Photo by Felix Mittermeier.
Chances are you’ve already read the tweet thread from Jason Calacanis. If you haven’t, it won’t take long to get the gist. Valley Thought Leader Prefers Free Market basically sums it up.
Jason would like you to know that, while he pays his interns, it shouldn’t be required. Internship is already a drag on “A Players” (🤮), he says. And anyhow the interns should honestly be the ones paying, since they’re learning. “After all we pay schools for teaching,” is an argument his fingers actually let him type.
We don’t want to talk about Jason’s nonsense, here. At least not directly. We want to talk about the replies. Because the replies are a thing that we need to get better at.
If you read the replies, many of them are counter-arguments about the value of intern programs. Because it builds a pipeline of talent. Because it gives your senior people relief on mundane work. Because it improves employer reputation.
They are arguments of the form “I am better at capitalism than Jason.” This is a bad argument. It’s bad because you might be wrong, he’s made a lot of money playing capitalism. But it’s also bad because it accepts his premise. It lets him off the hook.
The argument we should be making instead is, “You’re being an asshole. Stop being an asshole.”
You can use your own words, if you want.
When you were a kid, did you ever have a friend with one of those joke hand buzzers? They’d hide it in their palm, and when you shook their hand it would buzz and annoy you? Maybe you were that kid. Anyhow, do you remember what happened next? Almost immediately, everyone learns to spot the thing. And when you see that little shit and his hand buzzer, you roll your eyes and say “God, AGAIN? No, I’m not shaking your hand.”
That’s what we need to do. If we want a better world, we have to build it, and that means not playing his game. The counter for Jason is not that there is a good business case to be made for paid internship. The counter for Jason is that it’s unethical to exploit people. The counter for Jason is that it’s shameful to argue for a system that gives more advantages to those wealthy enough to work unpaid. The counter for Jason is that he’s being an asshole, and should stop.
While Jason played with his hand buzzer last week, Lily Zheng wrote a very good piece: The business case for diversity is a sinking ship. It gets to a very similar place, and with concrete steps on how to keep going. It’s worth your 8 minutes.
— Melissa & Johnathan
What Melissa’s reading
We’re deep in content development for our upcoming 3-day boss intensive. It’s the best. Our office is completely covered in post-it notes. We work in a historic building with very crumbly brick walls. The only way to use sticky notes is to stick them to the tables. It’s like someone took a snapshot of a google sprint and rotated the whole thing by 90 degrees.
Part of new content development means digging up old resources. Poking at them and trying to unlock why they were so formative. And discerning what about them might be useful to others who are similarly stuck.
The program for Betterboss is all about the link between strategy and execution. It’s a place, frankly, where we see bosses at all levels struggle. Early leaders are told they need to “be more strategic” and “get out of the weeds.” But the truth is that you can get pretty far in your career whist still among the weeds.
The problem with most writing on strategy is that it presupposes you know what it means to be strategic. People say strategy is about choices. People talk about building a moat. And understanding how you’ll win. But a person can nod along to all of that and still make tactical decisions. I know because I did this for a good chunk of my career.
All day, I’ve been thinking about how I got to the other side. How I came to not only understand strategy but fully internalized it. How I learned to stop worrying and love strategy. The unhelpful truth is that my own path was more dial than light switch.
Julie Zhou‘s is one of the most honest and vulnerable strategy articles I’ve ever read. It’s a glimpse at what it feels like to get better at strategic thinking. Particularly when the stakes are high. Particularly when you feel like it’s something you ought to have already mastered.
If you’re working to level up your own strategy game, did this piece connect for you? Did it help get you unstuck? And if you already feel on top of strategy, chances are good that you’re surrounded by people who aren’t. Does the article help you better understand where those folks are stuck? And how you might help bring them along?
What Johnathan’s reading
The Most Common Type of Incompetent Leader
This article is a year old, but has been making the rounds again on twitter. It’s good in the way that HBR articles are good, and bad in the way that HBR articles are bad.
It’s good because it’s packed full of links to research about the damage that bad leaders do (hooray!). And the core point it makes is one that some of you will nod along to. I know I did. The core point is that an absent/disengaged boss can be much worse than an actively negative one. He writes,
“Research shows that being ignored by one’s boss is more alienating than being treated poorly. The impact of absentee leadership on job satisfaction outlasts the impact of both constructive and overtly destructive forms of leadership.”
I’ve worked for destructive leaders. And I certainly had days where the idea that they’d be absent for a while sounded just fine. But still I know this is true. A passive, absent, disengaged leader is worse. It makes work feel hopeless. It makes you feel stagnant. It’s surprising how quickly and completely it can deplete you.
But this article is also bad in the way that HBR articles are bad. It’s written by a guy who sells leadership assessments. And wouldn’t you know it. The only suggestion in the entire piece for making things better is to assess your leaders. And then “do something about them.”
So okay, so look. Bosses are human, too. That’s basically an underlying thesisof our work. If you’re an absentee boss, this research should be a wake up call. You’re hurting your team. But I will also bet you a shiny nickel that no one ever taught you how to do this job. And now you’re reading this research, and you get that you’ve screwed up. But the problem is that you don’t know what you don’t know.
I see you. And if it’s not you, if it’s your boss doing this, well I’m sorry but I see them, too. Time to get educated. There are skills that will make you better at feedback, better at career conversations, better at getting a team lit up and excited to work with you. The answer isn’t that you’re not cut out for this: it’s skills. The answer isn’t that your job isn’t set up for success: it’s skills. You don’t need another assessment. You need skills.
There’s a reason we do the work we do.
