There was a time when the words used in job ads actually made sense.

These days the words used seem to have little relation to either the skills needed or the opportunities offered.

For example, courage

Courage is mentioned in a variety of job postings for minimum wage retail and service work. Companies like JCPenney (where an ideal employee will “show the confidence and courage to do what’s right“), Ann Taylor (in which one “has the courage to know who she is“), and Lululemon (wherein a worker “leads with courage, knowing the possibility of greatness is bigger than the fear of failure“) ask for it specifically in job ads.

Does that mean the employee can expect a positive outcome if they have the courage to report their boss, another executive or a customer for harassment?

Then there are the companies looking for passionate workers.

Lisa Cohen, an associate professor of organizational behavior at McGill University’s Desautels School of Management shared that passion is a common attribute that companies she’s spoken with want, but they struggle to explain why.

“They haven’t defined the term,” she said. “They don’t know why it matters and probably what they’re looking for—and they’ll put this in not particularly nice terms—is somebody who’s going to work like crazy for long hours, right?”

Hiring for intangibles is smart, but it should be for traits that actually matter, as opposed to smoke and glitter.

Image credit: Robert Nunnally

Last week in a post about responsibility and the difference between Microsoft and other tech giants I said that change was coming, driven in by a surprising source.

The change is to antitrust law.

The University of Chicago is the intellectual birthplace of the consensus in antitrust thinking over the last four decades — that monopoly law should place consumer interests, usually in the form of lower prices, above the concerns of smaller business rivals.

Big tech has been protected, because you can’t get lower than free, but people are waking up to the fact that free isn’t actually free.

More importantly, so is the University of Chicago and a growing list of experts.

But amid growing concerns about the unchecked power of today’s tech giants, economists and legal scholars are questioning whether the Chicago School still makes sense. Even the university’s own faculty is starting to publicly challenge the ideology.

It’s about time.

Considering how fast the world moves these days there is no excuse for those who are supposed to protect us to move at glacial speed.

At last year’s summit, Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department official in charge of antitrust, told attendees that his view of the cost of free platforms “has changed” with a greater understanding of the nature and scope of data collection and sharing.

Duh. No kidding.

Makes you wonder how the European Union figured it out so much quicker.

Or not.

Image credit: Luiz Gadelha Jr.

Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Last week’s look at the “new” Microsoft reminded me of a previous post that’s especially apropos in light of unicorn valuations crashing headlong into the reality of investor focus on profitability.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Neither market cap nor valuation are cause for celebration.

Both are as ephemeral as morning fog.

Ask Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella his reaction when Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world for a few months last fall.

“I’m not one of those guys who says, ‘let’s celebrate some market cap measure.’ That’s just not stable.”

What does interest him?

The Microsoft-generated ecosystem.

“Our business model is about creating more surplus outside us. We will only be long-term success when the people are making more money around us,” he said.

This dovetails with what Bill Gates also believes, i.e., a company’s success is defined when the total value of the ecosystem around it is more valuable than the company that created it.

That ecosystem seems non-existent to the majority of founders of gig economy businesses, dating apps, social media, etc.

Or perhaps it’s just those with venture funding who are focused on growth at all costs.

That said, this post is dedicated to the founders who focus on building sustainable businesses/ecosystems.

As opposed to the fools who chase investment in lieu of revenue, celebrate valuation based on their last round of funding, and don’t care about ecosystem beyond its PR value.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Looking at founders, such as Larry Page, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zukerberg, you get the feeling they believe they are all powerful — more so than even governments.

It’s not a new attitude; Bill Gates learned they aren’t the hard way.

The Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, according to Mr. Smith, “learned that life actually does require compromise and governments actually are stronger than companies,” if only after a bruising confrontation.

Mr. Gates, who wrote the foreword in Mr. Smith’s book, recalled that for years he was proud of how little time he spent talking to people in government. “As I learned the hard way in the antitrust suit,” he wrote, “that was not a wise position to take.”

Lesson learned well enough that you don’t see Microsoft on the common list of big tech, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple.

That lesson hasn’t hurt Microsoft, which is valued at more than a trillion dollars by investors based on profitability, not funding.

