What We’re Reading
A few good pieces we came across this week …
Hedges
Am I going to be okay?
How much is enough?
That’s it. If you can answer these two questions, clearly, then you will have a gift most will never know – peace of mind. From all the strategies I examined, I learned the only hedge needed is humility.
Market share
Under chief economist Pat Bajari, Amazon has hired more than 150 PhD economists in five years. He’s also cornered the market on what might be called “rookie economists” just out of school. That crowns Amazon the largest employer of tech economists—with more working full-time than even the largest academic economics department.
Algos
Travel — when done right — is challenging. Like all face-to-face interaction, it’s inefficient. The fact that an experience can’t be found in a guidebook is precisely what makes it so special. Sure, a little tip helps — go here, go there; eat here, eat there; stay here, stay there — but at the end of the day, the great pleasures of travel are precisely what you can’t find on Yelp.
Algorithms are great at giving you something you like, but terrible at giving you something you love. Worse, by promoting familiarity, algorithms punish culture.
Peter Principle
Good salespeople are not necessarily good managers of sales-people. Yet the scholars find that firms pick their managers based simply on sales performance. The result is that successful salespeople are promoted — and turned into mediocre managers.
Comp
Have a good weekend.