Gartner finds that US companies are paying less to entice workers to switch jobs, with active job seeking remains low

U.S. employers are offering less of a compensation increase to attract talent and lure workers from their current jobs, according to Gartner. While historically companies have extended, on average, a 15 percent pay increase to get people to switch jobs, the latest data from Gartner’s third quarter of this year Global Talent Monitor report shows this compensation premium has declined over the past six months to approximately 13 percent.

Gartner’s most recent Global Talent Monitor report also shows that only one-third of currently employed U.S. workers indicated they were actively looking for a new job in the third quarter of this year, below the global average of 40 percent. This U.S. number represents a significant drop from a high of 41 percent in the first quarter of this year, while the international average has remained steady over the same time period.

Additionally, for the second consecutive quarter, 51 percent of U.S. workers reflected their intent to stay with their current employer. This figure is well above the international average of nearly 40 percent.

“The dramatic decline in active job seeking that we witnessed in the second quarter did not rebound much in the third quarter, even as employee business confidence and perceptions of the job market remained stable,” said Brian Kropp, chief of research for Gartner HR practice. “This coupled with companies paying less to entice workers to switch jobs demonstrates additional signs of a tighter U.S. labor market from both the employer and employee perspectives.”

In the third quarter, the number of U.S. workers reporting high discretionary effort on the job — or going above and beyond their regular duties — remained at 21 percent as in the previous quarter, higher than the global average of 17 percent and staying above the 20 percent mark in back-to-back quarters for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018. 

Gartner data reveals that compensation has ranked as the No. 1 reason why U.S. employees leave an employer since the first quarter of 2018, a trend that continued in the third quarter this year. Future career opportunities and people management came in as the second and third reasons, respectively, employees cited for leaving a job.

Although wage increases have remained somewhat stagnant over the past few years, companies have an opportunity to retain talent by providing their workforce with new experiences and development programs to help them learn new skills and strengthen their employability. Managers play a vital role as well; by creating environments in which employees feel better connected to the organization, they help strengthen the bond between the company and workers — and create higher performers.

“Faced with less than ideal compensation increases, U.S. workers are looking for other benefits and value they can extract from their jobs,” said Kropp. “Gartner data shows that even if wage increases remain low, workers will stay on with companies that develop programs which enhance their skills and invest in their professional growth within the company.”

Kioxia introduces Twin BiCS FLASH, its 3D semicircular flash memory cell structure that helps boost bit density

Kioxia announced development of the initial three-dimensional (3D) semicircular split-gate flash memory cell structure “Twin BiCS FLASH” using specially designed semicircular Floating Gate (FG) cells. Twin BiCS FLASH achieves superior program slope and a larger program/erase window at a much smaller cell size compared to conventional circular Charge Trap (CT) cells. 

These attributes make this new cell design a promising candidate to surpass four bits per cell (QLC) for significantly higher memory density and fewer stacking layers. This technology was announced at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Francisco, California.

3D flash memory technology has achieved high bit density with low cost per bit by increasing the number of cell stacked layers as well as by implementing multilayer stack deposition and high aspect ratio etching. In recent years, as the number of cell layers exceeds 100, managing the trade-offs among etch profile control, size uniformity and productivity is becoming increasingly challenging. 

To overcome this problem, Kioxia developed a new semicircular cell design by splitting the gate electrode in the conventional circular cell to reduce cell size compared to the conventional circular cell, enabling higher-density memory at a lower number of cell layers.

The circular control gate provides a larger program window with relaxed saturation problems when compared with a planar gate because of the curvature effect, where carrier injection through the tunnel dielectric is enhanced while electron leakage to the block (BLK) dielectric is lowered. In this split-gate cell design, the circular control gate is symmetrically divided into two semicircular gates to take advantage of the strong improvement in the program/erase dynamics. 

The conductive storage layer is employed for high charge trapping efficiency in conjunction with the high-k BLK dielectrics, achieving high coupling ratio to gain program window as well as reduced electron leakage from the FG, thus relieving the saturation issue. The experimental program/erase characteristics reveal that the semicircular FG cells with the high-k-based BLK exhibit significant gains in the program slope and program/erase window over the larger-sized circular CT cells. 

