Surely you’ve heard. The winds have shifted. Layoffs are ticking up at well known startups across the funding spectrum from public companies on down. You’re likely hearing the volume turned up on sayings like “renewed cost discipline”, “focus on profitability”, “wartime mentality”, or even the dreaded “shift in strategy”. These types of announcements are already sending ripples through teams, organizations, and markets. Is any of this really surprising?
I know we’ve missed a couple weeks here. Temperatures are rising into this Friday the 13th and I’m not talking about the weather! The tech bubble has burst (?) and yearly earnings for the stock based comp folks are down down down. Other news about the future of our world, climate and politics look downright gloomy. I mean have you ever heard more about inflation in your entire life?
We’ve all been there. Stuck in a meeting that runs late. Maybe you have to bail on a team lunch. Or you’re late to an event. Or worse, your telecommute is delayed! Doesn’t it feel that much worse when it’s because of an interview? An interview that statistically is not going to go well even as you try furiously to fill that critical gap on your team.
For Twitter employees it was supposed to be a recharge week without meetings. You can imagine how quickly that got turned upside down when Elon entered the app. Just a couple weeks before payments startup Fast hit the wall and shut down suddenly leaving hundreds of employees looking for new jobs. In a rapidly changing macroeconomic environment, things are getting tougher out there!
We talk a lot about building out orgs and all the planning it takes to construct teams. A lesser discussed idiosyncrasy of that process is writing job descriptions. To post online and kick off the process of hiring people to build out said org. I went through one of those exercises this week and, with […]
All you had to do was read the title to know what this one was gonna be about. The entertainment world was abuzz this past Sunday when a Hollywood star unsuspectingly struck another Hollywood star on stage…at the Oscars (!!)…on national television. Not the VMAs! The Oscars!!
Got off the phone with a candidate yesterday. They were late to our interview. Didn’t really know what our company did. The role had some analytical needs and they offered up the fact that they couldn’t build pivot tables.
Recruiting is hard!
Easily one of the biggest winners of the last few years of streaming competition are music documentaries. Nonstop hits have been produced covering generational artists’ stories of perseverance, process, and their epic rise to stardom. Whether it’s Coldplay, The Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, The Bee Gees, Billie Eilish, The Beatles, or most recently Kanye West (to name just a few) it’s amazing to watch these stories…from your couch.
I’ll tell you what, I felt pretty stupid sitting down to write about management with war breaking out in Eastern Europe last week. Couldn’t find the words. So I took the week off. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one doom scrolling the timeline. In the days since Russia invaded Ukraine (again) we’ve seen the horror of war and the indomitable will of the Ukrainian people on full display to the world.
Many moons ago before working in startups I had a cup of coffee on Wall Street. Well it was more like slightly to the north of Wall Street. Anyway, I got a small feel for the motion of the capital markets. Connecting the dots from how private companies grew into “small” or “mid” capitalized public companies. Hearing how public market investors evaluated companies on their way up and all that jazz.