Career & Leadership

All 7 articles in this section

The First Five Years: Where Career Paths Quietly Diverge

The First Five Years: Where Career Paths Quietly Diverge

Entry-level pay is close to equal in most professions. The gap opens in a specific window, through a specific mechanism, and almost nobody is warned about it in advance.

Rachel Cohen · 5 min read
Your First Salary Negotiation: What the Evidence Says Works

Your First Salary Negotiation: What the Evidence Says Works

The advice to “just ask” is incomplete and in some contexts counterproductive. The research points to a narrower set of moves that survive the backlash problem.

Meera Krishnan · 4 min read
The Broken Rung Is Not the Glass Ceiling

The Broken Rung Is Not the Glass Ceiling

Corporate pipeline data locates the largest loss at the first step into management, not at the top. That relocation changes which interventions could possibly work.

Michael Johnson · 4 min read
How Teenagers Build Networks Without Knowing It

How Teenagers Build Networks Without Knowing It

The strength-of-weak-ties finding explains a great deal about who hears about opportunities. It also explains why some sixteen-year-olds are accumulating an advantage nobody has told them about.

Priya Patel · 4 min read
Internships, Unpaid Work and Who Can Afford a Career Start

Internships, Unpaid Work and Who Can Afford a Career Start

In several high-status sectors, the standard entry route requires working for nothing in an expensive city. This functions as a means test, and its effects are well documented.

Sarah Williams · 4 min read
Performance Reviews Read Differently for Women. Here Is How.

Performance Reviews Read Differently for Women. Here Is How.

Textual analyses of large numbers of reviews find consistent differences in vocabulary, specificity and the ratio of personality feedback to work feedback.

Rachel Cohen · 4 min read
The Only One in the Room: What Tokenism Does to Performance

The Only One in the Room: What Tokenism Does to Performance

Being the sole representative of a group in a workplace has measurable effects on visibility, evaluation and workload that are separate from any question of ability.

Rachel Cohen · 4 min read