Is anyone in tech truly immune from the lure of the big bucks that come from mining user data?

Not just in the short haul, but over the long haul — like 25 years?

Certainly not Google, with its management-trashed “don’t be evil.”

Or Facebook, that continually violates its users in the name of revenue.

but there is one site known to techies and the rest of us alike.

Craigslist.

Craigslist started as an email listserv in 1995, when early web enthusiasts were looking for a sense of community and DIY education. By 1996, it had become a website with job listings, apartment rentals, and personal ads. Almost as soon as the internet was becoming widely available—roughly 1 out of 5 households was online at the time—Craigslist was there to help people find roommates, look for jobs, go on blind dates, or sell used furniture.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has been at the helm since 2001, and the founder, Craig Newmark, is still involved in the company. For years, Newmark did customer service, responding to design complaints and concerns about scams. Today, Craigslist has more monthly page visits than The New York Times or ESPN, and it’s been incredibly profitable.

Its profitability might come as a surprise to some. Many of those I spoke with thought Craigslist was a nonprofit or that it was community-run. In fact, Craigslist has always charged money for certain ads, such as job postings and classified ads. (By siphoning revenue from classified ads, Craigslist has been one reason newspapers across the country have struggled to stay in business.)

More recently, Craigslist has started charging for other kinds of ads, such as real estate listings from firms and car ads from dealers.

But regular users don’t have to pay a fee. The site doesn’t display banner ads, nor does it sell user data to third parties.

Way back when Craigslist was a startup I met Craig and found him to be a very nice, unassuming guy and it seems  he’s still the same, as reflected in a 20017 interview.

“Basically I just decided on a different business model in ’99, nothing altruistic,” he said. “While Silicon Valley VCs and bankers were telling me I should become a billionaire, I decided no one needs to be a billionaire — you should know when enough is enough. So I decided on a minimal business model, and that’s worked out pretty well. This means I can give away tremendous amounts of money to the nonprofits I believe in … I wish I had charisma, hair, and a better sense of humor,” he added in a completely deadpan voice. “I think I could be far more effective.”

Current entrepreneurs seem more focused on charisma, hair, and reaching unicorn status via multiple rounds of investment. A sense of humor is considered optional.

Image credit: Cambodia4kids.org Beth Kanter

A couple of years ago I wrote about a stupid, soul-gutting Silicon Valley myth about work and people’s value.

It spelled out the idiocy of believing that only the best were hired by startups, let alone unicorns, and everyone else was second caliber. As I said then, what a crock.

Throughout a long career as a recruiter and since I’ve said the same thing and it hasn’t changed.

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.

For some people those reasons still stand, but a lot has changed.

For many Silicon Valley engineers money has taken a front seat to most considerations and it’s startups that are suffering, since they can’t compete salary-wise with giant companies and unicorns (which are nothing more than giant companies that haven’t gone public — often because they aren’t profitable and likely never will be.)

That’s understandable, considering the cost of living, but when you add the aspirations so many consider “necessities” then salary becomes even more important.

The problem, for both employers and employees is the same.

Money is not and never has been a source of loyalty — in either direction.

When companies feel the necessity to lower their burn rate the highly paid are often the first to go.

And my old adage that people who join for money/stock/perks will leave for more money/stock/perks still holds true.

Loyalty is the result of managers and companies giving a damn and employees invested in a mission that has meaning beyond money.

Silicon Valley is big on smoke and mirrors; the two biggest are

• Startups, including unicorns (think WeWork), will make you rich is the smoke.
• The inevitability of technology is the mirrors.

Image credit:  theilr

Poking through 14+ 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.

First, Steve Wozniak’s comments from 2016 are even less true today than they were then. Secondly, money has become the all-consuming focus for most people regardless of profession, driven for some by necessity, but in tech more often by ego, stuff and an aspirational lifestyle. That said, startups as a source of wealth may be falling out of style, as you’ll see tomorrow.

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

I only partly agree with Steve Wozniak’s recent comment.

“I think the money that’s been made has attracted a different kind of people looking at technology today and saying ‘Oh my gosh, I could maybe have a startup and make a bunch of money,’” Wozniak said. “And the ones that come out of business school, money’s the priority. For the ones that come out of engineering school, being able to accomplish and design things that didn’t exist before is their priority.”

