M&Ms: Shout Outs
Shout out to the micro-manager.
Shout out to those not afraid of wasting your time.
Shout out to the leaders not taking in any feedback.
Shout out to those asking more from the people below them than they ask of themselves. Shout out to those who said they were remote companies during the pandemic and are now forcing people back to offices.
Shout out to you. So many of us are free now because of you.
Most people need a catalyst.
Take the Bostonians in 1773. Those Bostonians had a pretty good thing going for them for a while under the British Empire. They had protection from Empire troops. They had lots of freedom, thanks to their distance. It was good to be remote. Boston needed that tea tax for a proper tea party.
Shout out to King George, or we wouldn't have America.
Trust me it's hard to quit a pretty good thing, even if you have dreams of being more free. It's hard to quit a high salary.
"The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary."
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I'll admit that I struggled to quit my salary addiction. And add to this that I got a raise every year. They always gave me a little more to keep me around. They boosted my ego. And so who in their right mind would quit that pretty cushy environment, even if they dreamed of doing other things?
But then, after COVID, things happened.
I got sick of being in 50 hours of meetings a week. I got sick of being forced to travel. I felt I had more to offer the world and my family per minute than sitting in these useless meetings at a big company.
But the best part of those meetings was some of the PMs who set up the meetings. In response to feedback about too many meetings, some of them used to get on the call and say, "Folks, we have 50 people on this call at an average total comp of $300 an hour; that's over $15k for this hour. Let's try and make it count." Then they waste the hour anyway and everyone's time. Shout out to you, PM.
How does someone grow from useless meetings they're forced to sit in? You tell me I couldn't figure it out. All my growth came from either building things that add value or from adding value to other humans. Of course you’re going to be worth less in the open market sitting in useless meetings all day.
The disdain for sliding backward in personal growth. The constant reminders that they own all my time and everything I produce. After all, every side project needed legal permission.
And the legal team would take their sweet time responding back to my requests for permission. If they ever respond at all. After all, it is better for them to just not respond. That way, if your stuff ever takes off, it can all be legally ambiguous. Of course, I am being a little too cynical here. They did respond sometimes.
Maybe the other times, they were just too busy in meetings like I was.
And don't get me started on meetings again. I'd constantly get the Slack ping: "Can you join this meeting Louie? You're needed in this one." I recognize now that disdaining those things was the catalyst for me.
I always dreamed of doing my own thing, but I never had the courage to quit a salary that was growing every year.
But I got the courage once I slid backward enough in "skills" and family time—two very bad things to trade away for a little more money.
Here is Taleb again; this is an excerpt from his famous essay "How to Legally Own Someone":
"If the company man is, sort of, gone, he has been replaced by the companies person, thanks to both an expansion of the gender and a generalization of the function. For the person is no longer owned by a company but by something worse: the idea that he needs to be employable.
A companies person is someone who feels that he has something huge to lose if he loses his employability...
The employable person is embedded in an industry, with fear of upsetting not just their employer, but other potential employers.
An employee is –by design– more valuable inside a firm than outside of it, that is more valuable to the employer than the market."
Taleb enlightens us with the harsh truth of the fear many of us experience and that the system is designed to inflate you inside a company and deflate you outside of it.
A boost to the ego from people up top, who aren't that important to your life, lying to you about how important you are to the firm is not as significant in the grand scheme of things as you'd think.
This isn't about any one company, though. During the last two years, I've been fortunate to speak to people at some of the best firms in the world who took action on their dreams for similar feelings and realizations. It's good to have a catalyst.
"Empty engines need fueling, y'all was like my theme music"
—Nipsey Hussle from California.
This is a theme for a lot of people who woke up during the "great resignation" to go out and fend for themselves. Chase their dreams. Live the life they always wanted to live because life is too short to have it wasted by firms for whom you're just a "resource."
Consider it a blessing if you've had a leader ask you to do things they didn't do themselves. Consider having had a micro-manager at least once in your career a blessing too. Consider all these things a blessing.
When the time comes for you, these might be the sorts of things that will make you think twice about trading away your freedom for a few more dollars.
Three Tweets: Stories, Startups, Economy
There is just a lot of value to becoming a better writer and a better story teller.
This is a skill that will make you valuable inside and outside your firm.
It is a very tough time for a lot of venture backed startups right now, even the ones with “product market fit.”
This long post I came across this week does a deep dive on Airtable but many firms are in this boat.
Chamath, like him or dislike him, I have found to be pretty knowledgeable about where things are economically.
Two Memes: Battle Bots, Founders
Elle role plays out the battle between Siri, Alexa, ChatGPT
Being a founder then vs. now.
Thank you to everyone that responded to last week’s newsletter. I am grateful for all the folks that read this newsletter each week.
—Louie
P.S. You can reply to this email, it will get to me, and I will read it.
That out of the blue call to be added onto some random already ongoing MS Teams meeting gets me all the f***in' times!!!
Strong stuff, Louie. Your writing just keeps getting better - really enjoyed this format. Thanks for having the guts to call out the leeches and bad actors. Those Taleb quotes hit the mark.