![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
metafilter_feedmetafilter_feedChina has begun the construction of a giant hydropower project at the earthquake-prone edge of the Tibetan plateau, a spectacular engineering feat that is central to Beijing's enduring mission to become self-sufficient in critical areas such as energy. The $167 billion facility will require digging tunnels that plunge through high mountains to harness the power of a river that sharply descends through the deepest and possibly longest canyon on the planet. If its planners succeed—after shrugging off objections from neighbors—the project could generate triple the output of the world's largest hydroelectric facility, China's Three Gorges Dam, which is big enough to power around 40 million Chinese homes... The plan, slated to be the world's most expensive infrastructure project, will also plow money into a struggling Chinese economy and bring jobs and business to a remote and sensitive corner of China where Beijing is trying to engineer the loyalty of the Tibetan population. A planned $7 billion high-voltage transmission network will deliver electricity from the site in Tibet to Guangdong province, the economic center on China's southeast coast, and the cities of Hong Kong and Macau. But the project on the Yarlung Tsangpo River has stirred accusations that it will give Beijing the power to strangle resources beyond its borders, where the river flows into northeastern India and then south through Bangladesh.Exclusive: China's new mega dam triggers fears of water war in India - "India fears a planned Chinese mega-dam in Tibet will reduce water flows on a major river by up to 85% during the dry season, according to four sources familiar with the matter and a government analysis seen by Reuters, prompting Delhi to fast-track plans for its own dam to mitigate the effects."
The Indian government has been considering projects since the early 2000s to control the flow of water from Tibet's Angsi Glacier, which sustains more than 100 million people downstream in China, India and Bangladesh. But the plans have been hindered by fierce and occasionally violent resistance from residents of the border state of Arunachal Pradesh, who fear their villages will be submerged and way of life destroyed by any dam. Then in December, China announced that it would build the world's largest hydropower dam in a border county just before the Yarlung Zangbo river crosses into India. That triggered fears in New Delhi that its longtime strategic rival - which has some territorial claims in Arunachal Pradesh - could weaponize its control of the river, which originates in the Angsi Glacier and is known as the Siang and Brahmaputra in India.more...
Engineers plan to drill tunnels from the top of the bend to the bottom, channeling water through turbines before sending it back into its natural course. It's a system designed to minimize upstream and downstream disruption. But in practice, it would drain one of the river's most ecologically rich stretches, and bring heavy construction to a seismically volatile region. The 8.6 magnitude Assam-Tibet earthquake, one of the strongest ever recorded on land, happened in 1950 just 153 miles away from Nyingchi...
The flipside is that the construction could unleash a cascade of environmental consequences. The Tibetan Plateau is often called the "Third Pole" because it holds more ice and snow than anywhere on Earth outside the Arctic and Antarctic. This frozen reservoir plays a powerful role in shaping jet streams and stabilizing South Asia's climate. The surrounding basin is one of the richest biodiversity zones on the planet, home to more than 150 native species of fish — some teetering on the edge of extinction — as well as elusive snow leopards and red pandas.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlander_ii posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fan_flashworksysabetwordsmith posting in followfridayHere's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".
metafilter_feedaskamanager_feedIt’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. My company makes summer interns wear bikinis
I work at a car dealership, and recently we hired two college interns to work here for six months. Every summer we have an event at the dealership themed around the summer, and usually it’s just marketed as some sort of summer blowout sale. This summer, since hiring the two interns, it has been re-marketed as “summer beach days” by our male dealership manager (the dealership is 80% male employees and managers). Our interns are women ages 21 and 19 and were brought into the manager’s office and I believe pressured to agree to a new “uniform” for the rest of summer. You guessed it … bikinis. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, two weeks later they changed the “uniform” and handed the girls THONG bikinis. So now we have two young ladies selling cars all day walking around with their bare bums on display for all the customers and staff to see. The male customers certainly love this, it seems, and many times the manger has asked the young women to hold a sign out on the street, wearing their bikinis. The dealership manager even had them pose for photographs and post them on social media for marketing purposes. A couple of the pictures were from the front but one was from behind, so now the dealership is posting this photo of our interns’ asses on social media on a weekly basis.
The young women seemed a bit uncomfortable at first, but I’m not sure how they feel now. I am sure that they were pressured into this and that this was not in the plan when they signed up to work here. I have gotten to know them both a bit, and they are both so smart. I imagine in their minds they just have to deal with this on a temporary basis but it’s hard to watch. Maybe there is nothing that can be done but should I at least ask them how they feel about their bums frequently being posted to social media and try to get the pictures removed?
