BizCom in the News

A Grammarian After My Own Heart

I want to meet this person: someone with a sharp grammatical mind and a sharp pen fixed errors at a sculpture park at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. As yet, no one has accepted responsibility, but I may have found my soul mate.

 

I admit, I've done my share of marking public typos. In some cases, I just take a photo, but other times I can't control myself. In this first example, I asked the Starbucks barista for a marker, and she obliged. In the second exmaple, I was alone in the stairwell with a pen. What choice did I have?

 

Discussion Starters:

• When have you found typos on public signs? What did you do?  
• Shouldn't we have a law protecting typo vigilantes, sort-of like the Good Samaritan Law? No?

E-Board Member Embarrasses Her Sorority

An executive board member of the Delta Gamma sorority at the University of Maryland let the entire sorority know how she felt in a scathing, obscenity-filled email. In her rant, she accuses her sisters of being boring, awkward, weird, stupid—and worse.

Apparently, the last straw was an event with Sigma Nu fraternity, during which some sisters weren't at their best. Still, one wonders whether their behavior was so egregious as to deserve being threatened: "I will...assault you."

One of the great ironies of the email is her concern about the sorority's image:

"Seriously, if you have done ANYTHING I've mentioned in this email and have some rare disease where you're unable to NOT do these things, then you are HORRIBLE, I repeat, HORRIBLE PR FOR THIS CHAPTER."

The president of the University of Maryland chapter responded:

 

Discussion Starters:

• Assess the chapter president's response? What works well, and what could be improved?
• Should the email author also respond? If so, what should she say?
• How, if at all, do you think this incident reflects on Sigma Nu? Should the fraternity do anything in response?

Good Grammar Improves Job Prospects

A study by Grammarly examined 100 LinkedIn profiles and found that good grammar improved job prospects:

"Professionals with fewer grammar errors in their profiles achieved higher positions. Those who failed to progress to a director-level position within the first 10 years of their careers made 2.5 times as many grammar mistakes as their director-level colleagues.

"Fewer grammar errors correlate with more promotions. Professionals with one to four promotions over their 10-year careers made 45% more grammar errors than those with six to nine promotions in the same time frame.

"Fewer grammar errors associate with frequent job changes. Those who remained at the same company for more than 10 years made 20% more grammar mistakes than those who held six jobs in the same period. This could be explained in a couple of ways: People with better grammar may be more ambitious in their search for promising career opportunities, or job-hoppers may simply recheck their résumés between jobs."

One-hundred is a small sample size, but the results aren't surprising. In another survey, 11% of employers who checked applicants' social media posts did not hire them because of "poor communication skills." I might assume that included poor grammar.

Although few spelling mistakes were found on LinkedIn profiles, probably because of the spell-check feature, careless and grammatical errors could be a dealbreaker for your future employer.

Image source.

Assignment Ideas:

• Review another student's LinkedIn profile. Do you find any errors? If so, how does this affect your opinion of him or her as a job candidate?
• Look at your Facebook page, if you have one. If you were a potential employer reviewing the page, what would be your impressions?
• Consider making changes to these sites and other social media spaces that employers may visit.

Yahoo! Email: No More Working from Home

New Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is making her mark, but she's ruffling a few feathers. In an email to employees, HR head Jackie Reses asks "all employees with work-from-home arrangements to work in Yahoo! offices." As expected, remote employees aren't too happy about the change.

YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT FORWARD

Yahoos,

Over the past few months, we have introduced a number of great benefits and tools to make us more productive, efficient and fun. With the introduction of initiatives like FYI, Goals and PB&J, we want everyone to participate in our culture and contribute to the positive momentum. From Sunnyvale to Santa Monica, Bangalore to Beijing — I think we can all feel the energy and buzz in our offices.

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.

Beginning in June, we’re asking all employees with work-from-home arrangements to work in Yahoo! offices. If this impacts you, your management has already been in touch with next steps. And, for the rest of us who occasionally have to stay home for the cable guy, please use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration. Being a Yahoo isn’t just about your day-to-day job, it is about the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our offices.

Thanks to all of you, we’ve already made remarkable progress as a company — and the best is yet to come.

Jackie

Hundreds of Yahoo! employees currently are working remotely, including customer service representatives and workers who don't have a Yahoo! office close by.

After a series of layoffs, Yahoo! may be taking a different approach to reducing headcount and increasing productivity. Some speculate that employees who can't or won't make the change will quit, making reductions easy.

Yahoo! responded to the controversy with only these statements:

• "This isn't a broad industry view on working from home. This is about what is right for Yahoo right now."
• "We don't discuss internal matters."

The email inspired a wave of articles, include a Wall Street Journal cover story covering the number of people, benefits, and possible career derailment from working remotely.

Image source.

Discussion Starters:

• How would you describe the tone and approach of the Yahoo! email?
• Yahoo! management clearly didn't want the email to be released. What, if anything, could have prevented this?  What's your reaction to employees' forwarding the message: are they justified, acting inappropriately, or something else? Why would an employee forward an email that's marked "proprietary and confidential"?

Facebook Admits Hacking

After weeks of reported breaches, Facebook has admitted that it was hacked. The same issue with Oracle’s Java software that allowed hackers to access data from 250,000 Twitter users provided inroads to Facebook. Although Facebook apparently knew about the breach for at least a month, the company just came clean.

In a blog post titled "Protecting People On Facebook," Facebook assured users that personal information was not compromised and that its systems have been fully patched to prevent future break-ins. The first two paragraphs provide context and the admission:

"Facebook, like every significant internet service, is frequently targeted by those who want to disrupt or access our data and infrastructure. As such, we invest heavily in preventing, detecting, and responding to threats that target our infrastructure, and we never stop working to protect the people who use our service. The vast majority of the time, we are successful in preventing harm before it happens, and our security team works to quickly and effectively investigate and stop abuse.

 "Last month, Facebook Security discovered that our systems had been targeted in a sophisticated attack. This attack occurred when a handful of employees visited a mobile developer website that was compromised. The compromised website hosted an exploit which then allowed malware to be installed on these employee laptops. The laptops were fully-patched and running up-to-date anti-virus software. As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day."

 Next, one sentence appears in bold type:

"We have found no evidence that Facebook user data was compromised."

The post echos Twitter's blog post from February 1.

Discussion Starters:

• What arguments does Facebook use in its post to convince us not to worry about the breach? Which do you find most and least convincing?
• How easy is it for non-technical people to understand Facebook's post? What, if any, jargon or business slang can you identify?
• How does Facebook's blog post compare to Twitter's? What similarities and differences do you notice?