Culture is everyone’s business
☀️ Hello! We’re back with another Daily Edition
Last year, media companies laid off 20,000 people, more than any year in history (except 2020, the exception that proves the rule). This year it’s looking even more dire — case in point, The Messenger shut down last week after somehow squandering $50 million in just eight months.
Entrepreneur and Wired co-founding editor John Battelle wrote on Medium last week about the shockingly terrible way the shutdown was managed. “I’ve had to manage several businesses through restructure, fire sale, or wind-down,” he writes, “and the absolute worst things you can do are first, to keep your employees in the dark, and second, fail to take care of them, as best you can, if you have to let them go.”
And indeed, even in the best scenario, a layoff is a traumatic moment; a writer and podcast producer who’s been through two layoffs describes the adrenaline, anger, and anticipation of knowing the end is near and then sitting through a meeting titled “crying.”
On a related note: A few weeks ago Jerry Talton, the former CTO at Carta, spoke out against what he alleges is a culture of abuse and intimidation at the company. (Carta helps startups manage equity; its CEO, Henry Ward, also writes on Medium.) For context, in 2020 Carta’s only woman executive posted on Medium about why she felt forced to resign (she contends she was underpaid compared to her male colleagues). In a nutshell, these allegations against Carta are about what happens when a company’s stated values don’t match employees’ experiences actually working there.
We’re not here to pick sides in what appears to be an ongoing legal battle, but Talton’s letter is one of the most impassioned acts of cultural reckoning we’ve ever read. This section stuck with me:
I have always liked Madeline Albright’s quote about the special place in hell reserved for women who don’t help other women, but I think the proper focus should be on power, not gender. What is the point of accruing influence and money and prestige if you won’t use them to help people? Stop saying ‘this isn’t my job; there’s nothing I can do; I don’t want to know; it didn’t happen to me; it’s none of my business.’ Mankind is your business. The common welfare is your business. The dealings of your trade are but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of your business.
Even if you’re not in the C-suite, the culture of your workplace (extend that to your home, your friend circle, your neighborhood) is your business, especially when things get tough.
What else we’re reading
- Flyfisherman Ryan Chin shares some of the most gorgeous nature photography we’ve ever seen and teaches us to view familiar places from new angles.
- There’s a lot of discussion out there about the “end of ambition” as an antidote to the stresses of late capitalism (see: the intro to this newsletter). Leadership coach Sara Wachter-Boettcher tries to find a middle ground between work-obsession and abnegation, reminding us that “We don’t tend to find much meaning through what we reject. We find it through what we choose.”
Your daily dose of practical wisdom
Permit yourself to be a beginner — over and over again.
Written by Harris Sockel
Edited and producted by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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