As Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai moves his agency toward rolling back Obama-era network neutrality rules, more voices are calling for a lasting solution to the debate: a new law. FCC rulings are subject to court challenges and changing political regimes, after all.

But Congress is so mired in the Trump agenda, and so distracted by the administration’s daily melodrama, that passing new telecom law any time soon seems practically impossible.

The 2015 Open Internet Order says large internet service providers (ISPs) like AT&T and Comcast can’t block or discriminate against lawful web content, under the FCC’s 1934 Title II regulations. Nor can they set up internet toll booths to sell the fastest service to the large internet companies that can afford to pay the most.

Lots of dollars are riding on whether the internet is regulated as a public utility or as a private, for-profit internet service. In the first scenario, the big ISPs say they’ll stop investing to improve their networks. In the second, big internet companies say the high rates they’ll be forced to pay for internet carriage will stop them from growing and creating jobs, and stifle venture capital investment in new tech companies.

Still, I’m told, the staffs of some members are studying the options. One major bill aiming at a net neutrality law was introduced May 1 by a group of nine Republican senators. The Restoring Internet Freedom Act would remove for good the right of the FCC to classify ISPs as common carriers to be regulated like public utilities. But the bill was sent into committee and hasn’t been heard from since.

Some in Congress are still hoping to craft a solution. “What the internet needs to end regulatory uncertainty and recurring threats of litigation is an enduring, bipartisan law from Congress to protect internet freedom by codifying widely accepted net neutrality protections,” Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the chairman of the Senate’s Commerce Committee, wrote in a recent op-ed. “If Democrats and Republicans have the political support to work together, we can together enact a framework that provides the net neutrality protections wanted by so many internet users, reasonably limits the whims of partisan regulators, and grants the necessary flexibility to protect consumers from future harm.”

ISPs interested in rolling back the rules, like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T, have also issued calls for congressional action on net neutrality. But that’s mainly because big ISPs are very confident in their lobbying power with the GOP-controlled Congress, and excited about the possibility of helping to write a new law, complete with loopholes. See, for instance, Congress’s recent tearing apart of the FCC broadband privacy rule that would have prevented ISPs from selling the personal information of their customers without their permission—a victory for the companies that has proved wildly unpopular with most Americans.

Meanwhile, the Internet Association, which represents companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon, has indicated it would be interested in working with lawmakers on legislation, too. But at the moment, they aren’t united and ready for battle. Last Wednesday’s “Day of Action” wasn’t exactly action-packed, and some people came away with the opinion that the big tech companies showed up mainly to keep up appearances. That is, they did just enough to be counted, but not so much that they might damage their influence with GOP lawmakers when the time comes to talk about the really important issues like tax reform, immigration, and repatriation.

Meanwhile, Pai’s FCC has, arguably, done a poor job of laying out to the public the case for rolling back the Obama-era net neutrality rules. For most Americans, the perception is that Pai, a former Verizon lobbyist, simply wants to deregulate an industry for the benefit of the big ISPs. The real benefit of a rollback for consumers hasn’t been clearly communicated, if there is one.

Far more adept in influencing the tax-paying public on network neutrality are celebrities like John Oliver, who oppose rolling back the existing rules. Polling shows that Americans are strongly against doing away with the Open Internet principles. As of Monday, the last day for public commenting, the FCC had already received more than 8 million online comments on the matter (although one study claims 1.2 million of them are fake or from overseas). Another comment period, for rebuttals to the existing comments, is set to end in August.

So far, however, all the popular opposition for rolling back net neutrality rules doesn’t seem to have influenced the FCC very much. Reports say the commission is driving forward with its intent to deregulate. But it’s not yet laid out a detailed proposal for a set of regulations that will take the place of the Open Internet Rules (it will presumably do that after the comment periods are over), as well as a clear description of the regulatory ground supporting them.

Pai argues that previous FCC’s network neutrality rules were “preemptive” because no major abuses had happened, and that the regulations would stifle investment. But if you buy into the argument that the internet is an essential service in the 21st century, like water, roads, and schools, it follows that government should play a role in protecting consumers from the handful of large companies that provide it, before, not after, the fact.

While big ISPs pay for the upkeep and upgrade of their networks, they’ve also been permitted by the government to establish markets where little or no competition exists. They’ve also been the beneficiaries of big federal tax breaks over the years.

Not content to collect large monthly fees from consumers, they want to further monetize their networks by charging to prioritize the web traffic of large internet companies that can afford to pay extra. That’s not only double dipping, but it puts large ISPs in a position to control what content end users will see, and nudges the internet closer to the paradigm of cable TV.

In exchange for all the perks they’ve received, big ISPs owe taxpayers something, and should accept a modest set of net neutrality guarantees—ones that are affirmed by a bipartisan agreement set in law, not subject to the shifting sands of noisy politics.

At a cost of $80,000 and upwards, geothermal systems have often been too expensive for homeowners, even if harnessing the natural temperatures of the earth will eventually mean year-round savings on heating and cooling, and no more oil and propane tanks in the basement. But at $20,000? Might homeowners start becoming interested then?

That’s the hope of a New York startup called Dandelion. It has developed a whole new process for installing, packaging, and financing home geothermal systems, thus cutting the typical cost by up to three-quarters.

Developed over two years at X, Alphabet’s “moonshot factory,” Dandelion recently won $2 million in seed financing from venture capital firm Collaborative Fund, plus other firms like ZhenFund and Borealis Ventures. The startup currently operates in 11 New York counties (Dutchess, Ulster, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Albany, Schenectady, Schoharie, Saratoga, Montgomery, and Fulton) and plans its first installations this September.

The cost of paying off a loan to build the system, in other words, will be lower than what homeowners would normally pay for oil or gas power over that same period, Hannun says. Dandelion hopes to do for geothermal what companies like Solar City and Sunrun have done for home solar: reduce equipment prices, wring efficiencies out of the installation process, and offer new types of financing packages where homeowners pay monthly instead of all-upfront.

Geothermal systems have two main elements: an electric heat pump inside the home, and ground loops dug into the garden (Dandelion’s go down about 500 feet). The systems exploit the natural heat of the ground below a house (in New York, it’s a constant 50 degrees Fahrenheit). In winter, the pump circulates water through the loops absorbing warmth in the ground and bringing it inside the home. The heat is condensed, then transferred into circulating air. In summer, the systems transfers the water and heat to the ground, cooling the air inside a home. The heat pump is roughly the same size as an oil furnace, which Dandelion installs alongside a water heater and smart thermostat.

Dandelion’s value proposition rests in simplifying and standardizing the installation process.

“In the past, geothermal has been almost like getting a remodel,” Hannun says. “That high level of customization requires a lot more time and detail because every job is different. We’ve built a product where one system fits most homes. If the home is not a good fit, we’ll disqualify that home, rather than changing the product.”

Dandelion does several new things to get the price down. First, it discriminates about who it works with. Its modeling and mapping tool accounts for weather (colder homes cost more), electricity and existing fuel costs, home age, and architectural style (and so on)—sizing up which homeowners could save most, and therefore might be the best clients. That might only be about a third of homes will initially qualify for Dandelion’s solution (yards also need to big enough to accommodate the loops).

Second, it has developed its own drilling rig–smaller and more nimble than traditional geothermal rigs. The custom-built machine is 19 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 8 feet tall, and weighs about 23,000 pounds compared to more than 70,000 pounds for a standard drilling rig. That means it can get closer to the house, and it won’t damage the grass so much, Hannun says.

Third, it drills a smaller hole–4.5 inches wide instead of a standard 6 inches. That means less dirt and rock coming out and less grout with which to fill the gap between the pipe and the ground. A six-inch hole produces 662 gallons of “spoils” and uses 561 gallons of grout to fill, Hannun says. A 4.5-inch one produces only 372 gallons of spoils and 271 gallons of grout–a 50% materials and spoils reduction. At the same time, Dandelion’s rig collects all the waste, so it’s not spread across the yard, Hannun says.

And, fourth, Dandelion plans to automate some of the drilling so it needs few people onsite, and less time to complete the whole job. Hannun estimates it will now take one or two days, instead of a normal two to four.

Dandelion decided to start in the Hudson Valley because natural gas often isn’t available, and many homes run either on oil or propane. Customers therefore have a greater incentive to move to a fuel-less heating and cooling system than other places. Geothermal, however, does tend to increase electricity costs, as more power is needed to run the heat pump. Dandelion currently only works with forced air-heated homes, but it plans to have an offering for homes heated with hot water within a year.

Hannun previously worked as a product manager at Google, while her partner, James Quazi, sold a home improvement service to SolarCity, the leading solar installer. If they can keep the price of geothermal at a level that makes it cheaper on a per month basis than traditional fuels, they might have a commercial model with legs. Why pump oil into your basement, if you can get most of what you need from the bowels of the earth?

In most wars, generals plan battles by gathering around maps. And historically, the victors of those battles get to redraw those maps.

An updated version of that battle is raging in the war over autonomous cars. Despite the growing ability of sensor-laden robots to recognize and react to their surroundings, many in the industry believe that self-driving cars need hyper-detailed digital maps to find their way safely.

These HD maps go way beyond smartphone navigation apps, down to a 10-centimeter (four-inch) level of accuracy, in order to keep cars in their lanes and make turns precisely. Fortunes are being invested in mapmaking by companies like Google, TomTom, and Here Technologies, which was one of Nokia’s crown jewels before Intel and several automakers bought it last year.

Into the fray come three twentysomething veterans of Tesla and iRobot with a more guerrilla approach: Their crowdsourced mapping company, lvl5, is collecting valuable mapping data from e-hail and other drivers who are already on the road. “We said, who drives a lot? Well, there are Uber drivers,” says lvl5’s 25-year-old CEO Andrew Kouri. “So let’s just pay Uber drivers to do this for us.” Lyft and truck drivers also take part. (The ambitious name is pronounced “Level 5,” the designation for a 100% autonomous vehicle.)

Lvl5 distributes payments to drivers through another app, Payver, that awards redeemable points to those willing to mount iPhones on their dashboards. Payver collects and uploads video of the road and data from phone sensors like GPS, gyroscope, and accelerometer to make 3D maps that, says lvl5, surpass the maps that companies like Here produce using hundreds of vehicles equipped with radar and laser scanners.

