Mike McBride Online

Microsoft

An Example of M365 Constantly Changing and an Offer For Those Impacted by Layoffs
ByMike McBride August 2, 2023August 2, 2023 Reading Time: 2 minutes

You can sign up for a 7-day trial and see all of the paywalled content to see what you’d be getting for your $7 per month subscription. If you’ve been impacted by layoffs, I want to make an offer to you, as someone who’s right there with you. Sign up for a free subscription, and send me an email with your LinkedIn Profile link so I can verify that you have been impacted by layoffs, and I’ll comp you 90 days of a paid subscription.

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Career

Linked – Managers Need a Toolbox for the “Post-Everything” Era
ByMike McBride July 31, 2023July 31, 2023 Reading Time: 3 minutes

Continue to be great at what you do and hope for an opening in management is not a career plan. That is what appears to be on offer at many companies though. They aren’t preparing anyone to be a manager in the future, and they aren’t increasing headcount that might require more team leads and managers, so how long do we expect people to wait? Add in the number of “senior” folks with higher salaries who find themselves part of a reduction in force, or the number of people who’ve watched their current job change over and over until they find themselves doing work they never signed up for in the first place, and it’s no wonder that workers are taking responsibility for their own growth, by choosing workplaces that give them better opportunities.

No one has to stay and work for you for the next 20-25 years. They can, and will, go elsewhere if there’s no clear path forward. I don’t blame them.

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Links | SocialNetworking

Linked – What If the Next Big Social Media App Is … Nothing?
ByMike McBride July 24, 2023July 24, 2023 Reading Time: 3 minutes

At some point, everyone who wants to have an Instagram account has an Instagram account and is using it as often as they want to. You can’t have huge growth spurts. You can only play around the edges and manipulate users to stay online to grow and that’s not a winning strategy. Yet it’s what shareholders and venture funds require. They’ve created a world where growing less than 20% per year might as well be failing. It’s sure going to look like failing when you start cutting jobs and doing stock buybacks. Those used to be desperate measures, but now they’re just a Tuesday at the office.

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Mental Health

The Gap Between What Management Thinks about Mental Health and what Employees Experience
ByMike McBride July 20, 2023July 20, 2023 Reading Time: 2 minutes

Leaders often throw benefits out to solve the problem, when work might actually be the problem. A great employee assistance program, health insurance that fairly covers mental healthcare, heck maybe they even threw in a few meditation app subscriptions for free. “See, we care!”

But the employee is quietly suffering from a lack of any connection to coworkers, poor communication with their boss, workplace stress, or even bullying and harassment, with no one in leadership to talk to. That’s not going to make them feel like you care.

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Career | Mental Health

The Important Question – What is all this Productivity For Anyway?
ByMike McBride July 19, 2023July 18, 2023 Reading Time: 3 minutes

Which got me thinking, if we are taking vacation time, sick time, or even going with a four-day workweek because it will help us come back and be more productive workers, then why bother? Is that all we are? Does everything we do, including what we do outside of work, have to revolve around our jobs?

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Career

Someone Might Just be a bad Culture Fit, Too.
ByMike McBride July 18, 2023July 16, 2023 Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last week, I shared an article and some of my own experiences around “culture fit” being a code for discrimination. We all know that is all too common, and an excuse for organizations to continue to hire “people like us”.

I saw another article over the weekend that reminded us that while that is common, there are some cases where someone is a bad cultural fit and there’s no discrimination involved.

Read More Someone Might Just be a bad Culture Fit, Too.