Money Quote, Issue 1. Possibly a regular column. Or not.
Mid Day Take: What I Read Today
My morning news reading is starting to stretch throughout the day. So here’s what I found worth reading before my day got started. May it help you be more efficient in your daily media consumption.
Read this. It really nails Zuck, and we’re going to be living with this guy for, well, pretty much the rest of our lives. Money quote: “Throughout the interview, he seems irritated that his actions could be viewed as anything other than expansive benevolence.”
We’ve been arguing this for five years: Talent naturally will evolve outside the major tech hubs, because it seeks a better and less costly lifestyle, and because these days, all companies are tech-leveraged companies, and companies grow inside great cities — and there are way more great cities outside of NY and California than inside those states. Money quote: “The data revealed that some of the best developers live in parts of America you probably wouldn’t expect them live. It’s important for any business looking to expand its pool of talented engineers — which these days is nearly every business in America.”
Money quote: “The Greeks distinguished between craftsmanship, known as technae,and knowledge, known as espisteme. But today we conflate doing with knowing: We believe that doers are wise, when perhaps they are only clever. Silicon Valley is so obsessed with crafting new wings — to harness the power of the Gods and tame the heavens — that it has overlooked the notion that cleverness is not necessarily wisdom.”
Yes, I read my own stuff. Mainly to iron out the wrinkles that develop overnight. Money quote: “Here’s why “business CRM” sucks: They’re designing for the wrong customer. They all design from the point of view of the companies who pay for their shitty software. And what do those customers say they want? More sales! More conversions! More revenue! More Milton Friedman, damnit!”
That’s two to three thousand more highly paid tech workers in San Francisco, which is already a flash point for income inequality, gentrification, and every other social issue boiling over in our increasingly divided nation. Money quote: “The year has been dominated by leases from established, public tech companies, rather than startups. Alphabet Inc.’s Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) have all signed large deals this year.”
Sandberg’s post is heartfelt, I can only imagine how shitty it’s been to be her and her team over the past couple of weeks. It’s odd to read what is, in essence, a blog post on a Facebook page, however. Does anyone else actually write posts like this on Facebook anymore? Or ever? Money quote: “We never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way — and that is on us. And we did not find it ourselves — and that is also on us.”
The former governor of Delaware, which plays the corporate incentive game better than anyone, pens a mea culpa, and notes that we’re essentially starving public infrastructure like schools and health care so we can court corporate jobs. It’s trickle down economics in practice, and it’s a terrible practice. Money quote: “The result is a market failure in which neither side is motivated to fix the problem. State and local policy makers can’t unilaterally opt out without potentially negative consequences for their constituents, while businesses have a fiduciary obligation to pursue these short-term direct incentives.”
Money quote: “We’re seeing a reverse brain drain for the first time. There are highly talented Canadians — educated in Canada or the U.S. — who are now seeking to come back home. There’s has been a significant spike in those conversations. Some of the most highly sought-after talent are asking, ‘What positions do you know of in Toronto?’ These are leaders in their industries in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago.”
OK, that’s that. Should I do this every day? Let me know in responses below, or by clicking that annoying clappy hand thingy.