That’s quite a boast, but it’s convinced investors to drop $2 million into lvl5, the San Francisco startup announced today. The funding round, at an unknown valuation, includes Gmail creator Paul Buchheit, now a partner in the Y Combinator accelerator where lvl5 began, and Max Altman of 9Point Ventures, and brother of Y Combinator head Sam Altman.

In three months, Kouri says lvl5 has recruited 2,500 users and mapped 500,000 miles of roads. “If we want to do this at a scale that would be very valuable to [a carmaker] we would need either 50,000 Payver users,” he says, “or we would just need a partnership with one [carmaker] and have them promise to install our software in their cars.”

That’s the strategy for other mapping companies. Cameras are becoming standard-issue in many new cars for features like adaptive cruise control and lane departure warning. Here, for instance, is installing software that collects data from the cameras and other sensors of cars made by its co-owner BMW starting in 2018. Co-owners Audi and Mercedes-Benz may follow. “The lower-quality signals from cameras are one of these data sources,” says Sanjay Sood, Here’s VP of HD mapping, in an email to Fast Company.

How much tech do they need?

Whether or not lvl5 can succeed, its chosen path furnishes fundamental examples of current debates around autonomous cars. One relates to the sensors that cars need to see the road.

Kouri and his cofounders, fellow Tesla alum Erik Reed and iRobot vet George Tall, say that cameras that cost a few bucks are all that’s needed to make detailed maps. Along with radar sensors, they are sufficient for cars to navigate themselves. It’s a philosophy shared by Kouri’s and Reed’s former boss, Tesla founder Elon Musk.

Related: This 22-Year-Old CEO Wants To Help Make Self-Driving Cars Affordable

Other experts advocate using LIDAR—essentially the laser version of radar—which uses lasers to measure details of any 3D space down to a few millimeters of accuracy, claim their makers. But LIDAR is expensive: Sensors cost up to tens of thousands of dollars. Here, Google, Apple, and others use LIDAR-equipped vehicles to build detailed baseline maps.

But any map will also need to be up-to-date, with incremental updates to account for things like road construction, accidents, and busted traffic lights. Lvl5 says it can do that more cheaply by crowdsourcing from vehicles equipped with smartphone or built-in car cameras, an idea that sounds plausible to experts.

“With significant data capture you can leverage multiple images or videos to help resolve different viewpoints of the same object, which can help boost recognition performance of key objects on the road,” says Matt Zeiler, CEO of image-recognition AI company Clarifai, which is not connected with lvl5, in an email to Fast Company. “For example, seeing a street sign from 200 feet, 100 feet, and 50 feet could be combined to give a better prediction of what and where that street sign is.”

He’s describing the structure from motion process, which lvl5 and bigger rivals use. Analyzing the similarities and differences between photos taken of the same objects, from several angles, can produce 3D maps. Erik Reed showed me the results. From a single iPhone running Payver, lvl5’s software generated a ghostly 3D image showing rough outlines of things like trees and buildings, and almost-photographic images of traffic lights. The latter are among about 100 items that the software is trained to recognize, along with other features such as stop signs and lane lines (these were the only three items that Kouri would reveal).

These capabilities are not unique to lvl5. But that fact that three smart guys, an app, and an Amazon Web Services cloud processing account can do it shows how accessible the technology has become. (The company is now recruiting three more employees and an intern.)

“There’s a lot of noise here. So in this one trip, it’s picking up things that we probably don’t care about,” says Kouri, noting the outline of a car on the other side of the road. “However, if we have 10 trips down the same road, not only do we get better accuracy for the features that we do care about, but we also have more references to eliminate the noise like this car.”

All of this works well, provided it’s a clear, sunny day. “I think most autonomous car companies would ditch LIDAR nowadays if it weren’t for low-light robustness,” says Alberto Rizzoli, cofounder of image-recognition company Aipoly. But, he notes, “with cameras alone you can get most of the info LIDAR gives you.”

Kouri argues that there are enough sunny days to make accurate baseline maps. “We can drive something in broad daylight and know that in night it’s probably not going to change that much,” he says.

Sood, of Here, is unconvinced. “A camera alone does not work in all situations. It does not work when the visibility is low and/or if the light patterns are difficult to make out,” he says. “An obvious example is a snowstorm, but sunsets or simple dust can also be problematic.”

Dead reckoning

Another controversy is whether digital maps need to show where a real-world object is in absolute terms—i.e., latitude and longitude—or just where it is relative to other objects. Companies like Here are trying to get as close to exact positioning as possible, supplementing sometimes-fuzzy GPS data with more precise sources.

Lvl5, meanwhile, claims that just knowing a car’s location relative to other things on the road, as humans do, is enough.

Kouri illustrates this with a toy car on a coffee table in the sitting room of the live-work mansion the company rents in San Francisco’s tony Russian Hill neighborhood. “If you’re driving down this road and you’re trying to shoot this gap,” he says, pointing to the space between two knickknacks, “what matters is: Are you lined up to the middle of these two things?” By this logic, the exact location of the car doesn’t matter. “It could be on Mars, as long as it knows it needs to go right at this angle,” says Kouri.

Some people question whether HD maps will be necessary as cars get smarter. Tim Wong heads the technical marketing team at Nvidia, which makes an in-car autonomous driving computer and software used by Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Toyota, and Volvo. “An HD map makes things better,” Wong says at the Automated Vehicles Symposium in San Francisco. But “if I don’t have it, I still need to be autonomous. You are able to drive a road you’ve never seen before,” he says. “I would expect an autonomous vehicle to do the same things.” He concedes however that autonomous cars aren’t yet that smart.

Kouri doubts that they ever will be, based on his experience at Tesla. In 2016, car owner Joshua Brown died when riding in Tesla’s Autopilot mode. Brown’s Model S mistook a tractor trailer pulling across the road for a bridge and concluded the car would fit under it. Instead, the top of the car was sheared off.

Kouri was on the team at Tesla that analyzed the incident. “The car has radar in it and a camera, and the radar saw some sort of bridge-like object,” he says. “But if it had access to an HD map that was always updated, it would know, ‘there’s no bridge here, so I need to slam on the brakes. This is an abnormality that we need to stop for.'”

When it comes to job security and getting ahead, few things can go as far as being the employee who makes your boss look great. Anticipating what those in charge need—sometimes even before they realize it—shows that you understand the big picture in ways that many employees don’t.

“I give this counsel all the time, but it’s not the job you do, but how you do the job,” says Andrew Alfano, chief operating officer of The Learning Experience, a childhood development center franchise company. Alfano walks his talk, too—before joining the Learning Experience, he spent 15 years working his way from district manager to senior vice president at Starbucks.

But how do you get inside your boss’s head to anticipate how to make them look good when you’re just trying to keep ahead of your own to-do list? There are some savvy ways to do so—and spending the time gaining the insight and information you need could also help you become a better employee and reach your own career goals a little faster.

Ask The Right Questions

Too many people try to guess at what is important to their supervisors without actually sitting down and having a conversation about it, Alfano says. “I would never avoid that,” he says. But, sometimes, your boss may not be able to articulate exactly what you need to do or may simply be unsure, as well. In those cases, you have to find creative ways to get the information you need, he says. Ask questions like:

• What does “success” look like in my role?
• What do you need from the person in my role?
• Who has had success in this role before me and what made them successful?

Figure Out What Your Boss’s Boss Wants

Remember that your boss is also trying to appease and anticipate the needs of her own manager, Alfano says. And, sometimes, looking to those higher-ups can give you valuable insight into how you can better manage your own supervisor, he adds. Of course, you don’t want to make your manager feel like you’re going over her head. However, good senior leaders typically want to get to know the people working for them to scope out potential talent in the ranks, he says. Look for opportunities to connect with your manager’s manager and take advantage of the encounter to ask questions about how you can better support the whole team.

See What Takes Up Most Of Her Time

The simple act of paying attention can tell you a great deal about your supervisor’s priorities, interests, and concerns, says executive and career coach Donna Schilder. Take note of the meetings that are taking up the most time and look at how you can help. During those meetings, listen to what people are discussing or requesting. Pay attention to what’s written on the white board in their office or analyze email messages on which you’re copied. Each of these interactions offers clues as to what’s going well, what’s not going so well, and where you might be able to prove your value in the form of assistance, she says.

You don’t want to overstep into eavesdropping or “spying,” she says. But, “any time your boss is talking to someone, you could be learning things about the company, about the assignments coming up, about what’s going on in the organization,” she adds. Use that information to focus efforts on streamlining workloads, providing additional assistance on certain important projects. You might even ask for a stretch assignment that would help your supervisor and provide you with valuable experience.

Do Their Homework

If you’re trying to think like your boss, you need to have a good understanding of the bigger forces at play in the company. Start by getting in the habit of reading industry news, relevant analyst reports, and your own company’s news release or internal reporting on business conditions. “It’s about research, research, research. The great people out there who move ahead are obsessed with research, says Sander Flaum co-author of Boost Your Career: How to Make an Impact, Get Recognized, and Build the Career You Want.

Alfano agrees. He says that emerging leaders typically focus too much on results and can lose sight of their broader role in the organization’s goals. Understanding what those goals are—whether they’re related to sales, innovation, culture, or other matters, for example—can help them get a clearer vision of how to help everyone be more successful. “It’s really just not about meeting the deadlines and it certainly is not winning at all costs, which I think, at least for myself, those are probably some of the mistakes I made early on,” he says.

Schilder suggests distilling relevant research into mini-reports for your supervisor. Become an aggregator of sorts, providing valuable insight when you find it, she says.

Think Ahead

Anticipating needs, large and small, requires thinking ahead, Schilders says. Are there busy seasons coming up? How can you help your manager prepare? Is she taking a vacation soon? Look for ways that you can help while she’s out.

Again, as you look at what’s coming up in the future, you can find ways to make yourself indispensable, and increase your opportunities to take on more responsibility in preparation for a promotion or a new job.

Get Input From Others

Outside perspectives can be valuable in helping you see areas you may be overlooking Flaum says. Ask your mentor or even other trusted managers and coworkers about how you can become invaluable to your boss. If you have the opportunity to speak with people who previously worked for your boss, such conversations can yield valuable insight about priorities, preferences, communication styles, and other areas.

