Hi All,
Hope your week is going well! Probably the most interesting thing this week was Page and Brin stepping away executive management but will continue to be âemployeesâ. This article further mentions that Page/Brin will âcontinue talking with Sundar regularly, especially on topics weâre passionate about.â To me this is pretty clear, Page and Brin are tired of being responsible grown upâs (they still have voting influence) but they donât want to handle the day to day mundane stuff (regulation, scandals, employee activism etc). I mean what the hell they definitely deserve to do what they want to do! The article while title aptly would be better titled as Google foundersâ second childhood :) Really, the end of an era!Â
Ok on to this weekâs reads
I read this article on the new rules and local protectionism. Liberalization of the early 1990âs made the market what it is today. And that is why foreign companies want to come and visit but this is like but âtariffsâ all over again and this encourages bad behavior and laziness.
Talking about bad behavior employers lying is definitely a gripe of mine. I have been to interviews and one just a few months ago at a well known company that Iâm sure you all have used and this was my entire experience. Lies! Lies! Lies. While I am grateful to have a job I do think itâs not too much to ask for honesty rather than a switch and bait that I went through recently. Lying and hiding are not tactics for success. Really!
To measure employee fulfillment instead of happiness, consider swapping out the traditional "How happy are you at work?" for one or several of the below questions on your next employee survey:
How likely are you to recommend the company as a place to work, on a scale from 1 to 10?
How much would you say you're growing in your role at the company?
How well do the expectations set out in the interview process and the reality of working here align?
Are you glad you joined the company? Why or why not?Â
How would you rate your fulfillment at the company, on a scale from 1 to 10?
I have been an avid follower of the journalism industry and the effect social media has had on publishers. In retrospect, I really wonder if this fate, the publishers were to see is really all that surprising? This article is a good summary and some takes on the future
Talking about journalism and the impact of Social Media and data collection, all these recent hacks have seriously made me question each time I provide my data to anyone. This list will show you how prevalent hacks have become and yet we surround ourselves with more data grabbing machines ...
This article on collective action and burnout was super interesting.
This coordination would never work, however. This is an example of what economists and political philosophers call a collective action problem, in which all individuals would be better off cooperating, but donât because conflicting interests between individuals discourage it. In the context of professional cycling, the incentive for each individual to win outweighs their incentive to not dope, even as the consequences for doing so include potential loss of life.
I think this article on Product and Company strategy was very interesting. It is when Product and Company strategy are not tied together and coherent when we have teams go off and do things that might move the needle but still not be aligned with the company strategy.
I love marketplaces and I love growth, too. Here are the various ways in which companies kickstarted their marketplace. What I feel is missing is not the experimentation but how these companies actually analyzed the signals that a channel is indeed good and that it indeed will be scalable. I suspect the answer is that they didnât know.Â
Paul Graham on what differentiates geniuses
Social media is broken badly. We all know that. This article talks about ways in which we can fix it. An interesting read but I think what this is missing is that bad people with bad intent exist everywhere and limiting their reach while a good idea still doesnât eliminate it. You can speak but you may not be heard
On streaming wars this read from Scott Galloway was spot on - i wonder though about NFLX/Roku.Given customer demand unless balance tilts i dont think this will happen (i.e. viewers care less about NFLX)
For those of you interested in programmatic advertising, this read on Googleâs ad machine was very educational
I love Shane Parrishâs weekly news letter and I totally agree with his viewpoint on mental models. Knowledge compounds. It really does!Â
Mental models are how we explain the world to ourselves. Compounding, for instance, is a mental model that helps us understand how things grow non-linearly. Supply and demand helps us understand why some things cost more than others. Typically, we apply these models only in the field in which we learn them, which limits their use. Money isnât the only thing that compounds, so do relationships. While no model perfectly explains reality, that doesnât mean theyâre not useful.