Longreads + Open Thread

Philosophy; Pay; Economics; A/B Testing; ByteDance; War; Oil

Longreads

Books

Open Thread

Reader Feedback

Calvin McCarter has a good comment on the unintended consequences of internal training programs:

Although the founders weren't laid off, they founded Health-Ade Kombucha in 2012 while at GSK when it was going through a series of lay-offs. Daina Trout and Vanessa Dew were both in sales at GSK, and in the early 2010s it was struggling to adjust to competition from generics. GSK notoriously mismanaged the process in 2010 by laying off sales reps just days after promising no layoffs at their sales convention: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/glaxosmithkline-layoffs-follow-promise-of-no-cuts-at-national-sales-meeting/

To improve morale and innovation, GSK started a rotational innovation / leadership program that Daina went through. However, after having this inspirational confidence-building experience, she was sent back to her old job in sales. The rotational program and repeated layoffs were both bad for employee morale by bringing "false dawns" followed by disappointment. Having said that, you might say that GSK's choices did in fact build confidence and innovation, but only in ways that didn't benefit GSK itself.

Daine Trout's interview on the How I Built It podcast is great btw: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/25/916944612/health-ade-kombucha-daina-trout

Big companies will sometimes try to create some kind of structure to provide upward mobility to their most promising new recruits. But that either requires the company to be growing enough that there are new responsibilities for rising stars, or to have high turnover in middle management so there's room to promote new people to replace the ones who leave. Neither of those is easy, and companies that aren't growing much but are constantly ranking and yanking can be stressful places to work.

A Word From Our Sponsors

Tegus is the first port of call for M&A professionals and institutional investors ramping up on an industry or company.

Get access to a database of 35,000+ expert call transcripts, spanning 5+ years, or schedule expert calls through the platform for a fraction of the usual cost.

When thousands of research analysts are pooling their expert calls into an on-demand database, using Tegus is table stakes. It's the leading platform for due diligence and primary research.

See the power of a Tegus subscription, and get up to data parity with your competitors, with a two week free trial through the Diff.

Diff Jobs

Companies in the Diff network are actively seeking talent! If you're interested in exploring growth opportunities at unique companies, please reach out. Some top current roles:

If you’re looking for talent, we should talk! Diff Jobs works with companies across fintech, hard tech, consumer software, enterprise software, and other areas—any company where finding unusually effective people is a top priority.


  1. Twitter used to have a view where your timeline could show tweets as well as replies, even when you weren't following both sides of the conversation. Although though this sounds like a completely unusable format, about as informative as sprinting through a cocktail party, and even though almost nobody used it, people still complained when it went away.