“It’s really important because if you don’t make your boss look good, you’re out. You’re not getting promoted. People move up when the boss says, ‘Uh-huh. [they] really made an impact,” he says. The key is to find out what “impact” matters—and how to achieve it.

Dressing for the office in the morning takes time and energy, which is why the concept of a “work uniform”–wearing a variation of the same outfit every single day–has become so popular. Barack Obama, for instance, put on the same blue or gray suit every morning while he was in office to cut down on the number of unimportant decisions he needed to make. Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg, whose closet famously consists of dozens of the same gray T-shirt, allowing him to eliminate any sartorial choices so he can focus all his energies on Facebook.

But it’s not quite that simple for women. For starters, it’s not as easy for women to throw on a T-shirt and jeans for work every day. In many industries, women still struggle to be treated as equal to their male counterparts. Wearing polished, professional clothing even in the midst of a casual work environment is an important way to project competence. Case in point: Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer have never shown up to a board meeting in a hoodie and T-shirt. They’re known for elegant shift dresses and well-chosen separates.

Women are also faced with more options when it comes to workwear. Men generally have two choices: formal, in which case they wear a suit, or casual, in which case they wear jeans. (In fact, many men feel so limited by their workwear that they resort to using colorful socks as a way to express themselves.) Women, on the other hand, can pick from a wide spectrum of choices, ranging from masculine to feminine, modest to risqué, muted to colorful, the list goes on.

I’ve spent the last few weeks testing a range of work uniforms that can help women simplify their morning routine throughout the year. Each outfit on this list is designed to be appropriate for different industries and office cultures. They also span a range of price points. This can be used as a template to help you build a work uniform that is perfect for your particular situation.

Your First Work Uniform: Aritzia

Appropriate for: Building your first professional wardrobe

Style Inspiration: Emma Watson

Canadian brand Aritzia targets the 18 to 30 market. Its Babaton line is specifically designed to go between professional and casual settings, which is ideal for women just starting out in the workplace, looking to build their first work uniform. I would recommend getting a couple of blouses and pants, plus a dress, and going through them in a regular rotation. The beauty of these outfits is that they don’t look overly starchy or formal, so they can easily transition into evening or weekend activities, like a casual dinner or brunch with friends.

A great basic is the Cian ruffled-sleeve blouse ($78), which is made of breezy, fluid polyester fabric that is easy to machine wash and doesn’t stain easily. Aritzia is known for its wide array of trousers in interesting silhouettes. I tried the Dexter trousers ($145) which are baggy and comfortable, but also look polished because they are made from a Japanese crepe material that is matte on the outside, but silky against your skin. When the fall comes, you can add trench coat: I tried the Lawson ($245), but Aritzia offers a wide range.

The brand also has a wide range of dresses that are perfect for the summer. I found the Whitlaw wrap dress ($135) which is made out of crisp cotton poplin, totally work appropriate, but also great for picnics or parties.

Best For Tech Lady Bosses: Argent

Appropriate for: Tech companies from startups to giants

Style Inspiration: Angela Ahrendts

Let’s face it. You need a blazer year round because your office air conditioning is over-active in the summer. Argent, a year-old startup that creates modern, edgy workwear, has you covered. It has created a smart blazer, full of ingenious hidden features, that is meant to be worn throughout the year.

The Smart Cuff blazer ($330), which is one of Argent’s best-selling products, is a perfect foundational blazer in your work uniform. I wore it for two weeks in a particularly chilly coworking space this summer. It features a rib cuff that allows you to pull back your sleeves when you’re working. It also has an invisible layer of tape on the back of your neck that is reflective, so that if you’re biking or even walking at night, cars will see you. It has a mesh pocket on the inside for your phone, so you can open the blazer and take a peek without having to fully take out your device. It also has a special compartment for your office key card, so you can easily get into and out of your building just by tapping the side of your blazer.

Try pairing the blazer with Argent’s Hi-Tech ponte dress, which is a work-appropriate little black dress. During the colder months, it looks great with contrast colored tights. It comes with pockets, which I found came in very handy when I was testing it out. It comes with UVB 30 protection and despite being black, tends to reduce the absorption of heat. And to top it all off, it comes in a very flattering profile: It cinches in at the waist, then flares out at the hem, and comes with three-way stretch. I wore the dress and the blazer repeatedly for two weeks and didn’t feel like I needed to change things up in any way.

Best For Starchier Industries: MM.Lafleur

Appropriate for: Law, consulting, government

Style Inspiration: Kamala Harris, Christine Lagarde

While the overall trend in offices has gone more casual, there are still industries where more formal dress is still required. If you’re heading into the courtroom, for instance, or to meet legislators on Capitol Hill, you’ll need a closet full of shift dresses.

MM.LaFleur, a women’s workwear startup, was designed specifically for busy women who spend their lives in professional clothing. The brand tries to take the effort out of the shopping process through its “bento box” concept, which allows you to provide a couple of details about your lifestyle and body type so that a personal stylist can pick out several outfits for you. You can send back the ones you don’t like. The brand now offers a much wider selection of sizes that go from 0 to 22.

For a simple work uniform, I would recommend an elegant blouse and trouser set, plus a shift dress. I tested the Foster Pant ($195), which ingeniously includes a concealed button at the hem that allows you to adjust their length. They serve as crops in the summer, and regular trousers in the winter. They look slim and proper, but they are made from a comfortable fabric that doesn’t stretch out, so you don’t end up with a terrible bulge at the knee half way through the day. I paired it with the Lin Top ($190), a crepe blouse that has a bow on it. It has a high, modest neckline, but the architectural drape makes it interesting.

For the shift, I tried the Sarah Dress ($195), which is very simple and versatile, but have interesting structured sleeves. It’s made from a polyester blend material that holds its shape throughout long days of wear, but also doesn’t feel too hot when you’re buzzing around in the summer and pairs nicely with a sweater or blazer in the colder months. One great thing about all of these garments is that they are machine washable, unlike much other workwear that often needs to be dry cleaned. I packed all of them for a work trip and they didn’t wrinkle or require ironing.

Best For Creative Professions: Eileen Fisher

Appropriate for: Architects, designers, creative directors

Style inspiration: Rei Kawakubo, Grace Coddington

Eileen Fisher has nailed the work uniform. The brand has created “The System” which is a set of eight garments that come in high-quality fabrics and simple silhouettes. Each piece, which comes in black or white, can be paired with any other part of the system, for an endless combination of looks.

I tried the System Silk Long Shell ($218) in black along with the System Washable Stretch Crepe Slim Pant ($168) also in black. Together, the pieces felt breezy and comfortable, but thanks to the drape of the silk, the outfit still felt polished. Part of the reason the pieces can be worn every day is that they are so basic. Since they don’t stand out, your clothes just fade into the background.

For some variety, I also tried the System Tank Dress ($198). This simple jersey dress worked well with heels or flats, but was also incredibly versatile. I could wear it to interviews or to a PTA meeting. The sheer simplicity of these clothes means you can wear them anywhere.

Investment Pieces: Senza Tempo

Appropriate for: Killer pieces for when you’re going for an interview, giving a talk, presenting findings to the board.

Style Inspiration: Amal Clooney

If you’re more established in your career, you might be looking for couple of luxurious but versatile pieces for your wardrobe that will make you feel confident when you need to bring your A-game. A Ted talk, for instance, or an important VC pitch.

The startup Senza Tempo was founded specifically to fill this need. The brand has launched a very curated collection of classic pieces. The clothes are pricey, catering to the luxury market and they are all made with the highest-quality fabrics. Each piece is lined in silk, for instance, because of its temperature regulating qualities.

The Frances black sleeveless top ($450) that pairs with the Sophia pencil skirt ($450) are a good place to start. Together, the pieces look like a tailored dress and serves an an alternative to a suit. The outfit is extremely simple but very elegant. But they can also be worn as separates; the black top even looks good with jeans, for more casual events. The garments are made from virgin Italian wool that is stretchy, so it hugs the body. I wore this outfit on a warm day and it didn’t feel hot at all, since the silk layer underneath wicks away sweat.

Best In Class: Les Lunes

Appropriate for: Almost anything. A casual office, a board meeting, chasing after your child in the playground after work.

Style Inspiration: Oprah Winfrey

San Francisco and Paris-based startup Les Lunes launched with one objective: to create the most comfortable workwear imaginable. Several years ago, the brand’s founders discovered bamboo, a soft, stretchy eco-friendly material that is now commonly used in sleepwear and underwear. They put this material in the hands of a team of Parisian designers to see if they could transform it into clothing that could be worn to work.

They’ve succeeded. They’ve created a line of jumpsuits, dresses, and separates that look polished thanks to thoughtful touches, like ruching, draping, and lace. The fabric is temperature regulating, making it appropriate throughout the year. If you were to put together one work uniform that you would wear every day, for the entire year, I would suggest going with Les Lunes.

One of my favorite pieces was the sleeveless Casino Jumpsuit ($220) that comes with a belt. The piece seriously felt like a pair of pajamas, but never looked slouchy or informal. It comes with a belt that provides a nice waistline. The Mont-Louis Dress ($245) is a wrap dress that has lace detailing at the neckline and hem. Again, it is extremely comfortable, but always looks very put together. Both are great foundational pieces for your wardrobe and can be worn on rotation.

To add a bit of variety to these pieces, I paired them with the Fontainbleau Jacket, which is also entirely made of bamboo. It drapes nicely over trousers and dresses, and comes with a long belt that you tie at your waist. Pairing the jacket with the outfits totally changes the look, adding some variety on cooler days when you need an extra layer.

WHAT:“Alt Disney”

WHO: Artist Tom Ward

WHY WE CARE: The best movies from Disney’s animation department are exciting, dramatic morality plays drawn from the greatest stories in human history. Good triumphs over evil after learning some important lessons along the way. Pure hearts are revealed to be the ultimate way to balance uneven power dynamics. Truth, honesty, and humility prevail over any number of foes.

In other words, it often seems like they’re nothing like the world we live in now.

If that inconsistency bothers you, though, worry not. British artist Tom Ward has created a series of illustrations–drawn in perfect Disney style–to show you the heroes of your childhood adventures living the sort of lives that you yourself may be living. In his “Alt Disney” series, which the artist posted to social media, the prince is too busy texting to pay attention to Cinderella, Aladdin and the Genie play video games while sticking Jasmine with the housework, and Alice’s “eat me” cookies are replaced by a salad without dressing.

