From Frothy to Flat
That's the way fake money goes
Happy Friday! I hope you weren’t laid off today. But if you were, I want to hear about it. (You’ll be fine, by the way.)
I’m in the middle of a research project around startup culture, which began before the recent VC-slowdown, which is actually a fake cash drought, but it spurred The Great Tech Layoff of 2022 nonetheless.
Klarna’s down-round was the bellwether: A bonkers-batshit valuation got downgraded to simply insane, and the way tech leaders are overreacting would be comical if it didn’t mean average workers are scapegoated for leadership’s spending hangovers and other bad decisions.
More pressure on the Player-Coach
Part of my research is talking to individual contributors who are so good at their jobs, they get “promoted” to managing a team of other ICs. But instead of moving into management full time, they’re still on the hook for their original output.
The startuppy term du jour is “Player-Coach,” but no one is acknowledging the practice is mostly obsolete from professional sports (where it originated) because it’s untenable in the long-term and ineffective in the short. Like, Phil Jackson didn’t win 11 NBA Championships by huffing and puffing around the court with Jordan and Kobe (even I know that).
Coaches aren’t personally responsible for winning points while also strategizing with their players to win theirs. (This might be the first and last sports metaphor in this newsletter.)
My fear is we’ll only see more of the IC-Player-Coach-Squeeze in the wake of tech layoffs, because the answer is always piling more onto your top performers after you’ve axed their colleagues.
But once the dust settles and early-stage businesses have a chance to reset, I hope founders will learn to double-down on their IC’s true value, allow them to focus on their specific area of genius and find more creative ways to promote them.
And for eff’s sake maybe invest in a few good managers.
Running up that road, running up that hill…
Vibe shift! I’m finally catching up on Stranger Things and I either don’t recommend watching Sn. 4, Ep. 4 on Day 26 of your menstrual cycle, or I highly recommend it.
Biting my nails while Max desperately ran from the personification (monster-ification?) of PTSD, choosing brief moments of joy and friendship over self-loathing and social isolation, along with the Kate Bush musical backdrop, left me in a pathetic puddle of tears. I think someone at New York mag called the scene “transcendent” and they are correct.
The video for “Running Up That Hill” was such a buzzkill in the late 80s when it interrupted the less artsy-and-intellectual Madonna and Def Leppard jams on MTV. I was in grade-school and had zero appreciation for interpretive dance.
In my twenties I watched one of my favorite Pilates teachers perform the song at Planet Rose and I was like, “Oh, I kind of get it.”
Fast-forward to me playing it on repeat this morning, mesmerized in the shower by this perfect, gorgeous song. Context (and age) matters!
Here are some links I saved for you:
Isabella Rossellini and her chickens.
Handling hard better.
This country hates kids.
Lines of closeness over time. (Also made me a little weepy.)
The actual executive behind the Kardashian brands. (That’s not a slam on the Kardashians, who I’ve grown to love {more on that another time}. I think they are smart for hiring her.)
See you soon!
P.S. Sorry for the repeat newsletter a few weeks ago. I was doing some content/channel reconciliation and hit the wrong button like an Old. Can’t promise it won’t happen again.