Meet levels.fyi – they collect actual like for like data on salaries, benefits, levels etc. for the US tech industry.
They use this to help people negotiate salaries (how they monetise).
Levels recently published a report for 2021 that has some fascinating data (h/t The Diff).
The table attached shows entry level engineer salaries.
Lots of other interesting stats – comp has been rising (generally highest entry-level salaries are growing +3.4% annualised since 2019) and the Bay Area still wins (40% higher than LA for example).
Google has been running an internal prediction market – Gleangen, and Astral Codex Ten has a great write up on the topic.
This is the second iteration of such a market (the first was called Prophit).
Google claims that anyone can now build a prediction market on Google Cloud.
Prediction markets are fascinating as a tool but have struggled to get really big and more importantly to solve the three key issues (real money, easy to use, easy to create own markets).
Metaculus is a community dedicated to making accurate predictions (they have a great resource page) as is Manifold. Neither use real money.
Kalshi is a new startup ($30m of funding) that is trying to make events into an asset class via a real money prediction market. As is Futuur.
Polymarket, the biggest such market in the US, was recently fined and forced to shut down in the US (it remains open elsewhere).
John Foley, founder of Peloton, was so determined that “one of his sales techniques was to have customers test out the bike; he’d give them headphones and turn up the volume so when they talked to him about how much they liked the product they’d end up shouting an endorsement to passersby.“
In the early days of Salesforce “when a competitor was holding an event at Cannes, they booked all the taxis in Nice for the night and had sales reps stationed in each one to pitch their product to people going to the competitor’s event” (h/t The Diff).
These remind me of an old Snippet on how some major consumer apps got their first 1,000 users – often in surprising ways.
The ECB, by introducing a new publication – “monetary policy at a glance“, is trying to address the declining and very poor readability of its existing press releases.
The decline in readability, measured by the Reading Ease Index (REI), is largely down to the introduction of more complex monetary tools (e.g. TLTRO).
As ever the Collaborative Fund blog puts out another gem collection of short stories. Each holds an interesting lesson.
Whether it’s how starting from scratch has its advantages – like when German complete disarmament after WWI meant it had the most modern army for WWII.
Or how Michael Lewis’ first hit book (Liar’s Poker) was followed by a decade break before his next one – the break allowed him to be patient and “start all over again, start completely fresh as if I’ve never written a book before and give myself at least the option of not writing books.“
“Humanity’s ability to heal the depleted ozone layer is not only our biggest environmental success, it is the most impressive example of international cooperation on any challenge in history.“
Simply fascinating read on how the confluence of science, politics and industry led to this human triumph.
Recommended by Quintin Price, head of Alpha Strategies at Blackrock (the $1trn active arm that is making a comeback against the firm’s passive dominance) on this excellent podcast, is an intriguing essay – “Why Should Anyone be Led by you?“
The authors, two business school professors, find that there are four qualities that make a great leader.
First, leaders must expose vulnerabilities, revealing their approachability. This builds trust, a collaborative atmosphere, and solidarity. Never reveal a weakness that can be seen as a fatal flaw, jeopardising central aspects of one’s professional role.
Second, good leaders must be great situation sensors. They can sense unexpressed feelings. This requires a fine balance as it needs to be validated i.e. observations must be grounded in reality and not just projections.
Third, leaders should care, intensely, about the work employees do, something that is hard to fake. This can’t be soft but requires tough empathy – a respectful “grow or go” mentality.
Finally, and most importantly, leaders must be different and show that difference. This takes time to discover and can’t be over done.
Although these sound like rules to follow it is incredibly hard to fake and authenticity is key as the article concludes – ““Be yourselves—more—with skill.” There can be no advice more difficult to follow than that.“
Japanese companies bloated their balance sheets with low-yielding cash and unproductive assets. This has meant that companies delivered just 3% return on capital compared to 6% fo the developed world for the majority of the past four decades.
Returns look to be improving according to GMO, the change is structural and not cyclical, and the result of improving margins and not improvement in inefficient balance sheets.
63% of TikTok users (1bn worldwide) discover new music on TikTok before any other platform.
This is worrying for SPOT.
TikTok has already launched a competing service – Resso – in key emerging markets (Brazil, Indonesia and India).
iOS App download rank data for the recent 90-day period from App Annie (pictured, link) shows it still hasn’t hit Spotify’s dominance (it has only reached 2nd place in Music category in Indonesia, and lingers in 4th for the other two launch countries).
The probability that a mature private equity fund will deliver 2x on investment fell in the 1990s and has since held steady at 30-35%.
In other words the probability of NOT achieving 2x is 65-70%.
For >2.5x the probability of NOT achieving is nearly 90%.
The data uses North America and EU strategies, >$100m, across buyout, growth and turnaround. 2011 vintage year is used to eliminate non-mature funds. This filter led to 1,200 funds.
Credit Suisse, who suffered $5.5bn in losses in the Archegos debacle earlier in 2021, have published a full report of what happened by an external firm.
Nice read for those interested in the inner workings of the Prime Brokerage business.
If you aren’t familiar with it, this is a brilliant introduction and history (paywalled).