It’s not just the women who suffer through Ward’s Make Disney Great Again vision of 2017, either. Animals–often the protagonists of these grand stories–don’t always get to enjoy a life of adventure and excitement in the real world. Instead, Simba, Shere Khan, and Tigger are captives of a circus; Dumbo burns a collection of poached ivory; and Baloo, rather than enjoying the simple bear necessities of life, is in chains as he awaits rescue at the hands of his pal Mowgli. Even poor Scuttle the seagull from The Little Mermaid is stuck surviving an oil spill with Ariel. (We don’t want to know what happened to Sebastian.)

It’s not all bad, though. 2017 is a less magical future than today’s adults were promised as children by the cartoons of their youth, certainly, but there are a few things to recommend it. LeFou and Gaston from Beauty and the Beast–whose subtext in the live-action version earlier this year resulted in some dumb controversy–finally get to just gay it up without shame. Pinocchio’s ever-growing nose is an asset as he tells enough lies to finally fit both himself and Gepetto into the frame by using it as a selfie stick. And creeps like Peter Pan are finally kept out of the Darling residence, thanks to some well-placed security cameras.

The entire collection is kind of depressing (especially the ones with animals), but also a pretty effective way to highlight some of the specifics of our bleak reality that we wouldn’t tolerate in fiction. Let’s hope, at least, for a more magical world in the future.

I sat staring blankly at hundreds of pages of documents and forms–willing myself to make at least some sort of progress. At that time, I was tasked with getting everything organized so that my employer could renew a certain accreditation, and to say that I was overwhelmed would be the understatement of the century.

I was still somewhat new to the company. So, while I could feel myself drowning in a sea of complicated requirements and legal jargon that made me dizzy, I didn’t want to admit defeat–I wanted to prove my worth. I was desperate to show my supervisor that I could independently handle anything that came my way. But, in reality, I was in way over my head.

Sound familiar? Confessing that you’re totally lost or struggling can be tough, whether you’re new in your office or are a more established employee trying to tackle a difficult project. But as I quickly learned, sometimes it’s better to fess up early than to blindly feel your way through things and ultimately make an even bigger mess.

Related:How To Rescue Your Attention Span From Information Overload 

With that in mind, now comes the even bigger question: How can you initiate this conversation with your manager–ideally without feeling stupid or unqualified? Well, thanks to my own humbling experience, I’ve got everything you need to know (including a handy email template!) right here.

1. Try Something First

Yes, your supervisor is there to help you solve problems. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid coming up with any potential solutions yourself first.

Maybe you don’t know how to do something off the top of your head. Hey, you might not even know where to start. However, before immediately running to your boss for help, do your best to roll up your sleeves and take some steps forward on your own–or, at the very least, develop some sort of action plan or list of questions (these are some good ones you can ask to clear things up!) that you can run past your manager.

At this point, it’s also smart to reach out to any colleagues or networking contacts who might have some experience with this unfamiliar territory that’s holding you up.

Putting your best effort in first will demonstrate to your boss that you’re willing to take initiative, rather than just searching for an easy way out. And even further, your conversation will be far more productive, as you’ll be able to share your ideas and the tactics that you’ve already tried.

2. Choose A Specific Problem

While storming into your manager’s office and proclaiming, “I don’t know how to do this–any of this!” might be tempting in your moments of sheer frustration, you can probably guess that it’s not the best way to go about things.

Instead, you’re far better off picking a very specific piece of that project or problem that’s keeping you stuck. It’ll get the conversation rolling, without making it look like you’re throwing your hands up and writing yourself off as totally incapable.

Related:How To Create Your Own Opportunities At Work 

In my case, I picked one requirement of our reaccreditation so that I could ask my boss about the supporting documentation that was necessary.

Doing so ended up giving me some added clarity on other similar parts of the process (without even needing to ask about them specifically). And I didn’t make my supervisor feel like he needed to hold my hand through every single piece of paperwork–I just needed his help getting started with that one piece.

3. Schedule A Meeting

Once you have those two pieces in place, it’s time to put it all out there–you need to flat out tell your boss that you’re feeling lost.

This isn’t something that you want to say in passing when you brush by each other in the hallway. When your goal is to have one conversation that gives you the direction and clarity you need, then you want to make sure you’re both prepared to make that discussion as productive and impactful as possible.

Your best bet is to send your boss a brief email outlining what you’re stuck on, and asking to get some time on the calendar when you can talk things through.

The Email Template

So, what exactly should you say? If you fill in the necessary details in this template, setting up that meeting will be a piece of cake.

Hi [boss’s name],

Admittedly, I’m feeling a little stuck on [specific thing]. So far, I’ve tried [tactic you tried] and [tactic you tried], but I’m still not making the progress I’m hoping for.

Rather than continuing to spin my wheels on this, I figured I’d swallow my pride to see if I could lean on your expertise and insights to identify the best way forward from here.

Do you have any time on [day] when we could sit down for [time frame] and talk through the details?

Thanks,
[Your Name]

Eventually, after enough hours staring cross-eyed at an accreditation handbook, I sent a very similar email to my own manager. And do you know what happened?

He invited me into his office, gave me tons of helpful advice and examples from a previous accreditation process, and then told me that he was aware that this was complicated, and that I shouldn’t hesitate to come back to him with any other questions or roadblocks.

Not so terrifying after all, right?

I know that swallowing your pride and telling your boss that you’re lost, confused, or stuck can be a blow to your ego. But it’s not nearly as detrimental as you’re making it out to be. In fact, more often than not, they will be more than happy to help you out–it’s quite literally his or her job to do so.

A version of this article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is adapted with permission. 

More From The Muse:

• 5 Ways To Handle Being Completely Lost At Work (That Won’t Make You Look Bad) 
• The 3 Best Lessons I Learned When I Admitted I Was Lost At Work 
• 5 Signs You’re Just Going With The Flow At Work (And Hurting Your Career In The Process) 

WHAT: The return of Barack Obama’s anger translator Luther on last night’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

WHO: The inimitable Keegan-Michael Key

WHY WE CARE: George Carlin. David Foster Wallace. Molly Ivins. There’s an endless well of lost voices sorely missed at this moment in American political history. Perhaps one of the most missed perspectives of all, however, is one that is still with us: former President Barack Obama. More specifically, though, a lot of Key and Peele fans are missing the voice of Obama as filtered through his personal anger translator, Luther. For five seasons, Keegan-Michael Key played the volatile id to the buttoned-up ego of Jordan Peele’s impeccable Obama on the groundbreaking sketch series. Key’s character brought to the surface the explosive emotions many guessed lay simmering beneath the president’s eminently composed exterior. Appreciated by the parody subject himself, the Luther project reached its pinnacle with Key and Peele bringing him to the 2015 White House Correspondent’s Dinner, where the president “used” him. With both the sketch show and Obama retired from their former positions, though, the character sadly disappeared into the ether. Until now.

Key appeared on last night’s Colbert to promote his performance in Hamlet this summer at the Public Theater in New York City, and the new Netflix series Friends From College. Since Colbert is a resourceful host, however, he took advantage of having the conjurer of Luther in the studio. He invited Key to summon the chaotic character over to the guest couch to translate some Obama quotes from the Trump era. What follows is five eruptive minutes of “Luther” railing on the Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (“I’d say you people make me sick but I couldn’t afford that because I have no insurance now”) and Trump’s promise of building a border wall (“I spent eight years tearin’ down walls and this mother[bleep] wanna put a wall up.”) It’s a much-needed fix for Key and Peele fans in withdrawal.

Best of all, though, this appearance might not be a one-off.

“I thought I was on forced retirement, but it looks like Obama still needs me,” Luther concludes at the end of his segment. “So I am back!”

Not a moment too soon, either.

If you’re a manager, maybe you can remember a time when you promoted someone to a position that they really didn’t deserve. And if you can, then you already know that undeserved promotions are time-wasters, morale-killers, and frustration-inducers–not just for you, but for the company as a whole.

What you might not know, even in retrospect, is why you went ahead and promoted that person in the first place. More often than not, over-promoting is a knee-jerk reaction and not a strategic decision. Perhaps your organization was going through growth or contraction, or you’d had some of your key people unexpectedly leave. Whatever the case, to avoid falling into that trap again, you’ll need to get your head around the myths and misconceptions that lead managers to promote the wrong people–or even the right ones at the wrong times.

Misconception #1: A Promotion Is Just A Label

It’s tempting to think of undeserved promotions as just lip-service that keeps whiny employees happy. But even if you think that, your employee might think otherwise. Soon he or she is sharing the promotion on social media, touting the new job title with coworkers, overstepping boundaries, and possibly even giving your clients the wrong impression about their new role. This situation can quickly get out of control, so before you give someone a title change, take a moment to think through the attitude change that might come with it.

Misconception #2: The Employee Will Grow Into It

You need to fill an open role, and the path of least resistance is promoting an employee with promise, but who isn’t quite ready yet. You’re pretty much setting them up to fail. They might have been exceeding expectations in their previous role, but without the right experience, they’ll struggle in a new position.

It can be a rude awakening for a star employee to receive criticism once they’ve been promoted, and that’s almost bound to happen if you put them in a role they’re not ready for. More job pressure and constructive feedback can also make employees defensive, feel picked on, or even go into hiding. It takes a lot of self-awareness to recognize when a job might be over your head, and that should really be a manager’s responsibility, not the employee’s.

Misconception #3: It’s Better To Over-Promote Than Be Understaffed

I once had a client with a problem employee who was actually on probation for poor behavior. After another employee quit, management suddenly got worried that she too might leave and they’d be understaffed. Sure enough, she smelled blood in the water, and threatened to resign for another job. Management panicked–instead of seeing her resignation as the gift it was, they gave her a promotion and hefty raise.

Related:How To Survive Working On An Underperforming Team 

Needless to say, her work ethic didn’t improve with the increased responsibility. She was literally rewarded for her bad behavior, and the company ended up with an even bigger (and more expensive) problem on their hands. Some employees even catch wind of their employers’ reluctance to fire and rehire, and use that as an excuse to stop putting in effort.

