Whether its Chaya Raichik from Libs of TikTok, Ian Miles Cheong or Ben Shapiro, conservative activists are complaining their online voices are once again being unfairly silenced.

This time however, it was happening under Musk, a self-described free speech absolutist who was keen to tempt back right-wing pundits who ditched Twitter for platforms like Truth Social, Parler, and Gab.

To erase any doubts he may secretly be shadowbanning alt-right commentators in a bid to claw back Tesla share value which has nosedived since his Twitter takeover, he is reaching out to them personally to admit something has indeed gone very wrong. 

This is extremely concerning, Musk replied to Cheong on Tuesday, who had recommended his half million followers set their account to private in order to vastly improve their engagement. 

Typically, doing so ought to actually limit engagement, but the former editor-in-chief of video game site Gameranx claimed it actually quintupled his reach by disabling Twitters presumed left-leaning algorithms. 

Raichik subsequently locked her Libs of TikTok account, which often satirizes Gen Z instructional videos on so-called neopronoun use, with Shapiro following as well.

The Daily Wire co-founder soon found out from political bedfellow Jordan Peterson that the Canadian psychologist could no longer retweet anything Shapiro had posted.

A worried Musk then decided the best way to find out if there was any truth to the theory was to test it out on his own personal account. He later claimed it indeed helped identify unspecified issues with the system. 

Should be addressed by next week, he tweeted reassuringly late on Wednesday.  

The controversy occurred only days after conservative pundit David Rubin from The Rubin Report personally met with Musk at Twitter HQ to find out why his account seemed to be absolutely crushed.

He explained Musk felt the entire code may need to be torn down in order to start from scratch since, in the entrepreneurs own words, the situation is a flaming dumpster rolling down the street.

Plummeting engagement, possibly an inadvertent result of Musk trying to deliver on his promise of amplifying postings from his paying Twitter Blue subscribers, has been aggravating users in recent days. 

But the result of Musk being forced to performatively experiment on himself after sacking more than half of Twitters staff was rather predictably met with online schadenfreude.

Im just floored, wrote one user on Wednesday. All these far-right accounts locking their Twitter down because they believe it drives more interactions due to a bug is both the greatest and the funniest thing Ive seen on this site. 

In a story entitled Elon Musk and Right-Wing Friends Do Us a Favor By Hiding Their Tweets, publication Rolling Stone wrote that Twitters right-wing power users were once again complaining of unfair treatmentnow visited upon them by their own presumed ally.

The right wants, more than almost anything to prove they are victims of Big Tech censorship, it wrote. 

The delicate nature of this engagement controversy just goes to show how prescient The Verges editor-in-chief Nilay Patel was when he predicted on October 28^th Musk was in for a miserable experience at Twitter now that he was in the business of moderating content.

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Many new digital tools entered the workforce recently, and while there is yet to be something as futuristic as flying cars or self-lacing shoes (as predicted in Back to the Futures depiction of 2015), there are still some new-fangled inventions that have been implemented. As remote work took the nation by storm during the early pandemic, digital tools like Zoom and Teams were used more frequently. And with investments pouring into artificial intelligence, the world of A.I. is also seeping into the workforce as automated programs like ChatGPT take off.

Less invested in than weird A.I. portraits or automated messaging systems that tell you everything is subjective: Gen Zers. While companies are rapidly changing to become more digitized and automated, the youngest working generation isnt being trained adequately to deal with this new reality. 

More than a third (37%) of Gen Zers feel their school education didnt prepare them with the digital skills they need to propel their career, according to Dell Technologies international survey of more than 15,000 adults ages 18 to 26 across 15 countries. A majority (56%) of this generation added that they had very basic to no digital skills education.

Its all led to some warranted skepticism regarding the future of work: Many Gen Zers are unsure what the digital economy will look like, and 33% have little to no confidence that the governments investments in a digital future will be successful in 10 years. Forty-four percent think that schools and businesses should work together to address the digital skills gap.

Gen Zs skills gap could be why they feel tech shame at work

The findings back up past research that found nearly half of the Class of 2022 felt the top skill they were underprepared for was technical skills.

It may all come as a surprise considering that Gen Z are digital natives. That means theyre often assumed to be the most technologically proficient in the workplace and assigned the work of explaining new tools to their colleagues, which stresses Gen Z out. As many as 1 in 5 young workers feel judged for having tech issues, whereas only 1 in 25 of their older peers report feeling similarly, according to a survey from HP. These tech snafus have created feelings of tech shame among the generation, which sometimes stops them from participating in meetings.

What little training thats being provided is not being distributed equitably. Theres a glaring gap in accessibility and application of tech education resources between lower-income and affluent studentsa gap that was widened by the pandemic, Rose Stuckey Kirk, chief corporate social responsibility officer, wrote for Fortune. And we know this gap is more than an academic or social justice issue.

Its evidence of the broader skills gap prevalent in the workforce right now. The problem for Gen Z is that digital communication skills are most high in-demand. But a large portion of them are taking it upon themselves to learn more; 36% plan on acquiring digital skills in order to get a new job or keep their job, Dell finds. 

Considering that many companies arent equipped with the resources to handle the skills gap, the Gen Zers who do teach themselves digital skills will likely have a leg up in the job search over those who dont.

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Many people think of commuting as a chore and a waste of time. However, during the remote work surge resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, several journalists curiously noted that people were could it be? missing their commutes. One woman told The Washington Post that even though she was working from home, she regularly sat in her car in the driveway at the end of the workday in an attempt to carve out some personal time and mark the transition from work to nonwork roles.

As management scholars who study the interface between peoples work and personal lives, we sought to understand what it was that people missed when their commutes suddenly disappeared.

