NaBloPo: Monday Matters

Well this is quite interesting.  Since I've been posting once a day I shouldn't have enough material to fill up my normal Weekly Roundup post but somehow it's pretty close.  To be fair there's really nothing to talk about for workouts or TV, but I got eats, a book, and some snarky werk talk.  Let's go! (Wait I stole "Let's Go" from Caroline Girvan so I guess we have workout talk after all).

For all things NaBloPo head over to The Inbetween in Mine 

Food Talk 

Item #1

I made Shepherd's Pie for Sunday dinner (pictured above).

Item #2

We have boatloads of leftover pizza from the weekend, and it just so happens that I'm in the mood to eat boatloads of leftover pizza for lunch for a while.  And yes I totally used this as an excuse to make up another batch of Cheap Lazy Vegan's Caesar salad dressing to go with.

Item #3

While the Shepherd's Pie was cooking, I whipped up a sesame tofu stir fry for dinners this week.  Big taste/little effort = recommend!

Reads

My reading dry spell came to an end.  A few weeks ago I read two really good books back to back and then didn't have anything else on tap, so I took a reading break while I waited for something else to come along.

Something else came along!  A long time ago I read a book called The Passenger by Lisa Lutz that I greatly enjoyed, and for some reason it came to mind and I checked to see if she'd written anything else since then.  The options were a "weird things happen at upscale private schools" book which isn't my genre and The Accomplice, which got my attention from the first sentence of the plot summary so I looked no further and clicked the checkout button on Libby.

IMO, the Dual Timelines structure has been done to death and too often I feel like it's used to camouflage a weak plot.  But when it works, it works.  The recap from as far as I've gotten: Owen and Luna are two attractive people who meet in college.  Flash forward to their adult lives and they are very close friends, though 100% in the Friend Zone.  Someone close to Owen is murdered, Luna finds the body, and they say to each other "aw man, not again"  I'm here eating it up and not complaining one bit when the story goes from "Eek a body!" to "Meanwhile in Sophomore year".  I'll keep you posted.

Werk Snark Talk

I had an intro call with the recruiter at Cool Startup (that company that contacted me out of the blue last thing on Friday to ask if I wanted to interview with them).  Mind you, I've settled down in my current job and I'm not looking BUT if someone is going to take the trouble to come to me, then duh of course I'm going to give them the time of day.

It was a good chat.  Usually recruiter calls are by phone but this one was video, which I like because I feel like I get more of a vibe on the company when I have a visual.  Everything was good so of course I'm interested in learning more about them and I'll find out if they want to move forward in a few days.  The only "huh" that I've got is that he never asked about compensation, which may or may not be a red flag.

My snark talk isn't about MY work but about something I've been watching on LinkedIn.  New York City just went live with a new law that requires employers to disclose the pay range in job postings.  I am all for this since one of the things that I've observed at every company that I've ever worked for in my career as a payroll accountant is that people who get promoted up from entry level jobs tend give a lot of value to their employers and they tend to be very loyal AND they also tend to get stuck with entry level salaries.  Real life example: you start at a company making $40k and two years later you've had a string of promotions that have taken you up to $60k which means that you're pretty happy with your life.  Especially since you don't know that the person who left the job that you got promoted into was making $120k and that person wasn't particularly good at the job and you're terrific.  No I am not making those numbers up and no it is not something that I saw happen one time - ya get me?  I've also shared that I've had positive conversations with my colleagues in recruiting and overall I feel that they really do see it as part of their jobs to help end pay discrimination by such practices as asking "what is your desired compensation?" instead of "whaddya make now and dude we're gonna pay you the same".

What are employers doing about the new NYC law?  LinkedIn News has the answers!

Some Firms Try to Avoid NYC Pay Laws (TL&DR companies are outsourcing recruiting so that the ads are coming from third parties and not them so they don't have to include the pay range)

$200k Pay Ranges Under New NYC Law (TL&DR those bastards are listing pay ranges such as $173k to $380k so to make the ranges useless)

lol no surprises there.  Things do change and dinosaurs do become extinct.  It just takes a while.