Work
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Everyday Design Icons
Why the symbol of corporate creativity will survive the remote-work era
Chances are if you’ve spent time in offices, you’ve spent time around whiteboards — and, perhaps, you’ve spent time dreading them. But where did these things come from, and how did they become a physical symbol of the mandatory brainstorming session?
Fittingly, the precise history of the whiteboard is somewhat tentative and subject to revision and correction. Many accounts give inventor credit to a Korean War veteran named Martin Heit, who discovered he could write on film negatives with a Sharpie, then wipe the markings away; in the mid-1950s, he designed the first whiteboard, essentially coated with a similar laminate…
Number Crunch
A global study conducted by Microsoft’s Work Trend Index found that 41% of respondents were considering leaving their jobs
41%: That’s the share of respondents in a 30,000-person global survey of workers conducted by Microsoft’s Work Trend Index who say they are considering leaving their jobs, as reported by Bloomberg.
The survey found that 54% of workers say they are overworked, and 39% say they are exhausted. Their bosses, meanwhile, seem not to be sharing in their struggles, as a majority of managers and company leaders surveyed reported that they were thriving at work.
Working remotely during the pandemic appears to be a mixed bag for workers — while some employees value the flexibility it provides, others suffer from…
Comment of the Week
Readers weigh in on the great WFH experiment, a year into the pandemic
Earlier this week, Marker launched Index, a new publication about the lived work experience —“a place to diffuse lessons and learnings, candid moments of triumph or failure, missives for change or cathartic humor” as editor-in-chief Danielle Sacks recently described. As part of launch week, writer Will Leitch wrote about his experience working remotely for the past 16 years and shared his candid thoughts on why so many Americans are still struggling to do it right, even a year into the pandemic. …
An exploration of the office, work culture, identity, bias, navigating your career—and more
Dear Readers,
At Marker, we’ve chronicled the professional whiplash of the past year. Some people’s careers have soared throughout the pandemic, while others have lost their jobs or businesses. Some started companies or fundraised for the first time, while others struggled to balance working from home while running a homeschool, dealing with mental health issues, or coping with the death of a loved one or co-worker. Some pushed back against institutional racism in their industries as others were awoken to their own biases. …
Number Crunch
Some of these interns sure look a lot like employees
43%: That’s the share of internships offered by for-profit companies in the United States that are unpaid, according data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, per the Washington Post.
While unpaid internships have long been a subject of contention, Jane Slater, a reporter at the NFL Network, kicked off a furious online debate last week when she bemoaned the negative comments she’d received for posting an unpaid internship opportunity. …
Number Crunch
Employers are hoping FOMO gets you to come in, too
25%: That’s roughly how many employees in the U.S. are going into the office nowadays, according to data from Kastle Systems, an office security firm, cited by the New York Times.
That said, there are some significant regional differences: More than a third of employees in Texas are back in their offices, while that number is under 20% in the New York, Chicago, and San Francisco areas. As vaccines roll out, and it becomes safer to commute and work in shared spaces, many businesses will expect their employees to return to the office. While technology has made it easier than…
Number Crunch
Women economists get far more scrutiny for their work than their male peers
12%: That’s how many more questions female economists received while presenting at conferences compared to their male counterparts, according to a working paper by a team of economists reported on by the New York Times.
The paper also found that women were more likely to face questions that were patronizing or hostile from conference attendees. …
Fixation
From Dilbert through the ’90s to The Office in the early 2000s and Silicon Valley in the 2010s, white-collar office satire has long served as a coping mechanism to process the frustration (and, occasionally, existential dread) that accompanies accepting your role in late capitalism. Pandemic work memes — the latest genre of white-collar satire to proliferate popular media — are no exception. Right alongside the influencers and foodies of Instagram, you can also scroll through satirical accounts like Litquidity, linkdinflex, MBA-ish, and consultingcomedy — proof that not even a global pandemic, the shuttering of nonessential offices, and the near cleaving…
Number of the Day
Honoring the civil rights icon seems like the bare minimum — especially this year
45%: That’s the share of U.S. companies that gives employees a paid day off on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, according to a 2019 Bloomberg Law survey, as reported by CNBC.
Since 1983, the third Monday in January has been observed as a federal holiday that honors civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. — though it took until the year 2000 for the holiday to be observed in all 50 states.
While the number of companies that observe MLK day as a holiday has been trending upward (only 28% of companies gave employees the day off in 2009), and…
Off Brand
When it comes to accidental branding moments, this one will go down in the books
When Slack started 2021 by suffering a mass outage on the very morning most of the remote workforce revved up their computers after a long holiday break, it seemed like the ultimate business nightmare. Twitter went nuts. Virtual teams had barely reunited before being disconnected. The ultimate black eye for a company that had just been acquired for a whopping $27.7 billion, supposedly central to the work-from-home boom.
But actually, maybe Slack’s inept start to the year wasn’t all bad — for Slack, at least.
While the corporate masses dunked on the company in typical Slacklash parlance, the company’s…