Please talk to them and tell them if they don’t want to wear bikinis at work, you will support them in pushing back — that this isn’t something they’re obligated to do and they have the right to refuse to do it. Ideally you’d also tell them that you’ll enlist other coworkers in supporting their stance if that helps make them more comfortable refusing (assuming you have decent colleagues who would in fact stand up for them once asked to). Let them know they can also say no to the photos and can ask to have the ones that were already posted removed if they want to.
I suppose it’s possible that you’ll find out that they’re enthusiastically consenting to all of this, but have the conversation since they may not realize their options. And even if they end up not pushing back on it, you’ll very likely be planting a seed in their thinking for the future.
You might also tell whoever in charge of hiring that if they’re going to ask this of future interns, they need to make it very clear it’s part of the job before anyone signs on.
2. Should managers expect apologies?
I’ve been in my current job for under a year, and my relationship with one of my direct reports has been challenging from the beginning. We have had a lot of communication issues, and they seem to have a strong tendency toward defensiveness, being territorial with their work, and assuming bad intentions of others. We recently had things come to a head, and their reaction to a mistake in their work being pointed out was unprofessional and unacceptable. I was able to address this with them later in the day. They seemed to somewhat know what they did was not okay, but mostly responded with defensiveness and deflection. They never apologized for the unacceptable reaction.
I have always made it a point to apologize personally and professionally when I have made mistakes and talk about what I would do differently going forward, so it definitely rubbed me the wrong way when they did not. Should managers expect an apology when something like this happens?
Eh. If I were advising the employee, I’d suggest they apologize if they flew off the handle or behaved inappropriately, but there’s no value in managers getting hung up on whether the person apologizes or not. The thing that you very much should be hung up on is whether they understand that what happened was a problem and can’t happen again and that they’re taking steps to ensure it doesn’t. It doesn’t sound like that was the case here, and that part is a big deal. I’d take it as a sign that it’s time to get very assertive about addressing the pattern of issues and either seeing quick and sustained improvement or considering whether you need to move the person out of the job.
3. Manager won’t keep any complaints anonymous
I need a sanity check over whether a manager’s idea around managing complaints is as bad as my team and I think it is.
I’m the senior of a small team and we work rotating shifts in a 24/7 control room environment. Our manager, Bob, is (a) on standard business hours and (b) managing multiple teams, so if we have an issue with work by someone on another team, it typically needs to be emailed to him to deal with it, as we will physically see him two days a week at most and not at all if he’s WFH when we’re in.
This would be fine, but his idea of dealing with it includes attaching your email to the email he’s sending to the person in question so there’s no anonymity. His reasoning is, “You’re all adults, you can deal with it and I believe in transparency, you should know what other people are saying about you.” This is exactly what happened with a major error we found in another team’s work, corrected, and sent to him so the person could be retrained. Bob included our emails in the one he sent to the person who made the error! Thankfully it was all professional, but still! What makes it worse is that this person is a known bully who now knows exactly who found and highlighted their errors.
I shared this with my team to warn them and their immediate reactions were “he’s throwing us under the bus” and “we can’t tell him anything at all, much less anything in confidence.” I agree with them completely, and I’ve told my team to funnel future issues through me and I’ll anonymize it before forwarding it on to Bob. I’ve also been in touch with HR but their response has been lukewarm. It also doesn’t help that Bob has a vindictive streak a mile wide and I’ve told HR I am very concerned about retaliation.
I’m not overreacting? This is bad practice?
You are not overreacting and this is terrible practice!
It’s all well and good to say you’re all adults and he believes in transparency — but human nature and internal politics are both real things! Of course people will worry about the consequences. And even if he doesn’t understand why because he wouldn’t feel that way himself (something that’s easy to say when you’re the one in a position of authority), it’s still how many people will feel and he needs to engage with the reality of human nature, not just pretend it doesn’t exist. He’s going to hear about far fewer issues if his staff knows that what they relay to him will be seen, in writing, by the person in question.
I’m not terribly surprised HR isn’t helping; at a lot of organizations, HR doesn’t get involved in coaching managers on things like this and instead gives them wide berth in how they operate as long as they’re not breaking the law. So your solution of having people funnel issues through you is probably the best place you’re going to land.
4. My new job just laid people off but I’m still here
I started my job at a small workplace (16 staff) in December. They just laid off three employees for budgetary reasons, which was a big shock to everyone. Despite being the newest person on the team, I was not let go. I can only assume it has to do with my specific role, but I really don’t know why they made the decision they made. I keep thinking they should have let me go and promoted one of the other staff who had been here several years into my role.
