FATE V FUTURE

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FUTUREBOARD

🔼 Temu. The “superstore” e-commerce app became the most downloaded mobile app in America, surpassing Walmart and Amazon. Temu is owned by the firm behind Pinduoduo, one of China’s most popular e-commerce platforms »»

🔽 Demand for cars from luxe EV maker Lucid Motors »»

💬 “At Berkshire, there will be no finish line.” the 92-year-old billionaire stock picker Warren Buffet —widely considered the greatest investor of all time— released his annual letter to investors in his firm Berkshire Hathaway »»

🛩️ Vegas’s best hotel pools »»

👗 The best of Milan Fashion Week »»

💎 The best villas in the Mediterranean »»

QUICKFATES

J-Hope is Louis Vuitton’s newest ambassador »»

Ads are coming to Apple TV+. (This is another example of what I’ve nicknamed “The New Deal”: paid platforms showing ads) »»

Speaking of Apple, here’s what the iPhone 15 will look like… »»

…and, is the company finally drawing better maps than Google? »» The newsletter's writer owns shares of Apple

10 ridiculously scenic walks near London »»

Sweetgreen’s launching subscriptions »»

5 tricks that can make any leader a better listener »»

Revolut’s getting a UK banking license »»

Speaking of “The New Deal,” first Amazon, then Uber, and now even eBay is making money from ads »»

A five-minute breathing exercise for anxiety and mood »»

19 niche music festivals for every type of person »» 

Why deep cleaning feels good »»

There’s a worrying amount of fraud in medical research »» 🔐 

Klarna’s rolling out late fees and a ‘customer recovery program’ to curb defaults »»

Nokia’s got a new logo »»

DEEPFATE ☀️ CONSENSUS REALITY

Many people entering the workforce are rethinking the age old tradition of “paying your dues,” sparking friction with older workers. Who’s right? (The answer is surprisingly deep)

A LOT OF CHAT on LinkedIn about job interview norms. It led me somewhere super deep.

• A particular post in my feed got particularly active this past weekend, before being deleted on Saturday.

• In the now-vanished post, a manager shared a screengrab of an email from a young design candidate.

• The sender politely declined a second round, in person interview/skills assessment.

• Paraphrasing from memory here, the candidate wrote that they didn't understand the need to further prove themselves beyond the first interview, seeing as they had already earned a graphic design degree, and spent 10 months working in the field.

• The manager described himself being totally lost for words by this note.

• His LinkedIn post questioned the next generation’s approach to work —at least when it comes to interview norms.

AS I RECALL, well over 1000 people liked the post and about half as many commented.

• It was an extremely lively thread.

• Some people agreed with the original poster, lamenting the fact that a job candidate would decline to attend a second, in-person interview/skills assessment.

• But many, many commenters did not agree with the OP.

• I was struck by both the volume of comments, and the volume of the comments— and sincerely wanted to add my first hand interview experience, in the hopes that some of the thousands and thousands of people on the LinkedIn thread might find it helpful.

AT FATE V Future, we often interview and contract freelancers for open ended positions (meaning no firm end date).

• We call our second round interviews for junior level people “shadow days”.

• They are paid.

• In them, the candidate shadows the person whose role they're taking on, or works with their would-be supervisor, for a half day.

• Shadow days can be remote or in person, as the candidate prefers.

• We ensure they consist of substantive work (that needs doing), and we ask for feedback on ourselves, to help ensure the day ends up a win-win.

• We've observed good outcomes doing this, and that includes the small handful of times we decided against contracting someone who did a shadow day.

• The method works for us. It may not for everyone, but —as I wrote in my LinkedIn comment— I hope some of you find this helpful.

WE HAVE NOT observed any obvious downsides to shadow days. And I'm sincerely surprised more firms don't do it.

• Of course, there are logistical complexities —around confidentiality, or the unwelcome bureaucratic burden— when it comes to paying non employees for a one off shadow day.

• But hiring is full of bureaucratic layers, and the info a firm needs to pay a freelancer is often requested at the application stage, anyway.

OK, SO WHAT’S the point here?

• Many people entering the workforce today are rethinking the age-old tradition of “paying your dues,” which is causing friction with older workers, many of whom view them a badge of honor.

• Look around. The dues-paying era is over!

• We’re in the creator economy now, and examples are all around you.

• Even those already in creative jobs are enticed by novel opportunities.

• Just last week, I shared a Quickfate about a 26-year-old art director who quit his job in advertising because he can make more money making TikToks.

ZOOM OUT: A lot of really fundamental aspects of modern life are changing. Rapidly.

• I’ve written about the wild sociological experiment all of us are currently in: the end of mainstream popular culture, as our information and entertainment sources splinter into narrower and narrower individualized streams. (Hold that thought.)

• But there’s another, enormous, society-level change we are living through.

CALL IT THE end of objectivity.

• We are all, right now, reading, watching, posting and sharing “facts” that may not actually be “true.”

• And while this isn’t exactly new —there were conspiracy theorists, and “alternative fact” peddlers way before the internet, operating via newsletters, amateur radio stations, or plain old word of mouth— the ease with which we can all post anything and have it be sent to anyone today, makes all previous eras seem quaint.

• Even in the Facebook days, your posts had to be physically liked, or forwarded, or commented upon to go, quote unquote, “viral.”

• Today, the algorithm decides whether what you're saying goes around the world.

ZOOM OUT AGAIN. Our recent period of shared, universally agreed and accepted truths is actually just blip in human history.

• Check it out: Copernicus suggested that the Earth might revolve around the sun —and not the other way around— in the 16th century (though the concept had been bouncing around history and various cultures dating all the way back to ancient Greece.)

• But it took a hundred years or more after Copernicus spelled it all out for his view of the sun to finally take hold. (That was more or less around the same time Newton called out a wild theory called gravity.)

• If that sounds like a long time, Flat Earth took even longer to debunk.

• References to the Earth being round actually also date back to the ancient Greeks (they were smart), but the idea of a spherical Earth took about two millennia to finally catch on.

YEP, FOR MOST of human history, our secular “truth” was simply what our village elder said around the campfire.

• And that truth might be really, really different from the one shared by the elders in the next village over.

• That is actually the way most secular information has been transmitted for much of human history.

• Today, we’re kind of back to that: anyone, anywhere can now share their truth —whatever it is— and probably find, a welcoming audience for it.

SO, WHAT’S ACTUALLY the point here? And how can we all benefit from it?

• Well, one way is to recognize that your truth and experience may not be the next generation’s.

• Another is to be open to the fact that what we call “truth” will increasingly be dictated by what’s been called the “wisdom of the crowd” (see: Quora, Reddit, Wikipedia), or —to get philosophical— “consensus reality.”

• The two expressions mean the same thing: if enough people agree on something or other, it will become truth.

• If consensus reality freaks you out, don’t worry.

• Even though it took a hundred years for us humans to agree that the Earth revolves around the sun, and two thousand for us to decide the Earth wasn’t flat, we should figure out whether an in-person, second round interview is valuable faster than that.

More

I’d link to the LinkedIn piece that started it all, but it was deleted. Instead, here is a Quickfate seeking consensus reality:

Covid-19 likely emerged from laboratory leak, US energy department says »»

Written by Jon Kallus. Any feedback? Simply reply.