What I'm Reading: August 1

Career / Company

• Waze Founder on Why He's Leaving Google

  • Worth a read - it's Noam Bardin's take on the differences between building a startup and growing it under the umbrella of a large corporation. He talks about how the constraint of not being able to hire, and especially fire, quickly in a corporation leads to lousy teams, how incentives in a corporation favor the mercenaries who see the product as a tool to advance their own careers rather than a passion or mission, how the corporate compensation model means employees have no exposure to the success or failure of their particular product (instead, the way to make more money is by getting promoted, not by making a more successful product), and how "work life balance" has become an excuse to not work very hard. It's hard to know how true these are without having worked at Google, but still an interesting read if taken with a grain of salt.

• North-Star Metrics

  • A very well-done survey of what types of "North Star Metrics" are used by different companies, and how they can affect the direction of the business.

• Reid Hoffman interviews Eric Schmidt on career, scaling Google, etc:

• On Scaling a Startup by Giving Away Parts of Your Job

  • Molly Graham (Facebook, Google, Quip) talks about how to handle the emotions that come with scaling a company quickly, like worrying whether the new hire will take over part of your job.

• 30 Assorted Pieces of Technology Management Career Advice

Tech

• FBI, CISA, NSA, UK Say Russian Military Group Behind Brute Force Attacks

• A Self-Righting Drone Can Flip Itself Over When Stuck on its Back

  • With a cool video! A self-righting drone that takes inspiration from how a ladybug uses its wings to right itself when stuck on its back.

Other Stuff and Things

• Bloomberg Article on Amazon's Incoming CEO Andy Jassy's Background and Tenure

• Jeff Bezos's Shareholder Letter on "Day One" vs. "Day Two" Companies

• Palm Pilot, Equity Carve-Outs, and Negative Company Values

  • An old case study, but still a fun read. The 3Com / Palm Pilot equity carve-out of the dot-com era demonstrated how investors can misprice assets - investors priced Palm so high and 3Com (which owned Palm) so low, that 3Com's stock price implied that the company had a negative value after subtracting the Palm ownership.