Archive for the “working” Category

I was editing a blog post at work the other day –  it may surprise you to learn that writing this blog is not my job – and I amended “the data says” to “the data say” because as everybody pedant knows, “data” is the plural of “datum.” I didn’t think much more about it.

Then somebody “corrected” me and said it was wrong.  I fired back some citation or other and didn’t think much more about it.

Then a consultant making a pitch for our business chided us in his pitch presentation on our lousy grammar by citing that very post. (Dear consultant guy: 1. you really should make sure your client is unambiguously in the wrong, and 2. there’s a sentence fragment in the middle of your own blog post on the subject of grammar. At least we agree that grammar counts.)

Every geometer knows that two points determine a line, and now – counting the original author – I had at least two smart people saying that data should take a singular verb.  I needed to think more about this.

There’s plenty of evidence that I was right to write “the data say” but also plenty that “the data says” is not wrong. The estimable Grammar Girl has a good blog post that begins by complicating things – it’s not about data being singular or plural; it’s about data being or not being a mass noun – and ends with some good guidance about picking your path and sticking to it.

I’ve come around to a different idea.  Using a possibly controversial construction is a no-win situation.  You either earn points with antiquarian scholars and sound overwrought, or you please the crowd and sound dull to the nitpicky.  It’s a bit like the forcefully correct use of “whom.” Either way you risk some people thinking you’re careless or ignorant.  If you’re got a sentence, especially a headline or title, that forces the reader to think about whether a word in it is right or wrong, I think it’s time to choose a different word or write a different sentence.

Perhaps instead of

…the data say… or …the data says…

we might try

…the survey says… or …my research reveals… or …4 out of 5 dentists agree…

Have I given in to the forces of the incorrect by avoiding the issue?  I hope not.  I don’t suggest anybody stop correcting errors of “you’re” vs “your” or allowing “alot” to slide by for “a lot” but when there’s room for common usage to differ from correct usage or where usage is evolving, making your readers think about grammar instead of reading and digesting your point is a bad idea.

Sometimes Boston feels like the city of inferiority complexes.  For years it was the Red Sox thing, feeling bad about coming in second to New York in baseball.  Now, it seems to be the Silicon Valley thing, coming in second to California in technology companies and startups.  In both of those cases, it seems the object of the complex is blissfully unaware that Boston is pining after its spot.

I attended a seminar at Sloan called Talent Wants to be Free with attorney John Bauer of Robinson & Cole, entrepreneur Branko Gerovac and Sloan Prof. Matt Marx, which seemed to be about the use or misuse of con-compete agreements but turned out to also be a lot about the unfavorable comparison of the Boston metro area to the SF Bay area in tech terms.

Mainly, I want to talk about the non-compete stuff, but I have to quote a couple of the comparisons made on the East coast – West coast discussion.  It turns out that Middlesex county MA (roughly the North side of the Charles West to Hopkinton and North to the NH border, including Cambridge, Somerville, and Waltham but not Boston) is very similar to Santa Clara county CA (the area around San Jose, including Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Cupertino but not San Francisco) in terms of population, education and even home prices.  But Middlesex has lagged Santa Clara in terms of tech jobs and startups for 20 years.  Why?  Lots of reasons, some of which were discussed over at BostInnovation recently, but let’s get back to non-competes, which might be one of them.

Prof. Matt Marx (it must be awesome being a business professor named Marx) showed some data from his exploration of non-compete agreements and I found two bits of his evidence particularly damning:

Non-competes are signed disproportionally by younger and less-experienced employees. Older and more experienced employees are more likely to negotiate or even refuse these agreements.  You have to figure the older and more experienced folks know something that apparently their juniors don’t.

Non-competes are often sprung on new employees late in the process. Note that I said “employees” not “candidates.” What does it mean when this document isn’t disclosed or even discussed until it’s pretty much too late?  A sizable number of Marx’s respondents reported being given the agreement on the first day of work.  By then, they had already exited their previous job and (if they were the ethical types) turned down any other offers they had on the table.

I take the latter point as evidence that non-competes are being applied in a stealthy manner, the way you go about doing things when you know they’re a little shady.  It can’t quite be called coercive (that would be illegal) since you can always not take the job or quit it.  I take the former point as evidence that these agreements are not in the best interest of employees, even when you take into account the honor of taking the job.

It’s got to be hard for Massachusetts companies to give up this seeming advantage, even the ones that want to, because their competitors may still retain it.  Of course, in some sense, MA companies are competing with CA companies for talent, albeit only the sort of talent that’s considering a 3,000 mile relation.  What’s interesting is that Google’s MA office is sticking with the California model and not doing any non-competes with employees.  I doubt they’re suffering for it.

I’ve only scratched the surface here, but I suggest MA employees in the process of a job change or even just thinking about one should do these things:

• Discuss your current non-complete agreement with a lawyer.  It’s not as expensive as you think, and it could certainly save or earn you a lot of money in the future.
• If you’re at the offer stage with a new opportunity, ask to see the non-compete (if any) before you sign, and discuss it with a lawyer.  Do not assume there is no agreement if they haven’t mentioned it.

I’m not a big fan of excessive regulation on legal agreements between rational parties, but what I heard at the panel suggests that non-compete agreements are neither as controlling or enforceable as employees often think, nor as helpful as companies often think.  It looks like without these agreements, more business grow faster and employees earn more.  Exactly how can that be bad?

Not sure of the status of the cars in there, but they’re not letting anybody else in.

And so, midway through the journey of  life, I found myself printing out a dark forest’s worth of marketing emails so that they could then be scanned and the resulting file burned on a CD to be sent probably via FedEx.  Indeed, I had strayed.

The task was irritating enough as I started at the present and began working backwards, but when I starting finding material that predated my joining the company, it got a little more interesting.  And then, just before the end – or rather, the beginning – I found this.

This is the sort of stuff that drives me mad.  it sets my teath on edge.  No, I’m not complaining that “A sneak-peak at what’s inside” is not a sentence.  I’m pretty much at peace with the use of pieces and fragments in headlines and email subject lines.  It’s the simple error of using “peak” instead of “peek” that gets me. I’ll take a couple of extra irritation points for gratuitous-hyphenation, too.

As deftly explained by Paul Brians with some handy mnemonics, a peak is the top of a mountain, a peek is a glimpse, and pique is irritation or excitement.  For extra credit, we can also find that pique is a type of polo shirt, and a peke is an ugly little dog also known as Pekingese.

Anyway, that message would never have gone out like that on my watch.  It made me think of the time I had to correct “security breeches” to “security breaches” in a press release at a company selling software that helped prevent data theft, not a company selling adult diapers.  Sure, it’s not exactly the decline and fall of Western civilization, but please folks, proofread with your brain, not just your eyes or your computer.

Looks dangerous.

I wonder how fast it’ll do the Kessel Run.