 Woz gives too much credit to the engineers.

It’s not just the biz school crowd that’s focused on the bucks.

The money bug has bit a good number of techies, too.

Years ago, no matter their role, people joined startups because they craved the bleeding edge, whether software, hardware or services.

This was true of both tech and non tech. In the words of Star Treck, they wanted “to go where no man has gone before” — or at the least go there differently.

Today the journey is more about getting rich and/or making connections for the future.

For decades I’ve told clients, “The person who joins your company for money/stock/perks will leave in a heartbeat for more money/stock/perks.”

That hasn’t changed, if anything it’s just gotten more so.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Over the last couple of days we’ve been looking at what makes workers happy.

We know it’s not fun and games or even money, so what?

Rather repeat the same stuff I’ve been saying for the last 11 years, consider what John Hall, co-founder and president of Calendar, says.

… workers aren’t liable to fall in love with a company over a handful of gimmicks and perks. … the things that really matter when it comes to sticking with an employer for a long time go deeper than decorations.

What are they?

Well, they aren’t rocket science — except to bosses whose heads are stuck in the past.

Here are four basic values, according to Hall (details at link), that are a good place to start.

1. Democratic Values
2. A Common Cause
3. The Freedom to Fail
4. A Culture of Improvement

See, not rocket science.

More about giving your team the same environment you wanted at some point in your working life.

Or maybe you just wanted to be promoted so you could treat your team as you’ve been treated by your own bad bosses.

My best recommendation is to look in the mirror long enough to decide which kind of a boss you want to be.

Image credit: Nichole Burrows

Yesterday we saw how companies often equate ‘happy’ with fun and fun with games.

Beyond that they seem to think that money buys happiness and will solve most, if not all, motivation issues; an attitude especially prevalent in tech.

That would mean that the well-paid employees with plenty of games at Google and Facebook are among the happiest workers. Right?

Wrong.

Not even close.

Who are the happiest, with the highest job satisfaction level?

According to a new survey from Bloomberg’s Work Wise (tada) the top five happiest professions are:

The median salary of four of the five is just under $50K

Tech doesn’t even make the list.

More proof that happiness is about far more than money, let alone games.

Image credit: Bloomberg

Have you ever wondered if there was a common trait that prohibits, or, at the least, significantly slows down, progress in stuff like climate change, compensation equity, equal opportunity, gender parity, etc.?

Some idea or attitude that throws a wrench in every proposed solution?

There is.

It is something so basic, so obvious, so societally common, so acceptable, that its presence mostly goes unnoticed and, therefore, unmentioned.

And it is intractable.

Ring any bells?

Remember, think simple, obvious and universally known.

Not a secret, not even close.

The watchword of our times.

Money.

The roadblock?

Money now always trumps anything later.

Image credit: Twitter Trends 2019

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

Last year I wrote that no one is a “self-made” anything, with backup from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The media loves attaching the “self-made” label, shining a spotlight and making it seem that anyone willing to work hard enough can become a billionaire, or at least a multi-millionaire.

It’s not just all the people along the way, but also where you come from and how privileged your background.

The latest self-made billionaire is 21-year-old Kylie Jenner who claims the self-made title, because she didn’t inherit her company, i.e., bootstrapped it using her own money.

No help, did it herself.

Of course, that self-made label ignores a few significant factors.

Still, it’s obviously absurd to attach the phrase “self-made” to Jenner, who is part of the wildly successful Jenner-Kardashian clan. While she is clearly savvy about marketing and promotion, Jenner grew up in one of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the world with access to every advantage money could buy ― including years of self-promotion on a successful reality television show. The value of her makeup company lies in the celebrity she accrued via her family.

So is “self-made” more nature or nurture? According to new research from Sandra Black, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, the answer is nurture.

The environment you grow up in ― the quality of education your parents can afford to give you, the investments they make in you, the relative affluence of your neighborhood ― is almost twice as important as biology.

It’s not a case of denying the success of Kylie Jenner, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, or Nick Woodman.

It’s a case of recognizing how the advantages they enjoyed reduced risk, lowered barriers, smoothed the road, and made the journey easier.

