Get a (dream) job during a tech recession 🪜- 10 charts to understand our changing world 🌎- Theranos founder in jail 🩸- (Do not) convince people 🙏
You are not your job
Episode #89. Hey Sunday reader 👋🏼
This Sunday, The Timestamp comes with 5 reasons to read more! Get your weekly dose of summaries from the articles, books, or podcasts you may have missed in tech & culture.
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#1. Get a (dream) job during a tech recession 📝
A couple of takeaways I enjoyed from Peter Yang who writes a newsletter called Creator Economy. On Nov16, he published How to land a great job in the Tech recession that you can access clicking on this 👇
“You are not your job”. Just because you lost your job does not mean your profile is worth nothing. Most companies may be in a job freeze now and you may feel there is a better time to look for a job but… you should focus on the relationship you have built, the achievements you accomplished, and the skills you acquired. This is what will count in your next job.
Here are the 5 recommendations for a job search nowadays:
Get your mind right. Think positively by finding support groups. You don’t have to stay alone in adversity.
Make a career plan. Know your ‘genius’ zone where nobody is as good as you are. Make a list of companies where you think you could be a good fit.
Network. You absolutely need to announce publicly that you have been laid off. Meet people from your network but also meet strangers. You will be surprised how strangers are willing to help you… and those strangers may be working in the target companies you want to work for!
Get interview-ready. Your resume must be ready; you have to know the answers to questions you will be asked during job interviews.
Celebrate small wins. If you only celebrate big wins, you may feel like a failure most of the time. Rewriting your resume, and meeting with a stranger who offers to help are examples of small wins. Big wins are often the sum of many small wins.
#2. Charts to help you understand our changing world 📈
I feel like a power reader of Rex Woodbury’s newsletter called Digital Native. But I cannot miss this opportunity to share a few takeaways from this article he wrote on Nov9 called 10 charts that capture how the world is changing. I will just pick my top4 to give you a flavor of this great article.
Chart #1: TikTok vs everyone
TikTok power users are now spending 95minutes per day on the app. outside of China. Interestingly, ByteDance is publishing a version in China (called Douyin) that contains much more educational content. The Chinese government is limiting the daily use of Douyin to 40 minutes. I will not debate here why but it is worth guessing that TikTok is probably hurting Netflix badly in 2022 as their number of subscribers has been going down for 2 quarters in a row in the US.
Chart #2: Secondhand is becoming first
It is impressive to know to analyst forecast that secondhand will grow 11x faster than the broader retail clothing sector by 2025. Secondhand is definitely the way GenZ wants to buy fashion clothing. Even more interesting is that there still exist tons of friction points for more supply to become available on secondhand marketplaces. It is still quite painful to take a photograph of the stuff you want to sell not even talking about the dozen of potential buyers you have to deal with before making one sale. The potential beyond 2025 might be even bigger.
Chart#3: Education more and more expensive
Do you know that College tuition fees in the USA have been growing at a much faster pace than inflation since 1980? And we are talking of a factor of almost 5x.
While the price of a TV set has decreased by about -98% since 1997, College tuition fees have increased by more than 150%. In a modern economy where one may think that progress is making everything more accessible to everybody, education follows a reverse trend that probably explains why college enrollments have been going down for more than 10 years in a row. Innovation in education is welcome to make it accessible to more people please 🙏.
#3. Theranos founder Elisabeth Holmes in jail
A few takeaways from the hot news published on Nov17 in this article from AP News Elizabeth Holmes gets more than 11 years for Theranos scam.
The news for the end of this past week is that Elizabeth Holmes, who once was the most promising tech figure in Silicon valley received an 11-year penalty sentence.
Now aged 38, mother of a 1-year-old, and pregnant with a second child, Elizabeth Holmes will spend “more than 11 years in prison for duping investors in the failed startup that promised to revolutionize blood testing”.
The question left for later is if Holmes will have to pay back $800 million to investors as compensation for the money she raised for Theranos (more than $1 billion). The technology that Theranos developed never worked as the story went from lie to lie. I do recommend you read the book Bad Blood to get the full story of Theranos.
The fact that Holmes was pregnant during the trial may have triggered a new controversy if it played a role to determine her sentence. “The judge gave Holmes more than five months of freedom before she must report to prison on April 27 — a window of time that should enable her to give birth to her second child before she is incarcerated”.
#4. Don’t convince people 🙏
Takeaways from Patrick Kervern about this article published on Oct2 in Digital Tonto This One Simple Scientific Principle Explains Why You Shouldn’t Waste Too Much Time Trying To Convince People. A recipe to influence people the right way 👇
People have the opinion of their friends and neighbors as proven by a set of conformity studies performed by psychologist Solomon Asch.
Your crazy uncle at the table does not bring only his weird opinions at the table but the ones of his social network.
When trying to influence. Do not try to influence people, try to influence networks.
And when trying to influence networks. Start with a majority even if it is a team of three people out of five in a room.
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