Satya Nadella, who became CEO in 2014, is credited most often for the change in Microsoft fortunes, i.e., its culture. attitude and product mix.

You don’t hear as much about Microsoft president Brad Smith, but he’s the guy who made friends with government and helps with policy.

“When your technology changes the world,” he writes, “you bear a responsibility to help address the world that you have helped create.”

Responsibility.

The thing that so many founders don’t see as being within their purview.

Unlike Microsoft, their future will be decided more in Europe than in the US.

But the revised interpretation of an old US law could change things drastically.

And that change is being driven in by a surprising source.

Join me next Tuesday to learn more about it.

Image credit: luquidat

Last week we saw how the best places to work rankings change — Google was number one for six straight years, now it’s number eight, while Facebook dropped to seventh place.

People change too. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who was named the world’s most reputable CEO in 2018, didn’t even make the top 10 this year.

Friends and family often aren’t aware of the most current news about a company and even when they are they may minimize it, especially if the company is hot or an icon.

This isn’t just about Google; Facebook, Amazon or dozens of others that are just as problematical.

Hot startups encourage you to jump in without due diligence. WeWork may seem like an extreme example, but it’s not as uncommon as you might think — remember Theranos, Uber and Zenefits.

It’s about how fast things change, both the big stuff and the little stuff, all the stuff that underlies culture and trust, which can and should affect your decisions.

Because it’s your career, your life and, corny as it may sound, your soul.

Image credit: chaukhat.com

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Knowing, understanding and accepting yourself is critical to major decisions, such as choosing a spouse/life partner/job. Ignoring or distorting any of the first three practically guarantees blowing the last three. As does ignoring or distorting the info gathered from your due diligence on the last three.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

There’s a very stupid myth that only the very talented are hired by startups and that the very talented only want to work for startups.

The corollary being that those who work for public companies, let alone large ones, probably aren’t all that talented and certainly not innovative/creative.

What a crock.

Another part of that myth is that working for a startup is the road to riches.

An even bigger crock.

The myth also says that the best place to work is a unicorn, such as or AirBnB, GitHub or Palantir,

And that is the biggest crock of all.

If you are looking for new opportunities and are dazzled by the idea of working at a unicorn I strongly suggest you read Scott Belsky’s post on Medium.

A company’s fate is ultimately determined by its people, so talent is everything. But this old adage bumps up against another one: cash is king (or runway is king, for a fast-growing private company). Without runway, talent takes off. So, it is no surprise that bold moves to extend runway (think late-stage financings at technically large valuations with some tricky liquidation preferences underneath) are done even if they could hurt the company (and its people) in the long run. This is especially true when these financings are ego-driven rather than strategic. The problem is, the employees at these companies don’t understand the implications.

But whether startup or Unicorn, this anonymous post on GitHub is a must read.

This is a short write-up on things that I wish I’d known and considered before joining a private company (aka startup, aka unicorn in some cases). I’m not trying to make the case that you should never join a private company, but the power imbalance between founder and employee is extreme, and that potential candidates would do well to consider alternatives.

The right place for you to work is the one that satisfies what you want — whether that’s the opportunity to work on bleeding edge technology, build a network, upgrade your resume or even plain, old curiosity.

The wrong place is the one you join with an eye to getting rich quick or for bragging rights.

Or because somebody says you “should.”

Image credit: Mike Mozart

Next Monday’s Oldie is about what to look for when choosing a place to work, with a special caution for unicorns.

Today I thought we’d take a quick look at a “great place to work” myth.

Google topped the best places to work lists for years, but no more.

According to the 2019 Glassdoor survey Google is in 8^th place based on 9186 reviews.

Last year 20,000 people walked out in protest over the handling of sexual harassment accusations and Google promised to do better.

But almost a year after the historic walkout, a dozen current and former Google employees told Recode that many employees are still justifiably afraid to report workplace issues because they fear retaliation. They say the company continues to conceal rather than confront issues ranging from sexual harassment to security concerns, especially when the problems involve high-ranking managers or high-stakes projects. …dozens more employees say that when they filed complaints with Google’s human resources department, they were retaliated against by being demoted, pushed out, or placed on less desirable projects.