What To Do After You’ve Promoted Someone You Shouldn’t Have

If you’ve already promoted somebody you can now see wasn’t ready for it, there are still a few things you can do:

Define the position: You should start by writing up a job profile that clearly defines the role and what it takes to be successful in it. Make sure to include the gaps that need filling between the employee’s abilities and the requirements of the job. This will help illuminate any hidden issues with skills like time management, prioritization, or delivering feedback. Once you identify those shortfalls, create a training plan for the employee.

Deliver concrete feedback: Make sure to include suggestions for ways to overcome whatever isn’t working. Without beating around the bush, spell out exactly what the employee is not doing well, outline what actions they need to take to improve, and set deadlines. Focus on the level of work, not on the person. Conduct regular follow-up meetings, on two-week intervals, to manage progress and adjust as needed.

Related:How To Give Feedback At Work That Doesn’t Jeopardize Your Career 

Move the person into another role: Don’t forget that this is always on the table. If you’ve explored feedback, solutions, and training, and it’s obvious that the promotion still isn’t going to work, it’s time to look for another role that might. Rather than letting the situation crash and burn to the point where your team member quits or gets fired, transferring them to another position could be a win-win.

Just make sure their skills match better the second time around. One saving grace? After the mishap that got you here, at least you’ll have a clearer view of your employees’ strengths and limitations.

Lisa M. Aldisert is a NYC-based business advisor, trend expert, speaker, and author.

More than 20% of nonprofit employees identify as LGBTQ. Perhaps that’s not surprising: Those who have traditionally been discriminated against or oppressed may have a strong impulse to ensure fair treatment and opportunities for others.

What is perhaps surprising (or, perhaps not) is that many LGBTQ workers within the nonprofit world are still reporting unfair treatment—this time by their own professional peers, according to a recent report from the Building Movement Project, a nonprofit research group.

In general, roughly one-fifth of U.S. workers who are gay have encountered discrimination in their workplace, notes the report. Within the nonprofit world—a place ostensibly championing equal rights for all—that trend stays true. Most LGBTQ employees aren’t working at LGBTQ advocacy groups: BMP’s data shows they’re scattered fairly evenly throughout the industry to improve things like basic human services, education, and health and mental health access. That often means working in communities where there may be bigotry and within states without sexuality-based anti-discrimination laws. (For LGBTQ people of color, the challenge is twofold because there’s an additional burden of institutional racism to contend with.)

Here are 4 charts that BMP has developed to explain the problem:

LGBTQ Employees Provide Crucial Sector Support

As you can see in the graph below, gay employees aren’t just a main part of nonprofit organizations, they’re the future: A proportionately higher number of millennials identify as LGBTQ compared to their straight counterparts. When separated by race, young LGBTQ people of color are even more strongly represented.

Yet Discrimination Hurts LGBTQ Workers’ Careers

The report notes that while a PEW Research Center survey found that 21% of LGBTQ people feel they have been treated unfairly by their employer, things aren’t any better at nonprofits. About one-fifth of employees feel their sexuality has negatively impacted their career advancement, while straight employees don’t see similar problems.

So Gay Employees Likely Work Harder For Less Pay

The next chart breaks out what challenges and frustrations that workers feel by both sexuality and race. Note the orange bar, which represents straight white people: It’s lower in nearly every category of oppression while, overall, LGBTQ people feel they face overly demanding workloads with inadequate compensation. Anecdotally, many of BMP’s respondents shared stories about not being promoted or forced out of similar jobs because of their sexuality.

The People Who Experience Bias Understand How Pervasive It Is

The graph below shows the rate at which respondents strongly agree with statements like: “One of the big problems in the nonprofit sector is that leadership of nonprofit organizations doesn’t represent the racial/ethnic diversity of the U.S.” Or that predominantly white board members don’t support the “leadership potential” non-white staffers. In these and several more scenarios, LGBTQ employees admitted there was likely significant bias, perhaps because as a potential target for discrimination, they’re more sensitive to bias in many forms.

Per the BMP report, major LGBTQ organization funders like the Arcus Foundation are trying an intersectional approach to tackling this problem, by ensuring that whatever labor and immigration cause work they back is designed to be intentionally inclusive to LGBTQ needs and open to LGBTQ leaders.

There’s obviously more work to be done. View the full report and other suggestions for how to solve things here.

So you got a promotion. Congratulations! But are you feeling unsure about how great that raise, title change, or additional benefit actually is? Maybe you’re even wondering if it’s worth accepting at all since you might be able to find a better compensation package elsewhere. If so, you’re not alone. Being offered a career boost from your company can be incredibly rewarding, but only if it’s in line with your career priorities and your own personal bottom line. Here, experts break down how to evaluate that shiny new package with a level head.

Does It Align With Your Goals?

When you’re offered a promotion, the first step you take should be to measure it against where you want to go in your career in the future. Of course, compensation is crucial, but the new job duties you’re being offered matter, too. “Ideally, a person receiving a promotion can articulate their long-term career goals, and thus can view the promotion, and its attached gifts, in light of their goals,” explains Carlota Zimmerman, a career coach based in New York City. It’s likely that your promotion will provide you with more money, a higher title, or other possible benefits, but more isn’t always more if the position doesn’t line up with your career interests.

Related:What To Do While You Wait For That Raise Or Promotion You’ve Been Promised

“It’s a natural instinct for humans, when presented with gifts, to want to snatch them,” says Zimmerman. It’s flattering to be offered something new. “But this is actually a time when you should step back and be reflective. Consider, for example, the people at the top of your industry you admire: What career choices did they make? There is something to be said for, after a time, moving to a new company, and meeting new people, weathering new opportunities, mastering new crises, and gaining new skills.” Before you even think about the money, consider whether you really want to stay at the same company surrounded by the same people, or if you’d prefer to branch out, try something new, and develop fresh competencies elsewhere.

Dollars And Cents

There are two extremely important considerations to make when assessing whether the raise you’re receiving with your promotion is adequate. First, using a tool like “Know Your Worth” to see how your new salary matches up to others in similar positions can help you evaluate whether you’re being offered fair compensation compared to the rest of the market. If you find that you’re not, you may want to go back to the drawing board and attempt to renegotiate the terms of your promotion.

Secondly, determining how your raise translates into each paycheck is also worthwhile. A $10,000 raise might sound exciting, but what does that really mean for your weekly budget? Bianca Jackson, career happiness expert, explains how to get started on figuring it out. “At most companies, there are 26 biweekly payments in a year. A $10,000 raise divided by 26 equals approximately $385 before taxes. But wait, don’t make imaginary plans just yet,” she says. That’s because you also have to account for taxes, especially if your raise bumps you into a new, higher tax bracket. “For example, at a tax rate of 25%, you could see $288 in each paycheck. Your $10,000 raise has now become a $7,488 raise instead.” Tricky, right?

Related:How To Get Promoted After Less Than One Year On The Job 

Here’s some good news, though: If you work for a larger company with a full HR department, chances are, they’ll be able to show you exactly how much more money you’ll receive in each paycheck moving forward if you ask. “For a company to offer you a raise is a serious thing, and their accountants have to crunch the numbers before they can comfortably offer it to you,” explains Zimmerman.

How Important Is The Title?

The answer to this question isn’t completely obvious because it ultimately depends on your goals. If you’re thinking about declining a promotion based on the title, consider these two things first. “Title matters if you have a desire to climb the corporate ladder,” says Jackson. “The usual path of someone progressing to the C-Level is manager to director to vice president to chief. Without that title progression, it may signal either you’re not ready to be promoted or you don’t have the potential in the eyes of hiring managers who believe and value linear progression of responsibility,” she explains. On the other hand, “if you’re gaining knowledge and experience to start your own business, it doesn’t matter what title you accept.”

Zimmerman mostly agrees, noting that, “Your title both does and doesn’t matter. If your title empowers you, it matters. If you’re already empowered, it probably won’t matter much–even as you keep acquiring better titles.” In other words, your performance, skill set, and dedication to the job can end up being more significant when determining your job duties and opportunities than whether you’re “manager” or “senior manager.” Of course, this is all assuming that you’re happy with your new compensation.

Job Title vs. Salary

Not all raises come with title changes, and not all title changes come with raises. Often people wonder if they should ever accept one without the other. “A company asking someone to take on additional responsibilities must also offer corresponding additional benefits,” notes Gina Marotta, a career and business coach. So if you do find yourself in the situation where a title or salary boost is being offered alone, it’s most important to understand why you’re being offered less than you should be receiving and figure out whether the company’s offer is in balance with your new role’s expectations, she says.

“No title change because the company is restructuring is understandable. No pay increase because the company is having financial problems is understandable. But then, as an employee, you do want to make sure you are being recognized and honored in some way,” she explains. This could come in the form of company stock, a shorter work week, or having less desirable duties taken off your plate. In this situation, “fairness and a sense of balance are key,” she adds.

This article originally appeared on Glassdoor and is reprinted with permission. 

WHAT: A PSA reminding people not to text and drive using a bevy of found footage.

WHO:  FCB Cape Town for the government of the South African province of Western Cape, using the #ItCanWait hashtag popularized by AT&T

WHY WE CARE: Texting and driving is a combination of such utterly mundane daily activities that it’s uniquely difficult to make people realize–especially young people who feel a certain invincibility that comes with youth–just how suddenly it can change your life or the lives of people who are on the road with you. Ad campaigns like AT&T’s “It Can Wait” (which tapped no less of a talent than Werner Herzog to explore the lifelong impact of the results) tend to focus on the banality of the action of texting and contrast it with the suddenness of the collisions that can occur.

This campaign utilizes a similar contrast, but it’s more of a tonal shift. The first 20 seconds of the ad features a Benny Hill-like score, complete with wacky sound effects, as people walk into doors or ponds while texting on foot. Then, after reminding viewers that “You can’t even text and walk,” it gets shockingly and disturbingly real, with dashcam footage of a very serious car accident involving a young woman who’s texting behind the wheel. Given the need to remind people just how serious this can be, it’s effective–but it sure isn’t much fun to watch anymore.

WHAT: The first trailer for The Shape of Water, a film about interspecies relationships with sea creatures.

WHO: Imaginative dynamo director Guillermo del Toro.

