Weekly Mixed Bag #1
Starting this week, I'm introducing a new section featuring opportunities and links worth your attention - this could be events, fellowships, job openings, or roles we're distributing through Clout. You can skip forward to the next section if you’re here for for conceptual analysis about human capital and nothing else.
Events and Opportunities
Optima & Outliers Drinks - New York: Quick reminder for those attending our first community event this week - looking forward to seeing you all on Wednesday at Fractal Tech in Wlliamsburg.
Clout is helping a leading fintech platform (with 200B+ in client assets) hire a data scientist. This hybrid role based in NYC offers $140-170k base salary + bonus + equity. Strong engineering/coding skills are a must - specifically Python for building analytic tools (like sales dashboards and ROI calculators) and SQL/Tableau for analytics. If you can vouch for someone, fill out this referral form, and you'll earn $10,000 if they get hired. If they're not actively looking, you can specify that - we'll reach out without presuming interest on their behalf.
If you're interested in receiving similar opportunities to help surface talent within your network, you can leave your information here.
What I've Been Reading and Thinking About
- with an intellectually honest take on whether you should work as a VC Associate
While his newsletter has 10x the reach and some of you may have discovered my newsletter through him, for those who haven't explored his writing yet, I've been enjoying going through the repository of content at Derisible
One meta thought that popped into my head while reading this piece - and a topic I've been meaning to write about - Always think through what people are paying you for, given your skills and comparative advantage. This can help close the gap between your instinctive reaction when you hear "investment banking" and the likely phenomenology associated with being a junior person in that job. From my time in VC, the subjective experience of being a junior person in the team can actually be quite good, especially because what you're being paid for is to capture deal flow. And if you're extraverted and intellectually curious, work doesn't really feel like work. (this is less true of later stage funds) But Yoni goes through all the factors that can potentially override this consideration of “it’s a cool job”.
Face Time Culture: There's an important distinction between reasonable return-to-office policies and what I'll call "face time culture" - the phenomenon in certain finance and consulting firms where appreciation scales almost linearly with hours spent in the office. This practice sends an unintended (or not) message: "We can't effectively judge your work output, so we'll use time spent in office as a proxy.” It’s worth asking what this selects for and if that trade-off is worth it. The type of conscientiousness that is most conducive to thriving in this environment probably only weakly correlates with agency and effectiveness, and probably negatively with creativity. The answer: junior people in client service roles are probably mostly being paid to be available whenever senior folks need anything. And if that need seems to be more important to your boss than how effective or agentic you can be, it’s worth asking: Do I want to be paid for that?
Senior folks should also consider if they have priced in the second order effects on the internal talent pipeline within the company. Is it worth having slavish analysts but a mediocre internal pool from which to promote?