Whatever the reasoning for how this all shook out, I’m wracked with guilt about it. I feel awkward in the office now. I’m not sure how to address all of this among the small team, or even how to just be, when I was still working on learning the ropes and making good impressions with everyone. I appreciate any advice you can offer.
There are a ton of very good reasons for why they might have done it this way! The likeliest is that it was indeed about your role — layoffs are most commonly about cutting positions, not specific people. The organization can’t afford as many positions as it could previously, so it has to look at which roles are most expendable; it might be a lot easier to stop having, for example, a marketing assistant than a bookkeeper. Or sometimes they have to cut an entire program, and so the people who worked on that program are the ones who are cut.
But if your role is similar to ones that were cut, then it’s possible that they had different reasons for choosing the people who were laid off — for example, that they weren’t performing well, were difficult to work with, or their salaries were much more expensive than yours.
It’s very unlikely that any of your remaining coworkers blame you or resent you for still being there. (Plus, in such a small office, they might have a good idea of the factors that went into the decision and be able to see clearly why those specific people were cut.) Focus on learning the job and contributing in your role, and this should be fine.
The post company makes summer interns wear bikinis, should managers expect apologies, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
rhi
mific posting in fanart_recsmetafilter_feedaskamanager_feedA reader writes:
One piece of career advice I’m seeing here and there these days is all sorts of hacks for finding jobs that have been posted in the last hour or three hours or some other short timeframe so that you can be one of the very first to apply. Does this actually make a difference?
I get that it’s important to be early for a variety of reasons (e.g., to be in the first batch of applications they review or in case they get overwhelmed with applications and pull down the posting early). But I’m not understanding why applying in the first few hours would matter more than applying in the first 24-72 hours. When I’ve been a hiring manager, I’ve never once looked at what time someone applied, nor have I looked at any applications within hours of posting the job. So I’m wondering if a) there’s some truth to this advice, b) it’s industry-dependent (I’m applying for nonprofit jobs, by the way), or c) if this is wishful thinking/a load of crap.
There are some jobs that only look at the first batch of applicants that come in, but they’re very much the exception to the rule, and they tend not to be jobs most people would want: they’re jobs that treat hiring like an assembly line and have high turnover.
Most hiring managers look at applications either in batches or all at once at the end of the application period. They’re not waiting breathlessly by their application portal looking at candidates as they come in over the first hour or two after a job is posted. (Hell, many hiring managers don’t even know exactly when a job is posted, just that it will be “today” or “sometime this week”).
Moreover, anyone who has been hiring for a while knows that, to the extent that you can find patterns, the very earliest applications are rarely the strongest matches because they’re mostly people who are just applying to everything they see, and the strongest candidates tend to come later because they’re being more selective. (This is just a general pattern; obviously there are exceptions.)
Plus, there’s no way you can customize your application if you’re racing to get it in within an hour of the job posting.
It is true that there can be some advantage to applying earlier in the application period rather than later — but that means the first week or two versus five weeks later, not hours. The reason for that is that if the hiring manager looks at applications, say, weekly, then the strongest candidates in the first two weeks will become the ones to beat when they’re assessing applications that come in later. In other words, they can become tougher judges as they go. But again, that’s about weeks, not hours.
This is not a good hack. Apply as soon as you have time to apply to do it well, but don’t worry that you have to race to apply within hours of a post going up.
The post does it really matter if you apply within the first hour of a job being posted? appeared first on Ask a Manager.
metafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedmetafilter_feedyhlee
askamanager_feedHere are three updates from past letter-writers.
1. A senior coworker keeps calling me my manager’s “girlfriend”
It got back to “Jane” I was uncomfortable with what she was saying, so she pulled me aside and asked in the future if I could come to her directly with any issues I have with her. She apologized for making me feel uncomfortable but she meant no harm as she could tell I had a crush on “Lucas.”
After your advice and the comments, I tried pulling back from “Lucas” but it was difficult; every time I would, his flirting would intensify. At this point I must own my actions and feelings because “Lucas” was the first man I was truly interested in romantically in years. Our flirting and his favoritism towards me intensified. Just about everyone left it alone or would use it to their advantage, asking me for favors because they knew Lucas would do it for me. The only person annoyed by Lucas and me was the newly promoted shift leader, “Bill.” He and I clashed on the nights he’d be in charge after the manager would go home because he had new ideas on how things should be run despite the fact that they went against company standards. I told our general manager about it. When Bill was called in to talk about it, Lucas told the general manager he was staying out of it because he knew everyone would automatically assume he would take my side and that wasn’t fair to Bill. Bill did get in some trouble and he decided it was my fault.
