints from patients that it’s too quiet and I feel lonely and I’m scared.”
Sen is experimenting with sound design options that can be individually tailored, such as sensors that adjust sounds and volume according to a patient’s heart rate. Her work goes hand-in-hand with steps health care providers are taking to turn down the volume. Some, like Hospital for Special Care in New Britain, Connecticut, have invested in software that separates alarms requiring an immediate response from those that don’t. In the facility’s respiratory wing—a place where 19,000 alarms from ventilators go off in an average day—only the most critical alarms to patient safety are sent to staff computers, personal pagers, and over the unit’s loudspeaker. Those include alerts letting providers know when patients are experiencing dangerous changes in lung pressure or if they’re not exhaling enough air, as well as when patients are disconnected from the ventilator or the machine has lost connectivity with the hospital’s alarm monitoring software.
Alarms, for things like high respiratory rate, which is often a temporary condition that isn’t life-threatening, only sound at the patient’s bedside. The system has reduced the number of ambient overhead alarms and alarms requiring immediate staff response by 80%, says respiratory practice manager Connie Dills, adding that the facility is planning to expand the system into all hospital units in the near future.
[Photo: amoklv/iStock]
“Discordant Cacophony Of Beeps And Blurps”
A 2014 mandate by the Joint Commission required hospitals to implement alarm management systems by January 2016, but how and which alarms are addressed was left up to the individual institutions. While some care facilities have focused on reducing specific types of alarms—cardiac monitors or ventilators for instance—others have focused more on sending alerts to individual health care providers rather than anyone on the floor. Even with these management systems, there’s still a lot of beeping and buzzing. One way to tone it down is to get medical equipment vendors and health care facilities on the same page, says Dawson.
“If you’re the vendor of IV pumps, it probably never occurred to you to coordinate with people who make the ventilator that your tones should be in the same scale,” Dawson says. “It sounds like a preposterous idea,” but without that coordination, right now “it’s just this discordant cacophony of beeps and blurps,” he adds. “At some point you stop being able to tell what’s what.”
The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation’s National Coalition for Alarm Safety—a collection of representatives from roughly 25 hospitals and 15 vendors—is working to bridge the gap between health care workers and equipment designers. The group is “probably the first time that practitioners and vendors have been at the same table” says JoAnne Phillips, the coalition’s representative from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and getting everyone on the same page requires significant coordination and cooperation from the vendors.
In the mean time, Sen is thinking of ways to expand her work throughout the health care system. Last September, Sen asked people throughout Iceland about sounds they would like to hear at the end of their lives, and created a composition based on their responses. She is currently working with a neuroscientist at another institution to create research-backed sound environments designed to soothe babies.
“We are really spending time to understand,” she says. “You don’t come here with the solution first.”
The gender pay gap—women earn, on average, 79 cents for every dollar a typical man makes—will not be an easy issue to solve. Contrary to logic, the growth of women in managerial roles hasn’t done much to break down pay disparities between men and women, and diversity initiatives, while effective in boosting the percentage of female employees at a company, often don’t go far enough in ensuring they’re compensated equally.
The pay gap is most pronounced among married women with children (it’s often referred to as “the motherhood penalty”). The total failure of federal and corporate policies to support working mothers means that the outmoded idea that a successful career and family life are mutually exclusive still often manifests itself in a woman’s salary. Introducing comprehensive paid-leave policies is a critical step forward, but to Ned Holstein, a physician and the founder of the National Parents Organization (NPO), it doesn’t fully account for everyone affected by unequal pay policies—specifically, mothers who are separated or divorced from their partners.
Sole custody—where one parent shoulders the majority of responsibility for the children—is the norm in the United States, and women are awarded sole custody in 80% of such cases. This, Holstein says, creates an outsized burden of care on the mother and alienates the father, who is essentially reduced to a financial resource with occasional visits thrown in. The NPO, instead, has been advocating for states to adopt legislation that supports shared parenting—a flexible arrangement in which children spend as close to equal time as possible with both parents, provided both are fit to provide care and neither has exhibited prohibitive behavior like domestic violence or substance abuse. To date, 25 states have introduced bills advocating for shared parenting over sole custody.
