Just like in 2021, I’ve sent over 30 newsletters in 2022, which together include hundreds of links to things that interested me at different points of the year. This is a quick summary of the things that stand out in my mind as favorites, now that the year is almost over.
Read MoreI’ve sent nearly 40 newsletters in 2021, which together include hundreds of links to things that interested me at different points of the year. This is a quick summary of the things that stand out in my mind as favorites, now that the year is almost over.
Read MoreWhile any organization would benefit from shared rules about transfers, data teams are uncommonly likely to need them
Read MoreThere is a concept in economics called Gresham’s Law, which is usually summarized as ‘Bad Money Drives out Good’.
Read MoreA bit over 3 years ago, I left a job in digital media for one at a tech company. A friend recently asked a bunch of us who made similar changes what we thought about leaving media. Since this seems to be something that people are doing with some frequency, I wrote down my thoughts in the hopes that they might help people who are evaluating a similar move.
Read MoreA few weeks ago, a colleague took time away from work for a personal issue. This person (let’s call them Sam) told their manager, who mentioned it to me (the manager’s manager). This was (and is) all fine, and happens all the time.
The next week, I had my regular meeting with Sam, who asked me whether I wanted to know what was going on that caused them to miss work.
I gave Sam a quick answer (something about not wanting to pry), and the conversation moved on, but privately I’ve been struggling with my answer to this question for well over a week.
The idea of ‘bringing your whole self to work’ has been ubiquitous and cliché enough to inspire snark for a while now, but the importance of empathy, humanity, and creating safe spaces is something that I really buy into. Still, as a manager sometimes the ‘right’ thing to do in this regard can be terribly difficult to figure out.
In general, I would invite anyone on my team to share as much about themselves as they feel comfortable sharing. And maybe that’s the right way to create the environment that I want to create. Maybe Sam wants to talk about it. Maybe they feel constrained by a vision of professionalism, and don’t want to be the first to broach personal topics of a certain sensitivity.
On the other hand, I’ve seen managers push employees to share more about their personal situations than the employees feel comfortable with. And Sam’s hesitancy might not be signaling a desire to talk about what’s going on; it might signal a feeling of obligation. Does Sam feel obligated to justify being out of the office? Or do they think they need to model extroversion and candidness with me (a notoriously candid extrovert) in order to advance in their career? I don’t know. The space of potential motivations is vast.
The idea of not wanting to share a piece of one’s life with work also resonates with me. A long time ago, I had to miss work for a personal issue that I very much didn’t want to talk about with my coworkers. That company was not a ‘bring your whole self to work’ kind of company, which I appreciated in this specific instance.
So what should I do next time? What’s the action item coming out of this retro? I think writing this post, in and of itself, is one.
The other is to ask more questions. My gut reaction to ‘Do you want to know why I’m missing work?’ is really ‘do you want me to know?’ but that isn’t the right framing, really. After some thought, it’s closer to ‘Would you prefer to talk about it with me, or would it help you more not to talk about it with me?’
This, I think, is what I’ll ask next time.
January 19th, 2021, will make 5 years of sending my NYC Data Jobs Newsletter.
Sending out a newsletter has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done over the last few years. In the hopes that talking about my experience would be helpful to people who are either just starting out, or are thinking about it (and, selfishly, encourage people to write more good newsletters that I can read), I’ve written down a few observations and experiences, 5 years in.
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This week I started a new role as the Director of Analytics at Squarespace. I'm really excited about the role and the team that I'm going to be working with!
Not only have I moved, but this blog has moved too: you might notice the 'powered by Squarespace' box at the bottom! I'm happy to say that the migration was relatively smooth. This is now the 3rd CMS that this blog has been hosted on.
A few links & images from the old tumblr days are now gone: I think this is more a function of link rot than anything else, but I did lose a few images for mysterious reasons. I also have to keep the blog off of SSL until I migrate the last few images. But generally I was pretty happy with the process.
I'm going to miss my friends at Fusion Media so much. They gave me the sweetest sendoff imaginable, and I'll remember my years there very, very fondly.
But the role here at Squarespace was too good to pass up. I'm passionate about the open web, and I'm so excited to help support millions of people and businesses participate in something that's so important to me. Being able to do this for a company based here in NYC is amazing, and I'm wildly excited to be digging into the role already!
My name is Josh Laurito, and I'm here to talk to you about the intersection of three of my favorite things: python, New York City, and trains.
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I'm super, super excited to post that I just completed my first full week at Gawker Media. I'll be acting as Head of Data & Analytics for the company, primarily helping to improve their kinja platform but also supporting the editorial team at their media properties.
Any work-related findings or posts will be at the (brand new) Gawker Data Team blog: gawkerdata.kinja.com.