The semicircular FG cells, having superior program/erase characteristics, are expected to attain comparably tight QLC Vt distributions at small cell size. Further, integration of low-trap Si channel makes possible more than four bits/cell, e.g., Penta-Level Cell (PLC). These results confirm that semicircular FG cells are a viable option to pursue higher bit density.

Going forward, Kioxia’s research and development efforts aimed at innovation in flash memory will include continuing Twin BiCS FLASH development and seeking its practical applications.

IDC finds that the refresh cycle of Surface and iPad will keep tablets market alive in the EMEA region

The EMEA tablet market reached 10.9 million units in the third quarter of the year, a drop of 8.2 percent on the same quarter last year, according to data from IDC. The contraction in consumer demand continues to be the main inhibitor of tablet adoption. 

As consumers lack compelling reasons to refresh their devices, life cycles continuously increase, leading to a market slowdown. However, the deployment of tablets in the commercial segments remains healthy, with a 4.2 percent year-on-year increase, due to the larger number of usage scenarios generated by digital transformation.

"In a quarter usually marked by seasonality, where there is a balance between the top two companies, Apple maintained and consolidated its market leadership," said Helena Ferreira, research analyst, IDC Western Europe Personal Computing Devices. "The growing market saturation is driving consolidation, as the top five companies become increasingly dominant, and in developed economies, like in Western Europe, the top five represented more than three-quarters of the market."   

The overall tablet market in Western Europe declined 6.0 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of this year, while and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) declined 12.0 percent year-on-year.

"Slate tablet shipments are continuing to drag down overall tablet results in both CEE and MEA, mostly due to the consumer consumption slowdown and significant drops in below-10in. tablets, due to stiff competition from large-screen smartphones," said Nikolina Jurisic, program manager, IDC CEMA.

Apple retained the market leadership in EMEA, ahead of its product refresh cycle. Samsung posted a double-digit decline, as the main focus is on pushing its prosumer S series and driving more profitability. Lenovo regained third position, filling the gap left by Huawei's decline. 

Huawei dropped to fourth and continues to suffer from the impact of the ban on consumer confidence. Amazon remained in the top 5 and continues to dominate the ultra-low-end price ranges, particularly during promotional periods such as Prime Day in the third quarter.

The EMEA tablet market is forecast to decline by 10.2 percent year-on-year in both the fourth quarter and for the whole year 2019. The dynamics affecting the market, particularly in the consumer segment, are expected to persist both in the consumer and in the commercial segments in the coming quarters.

"Despite the decline in total units shipped, the tier A vendors will sustain market value, particularly through the most recent iterations of iPad and Surface," said Daniel Goncalves, senior research analyst, IDC Western Europe Personal Computing Devices. "The new iPad with a first party keyboard and a new operating system designed to enhance productivity features in a tablet environment is expected to generate interest among prosumers and to continue boosting renewals of old tablets. On the other hand, the adoption of Surface Pro as a notebook replacement is expected to continue to thrive and to increasingly drive horizontal deployments in enterprise." 

The commercial market in EMEA is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 4.6 percent between 2019 and 2023.

"In the long run, the commercial segment is expected to grow due to the transition to mobility and growing user case scenarios for deploying tablets into businesses," said Jurisic.

Microsoft Research Open Data Project lays down evolving standards for data access and reproducible research

Microsoft Research has announced that it will be adopting the Open Use of Data Agreement (O-UDA) data for several datasets that the company offers. 

The Open Use of Data Agreement (O-UDA) is intended to make it easier for individuals and organizations that want to share data to do so, with minimal requirements for users and no restrictions on use. The O-UDA is complemented by the Computational Use of Data Agreement (C-UDA), an agreement intended for situations where a specific data use scenario is desirable or required.

It is not appropriate for datasets that include any data that might include materials subject to privacy laws (such as the GDPR or HIPAA) or other unlicensed third-party materials. 

The O-UDA meets the open definition: it does not impose any restriction with respect to the use or modification of data other than ensuring that attribution and limitation of liability information is passed downstream. In the research context, this implies that users of the data need to cite the corresponding publication with which the data is associated. This aids in findability and reusability of data, an important tenet in the FAIR guiding principles for scientific data management and stewardship.

Microsoft recognizes that in certain cases, datasets useful for AI and research analysis may not be able to be fully “open” under the O-UDA. For example, they may contain third-party copyrighted materials, such as text snippets or images, from publicly available sources. 