In our recently published conceptual study, we argue that commutes are a source of liminal space a time free of both home and work roles that provides an opportunity to recover from work and mentally switch gears to home.

During the shift to remote work, many people lost this built-in support for these important daily processes. Without the ability to mentally shift gears, people experience role blurring, which can lead to stress. Without mentally disengaging from work, people can experience burnout.

We believe the loss of this space helps explain why many people missed their commutes.

Commutes and liminal space

In our study, we wanted to learn whether the commute provides that time and space, and what the effects are when it becomes unavailable.

We reviewed research on commuting, role transitions and work recovery to develop a model of a typical American workers commute liminal space. We focused our research on two cognitive processes: psychological detachment from the work role mentally disengaging from the demands of work and psychological recovery from work rebuilding stores of mental energy used up during work.

Based on our review, we developed a model which shows that the liminal space created in the commute created opportunities for detachment and recovery.

However, we also found that day-to-day variations may affect whether this liminal space is accessible for detachment and recovery. For instance, train commuters must devote attention to selecting their route, monitoring arrivals or departures and ensuring they get off at the right stop, whereas car commuters must devote consistent attention to driving.

We found that, on the one hand, more attention to the act of commuting means less attention that could otherwise be put toward relaxing recovery activities like listening to music and podcasts. On the other hand, longer commutes might give people more time to detach and recover.

In an unpublished follow-up study we conducted ourselves, we examined a week of commutes of 80 university employees to test our conceptual model. The employees completed morning and evening surveys asking about the characteristics of their commutes, whether they shut off from work and relaxed during the commute and whether they felt emotionally exhausted when they got home.

Most of the workers in this study reported using the commutes liminal space to both mentally transition from work to home roles and to start psychologically recovering from the demands of the workday. Our study also confirms that day-to-day variations in commutes predict the ability to do so.

We found that on days with longer-than-average commutes, people reported higher levels of psychological detachment from work and were more relaxed during the commute. However, on days when commutes were more stressful than usual, they reported less psychological detachment from work and less relaxation during the commute.

Creating liminal space

Our findings suggest that remote workers may benefit from creating their own form of commute to provide liminal space for recovery and transition such as a 15-minute walk to mark the beginning and end of the workday.

Our preliminary findings align with related research suggesting that those who have returned to the workplace might benefit from seeking to use their commute to relax as much as possible.

To help enhance work detachment and relaxation during the commute, commuters could try to avoid ruminating about the workday and instead focus on personally fulfilling uses of the commute time, such as listening to music or podcasts, or calling a friend. Other forms of commuting such as public transit or carpooling may also provide opportunities to socialize.

Our data shows that commute stress detracts from detachment and relaxation during the commute more than a shorter or longer commute. So some people may find it worth their time to take the scenic route home in order to avoid tense driving situations.

Matthew Piszczek is Assistant Professor of Management, Wayne State University and Kristie McAlpine is Assistant Professor of Management, Rutgers University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of organizational behavior at University College of London, coined the term Great Resignation way back in May 2021 during an interview with Bloomberg.

When theres uncertainty, people tend to stay put, so there are pent-up resignations that didnt happen over the past year, Klotz said at the time. The rate of those resignations was compounded by the many pandemic-related epiphanies about values, passions, and the need for work-life balance.

Suffice it to say, Klotz hit the nail on the head. Forty-seven million Americans quit their job in 2021; 46.6 million quit last year. Thats a relatively small dip, but Klotz says this year will bring a precipitous fall as the labor market evens itself out.  

Thanks in large part to the threat of a recession and a millions-strong wave of layoffs across sectors, quit rates have slowed so much that its like the pandemic never happened, Klotz told CNBC Make It on Wednesday, adding that they seem to be plateauing.

The pandemic definitely happened, but what hasnt lasted is job hoppers pandemic-era confidence that a great new job is always around the corner. Workers optimism that theyll find a strong new role has dropped precipitously, Klotz said, and workers have become much less likely to quit if they dont have something new lined up. As more companies reduce hiring, job seekers will have fewer options, and quitting becomes harder to do. 

That might explain why so many people who have joined the Great Resignation recently are having a harder time finding a job than expected. Even if quitting has gone out of fashion, employers are going to work overtime on attracting and retaining talented workers this year, Klotz predicts. That may take the form of expanding benefits, upping salaries, and potentially even bending on return-to-office mandates. 

If youre getting what you want from your current job, theres less incentive to quit, Klotz told CNBC. We cant discount the fact that millions of jobs are better now than they were three years ago, thanks, in large part, to the policy changes companies have made.

Minor technicalities 

Now, the data doesnt quite back Klotz up. According to the latest JOLTS report, released Wednesday, U.S. job openings surged to 11 million in December 2022: a five-month high. And nearly half of workers plan to ask for a raise this yearand say theyll likely quit if they dont get one. But you cant argue with the expert, although Klotz acknowledges some caveats himself. 

Not every industrys employers have regained total power, Klotz said. Sectors like health care, retail, and transportation are still feeling the squeeze of two years of Great Resignations and have continued hiring at a rapid clip to stem their losses. 

Plus, other experts predict that even if the Great Resignation becomes demoted to just the Good Resignation this year, bosses wont retain the upper hand for long. 

Beyond the near-term noise of the boom-and-bust economic cycle, there are very clear labor-supply headwinds across the advanced industrialized world, Aaron Terrazas, chief economist at jobs site Glassdoor, told Fortune last month. Aging demographics and slow immigration mean that the pendulum of the market should swing back toward employees before long.

The Great Resignation, quiet quitting, and record levels of job openings proved that the war for talent is over and talent has won, added Carin Van Vuuren, chief marketing officer at SaaS company Greenhouse. The power will remain in candidates hands and they will continue to be selective about who they work for and wherethis could be the first recession that we see job seekers win.

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