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Inside baseball and more links: Context Collapse #162
Greetings from Ungerleider Haus in beautiful Chicago, Illinois.
As Iām writing this newsletter, itās snowing outside. SNOWING. Not a heavy snowāitās the lightest dusting of a baby dusting of incredibly light snowābut, nonethelessā¦ snowing. In October.
Welcome to the midwest.
Iāve been thinking a lot about this Reddit thread (and parallel Hacker News thread) about how many Google products are shut down because of how Google promotes employees.
TLDR is that, when determining raises and promotions, Google values launching new products much more than fixing bugs in existing products or updating existing products.
This is an interesting conversation! And one that, even if I canāt definitively say this is the case at Google or not, definitely happens in other organizations!
Say it with me again: Company culture impacts company product.
Thank you.
I recently read David Perellās 28 pieces of life advice and two stuck with me, because theyāre true:
When you see somebody taking a photo of their friends, offer to take the shot for them so they can be in the picture.
Most wealthy people are starving for ideas and don't have interesting friends, so you can claim a spot at the deca-millionaires table by simply having interesting ideas.
This is also why the most interesting ideas arenāt even at the deca-millionaires table, or even the millionaires table. Go the college studentsā table or the cranky weirdos table for those.
But the photo-taking one? Absolutely true. And leads to meeting rad people.
Also a bit late to the party on this one, but thank you to Rosie Yakob @ Strands of Genius for tipping me off to this evaluation of the state of the TED Talk in 2022. Everything is weird post-pandemic, even interesting people talking about interesting ideasā¦ (Those again!) But you knew that already.
Additional stuff on my radar:
Indie Hackers asks how do you organize your day as a founder? As a small business owner who constantly has caffeinated squirrels running around his head 24/7, this topic is worthwile to me.
Alex Tabarrok on telemedicineās post-pandemic setbacks. TLDR is that many of the emergency declarations that let Americans access telemedicine providers across state lines during peak COVID are now being rescinded, which is making it hard for a lot of people (your author included) to actually see a doctor.
An epic Substack post called āAn Oral History of Gimletās Slow Demiseā thatās basically a massive compendium of how Spotifyās acquisition of Gimlet ended up going very, very wrong.
Drew Harwell at the WaPoās epic longform piece, How TikTok Ate the Internet, which explains everything. Everything.
Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash Tired = work from home. Wired = work from pub.
The new Adam Curtis documentary on the fall of the Soviet Union.
Margaux MacColl at The Information asks āSocial Media Companies Know When Users Are Manic or Bipolar. So Why Donāt They Help Them?ā Soā¦ modern quandryā¦ When proprietary social media algorithms are remarkably good at figuring out a user has mental health issues, does the company share the information to health providers against a userās will, do they try to monetize it via advertising or simply do nothing with the knowledge? Weird future is here, people!
And, last but not least, this documentary on the comic book Love & Rockets is *amazing*. Enjoy:
Have a good one. Click like, share, subscribe, leave comments on loves/hates/never-write-this-again/write-more-about-this and see you soon.