The law permits their use for research, so following the principle that research data should be “as open as possible, as closed as necessary,” Microsoft developed the Computational Use of Data Agreement (C-UDA) to make data available for research while respecting other interests. The software giant will prefer the O-UDA where possible, but perceives the C-UDA as a useful tool for ensuring that researchers continue to have access to important and relevant datasets.

Microsoft researcher John Krumm and collaborators collected GPS data from 21 people who carried a GPS receiver in the Seattle area. Users who provided their data agreed to it being shared as long as certain geographic regions were deleted. 

This work covers key research on privacy preservation of GPS data as evidenced in the corresponding paper, “Exploring End User Preferences for Location Obfuscation, Location-Based Services, and the Value of Location,” which was accepted at the Twelfth ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2010). The paper has been cited 147 times, including for research that builds upon this work to further the field of preservation of geo-privacy for location-based services providers.

Another example dataset is that of labeled hand images and video clips collected by researchers Eyal Krupka, Kfir Karmon, and others. The research addresses an important computer vision and machine learning problem that deals with developing a hand-gesture-based interface language. 

The data was recorded using depth cameras and has labels that cover joints and fingertips. The two datasets included are FingersData, which contains 3,500 labeled depth frames of various hand poses, and GestureClips, which contains 140 gesture clips (100 of these contain labeled hand gestures and 40 contain non-gesture activity). 

The research associated with this dataset is available in the paper “Toward Realistic Hands Gesture Interface: Keeping it Simple for Developers and Machines,” which was published in Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Finally, the FigureQA dataset generated by researchers Samira Ebrahimi Kahou, Adam Atkinson, Adam Trischler, Yoshua Bengio and collaborators, introduces a visual reasoning task for research that is specific to graphical plots and figures. 

Microsoft Research Open Data project was conceived from the start to reflect Microsoft Research’s commitment to fostering open science and research and to achieve this without compromising the ethics of collecting and sharing data. The company aims to make it easier for researchers to maintain provenance of data while having the ability to reference and build upon it.

Gartner reveals that just 22 percent of CFOs are personally effective; while most are overinvested in finance tasks

Only 22 percent of CFOs achieve a high degree of personal effectiveness, and Gartner Inc. research shows that a limited set of activities and relationships outside the finance department are the biggest contributors to a CFO’s personal effectiveness.

The research was based on more than 100 CFO interviews and it assessed CFO personal performance and effectiveness across 231 attributes to reveal what the most effective CFOs do differently with their time, relationships and teams.

Gartner determined CFO personal effectiveness based on how closely a CFO’s organization aligned to efficient growth behaviors, such as positive risk taking to drive long-term growth, as well as the CFO’s ability to meet CEO expectations around revenue growth, margin expansion, return on invested capital and balance sheet health.

As part of the analysis, Gartner studied the average weekly activities of CFOs and found that the average CFO lost one full day of work per week to ineffective activities. The largest misallocation was in how much time CFOs spent working within their own departments.

“CFOs want to reinvent their departments, keep their talent pipelines full and provide services more efficiently to internal business partners, so it’s not surprising that most respondents noted that managing these activities were a huge demand on their time,” said Mr. Nagy. “However, none of these activities, even if mastered, ultimately impacted how effective a CFO was in their overall job performance.”

Gartner found that there was no correlation between an organization’s size or industry in how effectively their CFO performed. Within the finance department, a CFO taking personal ownership of finance talent acquisition, mergers and acquisitions strategy, cost management or digital transformation also had no material impact in how effective the CFO was rated in overall job performance.

“CFOs tell us they have more demands than ever, but the surprise in this research is just how few activities differentiate the most successful operators from the rest of the pack,” said Peter Nagy, research vice president in Gartner Finance practice. “The most important relationships that drive high performance in the CFO role are found in the boardroom and where the customers are, not in the finance department.”

Kaspersky research confirms that cybercriminals have been stealing guests’ credit card data from hotels worldwide

Kaspersky’s research of the RevengeHotels campaign has confirmed that over 20 hotels in Latin America, Europe and Asia have fallen victim to targeted malware attacks. As a result, travelers’ credit card data, which is stored in a hotel administration systems including those received from online travel agencies (OTAs), is at risk of being stolen and sold to cybercriminals worldwide.

