On The American Dream
”It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
George Carlin
Archives
April 5, 2019
quotes
April 5, 2019
MicroBlogging As A Search Term Over The Years
Microblog featured in examples of ‘The Most Hyped Technology of Every Year From 2000-2018’
”As the media searches for the next big thing, certain technologies tend to dominate the headlines. Meanwhile, venture capital flows into the companies racing to bring the tech to market, valuations swell, marketing departments generate excitement, and the expectations of the general public begin to grow as well.
MicroBlogging As A Search Term Over The Years
”One example of this phenomenon at work is the adoption of microblogging. Today, we don’t think twice about posting a tweet or updating our status on Facebook, but a decade ago, the act of posting a short public message was major shift in the way people used technology to communicate with one another. The intense buzz that sent microblogging towards the top of the Hype Cycle is corroborated by Google Search data.”
Nick Routley
business.of.tech
April 4, 2019
Richard Wellins On Promotion
future.of.work
observations
people.first
Job Disatisfaction … However You Cut it.
From Stowe Boyd’s ‘Workplace Newsletter’:
CNBC and Survey Monkey worked together on a Q1 2019 @Work Survey
“85% of respondents say they are very or somewhat satisfied with their jobs. Despite the overall optimism, only 9% of workers gave top ratings across all 5 categories of the Workplace Happiness Index. Additionally, 27% say they are not well paid and 30% have seriously considered quitting their job in the last 3 months.”
and
“Our study clearly reveals that workplace happiness is richly nuanced. While a big majority of U.S. workers are at least somewhat satisfied with their jobs, there are a lot of negatives when it comes to how people relate to their work,” said Jon Cohen, SurveyMonkey’s chief research officer. “Whether it’s the fact that a quarter of all young workers doubt their contributions are valued, or that 40% of all workers don’t see clear opportunities ahead, shows that simple ‘up or down’ measurements of job satisfaction never tell the whole story. If companies want to hire and retain great employees, they need to open up feedback loops to get at the ‘why’—learning what makes people happy and productive. Only through engaging in conversations at scale can managers bring meaningful change to the way their employees experience work and the workplace.”
The Survey
Nuanced? Sorry … “30% have seriously considered quitting their job in the last 3 months.: That is not nuanced. That is a very loud warning signal.
This came to me via Stowe Boyd - who reminds us that
“Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory states that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction are two semi-independent dimensions, so the Workplace Happiness Index is set up wrong. Job satisfaction is driven by personal issues: challenging work, responsibility, autonomy, and the respect of others, while job dissatisfaction is tied to shared, community concerns, like working conditions, management style, low salaries, and poor benefits.”
Translation : If you are an average company, 30% of your staff are seriously pissed off with you.
Maybe they should pay more attention to this guy:
Richard Wellins On Promotion
April 3, 2019
Twenty Six Billion Phone Calls Last Year
Robo-callers rang Americans’ phones 26 billion times last year.
Turns out, Congress have woken up ….
”Under bipartisan legislation, called the TRACED Act, the U.S. government would gain more power to slap these lawbreakers with bigger fines, while prodding AT&T, Verizon and other carriers to improve their technology so that consumers can more easily figure out if calls are real or spam. The first test for the bill arrives Wednesday, when it is scheduled to come before the tech-and-telecom focused Senate Commerce Committee for an early vote that it’s expected to pass.”
But if we already have laws and as a result are discovering ‘bad actors’, taking them to court, finding them guilty … and then just not ‘collecting’ … wouldn’t that be a good place to start before we introduce even more laws?>
Side Note : I mentioned Robo callers in passing a couple of days ago
business.of.tech people.first
April 3, 2019
Jeff In His Power Vest
This is Not Your Father’s VC Uniform
A while back Business Insider reported that a vending machine selling vests in SFO was raking in $10,000 per month! Turns out that for all these VC wonks, the new ‘power dress’ is a vest. (Personally I think they have all been watching the BEEZO a little too much … creepy - right?)
Jeff In His Power Vest
Anyway, for the more affluent VCs, sounds like they have been forking out a bit more mullah and buying them some ‘Patagonia’. In fact, it gets worse, because it sounds like those VC firms have been bulk buying those vests. But for how much longer?
Patagonia Is Refusing to Sell Its Iconic ‘Power Vest’ to Some Financial Firms
”The vests, which are so ubiquitous in finance and tech circles that they’ve been nicknamed the “Power Vest,” are typically purchased with a custom embroidered corporate logo on them. A representative for Patagonia confirmed its policy change regarding corporate orders to BuzzFeed News, saying the clothing company was focusing on selling products to “mission-driven companies that prioritize the planet.”
Focussed on selling products to “mission-driven companies that prioritize the planet … take that!
business.of.tech observations people.first
April 3, 2019
Spotify And How They Will Make Money In The Future?
Music is Booming, But Spotify Isn’t the Winner
My highlight below …
”Spotify is working on ways to improve its negotiating leverage, but these are untested and at a fairly early stage. One option is to move beyond music: The company has made a string of podcasting acquisitions this year. Another is to use its data on customers’ streaming habits as a bargaining chip with labels. “The only way the market improves is if we provide them with some value-added services that don’t exist today,” Mr. McCarthy said.”
And there you have it.
people.first
April 3, 2019
Why The New York Times did not sign up for Apple News+
“We’ve been pretty deliberate about saying that the best place you can experience journalism is through a relationship with a news provider,” Meredith Kopit Levien, the Times’s chief operating officer, told me. “So far for us, that has meant a direct relationship with users. The more we have a relationship with users, the better we think our business will be, and the better the experience that we can provide to them.”
Dave Mark
All good - I just wish they wouldn’t call their readers ‘users’.
How much better if it read (my bold = changes)
“We’ve been pretty deliberate about saying that the best place you can experience journalism is through a relationship with a news provider,” Meredith Kopit Levien, the Times’s chief operating officer, told me. “So far for us, that has meant a direct relationship with people, an increasing number of which we hope will become customers. The more we have a relationship with people, the better we think our business will be, and the better the experience that we can provide to them.” people.first
April 3, 2019
quotes
On Writing
”The reason I eventually became a writer is that writing makes thinking easier, and even as a verbally under developed fourteen-year-old I knew that if I wanted to understand ‘the situation,’ thinking was what I had to do.”
Barbara Ehrenreich