Laura Massetti, a career coach for young workers, said that Gen Z workers struggle with unwritten rules and need professional training. Courtesy of Laura Massetti Laura Massetti spent 15 years leading teams and saw Gen Z workers struggle with unwritten rules. Massetti said Gen Z workers need training on communication, judgment, and follow-through. As AI levels technical skills, Massetti said human skills can help early-career workers stand out. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Laura Massetti, founder of Real Work Ready, which helps early-career professionals develop workplace skills. Massetti has more than a decade of experience in the corporate world, leading sales and marketing teams. The essay has been edited for length and clarity. I spent 15 years in the corporate world, leading sales and marketing teams. I loved mentoring early professionals, but I often found myself thinking: My goodness, I wish I could make this process go quicker. I never only look at whether someone could do the work. It is more about whether they could communicate clearly, exercise good judgment, and follow through. As a career coach for young workers, I know there are things that you, as an employee, get judged on that no one actually puts inside the rubric. We expect people to figure them out over time, but in reality, someone has to teach them. Gen Z needs feedback in a workplace that expects people to figure things out I don’t think that Gen Z is unready for work. I think no one has taught them what to do. This generation grew up with a cellphone in their hands. They’d post something on Instagram and get 10 likes. They’re used to instant feedback: Tell me what I need to grow. That’s not how the workplace is built. We have annual reviews. You learn through experience; you learn the hard way. Young workers are digitally fluent, which makes this generation incredible for so many reasons. But growing up digitally, compounded by the pandemic, left gaps in opportunities to practice face-to-face interaction. Now they’re entering workplaces with other generations, and those generations set the rules. Meanwhile, AI is taking on tasks that used to help people develop. We learned shoulder to shoulder with someone. How are new hires supposed to learn if we’re outsourcing those opportunities? You’re being judged on things no one puts in the rubric There are areas you’re being judged on that no one actually puts inside the rubric, including communication and clarity, prioritization and judgment, your ability to follow through, professional presence and credibility, ownership and reliability, and organizational awareness. It’s not just about how you communicate. When you enter the workplace, do you know how to get stuff done? How aware are you of the organization you operate in? You need to understand when to use email, when to use Slack, and when to stop by someone’s office. You can’t walk in and assume you know the rules. In one new-hire program at a company with about 100,000 employees, a manager told me that someone had pinged the CEO on Slack to request a skip-level meeting. Mind you, that would’ve been probably 10 skip levels. Poor thing, he had no idea. No one had told him that wasn’t how you reached out to the CEO in that organization. I’ve also seen people show up to meetings unprepared, without what they needed or knowing how to follow up. Dressing appropriately is something I had to learn on my own. About six months into my job, I wore a full black business suit to a meeting in Miami. It absolutely did not match the environment. I was way too formal. Match the client’s environment and match how they dress. The other day, I saw someone meeting their manager in a suit jacket over a basketball jersey and shorts, but wearing loafers. Your job is to show your manager that they can trust you to be professionally present and to deliver. Managers have a responsibility here, too. When we say, “They’ve been here for two years, and they’re just not getting it,” we need to ask ourselves: What aren’t they getting? What am I judging them on that I haven’t clearly explained? Practice the human skills that will set you apart My company now offers a six-month program that combines online training with weekly role-playing of workplace scenarios. We practice things like how to react when you receive feedback. The goal is to give people experiences they might otherwise wait years to encounter. My advice to every fresh graduate and those entering the workforce is that, at a time when AI is making skill sets equalizers, you will need to define how you’ll be different. Technical skills are still incredibly important. But how do you communicate, exercise judgment, execute an idea, and get people’s buy-in? I’ve never made a hiring decision based on technical capability alone. It’s mostly about whether I can trust that person. Knowing the ins and outs of coding is one thing. Being able to speak to a boardroom and convince people of an idea is another ability you can bring to an employer. Those are the skills I believe will make all the difference. Read the original article on Business Insider

Native audio models process or generate acoustic representations directly, preserving timing, tone, speaker cues, and other information that a text transcript discards. This guide explains the mechanism, trade-offs, evaluation, and controls that matter in practice.

How participant-aware evaluation changed performance across three machine-learning models The post When EEG Models See the Same People in Training and Testing appeared first on Towards Data Science.

