👉 What Happened on Tech Twitter Last Week - Dec 1st

Abusive CEOs or nah, the end of Google, bad music from 2019, Horowitz's new book, 30 under 30 - the dating app, and more!

Yo! It’s Brett again. Here’s all the juicy goodness that happened on Tech Twitter the week of December 1st. As a reminder, Crypto Twitter TLDR with Colin Goltra has launched! Go check it out.

Also, Nikita Singareddy is curating next week’s edition of Tech Twitter TLDR! Get excited!

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Away’s Emotional Baggage

The Verge broke a story about Away’s work culture that triggered basically everyone. Half of Twitter thought it was an over-the-top hit piece about a normal hard-working culture and the other half thought it was a legitimate exposé on an abusive CEO.

Red @adventurared

Can you IMAGINE working for luggage company @away and having the CEO write shit like this to her own customer service employees to “teach them a lesson”? What in the actual fuck. theverge.com/2019/12/5/2099…

Jill Carlson @jillruthcarlson

Imagine being a first year investment banking analyst and reading the piece on Away lmao

Sheel Mohnot @pitdesi

The Twitter reaction to the piece on @away reminds me of “The Dress;” you either see it as black/blue or white/gold and you can’t see the other side. Either it was a hit piece and they did nothing wrong or we should be outraged at how they treated their employees.

Larry and Sergey Step Down

Larry and Sergey have been something like absent fathers to Googlers over the past few years. Last week, they finally filed the divorce papers. It was quite the sentimental moment.

Jeff Morris Jr. @jmj

Larry Page & Sergey Brin step down from active management at Google. Two of the most iconic co-founders depart together on the same day. A poetic decision after 21 years leading the world’s 4th most valuable company. Every co-founding team should view this moment as the dream.

The marketing genius of Spotify Wrapped

Spotify released their end-of-year wrapped product that shows you how much awful music you listened to all year. It may have been one of the most shared pieces of non-native content on Instagram all year aside from Tik Tok. Well played, Spotify.

Anna Khan @annarchyy

What about #SpotifyWrapped makes it such a brilliant campaign? In a world where we share pictures and content so often, music is the thing that is still more private & uniquely personal. To share it is both vulnerable and a moment of reflection, a definite recipe for virality.

MikePetes @MikePetes

Love this POV by Sarah : 👤Your product should support the user’s identity 🛠Build a frictionless way for users to share 📲Leverage distribution platforms through integration 🗣Give content your users love to shQMK8

Sarah McBride @sararahmcb

I wrote about how startups can build an organic marketing engine à la Spotify Wrapped 💫 TLDR; lol jk please read it https://t.co/hEAH1AgZVH

Ben Horowitz’s New Book is Lit

Immad wrote up a quick summary of Ben Horowitz’s new book, What You Do is Who You Are. Check it out:

immad @immad

1/ Ben Horowitz’s new book makes a compelling argument that that your company’s greatest cultural strength, when taken to its extreme, can be its greatest weakness. The example in the book is Uber prioritizing competition over all else.

immad @immad

2/ The solution presented in the book seems to be two fold A) avoid one word cultural values and go into depth on how to inact and not inact them B) have a second cultural value that counters the firsts negative tendacy

immad @immad

3/ B is rather graceful and the example given is that Japanese/Samurai culture promotes politeness above all else but also states politeness without sincerity is meaningless

immad @immad

4/ Now that I have heard the idea of cultural values taken to the extreme lead to these issues it explains a lot of issues we see with larger companies. Like Google wants to organize data above every other virtue even when organizing private data has negative issues etc

Other Good Tweets

Kate Clark @KateClarkTweets

Ah the list we've all been waiting for.

Ian Sigalow @Sigalow

There are a growing number of publicly-traded D2C product companies such as purple, SDC, blue apron, Mohawk, hello fresh, etc. Evidence suggests these companies trade ~1x revenues, not SAAS multiples. Peloton is an outlier, but it still trades at a discount to Planet Fitness.

Tim L @telenardo

Noicing that the rounded screens on the newer iPhones seem to have started a design trend towards more rounded UI elements.. I’m here for it 🤙t

Kevin Kwok @kevinakwok

Excited to start talking about a project @kane and I've been working on Starting with a poetry book Kane's written* with OpenAI's GPT-2 model Available at your local bookstore, & our website. But def not your local bookstore papergains.co *written is a generous word

Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong

Imagine if Airpods keep getting 10% smaller every year or two. Eventually it will be a hearing aid that you wear 24/7, barely visible.

Lenny Rachitsky 👋 @lennysan

Love this from @JamesClear: How to Be Unhappy: -stay inside all day -move as little as possible -spend more than you earn -take yourself (and life) too seriously -look for reasons why things won’t work -always consume, never contribute -resent the lucky and successful (1/2)

Greg Isenberg @gregisenberg

The future of social is: - Paid - Centered around vertical communities - Feels like a game - Completely new ways of discovering content - Non-broadcast model - Has a virtual economy - Shopping is a key part of it - Eventually has a physical component

Just for the lols

justin gage @itunpredictable

is forbes 30 under 30 a dating app

𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐬 🐺🦊 @karbonbased

I am a... ⚪️ man ⚪️ woman 🔘 cryptocurrency trader Looking to... ⚪️ long ⚪️ short 🔘 make the world a better place I’m doing this for... ⚪️ profit 🔘 ideological reasons

Andrew Reed @andrew__reed

Legit amazed that @PeteButtigieg spending a few years at McKinsey has become a hot topic in the election cycle. I have done my best to summarize below. Please let me know any questions or comments.

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