“JOBS, JOBS, JOBS,” the Trump campaign liked to say. But upon assuming office, one of the first things that Trump did was initiate a hiring freeze in the federal government. And now, EPA has announced its plan to push out as many as 1,228 people on its staff by the end of the summer.
Sometimes a picture can help make sense of a situation. This viz shows the proportion of government employees who are currently furloughed. It's as grim as the rest of the shutdown news.
Mac Rumors claims that Apple is "turning to select Retail Store employees to help improve Maps for iOS 6." What a genius idea!
Foxconn has had to close down a factory in Taiyuan, China, which employs 79,000 people after a massive brawl broke out amongst 2,000 of its workers. Bloomberg is reporting that the fight left 40 people hospitalized and some employees arrested.
Facebook's chief privacy officer Erin Egan has sent a warning to social network's users: never give your password to your employer. It's wrong and it's illegal for them to ask you. In fact, the US Senate is working on a bill to specifically ban this despicable tactic.
BlackBerrys are still the de facto standard in the work force and represent a sort of leash an employer has on an employee. If you see that indicator light blink, you better get to work. The problem with that is that no employee ever stops thinking about work! VW wants to change that. They're turning off employee…
The latest office trend sweeping the nation is stand up desks, according to the Wall Street Journal. A growing number of employees at companies like Facebook and Google are tossing aside their chair and asking to work while standing.
Here's a report that'll raise the hackles of some Motorola employees. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google employees are better fed at work, make more money and are smarter than their Motorola colleagues.
Foxconn, prominent manufacturer for such companies as Apple and Sony and home to many an exhausted employee, has committed itself to replacing its workforce with 1 million robots. Robots making iPads. I like the sound of that.
What would you do if you walked into a supermarket with no employees inside? Dump everything into 5 carts and run? Steal all the alcohol you can? Grab store displays? Get a lifetime supply of cereal? Fruit? Or would you pay?
Aspiritech, a Chicago-based tech start up, is a software testing firm that exclusively hires people with Asperger's syndrome. Why? Because apparently, people suffering from Asperger's make for the perfect software tester. And this isn't even news! Studies have shown people with Asperger's thriving in tech fields…
To celebrate the release of the new Dell Streak tablet, a genius Dell sales manager in Round Rock, Texas wanted to boost employee spirit and make it an event to remember. Too bad his ridiculous plan got him and another employee arrested.
And here I thought Burger King was the classy fast food establishment! Oh wait that's Wendy's. Anywho, two California Burger King employees were fired for printing "FUCK YOU" on a customer's receipt. Watch local reporters take the matter very seriously.
Microsoft really didn't like that a Google employee went public, telling the world the big G is swapping employees' computers from Windows to Chrome, OS X and Linux. They've responded in a particularly sarky way, calling it "ironic":
Contrary to a lot of reports, more than just Apple's products are made at Foxconn's Shenzhen factories. Nintendo, whose Wii and other products are made there, has announced it shall be investigating the working and living conditions of the factory workers in light of the suicides. [MarketWatch via Kotaku]
This goes some way to explaining why employees at Foxconn may be killing themselves. According to The Telegraph, Foxconn pays 110,000 Yuan ($16,100) to the family of each person who dies. That's ten years' salary, on average.
Despite Foxconn allegedly asking all employees to sign contracts promising not to kill themselves, another worker has jumped out of a building window. This came hours after Foxconn's CEO was boasting to press of the fabulous facilities at the factories.
An SEC filing shows that Michael Abbott, Palm's Senior Vice President of software and services, will be leaving the company this month. The same filing also revealed that several key employees received generous incentives to stick around.
In today's Remainders: new beginnings. Tim Bray, co-founder of XML, starts a new job at Google (and has his sights set on Apple); several Windows Phone 7 team members are leaving...to develop apps for Windows Phone 7; and more.
You might think your job sucks, but at least your boss wasn't insane enough to remove all the chairs and install security so an alarm goes off if you don't walk fast enough.