WHY WE CARE: It’s probably nothing. Just a synaptic misfire or a forced association. Either way, though, Fast Company can’t help but notice a troubling resemblance between forthcoming del Toro film, The Shape of Water and M. Night Shyamalan’s career-crippling flop, Lady In the Water (24% on Rotten Tomatoes; $42M gross on a $70M budget.) There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s investigate.

What the Two Films Have in Common

Titles: They both sound like separate entries in the same series of books by Charlaine Harris.

Career moment: When Shyamalan made Lady in the Water, he was coming off a career stumble, The Village, which made substantially less money than his previous films and had middling reviews. Guillermo del Toro is now following up gothic horror thriller Crimson Peak, which had enthusiastic reviews but ultimately made back just over half its budget domestically. The Shape of Water isn’t quite do-or-die time for a director as respected as del Toro, but he’s in need of a cultural and financial hit now more than at just about any point in his illustrious career thus far.

“Fairy tale” marketing:Lady in the Water was billed, fairy tale-style, as “a classic bedtime story for a new generation.” Indeed, the film is purported to have started its life as a bedtime story Shyamalan told his kids. The YouTube copy for The Shape of Water trailer bills it as “an other-worldly fairy tale,” and the narrator of the trailer speaks in fairy tale tones.

Interspecies relationship with a sea creature: In the case of the earlier film, the creature is Bryce Dallas Howard’s beautiful water nymph and the relationship is friendly/parental. In The Shape of Water, the creature is an actual Swamp Thing-esque seabeast of the male variety, and the relationship with the female protagonist looks to be of a romantic nature. It’s like a gender-flipped Splash situation, only without the comedy, but it’s still a relationship nonetheless.

Mute protagonists: Okay, so Bryce Dallas Howard’s aqua-pixie wasn’t 100% silent, but she barely speaks at all, and when she does, it’s to say words like ‘narf,’ which is what her character technically is called. (Ugh, that movie.) In The Shape of Water, though, Sally Hawkins is fully mute, with sign language and subtitles to assist the audience.

What the Two Films Don’t Have in Common

Thankfully, a world of difference separates the two projects. The Shape of Water follows Hawkins’ meek office cleaner as she stumbles upon a secret classified experiment involving a Black Lagoon-type sea creature. Rather than some crappy modern apartment complex with annoyingly quirky residents, where Lady in the Water unfolds, the new film takes place in and out of government buildings during Cold War-era arms development. Also, Shape appears to have a real, formidable villain in the form of the ever-menacing Michael Shannon, whereas Lady asked viewers to be scared of something called a scrunt. While the two films definitely share some ingredients, the trailer suggests that Shape has enough going in its favor to make its own unique splash in theaters. Ultimately, holding the two next to each other may be more like comparing apples and scrunts.

When a refugee family arrives at the Kakuma camp in Kenya—established in 1992 and now populated by more than 164,000 people—they’re given a slip of paper that serves as identification. If they have children, they’re given a paper voucher to trade for their attendance at the camp school. Meals, pre-rationed by aid organizations, are obtained via punches in another paper card. Cash, withdrawn from a limited selection of banks near the camp, fills in other gaps. Kakuma operates, needless to say, as paper-based economy, shakily supported by a disconnected payments system of vouchers and cash.

That’s in large part due to the fact that when the camp was established, to house people fleeing the war in Sudan and the collapse of the Ethiopian government, it was never meant to endure as long as it has. Nor were people meant to stay there as long as they do. Refugee camps are established as temporary settlements, but amid the global failure to develop a comprehensive, effective solution and consensus around how to house and welcome people displaced by crisis and strife in their home countries, they have become permanent. Those refugees that make it to a camp like Kakuma remain there for an average of 18 to 20 years. “It’s a lifetime,” says Maureen Sigliano, the vice president of global loyalty development for Western Union. “If you’re a little kid fleeing Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan with your parents, by the time you’re granted asylum, you’re in your mid-twenties. And your view of life is going to be completely different.”

With the refugee crisis ongoing–according to the U.N. High Commission on Refugees, 65.6 million people are currently displaced within or across country borders–Western Union is partnering with Mastercard and a network of local service providers to reconfigure the role the camps themselves play. The key, says Tara Nathan, executive vice president of public-private partnerships for Mastercard, will be to imagine the camps not as temporary settlements, but as new cities. And for that matter, smart cities, equipped with the kind of integrated technology and payment mechanism underpinning those in the developed world.

Research conducted by Mastercard and Western Union at Kakuma and its smaller offshoot camp, Kalobeyi, led to Smart Communities: Using Digital Technology to Create Sustainable Refugee Economies. The research brief, Nathan says, “is a blueprint for how humanitarian assistance must happen in the future.” In creating this blueprint, the companies are calling for the development of a digital infrastructure model, focused on outfitting refugee camps with robust mobile and card-based payment solutions. While the details of how the system will be implemented, and what exactly it will look like, are still in development, the concept, Nathan says, is crucial for integrating refugee camps more seamlessly into their host countries’ economies, and for setting refugees up with a digital presence that will remain with them beyond the camp.

Take transit. Imagine if each time a refugee took a bus between Kakuma and Kalobeyi, they registered their trip through a digital payment system. Regardless of whether the camp residents themselves or an NGO is financing the bus system, having a digital record of transit trips will prevent refugees from having to rely on cash, but also build up the necessary data to begin to optimize transit services for camp residents. “So if the data starts to show that there’s a lot of traffic in the early morning, when shop owners, for instance, are trying to restock, the service provider can take that information and prioritize when they run routes to best meet people’s needs,” Nathan says.

Yet in order to better serve the refugee market they’re trying to reach, Western Union and Mastercard will have to navigate the fact that wire services undeniably profit off the necessity of remittances. Fast Company has previously reported on how migrants pay a “super tax” on international transfers–sending money to Africa from the U.S. or Europe can cost up to 15% of the total transaction–and a 2014 report from the London-based Overseas Development Institute found that MoneyGram and Western Union (the two largest players in the remittance market) accounted for $586 of the million in losses associated with the remittance “super tax.” But a number of blockchain- and bitcoin-enabled startups are emerging to challenge the large wire services’ monopoly in the space by providing faster service and lower fees; if Western Union and Mastercard want to more proactively engage the refugee market through their partnership, they would do well to incorporate the digital strategies of their competitors to boost transparency and lower costs for refugees.

Digitizing the refugee camp economy could also prove useful in developing a financial foundation for refugees themselves. Currently, it’s next to impossible for unbanked people, especially those operating in cash or voucher-based societies, to become eligible for asset-building materials like business loans. But if a refugee’s payment and transaction records are all tracked and recorded digitally, that could provide a financial history and identity that could be used in assessing and verifying a refugee’s eligibility for a loan (companies like First Access, as Fast Company has written, are already experimenting in this space by using mobile-phone payments as a way to determine financial stability).

As the Mastercard and Western Union blueprint moves toward implementation, they’ll be partnering with a number of on-the-ground service providers like the U.N., M-Pesa, and local banks to facilitate the digital infrastructure. It’s a radically different way of thinking about refugee camps, but as the crisis shows no sign of abating, developing a strong local economy in the camps, one that can digitally integrate with resources in the host countries and the rest of the world, will start to drive prosperity and bring the people living in the camps–many of whom are highly educated, entrepreneurial, and just happen to be trapped in circumstances that limit their capabilities–into conversation with the global economy.

In late June, the city of Boston was left in shock after a 34-year-old man assaulted a 61-year-old woman in a headscarf riding the MBTA’s Orange Line. Yelling anti-Muslim slurs at her and accusing her of carrying “a bomb that would kill us all,” according to a press release from the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, he then struck her with an umbrella and smashed a window on the train.

Hate crimes, especially against Islamic people, have been on the rise since the election of Donald Trump in November: The Southern Poverty Law Center, in its “Year in Hate and Extremism” report, found that the number of anti-Muslim-identifying groups in the U.S. rose 197%–from 34 in 2015 to 101 last year. Due to underreporting and lack of documentation, hate crimes and bias incidences themselves are notoriously difficult to track (the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica has launched a database called Documenting Hate in an attempt to amend that). But after last month’s incident, Boston is launching a poster campaign to try to curb acts of Islamophobic violence before they even occur.

On July 17, the city of Boston installed 50 posters advising people on what to do if they witness Islamophobic behavior. The cartoons, drawn by a French artist known as Maeril, feature a nervous-looking woman in a hijab being threatened on public transit, and illustrate a step-by-step guide to intervening in a situation before it escalates. Sit beside the person being harassed and introduce yourself; pick a random subject (a movie, the weather) and start discussing it; keep holding eye contact with the person feeling threatened and refusing to acknowledge the perpetrator; continue the conversation until the attacker leaves and, if necessary, escort the targeted person to a safe space. (Of course, as we saw when bystanders attempting to stop Islamophobic attacks were killed Portland, there are times when the harasser is so violent, you may need to involve the authorities rather than simply ignore them.)

The technique, according to WBUR, is called non-complementary behavior, and it de-escalates situations by disempowering the perpetrator—by refusing to acknowledge what they are doing or saying, you’re sending a clear signal that their actions have neither an effect nor an audience. San Francisco and New York have launched similar campaigns.

“The climate across the nation is certainly different under the current White House administration,” Yusufi Vali, executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, told WBUR. “The Boston-Muslim community is feeling what the rest of the nation is feeling: a lot of uncertainty and a sense of insecurity.”

While the posters, which will remain in place for six months, depict a response to Islamophobia, the tactics outlined in the illustrations can be more broadly applied: Substitute in a woman on the receiving end of vulgar comments about her appearance (another scenario trickling down from the current administration) or a man being subjected to anti-Semitic threats; the techniques would still be effective, and they’re straightforward enough to encourage anyone to feel capable of intervening.

Chipotle hasn’t been shy about tapping the creative talents of prominent people in the past. They’ve published short stories by Jonathan Safron Foer and Toni Morrison on their packaging, and talked up their fresh ingredients with the help of Jeffrey Tambor and Jillian Bell (even as they’ve tiptoed around their struggles with food-borne illness). But translating burritos, tacos, and protein bowls to music is a tall order. Which is presumably why they tapped Wu-Tang overlord RZA to make it happen.

