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    Pilita Clark

    Columnist

    Pilita Clark is an associate editor and business columnist at the Financial Times. She writes a weekly column on modern corporate life, as well as features and other articles.

    Pilita Clark

    Today

    Tesla has suffered a raft of other pressures, from higher interest rates to supply chain glitches.

    Why Musk’s antics now appear to be hurting his bottom line

    After a string of inflammatory remarks on social media, Elon Musk seems to be turning off the most obvious customers for his cars.

    • Updated

    This Month

    J.D. Vance’s comments are not just astronomically offensive and politically witless, they also betray a serious misunderstanding of where the world is heading in the first half of the 21st century.

    Beware the march of the childless voter

    The number of non-reproducers is already large and it’s rising, and unfortunately for J.D. Vance, these people may not have kids, but they do have votes.

    July

    ‘Humaning’ and other nonsense: why we put up with corporate twaddle

    Office jargon will always be unstoppable because it makes us feel more secure, more of an insider and more able to tell someone something pronto.

    Do you get sick on holidays? You’re probably a workaholic

    Those of us who fall ill as soon as we stop work may need to rethink our approach to life.

    This is the new normal for working from home and commuting into the office.

    This is the new normal of office life

    Flexible working patterns in a decent place that makes it easy to do the job you’re paid for is a basic recipe for success in a post-pandemic world.

    • Updated
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    Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer can work and work with “ridiculously small amounts of sleep”, according to one of his ex-girlfriends.

    The productivity hack that really does boost careers

    Physical stamina is an oddly overlooked superpower in working life. But although it will take you a long way, it won’t always be enough to achieve enduring success.

    June

    accent

    Why your accent might be holding you back at work

    Wall Street banks and big law firms are among employers addressing this potential discrimination.

    London

    Why workers are shunning plum foreign postings

    Some companies have found that the impact of the pandemic has intensified a reluctance to move abroad for work.

    May

    The humble email sign-off is not what it used to be

    It is not exactly clear when the sign-off turned into yet another tool in the arsenal of self-promotion deployed in so much of modern corporate life, but I do not see it fading any time soon.

    How much fun should you have at work?

    Jokes at work need to be deployed with skill and care. Yet, the best are glorious and the working world would be a far better place if we had a great deal more of them.

    Dozens of men have more than five separate domestic violence victims each.

    Domestic violence is also a workplace issue

    Governments should take the lead on the problem, but other groups can do more, including employers. Companies can achieve much more than many imagine.

    April

    Universities are catching hundreds of students in a new wave of alleged cheating using ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence.

    ChatGPT essay cheats are a menace to us all

    Some universities are increasing face-to-face assessments to discourage AI cheating. Academics should be encouraged to expose the problem, not deterred from fixing it.

    • Updated
    workers

    Why it doesn’t pay to be a working-class professional

    Social class is a bigger barrier to career progress than gender or ethnicity, a study by KPMG in Britain has shown.

    March

    Time warp. Empty restaurants in the Sydney CBD at the start of the pandemic.

    The pandemic still warps our sense of time

    It is almost a year since the WHO declared COVID-19 was no longer a global public health emergency, so shouldn’t we have reset by now? Not necessarily, say academics.

    Has the push for female equality gone too far?

    Ireland’s failure to modernise constitutional language on the role of women suggests reluctance to go further with equality. What’s going on?

    • Updated
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    Companies mandating their workers return to the office will live to regret it, says a top executive of Atlassian.

    The misery of motormouths in meetings

    The ability to interrupt yammering windbags who steal time is a sorely underrated skill.

    Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson.

    Vanessa Hudson is not alone. Why women teeter on ‘glass cliff’

    Female workers are deemed more likely to rise to the top when the job is dire, the risk of failure is high and men are less interested in the gig.

    February

    The rising menace of absurd job titles

    From “global general counsel” to “chief growth officer”, terrible epithets confuse and infuriate, but they are also increasing.

    The new world of work is creating its own fault lines.

    Work from home if you want but don’t expect a pay rise

    Remote working is linked with lower wage growth, higher productivity and happier staff.

    Why ignoring modern business thinking can be key to success

    The inventor of the AeroPress disregarded conventional wisdom about marketing, pricing and almost everything else on how to run a profitable business.