Workplace Culture
153 episodes
#6107: Warum deutsche und japanische Anleitungen so gut sind
Wie die duale Ausbildung in Deutschland und die Monozukuri-Philosophie in Japan erstklassige Dokumentation hervorbringen.
#6090: Unconventional Pitch Tactics That Actually Win Clients
From ditching slide decks to wheeling in a day's worth of paper — a ladder of pitch tactics, from mildly odd to career-ending.
#6089: Cheap Ads for Two-Person Shops
Billboard remnant space, $20/day digital slots, and reverse graffiti: how small operators buy attention at a fraction of list price.
#6083: The Second Noun: Where AI Careers Are Still Empty
Everyone's headline says "AI consultant." The real openings sit where AI attaches to a second noun you already know cold.
#6046: Five Jobs, One Laptop: The Overemployed Playbook
A British civil servant allegedly held five full-time jobs at once — until his make-up started separating on a Teams call. What the overemployed pl...
#6045: The Two-Week Job You Never Explain
A White House press secretary lasted five days. What the roll call of spectacular flameouts says about the two-week gap on your CV.
#6030: Who Do You Actually Hire to Train a Model?
Research engineers and data engineers are diverging. Here's who you actually hire to train a model — and why the org chart keeps changing.
#5927: Where Generalists Get Priced: Inside the FDE Role
A $485K median salary for a job with no clean definition — and why the résumé can't capture it.
#5906: Running a Company Like a Spy Agency
What if an ordinary company ran on intelligence-style need-to-know? Oak Ridge and a 1977 CIA self-audit already ran the experiment.
#5837: Atlas Obscura: 33,000 Hidden Places and a Boardroom Coup
A rotating circle of plants in Argentina, a boiling river 400 miles from any volcano, and the founders who got voted off the board.
#5787: Inside the Two Steel Industries
Steel is really two industries wearing one word — and the health and carbon ledgers land in different places.
#5690: Kaizen and the Cult of Productivity
Two-thirds of people rank productivity above health, money, and happiness. What happens when the bar you're chasing never stops moving?
#5636: Before the 9-to-5: Working Hours in 1700s England
Saint Monday, seasonal building sites, and a scholarly brawl over whether anyone worked 270 days a year before factories existed.
#5608: When Your ISP Bot Won't Let You Talk to a Human
A caller with one simple request gets trapped in a diagnostic loop he doesn't need — and the escape hatch won't open.
#5590: What Alaskan Crab Deckhands Actually Do
18-hour shifts, 800-pound steel pots, and a pay structure that's basically a lottery ticket. The real job behind the TV show.
#5589: Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome: What Cheap Power Tools Cost
Cheap power tools changed construction — and quietly introduced a disease that damages nerves and blood vessels in the hands. Here's what HAVS actu...
#5576: Lying Flat as a Tactic: The Quiet Opt-Out
Tang ping, quiet quitting, and the N-po generation — what happens when people stop donating effort they were never paid for?
#5401: When Companies Hide Humans Behind the AI Curtain
A system prompt and a cheap model can make human decisions read like bot output — and that's exactly the point.
#5400: Amy, Presto, and the Thousand Workers Behind "AI
From X.AI's Amy to Amazon's Just Walk Out, the humans quietly doing the "intelligent" part while the product says AI.
#5399: Who's Actually Behind the AI? Fauxtomation Explained
Amazon's Just Walk Out needed 1,000 workers in India. Google Duplex, Facebook M — the pattern of selling humans as software goes deep.
#5330: Who Actually Works on a Live 765kV Line?
Helicopter barehand work on a 765kV line is the top few percent of the trade — here's who gets there, and what it costs.
#5324: Retention by the Numbers: Who Actually Trains Their People?
Most small organizations run training programs — they just don't call them that. What the data says about who invests in talent, and why it pays.
#5305: The Empty Cup Is a Timer: Rethinking Remote Work Spaces
Cafes fail remote workers for one reason nobody lists: the guilt structure. Here's what to optimize for instead.
#5300: When the Interviewer Isn't Real
AI avatars are already interviewing job candidates — often without saying so. The disclosure toggle ships off by default.