… Google’s top-down culture that suppresses meaningful employee pushback — even in areas the company says it’s trying to improve on, like diversity.

To really find out about a company you need to do the same depth of due diligence on it that the company does on you.

That requires more than reading employee reviews; it means searching traditional media as well as proven new media.

And checking out who left and why.

Most of all it means making the time to just do it.

Image credit: Ben Nuttall

I’m frequently accused about being badly out-of-date with current terms, let alone trendy ones, but I find myself using them even when they make me uncomfortable. That’s the case with “talent,” a term I’ve used, although it makes me squirm. This post from Wally Bock does a great job of explaining why. (I never really thought it through.) Thanks, Wally!

I’m sick of “talent.” I’m sick of wars for talent, and talent pipelines, and talent acquisition. I’m sick of talent anywhere it’s used as a substitute for people. People are not talent. People have talent. People are more than talent.

There’s no such thing as disembodied talent. Every bit of talent comes wrapped up in flesh and blood people.

People Are More Than Talent

People aren’t just talent. They bring you their hopes and fears. They bring their experience, expertise, and passions. Sure, their talent is important, but so are other things.

Their work ethic is important. The other people on your team want to work with someone who pulls their own weight. If you’ve got a slacker, even a talented one, you’ve got a problem.

Social skills matter. Nobody wants to work with or for a jerk. If you’ve got a talented person who can’t get along with other people, you’ve got a problem.

The situation matters. Context is critical. Talent is specific. If you’ve got a talented person in the wrong job, you have a problem.

Let’s quit talking about talent as if it’s some disembodied thing that we can bottle or store or (gag) develop. Instead, let’s think of talent as one of the many parts of those complex and wonderful people we work with.

Image credit: Three Star Leadership

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

How time and tech fly. I wrote this in 2017 and there’s been a lot of change since then. In short, while hypocrisy has skyrocketed, with the advent of Uber, Lyft, We, and others profitability has fallen way behind. Greed, however, is alive and kicking butt — think We’s Adam Neumann.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Tuesday I cited a post by Scott Belsky on Medium talking about how employees are often conned (my word) by founders, especially unicorns, when it comes to the wealth that is supposed to flow from their ISO.

As pithy as the post was, some of the comments were even pithier. I especially like this one from  colorfulfool (21st comment)

If profitability were proportional to hypocrisy, there would be no failed startups in the Valley.

Not just true, but succinctly and elegantly stated.

Founders love to talk about the importance of transparency, trust and authenticity.

However, their stock plans and pitfalls thereof exhibit such a high degree of opaqueness and caveat emptor that they kick a hole the size of Texas in the fabric of the founders’ authenticity.

Another prevalent piece of hypocrisy is “change the world.”

Do you really believe that another dating app or being able to evaluate a new restaurant or another way to buy your groceries will change the world?

While they may impact one’s personal world, they certainly don’t have the impact of something like Mine Kafon.

What is proportional to the Valley’s hypocrisy is its sheer greed.

Actually, when I stop to think about it, the greed probably exceeds even the hypocrisy.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Amazon is right up there when considering big tech Kool-Aid.

All by itself it has done more to addict consumers to near instant gratification, with no vision past themselves, than any other company.

In doing so it has actually killed people and ruined lives.

And it has done it in a way that shielded it from both notoriety and financial responsibility.

Rather than a synopsis and comments from me, take a few minutes to read the original ProPublica’s, in conjunction with The New York Times, investigative article.

This isn’t the first article detailing deplorable working conditions that have resulted in numerous walkouts by Amazon and contracted workers,

But the only walkout that would actually have an impact is a customer walkout.

Obviously, it’s unlikely that anyone will actually quit using Amazon.

But if just 1% of users stopped for just one week, Amazon would definitely sit up and take notice.

And if a higher percentage stopped even better.

Whether it’s Amazon, Uber or any of dozens of other companies whose business model is built on unfair/dangerous worker practices they need to step up and start taking responsibility for the actions of people who deliver their “experiences,” instead of claiming they are “independent contractors” while still controlling their daily actions at work.

Image credit: Mike Mozart