The author and her son moved into her husband's 2-bedroom townhome. Courtesy of Ashley Archambault When my husband and I got married, we had to decide where to live. My son and I ended up moving into his 2-bedroom home. There are a few pros, but we didn't consider how much we'd miss having a guest room. When my husband and I got married, we each had our own homes. I had a one-story, 3-bedroom home, while my husband had a 2-story, two-bedroom townhome. At first, we compared the pros and cons of each house. For instance, my house had a large yard, which can be a perk size-wise, but lawn maintenance was a chore. While my husband was willing to move, we ultimately chose his house, mainly because it was so close to his job. I knew from experience what a blessing an easy commute is, and I didn't want him to have to give it up, so we decided to consolidate. My son and I moved from our 3-bedroom home to my husband's 2-bedroom townhouse. I was giddy when we got married, and thinking more about moving in together and planning our wedding than the long-term realities of living in a smaller home. The lack of an extra bedroom was an issue we didn't foresee My son and I still occasionally miss our old home, but I don't regret selling my home and moving in with my husband. The worst part of downsizing has been no longer having a guest room. I mainly used the third room in my house as an office, but the bedrooms at my husband's house were large enough that there would be room for an office in ours. And my son would still have his own bedroom, so we didn't realize how much we'd miss the extra bedroom until it was too late. It's nearly impossible for us to have anyone spend the night or a weekend with us I'd mostly thought of the extra room as my office, and didn't consider that we also used it as a guest room. Now, without it, it's difficult to have anyone over for the night. We have a few options, but none of them are appealing to anyone, including our potential guests. When I had my own home, it was so easy to have friends visit for the weekend, because I could offer them a room. Having space for guests is a privilege I didn't realize I'd miss. I can still offer the chance to stay, but when someone takes us up on it, my husband and I feel kind of awful the whole time. We've had guests overnight and offered them the couch pullout or the air mattress. But despite our best efforts, everyone feels a little awkward because our guests have no privacy without an actual room of their own. Sometimes, we've thought of offering our bedrooms — or at least one of them — while my son would get displaced to the living room on an air mattress. He honestly loves doing that anyway, because he thinks it's like a sleepover, but the problem comes in the morning. Our downstairs space is pretty much just the living room and kitchen, so when someone comes downstairs in the morning, whoever's sleeping on the giant air mattress — whether our guests or my son — will inevitably be woken up. In our next home, having an extra bedroom will be a requirement My husband and I both miss having guests, as he could also have more guests over before my son and I moved in. We don't like that we don't feel we can offer loved ones a place to stay, or that when we do, the best we can offer them is an air mattress or my 12-year-old's bedroom. In addition to wanting to have more company over, my husband and I have aging parents. We don't want to find ourselves in a situation where one of them needs living assistance, and we don't have the space. There are a few things we want in a forever home, like a more spacious kitchen, of course, and a giant garden in the back, but having a guest room again is at the top of our list. Read the original article on Business Insider

Research suggests listening more while talking less. Killing aimless meetings can help, too.

The single-player is just OK, but according to the players, that doesn't matter.

Nilay Patel / The Verge: An interview with YouTuber Benn Jordan, who recently testified in Congress against license plate readers, on Flock, privacy, the surveillance backlash, and more  —  Today, I'm talking with Benn Jordan, musician, YouTuber, researcher, and investigative journalist.

The DNA inside our cells isn’t just a series of instructions, but something far more dynamic. Like scientists, AI models don't yet have the data to properly decode it.

History is littered with ideas that have been tossed aside, only for them to gain relevance at some later date. Think of Moby-Dick: forgotten in Melville's time, but now regarded as the great American novel. Or the work of economist Hyman Minsky, which became influential a decade after his death, when the 2008 financial crisis made “the Minsky Moment” a mainstream term. These are just a couple of the things we talk about with the legendary musician David Byrne on today's podcast. Byrne's new book, Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up, looks to categorize numerous “sleeping beauties” — ideas that were lost but then rediscovered. Besides Melville and Minsky, we also talk about the lost Roman recipe for concrete and we get into Byrne's thoughts on how to write a song and his own experience of having his music rediscovered by a new generation. (Source: Bloomberg)

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Rafe Rosner-Uddin / Financial Times: A profile of Alexandr Wang, who sources say is “an operator”, had “all” of Zuckerberg's support during Meta's AI revamp, and is being touted as his successor  —  The 29-year-old in charge of the company's Superintelligence Labs is being touted as a potential successor to Mark Zuckerberg

FinTech Global: Reach Security, which develops AI-powered exposure management tools for securing enterprise systems, raised a $50M+ Series B led by Top Tier Capital Partners  —  Reach Security has secured more than $50m in a Series B round led by Top Tier Capital Partners, while unveiling Reach Everywhere …

Mike Butcher / Pathfounders: Duvo, which develops tech to automate business processes across enterprise systems, including ERPs and legacy apps, raised a $32M Series A led by Balderton  —  He didn't get very far.  He discovered that much of the company's operational knowledge just wasn't documented anywhere.

FinSMEs: Montevideo, Uruguay-based Scanntech, which develops market intelligence tools using POS data, raised $180M in a Series F led by L Catterton and Partners Group  —  Scanntech, a Montevideo, Uruguay-based provider of a retail intelligence, data analytics, and marketing services platform, raised $180M in Series F financing.

Cate Lawrence / Tech.eu: London-based Scarlet, which certifies AI and software for medical devices, raised a $50M Series B led by Headline to support its US and Asia-Pacific expansion  —  Led by Headline, the funding will support the London-based company's expansion into the US and Asia-Pacific as it tackles lengthy …

Kyohei Suga / Nikkei Asia: NAND flash maker Kioxia has lost two-thirds of its market cap since its June peak, when it became Japan's most valuable listed company, as Chinese rivals emerge  —  TOKYO — Japanese memory chip maker Kioxia Holdings' market value has shrunk to one-third of the peak it reached just four months ago …

Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE: Mistlabs, which develops Ambi, an ambient AI app for iPhone, Apple Watch, and Mac that learns about users from conversations, raised a $26M pre-Series A  —  Ambient intelligence startup Mistlabs Ltd. today brought its Ambi artificial intelligence system out of beta test on Apple Inc. devices, backed by $26 million in new funding.

Wipro’s large-deal bookings fell 58.6% sequentially, yet its CEO says AI is helping it win deals.

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The OpenAI software engineer charged with using a hidden recording device in one of the company’s offices asked to be freed from custody and denied his purchase of a one-way plane ticket to his native Saudi Arabia was part of a plan to flee US justice.