On a new interactive website called Savorwavs that the brand launched on Wednesday, the beats and the ingredients are fresh. Visitors assemble the lunch of their dreams, and each ingredient fleshes out the track the hungry customer lays down. Start with a base—which provides the primary beat—then flesh it out with up to two proteins (which carry the bulk of the melody), rice and/or beans for rhythm, and salsa, cheese, guacamole, or other toppings to truly customize the track.

If that sounds weird, well, each ingredient has its own distinct sound, roughly related to how bold each one is within the confines of a burrito. Lettuce or salad greens, for example, are just a couple of quickly-shaken maracas, while the crispy corn tortillas fairly announce their presence. Chicken and black beans will add a charismatic bassline and horns, and topping it off with cheese and sour cream adds some funky dairy to the mix.

As campaigns go, this is a silly one: It has very little to do with food, anyway, although it’s exciting to learn how sofritas sound to the RZA (it’s a passionately plucked guitar). It’s fun, though, as a lark, to goof off and pretend to be the RZA for a few minutes in the afternoon. And if doing that makes us think about Chipotle ingredients while we’re on the job, well, that’s probably the mark of a successful collaboration for the brand.

In May, U.S. President Donald Trump authorized a plan to arm the YPG, a Kurdish militia in Syria. A month later, the YPG and their Arab partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces began the fight to take the Syrian city of Raqqa back from the Islamic State (ISIS). While the U.S., Russia, and Jordan agreed to a cease-fire in southwest Syria that went into effect last week, the intense battle for Raqqa continues in the north of the country.

Turkey, a NATO ally and U.S. partner, is fiercely opposed to providing weapons to the YPG because Turkey considers the fighters to be terrorists. But the Pentagon insists that arming the Kurdish fighters is essential to beating ISIS in Syria.

Is the Pentagon right that the benefits outweigh the risks? Is it ever a good idea to increase the lethality of violent non-state actors? These are questions I address in my research on the long-term effects of providing such aid.

Security Assistance As Foreign Policy

Arming Kurdish and Arab fighters with heavy machine guns, mortars, and anti-tank weapons to support operations against ISIS is not an entirely new development. U.S. Special Forces have been training and equipping the Syrian Democratic Forces since at least 2015.

This is also just one recent example of U.S. security assistance to partner forces around the world. The United States is turning to this foreign policy tool with increasing frequency, but the U.S. has a long history of arming proxy forces in a wide range of locations around the world.

Most security assistance goes to the regular armed forces of recognized states like Egypt and Israel. But, according to the Security Assistance Monitor, approximately 14% of publicly disclosed security assistance, and an unknown amount of covert assistance, currently goes to irregular forces–rebels, mercenaries, and other non-state groups. Over the past two decades, the U.S. Department of Defense, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency have trained, armed and advised non-state armed groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Angola, and elsewhere.

Considering The Risks

So what are the risks of transferring military capabilities to non-state armed groups?

One serious concern is that weaponry provided to a sympathetic group will end up in the hands of hostile actors. For example, weapons, ammunition, and vehicles given by the U.S. to Syrian rebels have been found in the possession of the al-Qaida affiliated al Nusra Front. And a 2015 report from Amnesty International claims that ISIS built much of its arsenal by capturing weapons manufactured in the U.S. and Russia from the U.S.-allied Iraqi military and Syrian rebels.

Armed groups can also use their training and weapons to commit atrocities against innocent civilians. Afghan leaders trained and equipped by the U.S. to fight the Taliban are now heading militias accused of kidnapping, extortion, and human rights violations.

Another risk is that members of the armed group can switch sides. Hundreds of Sunni fighters put on the Department of Defense payroll between 2006 and 2008 to fight al-Qaida in Iraq were reported to have rejoined the insurgent movement after U.S. troops began to withdraw in 2009.

Competing Interests

These negative outcomes are not simply bad luck or a result of the clumsy execution of particular security assistance programs. Providing weapons to violent non-state actors creates textbook conditions for what social scientists call principal-agent problems.

Principals like the U.S. employ agents like the YPG to perform some task on the principal’s behalf. Problems arise when the principal cannot be sure that the agent’s actions will be consistent with the principal’s interests.

Principal-agent problems are most severe when the parties’ motivations and goals are not the same. Uncertainty about the motives of the agent and circumstances that make it difficult for the principal to monitor the agent’s behavior make the problems worse. If the principal is also unable or unwilling to fire the agent for poor performance, the agent is free to use the principal’s resources to do as she pleases.

The priorities and motivations of violent non-state actors in foreign countries will rarely be closely aligned with those of the U.S., even if they share a common adversary. While the U.S. is arming Kurdish fighters to combat ISIS, many of the Kurdish militia’s leaders see Turkey as a greater threat. In addition, if the Syrian Democratic Forces capture Raqqa from ISIS, American and Kurdish interests are likely to diverge over who will govern the Arab majority city.

Moreover, by design, rebel groups, paramilitary organizations, and other violent non-state actors are difficult to monitor. Constantly shifting membership, leadership, and alliances are typical of militant organizations. This also makes it extraordinarily difficult to screen potential aid recipients to make sure leaders will maintain control of weapons stockpiles and foot soldiers.

Finally, even if a state becomes aware that its agent is behaving badly, governments providing lethal aid are slow to cut ties. Although the state holds the purse strings, it has limited leverage over the agents it arms. This may sound surprising. But it makes sense if you consider armed groups have many ways to get weapons, but states have fewer options if they want to combat a threat in a foreign country without committing their own troops to the fight. Proxy warfare almost always involves choosing local allies from a limited set of imperfect options.

In fact, military aid can create perverse incentives: Encouraging recipients to act recklessly or shirk on fulfillment of tasks knowing they are unlikely to lose funding for behaving badly, but will lose the contract when their tasks are fulfilled.

Difficult Choices

Despite the risks, the U.S. and its allies will continue to provide assistance to non-state armed groups. Providing military assistance to a domestic opposition group is a means, however imperfect, of combating foreign threats without the human, material, and political costs of committing large numbers of troops to combat. Partnering with local forces is playing a larger role in U.S. security strategy, because perceived threats to American interests are dispersed across the globe, and public support for large-scale military deployments is low. In addition, evolving U.S. military doctrine recognizes that local forces can have levels of local knowledge, cultural sensitivity, and legitimacy a foreign force could never attain.

Moreover, there are situations in which providing lethal assistance to a non-state actor could be the least-bad feasible policy option. Syria, for example, presents the leadership of the U.S. and other capable states with practical, political, and moral dilemmas–and no good options. Arming the YPG runs all the risks outlined above, plus it angers a key ally. On the other hand, a brutal dictator is indiscriminately massacring his own population, and ISIS is terrorizing innocent civilians. Over 400,000 have died, and up to 5 million people are seeking refuge in other countries.

How can policymakers anticipate the unintended consequences of a decision to arm a non-state actor, or weigh the costs and benefits of providing lethal aid against those of withholding such assistance? Unfortunately, empirical evidence is thin because the data required to do systematic, unbiased analyses are so hard to attain.

My own research suggests that the arms and ammunition supplied to a combatant in wartime can perpetuate a state of insecurity in the region long after the war has officially ended. A recent study concludes that security force assistance can achieve some limited goals, but only if states make aid conditional and intrusively monitor recipients. The reality is that the conditions under which the U.S. trains, equips, and advises armed opposition groups are seldom conducive to either.

Patricia Sullivan is associate professor of public policy and the curriculum in peace, war, and defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Sullivan receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. This essay originally appeared at the Conversation. To share your ideas on Fast Company, see some suggestions here. 

The best and worst thing about Twitter is that you can say anything, and people may actually listen. And I mean anything.

Today we have a searing example of that principle from Twitter user Louise Mensch, a former British MP turned incendiary politics writer, who sent an alarming and almost certainly false tweet early this morning:

My sources say the death penalty, for espionage, being considered for @StevenKBannon. I am pro-life and take no pleasure in reporting this.

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) July 19, 2017

The implications are bizarre, to say the least. And if you actually play out the scenario in your head, you realize there’s almost no way it’s true. For one, how would a penalty already be decided for an indictment that has yet to be made? It’s not worth delving further into the specifics of this Bizarro World, but it’s safe to say that the contents of this tweet should be deemed misinformation at best.

This isn’t a first for Mensch. Through her Twitter account, she has has long peddled conspiracy theories about hidden courts and global espionage, always citing anonymous sources. She currently has over a quarter of a million followers, putting her in the ranks of viral conspiracy theorists like Eric Garland, whose famous tweetstorm about political “game theory” last year still has people scratching their heads over what it means.

Posturing oneself as a brazen political insider with well-placed anonymous sources has become a potent currency on social media. Since the presidential election, dozens of formerly unknown political figures have materialized with this approach. Mensch, Garland, and their ilk have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers–many of whom heed their words, retweet their unfounded allegations, and are sometimes incited to partake in online witch hunts.

What’s galling is that many of these same spreaders of misinformation are given a special designation on Twitter–a blue verification checkmark. This icon was originally conceived as a way to verify celebrities and other high-profile Twitter users against impersonators and hoax accounts. Later, it was extended to include journalists and other newsmakers who tweet under their real names, but it’s since transcended into a sort of status symbol. While anyone can now apply to receive a checkmark, not everyone gets one. (Anecdotally, I’ve been told that it’s still difficult to obtain one, even with the new democratized application process.)

And yet for reasons that remain unclear, both Mensch and Garland have these checkmarks, and they’re not the only questionable users who enjoy the designation. InfoWars founder Alex Jones–who has long spread false and inflammatory stories–has also been given the special icon. In the Twitter world, the checkmark grants these users validity, giving a little extra weight to everything they tweet.

Verification Or Validation?

Twitter maintains that the designation has nothing to do with the contents of a person’s tweets; it’s simply a way of proving that the person is who they say they are. When I contacted Twitter for comment, a spokesperson pointed me to the site’s explanation of the icon.

“The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic,” the company says on its website. “A verified badge does not imply an endorsement.”

Fair enough. But it hasn’t always played out that way. For instance, when former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos was reportedly harassing people on Twitter early last year, the company removed his checkmark (although it didn’t say why). Some time later, it banned him completely.

