Hi friends,

It’s May and it’s finally beautiful! We’re crafting some fancy new resources for you. In the meantime, here’s a Bright Reads focused issue: everything we’ve been sharing, linking and debating in Slack re: the world of work.

A major workplace stressor? Role ambiguity. And no, it’s not a new thing. An analysis of studies from 1964 through the present day point to unclear, undefined roles as a bigger stress point than role overload or conflict. It also led to lower overall productivity. Time to dust off those job descriptions and career paths and make sure they’re fresh.

The AI Job Apocalypse Is a Complete Fantasy, according to Andreessen Horowitz (who are, notably, heavily invested in Anthropic and OpenAI). It’s not a terrible take in some parts; when it comes to digital work, jobs are mostly (statistically, so far) just changing. Most “email” jobs don’t have a specific lump of work to complete and then call it a day; they’re expected to own results, and those output expectations will grow (or, we’ll all strike for a 3 day workweek).

A more detailed and nuanced take from Taylor Pearson on how to think about knowledge work and AI. I like the analogy to freestyle chess: “The people who won freestyle chess tournaments might accept 95% of the machine’s suggestions. The skill is understanding the 5% where you override it — knowing the jagged frontier and when your own judgment should take over.”

Andresseen Horowitz would also like to invest in you if you can defeat HRIS behemoth Workday and its shortcomings.

AI Is Putting Pure Managers at Layoff Risk. I get that we are doing more with less these days (see above), but this is classic tech company silliness. If you’re doing a big “pivot to AI in the workplace”, some things that seem important to me include: managing change and human feelings, helping people adapt to the new ways they are expected to work, getting them excited about it, making sure that said work is actually decent (especially if it’s being done in a new way or with new tools) and overall figuring out what “good” even looks like. Who exactly will be doing this?

Presenteeism (working long hours for no real reason, showing up when you’re sick, etc) is actually causing work performance slumps. If you’re a leader, please model chilling out.

The Hot New Breakup Line: It's Not You, It’s My Startup. My fave nugget here, from a founder who doesn’t take time to date: “If I think I might marry someone, I'll explore for a week, and after that week I'll make a decision”

Workplace Surveillance Gets an Emotional Upgrade. DO NOT BUILD THIS!

Broad Pay Ranges May Hurt Your Chance of Recruiting Female Talent

It's Possible to Learn in Our Sleep. Should We?

Other stuff:

Are you heading to any Toronto Tech Week events? Should we? We'd love to know what's on your radar — hit reply and let us know!

On a personal note, I recently had the chance to work on something a little different: a print-only literary science magazine called Orbital Studies. It was a super rewarding project and I'm really proud of how it came together!

Every issue, we’ll share a curated list of exciting jobs at Bright + Early partners. Bright + Early organizations are all committed to building human, inclusive places to work. Note that we’re not involved in hiring– please apply directly. As part of our advocacy for pay transparency, we only share jobs that include it.

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