Morning Advantage: Why Working Families Are Stuck

In a lengthy, research-packed opinion piece for The New York Times, family history professor Stephanie Coontz lays out the conundrum working families face in the United States. One of the major structural problems employees are up against, she argues, begins with the amount of time we’re required to put into our jobs: “As of 2000, the average dual-earner couple worked a combined 82 hours a week,” she writes, “while almost 15% of married couples had a joint workweek of 100 hours or more.” And for lower-income workers, two or more jobs, often with unpredictable hours, can be the norm. Also among the new normal is the fact that 70% of children live in a household where both parents are employed.

While this set of data is unmanageable enough, things become that much more complicated when the “political gets really personal.” Women still earn less than men across the board, and face more hostility when asking for flexibility in the workplace. Men often say they want an egalitarian system of working and raising children, but tend to fall back on traditional roles if faced with exiting the workforce. So when a man works 50-plus hours a week, for more money, his wife or partner is twice as likely to quit her job; if he works 60-plus hours, she’s three times more likely to stay home. When a sociologist interviewed women who had made this decision, she realized it wasn’t a decision at all — it was actually a compromise of last resort. And when women are faced with the realization that they have to contradict their very basic ideals, marriages and home life can become tense. Couples are forced create a family narrative about who does what and why based on roles no one really wanted in the first place. And only policy changes, says Coontz, can make these choices-that-aren’t-choices irrelevant for everyone.

MY COMPANY’S MONEY WENT TO LUXEMBOURG AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS BLOG POST

Four Charts That Show U.S. Companies Hiding Profits Abroad (Quartz)

Tax season is upon us. And while you’re in your apartment, organizing W-2s and awkwardly navigating free online software (OK, maybe I’m projecting here), many big U.S. companies (or at least their money) are in a much more interesting places. Like Bermuda! Or Switzerland! This handy, anger-inducing blog post from Tim Fernholz uses Congressional Research Service data to systematically dismantle the notion that American companies are simply successful in global markets, arguing instead that they’re financially engineering profits abroad to avoid U.S. corporate income taxes. After walking you through the evidence, Fernholz puts the numbers into perspective: in 2008, the U.S. lost between $57 and $90 billion due to this type of tax avoidance. The amount of money set to be cut from the budget, per the sequester, is $110 billion.

BUT IT WORKED FOR ODYSSEUS

Old-Fashioned Personnel Assessments Are Demotivating and Unhelpful (Washington Post On Leadership)

Medtronic has ditched the old-fashioned performance review, eliminating the dreaded numerical rankings as well as a mountain of paperwork, writes Bob Staake for The Washington Post. Instead, the company has instituted a quarterly “performance acceleration” process that focuses on forward-looking goals. The result: The average merit increase for the company’s truly exceptional performers has doubled. But are managers still making the tough calls about terminating people? Yes: People still get fired, and at the same rate as before. A former chief talent officer for the company says most traditional performance reviews are the equivalent of poking employees in the eye with a sharp stick. — Andy O’Connell

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