In 1970, the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act directed states to decide custody based on the perceived “best interest” for the children involved. The fact that custody overwhelmingly went to the mother was “rooted in an idea of proper gender roles,” Holstein says. In the nearly 50 years since that law was passed, the culture in the U.S. has changed drastically. The share of children under 18 living with both parents fell from 85.2% in 1970 to 69.2% in 2015; in the same time frame, the labor-force participation of women has risen from 43.3% to 56.7%. But despite these shifts, “what goes on in family courts has barely changed at all,” Holstein says. Prior to the 1970s, family court decisions were governed by the “tender years doctrine,” a holdover from 19th-century law that maintained that children under the age of four belonged in the care of the mother. Though the “best interest” clause replaced the tender years doctrine after 1970, court decisions still tend to be swayed by the earlier law.
With the image of mother as primary caregiver changing as more fathers take on active roles in child-raising, Holstein believes that shared parenting laws more accurately reflect the cultural shift toward gender equality. “I don’t believe that the pay gap can be closed unless we have shared parenting widely after parents separate or divorce,” he says. One study found that men’s ability to work longer hours because they have less responsibility at home accounts for around 10% of the gender pay gap; advocating for a more even split of domestic duties could chip away at that margin.
Research also supports that shared parenting results in better outcomes for children. In a 2016 study from Sweden where, along with Australia, shared parenting has been the norm for several years, researchers found that children who spent close to equal time with both parents after separation had the same level psychological complaints as those in nuclear families; both had lower levels than those living with only one parent. A 2014 paper that aggregated the input of 110 professionals and experts in the field came to the consensus that it’s beneficial for children under the age of four to spend equal time living with both parents. Plus a recent poll in Maryland found that 63% of adults favored shifting to shared parenting, as opposed to sole custody, as the starting point in court proceedings.
However, because shared parenting comes with the hefty qualifier that in order for it to work both parents must be willing and able to cooperate and provide care, it cannot be mandated universally. While Holstein emphasizes that shared parenting legislation cedes a substantial amount of discretion to judges to determine whether a joint custody agreement is viable and in the actual best interest of the children involved, many feminist and domestic violence groups, including the National Organization of Women, oppose joint custody as the starting point in divorce proceedings, saying that it could force a couple that may want nothing to do with each other into a cooperative arrangement not of their choosing.
Advocates like Holstein are sensitive to those concerns, and add that they hope a joint-custody arrangement could, in the long term, lessen some of the bitterness that arises in court battles for sole custody. “If both parents are fit and there has not been previous violence, I think it’s a protective measure for the future of the relationship and the child that things are fair,” Holstein says. “You don’t have all the bitterness and hatred.”
Other opponents include family lawyers and bar associations, who are trying preserve sole custody because the lengthy and lucrative court battles are—along with real estate closings and DUI cases—“bread and butter” for smaller practices, Holstein says. “It’s become increasingly impossible to hold a benign explanation for this opposition, especially as the research that shared parenting is better for children mounts up more and more,” Holstein says.
Given the sensitive and highly personal nature of parenting decisions in the wake of divorce or separation, many of the bills working their way through various state legislatures shy away from outright mandates; two bills introduced in Maine, for example, clarify the “best interest of the child” clause to mean that judges should consider the value of having both parents involved in the children’s life. All of the bills contain exceptions in the cases of abuse, drug use, and neglect on the part of one parent.
From Holstein’s perspective, the transition to shared parenting is bound up in a swath of gender norms and expectations that, especially in family courts, has been slow to change, though he’s hopeful that with 50% of the states considering shifts away from joint custody, it soon will. “This is one of the last remaining bastions of institutional gender expectations,” he says.