The RevengeHotels campaign includes different groups using traditional Remote Access Trojans (RATs) to infect businesses in the hospitality sector. The campaign has been active since 2015 but has increased its presence in 2019. At least two groups, RevengeHotels and ProCC, were identified to be part of the campaign, however more cybercriminal groups are potentially involved.

The main attack vector includes emails with crafted malicious Word, Excel or PDF documents attached. Some of them exploit CVE-2017-0199, loading it using VBS and PowerShell scripts. It then installs customized versions of various RATs and other custom malware, such as ProCC, on the victim’s machine that could later execute commands and set up remote access to the infected systems.

Each spear-phishing email is crafted with special attention to detail. The emails impersonate real people from legitimate organizations who make a fake booking request for a large group of people. 

It is worth noting that even careful users could be tricked to open and download attachments from such emails as they include an abundance of details (for instance, copies of legal documents and reasons for booking at the hotel) and looked convincing. The only detail that would reveal the attacker would be a typosquatting domain of the organization.

Once infected, computers can be accessed remotely, and not just by the cybercriminal group itself. Evidence collected by Kaspersky researchers shows that remote access to hospitality desks and the data they contain is sold on criminal forums on a subscription basis. 

Malware collected data from hospitality desk clipboards, printer spoolers and captured screenshots (this function was triggered using specific words in English or Portuguese). As hotel personnel often copied clients’ credit card data from OTA’s in order to charge them, this data could also be compromised.

Kaspersky telemetry confirmed targets in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, France, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Thailand and Turkey. However, based on data extracted from Bit.ly, a popular link shortening service used by the attackers to spread malicious links, Kaspersky researchers assume that users from many other countries have at least accessed the malicious link, suggesting that the number of countries with potential victims could be higher.

“As users grow wary of how protected their data truly is, cybercriminals turn to small businesses, which are often not very well protected from cyberattacks and possess a concentration of personal data,” said Dmitry Bestuzhev, head of global research and analysis team for Kaspersky Latin America. “Hoteliers and other small businesses dealing with customer data need to be more cautious and apply professional security solutions to avoid data leaks that could potentially not only affect customers, but also damage hotel reputations as well.”

Google announces progress on effects of AI to the reporting process, beginning with news gathering and distribution

Google released Monday a report which highlights how AI offers new powers to journalists across the reporting process, from news gathering to distribution. It also underlines how news organizations that want to explore this potential must be ready to consider and carefully monitor the ethical and editorial implications of these new technologies.

This research is the result of Journalism AI, a year-long collaboration between Polis, the international journalism think tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Google News Initiative, to educate newsrooms about the potential offered by AI-powered technologies through research, training and networking.

The Journalism AI report is based on a survey of 71 news organisations in 32 different countries regarding artificial intelligence and associated technologies. A wide range of journalists working with AI answered questions about their understanding of AI, how it was used in their newsrooms, and their views on the wider potential and risks for the news industry.

What emerges from this research is that AI is a significant part of journalism already but it is unevenly distributed. AI is giving journalists more power, but with that comes editorial and ethical responsibilities.

The future impact of AI is uncertain but it has the potential for wide-ranging and profound influence on how journalism is made and consumed. AI can free up journalists to work on creating better journalism at a time when the news industry is fighting for economic sustainability and for public trust and relevance. It can also help the public cope with a world of news overload and misinformation and to connect them in a convenient way to credible content that is relevant, useful and stimulating for their lives.

Artificial intelligence is helping transform many businesses, and journalism is no exception. Newsrooms are already using AI to help organize and find videos and images, transcribe interviews in multiple languages and much more. But the industry  is still trying to understand the full impact AI can have.  

Newsrooms around the world are experimenting with AI, and responses to the Journalism AI survey came from 71 media organizations in 32 countries. Publishers, editors and reporters shared their detailed thoughts on the potential of AI for the news industry, how it is impacting their organizations and the risks and challenges involved with this new wave of technological innovation. 

The findings make it clear that journalism should pay attention to AI, which has the potential for wide-ranging and profound influence on how journalism is made and consumed. 

On one side, AI technologies promise to free up time for journalists to work on the more creative aspects of the news production, leaving tedious and repetitive tasks to machines. At a time when the news industry is fighting for economic sustainability and for the public’s trust, it’s easy to see why this promise is highly attractive.

On the other side, via personalization and smart recommendations, AI can help the public cope with news overload, connecting them in a convenient way to credible content that is relevant, useful, and stimulating for their lives.