Tulumification → eFeudalism → Zorse Gods

Hey Neighbor. Nothing big. You’re getting a Dyson? That’s cool. Yeah, I’m sure. Just toilet paper. What’s in today’s email? Well, we got.... the Ghost of Neutron Jack, Tulumification, and Downward Mobility. Nah. I won’t be tempted to swipe it.

STATUS

→ It’s Prime Day, the first day of package theft season. Time to put an ADP Security sign out front or stop buzzing in people you don’t know. Don’t feel weird about it.

→ The Times is beta testing “Zorse,” a new Wordle-like game that will require players to parse two tangled phrases. The newspaper of record has yet to explain the scoring system on this latest engagement play. And, yes, The Dictionary of American Idioms is comprehensive if we’re gonna play like that.

→ The number of Forbes “30 Under 30” honorees that have gone on to scandal, ignominy, or incarceration is stunning: Martin Shkreli (securities fraud), Sam Bankman-Fried (fraud, conspiracy), Obinwanne Okeke (wire fraud), Ezra Miller (abuse), Amar Singh (con-artistry, Olivia Nuzzi (Kennedy Facetime sex partner). That’s just a taste. At this point it’s less of reason to hire someone – the joke was always that folks who made it immediately left whatever job got them listed – than a reason to view them with suspicion [1].

Last Month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced plans to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% across his 1.5M-person megacorp. Then, last week, Morgan Stanley released an estimate of what would be required: eliminating 13,834 manager roles. That estimate, arriving on the heels of CitiGroup’s commitment to eliminate 5,000 manager jobs and the targeted hits in the spring became a trend-defining third data point. Here comes the next C-Suite war on middle management.

But that martial narrative makes partial sense. In reality, reducing middle management requires structural changes that empower a specific subset of middle managers and incentivize them to act like lunatics.

GE CEO Jack “Shareholder Value” Welch [2] kicked off the first modern war on middle management when he implemented his “rank and yank” program: employees were regularly sorted by managers into the top 20%, the middle 70%, and people getting fired. This destabilized teams and created a hypercompetitive work environment while earning “Neutron Jack” a reputation as a hard-nosed leader of men. But Welch’s strategy for driving up GE stock – divest from struggling business units, offshore manufacturing, and underfund R&D – ultimately tanked the General. Between 2000 and 2020 GE stock lost 80% of its value. He left a murky legacy and big Valentino shoes (weirdo) to fill.

Enter Netflix Founder Reed Hasting, who implemented (and heavily publicized) the “Keeper Test” as part of a personal Welchification in service of his company’s skyrocketing stock. But the Keeper Test – managers are asked: “If X wanted to leave, would I fight to keep them?” – is not just an iteration of Welch’s stack ranks. In effect, Netflix managers are asked not if an employee is underperforming or overperforming, but whether their job functions can be redistributed. [3]

Jassy is clearly following the Hastings playbook, but he doesn’t seem to have made it to the twist ending. The Keeper Test empowers some middle managers – let’s call them Upper Middle Managers – to think like feudal lords and get creative about how they manage their fiefdoms. But that creates a perverse incentive. Knowing they will be subjected to the same Keeper Test, Upper Middle Managers often insert themselves into as many processes as possible while under hiring for any technical skills they happen to possess. They know their managers are more likely to fight for them if their contorted portfolios make replacing them a complex, potentially multi-hire process.

Hastings doesn’t generally lead with this, but Netflix has a lower annual turnover rate than most tech companies. Compensation is part of that, but so is “keeping.”

In the short term, Amazon – which now has a “bureaucracy hotline” for ratting on coworkers – will probably win the fight against inter-team inefficiencies and declare Pax Amazonia. But the cost of the NYSE victory lap will be the creation of intra-team inefficiencies. When those inefficiencies inevitably become an obstacle to productivity, the company will have to bring in folks to mediate. There’s a name for those kinds of people….

TASTE

→ Kamala Harris has a Glock. She talks about it a lot. Yes, that’s to assuage a certain kind of voter, but it’s also a way to lean in on a trendy accessory. Last year, an NBC news survey found that 41% of Democrats live in a household with a gun, up 8% percent from 2019. Guns tend to be most popular with wealthier people in poorer states.

→ The new novel Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin is getting a lot of attention for positing the idea that adultery can be good for a marriage. The book, which follows two women who cheat, seems optimized for book club awkwardness. So that’s fun.

→As Boomers start to downsize, Millennials are inheriting and trying to offload their crap on Facebook marketplace, where Gen-Z hunts for bargains. Ethan Allen couches are going to get cheap and… maybe cool again?

 → Howard Schulz did a cold brew version of the Juicero.

Starting in 2010, bars, restaurants, and hotels in Los Angeles, Miami, and, oddly, Brooklyn, went all in on low-key tropicalia: terracotta tiles, rattan chairs, basket lights, poured concrete floors, and little outcroppings of lava stone planted with succulents. The trend hit at the same time a hoard of influencers started attending Full Moon parties on Akumal Beach and participated in ayahuasca ceremonies [4] in the shadow of the Temple of the Descending God.

A feedback loop kicked off. Instagram brought Tulum, previously a retreat for cultural elites, to the mass market and Tulum conformed to the incentives of that platform, embracing a totally portable, non-Yucatec aesthetic. Amansala Eco-Chic Resort, the first local hotel to effectively cater to a broad swathe of American professionals, was constructed in a Balinese style, blessed by Buddhist monks, and given an Arabic name. It could have been anywhere. Or, more precisely, it could have been at the edge of anywhere.

Because “Tulumification” is not just pastiche. It’s placement. Unlike hyper-stimulating, “this must be the place” Jimmy Buffet-style Caribbeana, it embraces the aesthetics of the “pleasure periphery,” the places out in the dark past the neon lights of Margaritaville. Like Tulum itself, 80 miles south of Cancun, Tulumification thrives at the highly accessible edges – Uber-able, but not walkable. Off the beaten path, but not really.

M O N E Y

→ New data suggests that $1 bet on sports reduces the amount investment by a household by over $2 and that legalized sports betting reduces the overall net investment of households by as much as 14%. That’s a lot.

→ A survey of 2500 Amazon workers found that 73% are (also) angry about CEO Andy Jassey’s decision to eliminate remote work and looking for a new job as a result. It’s actually wild that so many people cared so much about something that they never got in writing.

→ According to research from Realtor.com, the cities where mortgage-holders are most likely to be “locked in” by low rates are Raleigh, Denver, and D.C. That makes the election particularly high stakes for Democrats who bought in Georgetown.

NOTES & FOOTNOTES

[1] Not gonna be a shock here, but a lot of 30 under 30 honorees happened to work for companies that advertised in Forbes. In effect, these companies were making it easier for their star employees to jump ship. Did they know they were doing this? Yes. They knew. That’s probably part of why the 30 under 30 crime wave happened.

[2] There are a lot of Jack Welch jokes on 30 Rock. The best is probably Liz Lemon humbling her boss Jack Donaghy by recalling that one time Welch called him Rick.

[3] Everyone’s job functions can always be redistributed. It’s like Charles Dickens wrtoe: “It was the best of times. Everyone’s job functions can always be redistributed.”

[4] Spiritualism is baked into Tulumification in a way that’s too complex to unpack in this space. But part of the aesthetic’s ongoing appeal seems to be that not having much furniture leaves space for the Holy Ghost (or w/e).