A couple months later, on a night Bill was in charge, I ended up having a very difficult customer who kept saying awful things to me and who I couldn’t please no matter what. I finally snapped and said something I shouldn’t have. The customer started yelling at me and it caught the attention of Bill and I was sent home. Bill called our general manager about the whole thing, and my next three shifts were canceled. The general manager fired me over the phone.
I was so upset, mostly because this was not how I wanted things to end between Lucas and me. A few days after I was fired, I stopped by in the evening and “Jane” was working. She gave me a hug and asked what happened. Turns out neither the general manager or Bill told anyone what happened, despite their asking where I was. She said I needed to stop by and see Lucas, so I did. I told him my side of what happened and he said the whole thing was stupid that if he, or Jane, or even the other manager had been on, I would have just been written up.
Since he was no longer my boss, towards the end of the conversation I asked if he wanted to get dinner at the restaurant he was always talking about wanting to go to but never had the time. He said he appreciated the offer but it was going to be a no. I was crushed. I have spent several months getting over him, upset and confused. I have never had a man show so much interest in me, flirt with me like that, only to say no. A lot of my friends tell me it sounds like he liked having me enamored with him and the thrill of it being off-limits and able to toe the line with flirting and banter, but the moment it could be official it wasn’t interesting.
Work-wise, I’m doing good. I finish my master’s this semester, and I have a part-time job in the field in which I’m getting my master’s. They are working on getting me a raise and more hours, knowing I am going to look for a full-time job after I graduate. I know I’m not completely over “Lucas” but I will be eventually. The hard lesson is don’t flirt at work. And don’t be pulled back into it after you pull yourself out.
2. How to apply for a job (internally) that I am not sure is even open (#5 at the link)
I am the office clerk at a law firm who was asking how to ask about moving to a legal assistant position.
The update is that I had a semi-regular checkin with my boss (office manager) and asked how I might go about getting a legal assistant position at some point with the law firm I work at. I didn’t know this checkin was going to happen when I sent the letter in.
Anyway, she said that I would need to get certified for this specific role. Without it, I won’t have a shot – there is not a lot of “learning on the job” in terms of this position, I guess. I don’t know if other firms also require certification, but I imagine if not, it would still look better.
She did not mention the legal assistant who is moving to a new position, so either she really doesn’t know or can’t say anything. I wonder if they’ll be distributing the work to other assistants rather than opening the job up. But if I were certified and all that and a job sis open up at the firm, I would go to HR and talk about it, hear more about the role, etc.
But I already have an MLIS and really don’t want to go back to school of any kind (even for a couple years) so unless that changes, I am kind of stuck in the role at this firm. I would ask if the firm would reimburse tuition of some kind, but that wouldn’t really matter, I just don’t want to go back to school for an extended period of time (a monthly class or something for fun is obviously different).
Update to the update:
I was talking to a couple of my coworkers, and I mentioned that I was told that I need to have a certificate or something like that before I could be considered for the legal assistant position. One of my coworkers, who was a legal assistant at a different law firm, said that in in the state where we work, a certificate is not required. (But I assume law firms can make their own requirements?) I like to think I could channel my prior experience into the legal assistant role, but it sounds like I wouldn’t even be considered without certification.
I also heard through the grapevine that a prior clerk had asked about transferring to another role (not legal assistant) and was blocked. The reasoning might have been for legit reasons (experience-wise) but now I can’t help but wonder if they’re now blocking clerks from moving because they don’t want to train replacements. I heard other prior clerks have moved on to paralegal assistant positions and they don’t have certificates. So I wonder what the deal is. This job does a little bit of everything in the firm, for better or worse. But I’m going to ask about where boundaries are in what tasks we clerks get assigned to help with, because if they’re not going to pay a legal assistant’s salary, I don’t want to be doing a legal assistant’s job. (I welcome tips on how to bring this up!)
Either way, it sounds like there’s no way up from this position.
3. Can we encourage our unhappy coworker to leave? (#2 at the link)
We got a new group lead, who told the colleague to knock it off. She calmed down a bit, but still made it very clear that she was unhappy and that wouldn’t change.
In late 2024, the group had to reduce the number of employees, and Angry Colleague volunteered to be the one to leave (with a generous severance). The mood in our department has since been ambivalent — half happy the complaining stopped, half worried because having to let people go makes us wonder if the company is struggling. There have been several rounds of restructuring, people changing departments, and everything feels a bit unstable right now.
I don’t know if Angry Colleague has found a new job since, but I wish her all the best. It’s a tough market right now, but she’s an expert with a decade of experience so I hope she’ll be fine.
The post updates: the flirtatious manager, the unhappy coworker, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
timeasmymeasure
