office buzz. Decoding GenZ

Move over millennials, it’s the turn of Gen Z to get decoded. HackerRank’s new report on Women in Tech finds that the arrival of Gen Z (those born after 1997), who are all digital natives, could change the workplace. GenZ women learnt to code at a much younger age compared to the generation before them. The GenZ women coders are more proficient in C and C++ and likely to know both Java and Python. They are brand-conscious and, unlike millennials, would prefer to work with prestigious companies. While overall, all the women coders felt that Silicon Valley would continue to remain the future of tech, GenZ women felt that Shanghai would be the next global tech hub. HackerRank surveyed 12,211 women developers from over 100 countries and for the GenZ report took the responses of those under 21.

British companies have sharply scaled back their hiring and investment plans amid the growing turmoil around Britain’s exit from the European Union, a survey showed on Wednesday. More firms were downbeat about the outlook for jobs and investment than were optimistic for the first time since the Recruitment and Employment Confederation began its surveys in June 2016, the month of the Brexit referendum. Nearly three years on, it remains unclear how, when, or even if, Brexit will happen.

The REC report added to other surveys showing companies feeling the strain of Brexit uncertainty, even though employment growth has been strong. Wednesday’s survey raised questions about the strength of the labour market. “For months, businesses have told us that they were concerned about the general outlook for the economy. It is clear to us that this concern is now closer to home,” REC Chief Executive Neil Carberry said. While more employers planned to increase rather than cut permanent staff, hiring intentions weakened sharply. For temporary staff, the survey showed outright cuts were likely. “Lower use of temporary labour is a sign of lower demand,” Carberry said. The REC survey of 600 employers took place between December 11 and February 21.

If your boss utters a grammatically incorrect sentence, would you let it pass, or quickly correct it? Well, when it comes to grammar, it transpires that a majority of employees don’t think the boss is necessarily right and would correct him or her. According to a survey on grammar policing by Landmark, a Tata Trent company, 56 per cent respondents will rectify their boss’s grammatical error and just mark a mail to their boss, but 23 per cent will not point it out and rather stay in their boss’s good books. Overall, at the workplace, 73 per cent said they would correct the mistakes of colleagues. Landmark surveyed over 2,500 people across the country and some of the results are rather surprising. Grammar snobbery or policing is more prevalent than one would have imagined. Around 78 per cent respondents said they felt ‘uncomfortable’ when grammatical mistakes are made around them. According to the survey, 80 per cent women claimed to be grammar snobs as compared to men. Thirty five per cent of respondents said they would unfollow people on social media if they found their grammar usage cringe-worthy. Krithika Sriram, Head of Marketing, Trent Ltd, says that “Grammar policing is not a new-age movement. However, with the exponential rise in the use of social media, Grammar Elitism is at its peak because of hyper-vigilant grammar nerds who are always on the look-out for grammatical errors. We at Landmark were pretty fascinated by this phenomena and thought it would be interesting to understand the psyche of grammar snobs.”