But it’s telling that Twitter’s response was to remove the prestigious icon—a way to delegitimize Yiannopoulos—even though it was still Yiannopoulos who was sending the tweets. The move suggests Twitter knows that its blue badge is about more than mere verification. In a way, it was tacitly saying that the checkmark does hold real weight. While Twitter may not be endorsing the speech, it is at least admitting that people see verified users differently than unverified ones. And if that’s the case, why should people like Mensch—whose main aim seems to be to spread unfounded information—be given the weight of Twitter’s unspoken endorsement?

Twitter likely views this as a slippery slope. If one account is delegitimized for spreading false news, where does it end? Many have called for Twitter to ban President Trump, which is surely not going to happen. Still, there’s a huge difference between Trump and this cadre of newly minted political pundits who are growing their audience exclusively on the platform. This shouldn’t be a hard distinction for the company to make.

It’s dire times in media right now. People on the far right hurl the phrase “fake news” as a way to discredit mainstream news sources. Meanwhile, actual fake news continues to flourish on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. As more people consume their news through social platforms, legacy media companies are trying to figure out a way to differentiate themselves from the rest. It’s up to the platform to figure out how best to deliver accurate information to its users.

Twitter allowing accounts like Mensch’s have a blue checkmark because she’s a “public figure” simply doesn’t cut it anymore. Both it and Facebook should own up to the power they hold as platforms and create better ways to help stop misinformation.

Twitter may see its ultimate goal as providing a forum for free and open speech, but it still needs to figure out how it can also hold users accountable for willfully deceiving the masses. Or, at the very least, it could make it harder for seemingly official accounts to basically imply that Steve Bannon is about to be executed.

When Ryan Yasin bought a gift of clothing for his newborn nephew, the baby had outgrown it by the time it was delivered. Yasin, a master’s student in London’s Royal College of Art’s Innovation Design Engineering program, was inspired by the problem of short-lived kids’ garments, and wondered if it would be possible to design clothing that could grow along with children.

He started experimenting and realized that by pleating synthetic fabric in a particular pattern, it was possible for a piece of clothing to stretch in both directions. He sewed a prototype–a pair of tiny pants–and formed the pleats by heating up the fabric around a special mold in his oven at home. The prototype worked: It fit both his baby nephew and his two-year-old niece.

“I believe new parents and young children are both at a stage in their lives where they are open to learning and absorbing new information—could Petit Pli instill a message that fast fashion is unnecessary and longevity is key?” Yasin says. “I really do hope so.”

If parents can avoid buying six new jackets as a child grows, in addition to saving money, they can also avoid the environmental footprint of manufacturing, transporting, and discarding each of those jackets.

The grid-like folds on the outerwear point downward, both so rain can easily run off and crumbs won’t get caught in the folds when kids have lunch. When it’s not in use, the jacket is tiny enough to fit in a parent’s pocket. The fabric is strong enough that it can last as long as a child can wear it, but if the clothing does wear out, because it uses a single material, it’s also recyclable. Yasin is investigating a take-back system that would recycle fibers from old clothing into new garments.

He doesn’t expect parents to dress kids entirely in expandable clothes; because the designs use a synthetic fabric, he says, they’re best for outerwear rather than wearing directly next to the skin. But he’s working on new designs. “In order to increase our impact against overconsumption, we’re working hard at developing our range to encapsulate a wider variety of garments,” he says.

We’re seeking a creative, experimentally minded, outside-the-box thinker to join our fast-paced, innovative team.

According to Laurie Ruettimann, who became a consultant after 12 years in HR and recruiting, job descriptions like these are “generally a lie.” In her experience, “They’re just looking to fill the position with someone who will stay a little longer than the person who quit.”

Not that recruiters want candidates to know that. Many are simply trying to squeeze people into job descriptions that may be outrageously ambitious or just mismatched for the needs of the role. As a result, recruiters sometimes resort to bad habits, indulge in crude biases, and mislead job seekers in order to keep their clients happy. Fast Company spoke to a few who’ve since left recruiting to learn some of the less-savory realities inside the industry—and what candidates can do to protect themselves.

Your Identity Might Get You Typecast

“A lot of recruiters—most that I know—will Google candidates who make it pretty far [in the hiring process],” says Ruettimann, “and then use Google image results, and also blog posts, tweets, and open Facebook accounts to judge someone’s character and credibility,” practices that she observes are frequently discriminatory and in many cases illegal.

Whether or not they’re aware of it, recruiters typically have a preconceived notion of what the ideal candidate looks like, Ruettimann explains, which often rests on stereotypes. Weight bias is still especially prevalent, she’s found—”these beliefs that someone who’s overweight is slovenly or lacks motivation.” And in her view, “diversity in Silicon Valley’s mind is the picture of Phylicia Rashad,” says Ruettimann, referring to the actress who portrayed Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show. She has seen African-American women get considered more readily for roles as diversity/inclusion chiefs while white men more often lead the pack to head up sales teams.

One recruiter who spent a decade at a Canadian executive-search firm backs this up. The recruiter, whom I’ll call Mark (he requested anonymity to speak candidly), says there’s “a penchant to see more diversity, but the definition is narrow,” typically reduced to race and gender; it was common to tout a candidate for being a “visible minority.” “It’s the only way to highlight that for the client on a call,” he explains, since “we can’t put it in our documentation.”

Mark also claims “there’s kind of a sweet spot” in terms of age for C-level positions. “My boss would say things like, ‘Did they have enough gray hair?’—not literally, but are they seasoned enough, do they have enough experience where they could be credible?” There were occasions when recruiters would nominate younger, well-qualified candidates for senior leadership roles, Mark recalls, but “I’d say 20% of the time they’re open to meeting with that person.”

There Are Fewer Applicants Than You Think

Erica Breuer is a personal branding strategist who worked for a year at staffing agency before deciding she’d had enough. One tactic she says was “used a lot was throwing out there how many people we’re [supposedly] speaking with when really it might’ve only been one to two options.” By the time a recruiter reaches out, she says, they’ve probably narrowed the candidate pool more than they’re letting on.

“Many candidates feel that there’s this huge job market and they’re competing against all these people,” says Breuer, and employers use that assumption to their advantage. “You always hear about this pile of 500 applications, when that’s not what it’s looking like behind the scenes.” So if you’ve gotten to the point where you’re speaking one-on-one with a recruiter, you may already have more leverage than you think.

Fancy Credentials Still Count (Way More Than They Should)

At the start of the hiring process, says Mark, “You get 100 resumes every single time, so how do I get to the top 20% of these people quickly?” One solution, all too often, is to zero in on prestigious credentials.

Recruiters “go to lower common denominators,” he says: “Who are all the Ivy League–school grads? Who are the McKinsey folks? Who is from a brand or company who we know and love?” As Mark points out, that leaves a candidate pool that’s only as diverse as those elite institutions. “We wouldn’t eliminate people for not having these things,” he says, “but we would prioritize people who did have Harvard credentials, for instance.”

In Mark’s experience, the only really effective workaround is a referral. “It can supersede a lot of things. It depends who it’s from, but if the CEO says, ‘We should be talking to that person,’ [recruiters] will be screening that person”–no matter what name brands may or may not grace their resume.

To be considered against stacked odds like these, he say, “it’s really important to be able to network your way in . . . Go look at LinkedIn profiles of people inside the organization. Look at how they came up and where they came up, and model their paths. What led them to their role eventually?”

You May Need To Oversell Your Skill Set

According to Breuer, many companies are “either looking for someone who has a very specific type of experience—like ‘programmer of 20 years but also has experience writing for women’s magazines’—or [are] just stacking up all these skill sets that no one person has. They’re both impossible scripts.”

“There were times where I would sit my candidate down and say, ‘Listen, they’re really looking for this—what can we do about it?’ I would encourage the candidate sometimes to just bring it up and be frank,” or else to talk up a snippet of their experience to match what an employer wanted to hear.

Breuer says she’d also have to “prep the client” in situations like these, encouraging hiring managers to ask a certain question that she’d coached the candidate to answer. “When you get to that point when you only have two options, you’ve got to get creative with your candidate.”

“Solopreneurs” Need Not Apply

Ruettimann believes an economic downturn is overdue, which will flood the job market with legions of contract workers, freelancers, and so-called “solopreneurs” applying for corporate jobs with full-time benefits. Whether or not that proves true, Ruettimann says that in the recruitment world, “nobody really believes in the gig economy.”

The prevailing attitude, she says, is that “if you’re self-employed, it’s because you can’t get full-time work.” So job seekers looking for traditional roles after years supporting themselves—particularly older ones—she says, “are facing serious ageism and bias in the workforce.” Ruettimann’s advice is twofold: “If you’ve been in this gig economy, get your references in order and make sure you’re working for really awesome clients who can vouch for you, then think about turning those clients from customers into employers—like now.”

Second, “downplay how much you took on in terms of risk or innovation or ability”—that experience won’t matter nearly as much as a job description may lead you to believe; in fact, risk-takers are seen as unpredictable liabilities. Instead, Ruettimann suggests, “highlight the fact you can work in a team, that you can take orders, that you’re looking to learn, you’re looking to collaborate.”

No matter what they claim, she says, recruiters are “looking for someone who will come in and assimilate with the team, not necessarily challenge it.”

The Job Is Being Made To Sound Better Than It Is

In Breuer’s experience, “there are a lot of companies talking about their mission and values, but it’s really a sales story. I was seeing huge promises get made to candidates, and three weeks in they’re emailing me saying, ‘Hey, this isn’t what I expected.'” The two items she found most commonly oversold were “the degree of flexibility that came with the role and e-learning and internal education [opportunities].”

“I think companies know how much both of those things mean to candidates,” so recruiters tout them, often in good faith. But, she says, “I don’t think companies have the best systems and internal processes in place to make sure they’re fulfilling on them.” As recruiters, Breuer explains, “we have these stories that we repeat—that sales story. We believe it when we’re saying it because we’ve heard it so often,” even if it isn’t entirely true.

The solution? “There’s nothing better than actually asking to speak to a few people who work there,” says Breuer. Read every Glassdoor review you can. Get ahold of former employees on LinkedIn. “If you think you’ve done enough research, do that extra half hour—reach out to a few more people, Google it one more time.”

She adds, “If you’re not feeling sure, there’s probably info you haven’t uncovered yet that’s making you feel nervous about what you’re looking at.”