If you still doubt that parents aren’t a big deal and nurture doesn’t carry all that much weight, take a look at a currently breaking scandal over the lengths to which parents will go to get their kids into a top university.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

Why is it that  founders who start out by claiming they want to stand against evil, just connect people, give people a new way to earn, or in some way make the world a better place, so often morph, to be polite, into jerks?

Money? Power? Drinking their own media Kool-Aid?

All of the above?

Or is it that, as opposed to morphing, given the right circumstances, even if transient, they always were jerks?

People, especially in our age of self-branding, work hard creating their image, so when considering it, caveat emptor.

Because what you see ain’t necessarily what you get.

Hat tip to KG for sending me the quote.

Image credit: Shut The Front Door

Jeff Bezos’ reach or, to some people, tentacles, is extensive. Just how extensive is apparent in the infographic below. It is yet more proof that one picture is worth a thousand words.

In case it’s not his empire that interests you, but his earnings, then your should read How much Jeff Bezos makes per minute.

You shouldn’t miss a look at the flip side to see the people who power the Amazon piece of his pie.

Do you care about the appalling conditions of many workplaces? Not overseas, but here, in the US?

Do you care about the impact enterprise has on the environment?

On people?

Do you fret, because you can’t DO anything?

Or can you?

Fashion has a terrible environmental report card, especially so-called “fast fashion.”

Change happens when we consumers vote with our feet and take our money elsewhere.

Fast fashion may be on its last legs. Take it from H&M, which was forced to admit in its March financial report that it had $4.3 billion of unsold inventory left hanging on its racks, along with a massive drop in sales. In fact, the Swedish company has started incinerating clothes in power plants to generate energy. When you consider all of the raw materials, chemical pollution, human labor, and transportation costs required to make just a single shirt, the scale of the waste is astounding.

Brands may seem impervious to complaints, negative press and exposés, but the operative word is ‘seems’, as Ivanka Trump learned when she was forced to shut down her fashion line.

The business seemed to be floundering: One source found that online sales of Ivanka Trump products sold on Amazon, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, and Zappos fell nearly 55% over the last year. (…) The brand was the target of a massive boycott, spearheaded by Grab Your Wallet, a movement urging people to protest the Trump family’s ethical violations by refusing to shop with retailers selling their brands.

The article made me wonder if the same approach could affect Amazon, the 8 thousand pound gorilla of ecommerce

Wait a minute, didn’t Amazon just agree to pay minimum wages to all workers?

Today (Oct. 2), he announced that he will be raising the minimum wages for his e-commerce company’s US workers to $15 an hour, a move that will affect 250,000 full-time employees and 100,000 seasonal workers.

Yes, and while it looks like a big deal, it was more in the line of self-preservation.

Earning $15 an hour isn’t likely to impress Amazon’s Prime customers, who mostly earn far more (it takes 8 hours of very hard work to pay for Prime).

But just as fashion takes a huge toll from the environment and labor, the people who deliver your packages pay an exorbitantly high price for the privilege.

For Amazon, paying third-party companies to deliver packages is a cost-effective alternative to providing full employment. And the speed of two-day shipping is great for consumers. But delivering that many packages isn’t easy, and the job is riddled with problems, (…)  Others, including several labor experts, said they felt blame should be placed with Amazon, adding that the company was pressuring courier companies to deliver more, faster. They said Amazon was profiting off cheap labor that it doesn’t have to protect because it’s outsourcing the job to companies that it doesn’t adequately supervise.

Read the article and you’ll see conditions similar, maybe worse, to those that have led to protests, boycotts and change when they’ve happen on production lines overseas.

Amazon’s response is typical.

“We have worked with our partners, listened to their needs, and have implemented new programs to ensure small delivery businesses serving Amazon customers have the tools they need to deliver a great customer and employee experience.”

Nothing about driver experience.

The problem has nothing to do with Bezos’ wealth, he earned that, and everything to do with Amazon using it’s savvy, backed by it’s power, to change the game.

So how do you get the attention of an 8 thousand pound gorilla?

The same way consumers moved the fashion industry — money.

Think of the effect if just 20% (or more) of the 100 million paying Prime members bought just two items a month from a different merchant.

There’s no question that would get Amazon’s attention.

Image credit: Drew Stephens