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Perhaps you're referring to other channels of communication, but I'd much rather have a rejection call than no contact at all. Corporate ghosting is much more sadistic.

https://randsinrepose.com/

He also hosts a slack that's up to something like 100,000 people. Ask a lot of dumb questions.

https://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership-slack/

(Which, not for nothing, is harder given all the diffusion brands. For GE, that includes Monogram, Café, Profile, Haier, and Hotpoint.)

Is it? I had no idea it was still a thing. I associate it first and foremost with fiction. Specifically, Dr. Strangelove: the campy black comedy that's fifty-six (56) years old.

If pushed, I probably would have guessed it was a real thing from the Cold War. Let me be clear: I couldn't have said with certainty that the Doomsday Clock was a real thing.

I had no idea that it was maintained in 2020. It belongs in the era of Burt Ward in tights. "Time to Stop the 'Doomsday Clock' — Because No One Cares" might be a better title.

Months leading up to baby? Doctor's appointments increasing to weekly, potential health issues that impact work and life.

Month 1? Way less organized: pretty much random bands of sleep, feed, care throughout the 24h cycle.

Month 2? I would love to meet the parents who get 8 hours of sleep in Month 2.

Month 3–6? Yeah, getting better, but still a lot of chaos.

Oh, and this is 7 days a week. No Friday nights or weekends, folks.

Having a kid is a massive life change, and a massive commitment. I emphasize this for two reasons. 1) We as a working society still massively under-support working moms (and dads). And 2) I don't want anyone getting depressed when their post-kid life isn't nearly as organized as the one laid out here.

(Inevitable disclaimer: Am man supporting a 8-month pregnant, working partner, along with two other kids.)

Albeit, this means that you now don't have pretty bundles, and are selling features à la carte, which can be hard to manage. OR you make all those customers upgrade to Enterprise, which they'll be pissed about, but still falls into the logical "paying more for more" optics.

I don't know anything about Postman, but this is an interesting case study on price increases. No one likes price increases, but they happen. So long as you have a strong ROI use case, you can navigate those discussions with your customers. E.g., "You were getting a 50x return, but listen, we're running a business over here, and a 45x return is still pretty darn good."

The challenge in Postman's case appears to be that they ALSO reduced the bundle components. So you compound the perception from "paying more" to "paying more but getting less". That's worse optics.

What I'd offer you think about is this may be a perfectly rational and even optimal customer solution. It's unifying two different pricing actions: price increase and product bundling. The logic being that many customers weren't using all the users, API calls, documentation views, custom domains, and integrations that were previously included in, say, the Pro bundle.

So as opposed to increasing price by—I'm making up numbers here—12% and leaving bundle elements the same, they increased price by 10% and cut features by 2%. The end result is exactly the same, but is actually better for most customers because they will get the same level of features they needed and not have to pay that additional 2% for features they weren't using anyway.

I don't know anything about Postman, but this is an interesting case study on price increases.

No one likes price increases, but they happen. So long as you have a strong ROI use case, you can navigate those discussions with your customers. E.g., "You were getting a 50x return, but listen, we're running a business over here, and a 45x return is still pretty darn good."

The challenge in Postman's case appears to be that they ALSO reduced the bundle components. So you compound the perception from "paying more" to "paying more but getting less". That's worse optics.

What I'd offer you think about is this may be a perfectly rational and even optimal customer solution. It's unifying two different pricing actions: price increase and product bundling. The logic being that many customers weren't using all the users, API calls, documentation views, custom domains, and integrations that were previously included in, say, the Pro bundle.

So as opposed to increasing price by—I'm making up numbers here—12% and leaving bundle elements the same, they increased price by 10% and cut features by 2%. The end result is exactly the same, but is actually better for most customers because they will get the same level of features they needed and not have to pay that additional 2% for features they weren't using anyway.

1. I suspect you'd have "protection" to use your title as a credential in a relevant professional forum.

2. Most companies also have policies on running for public office, usually because of legal oversight to public procurement or policymaking.

3. Neither of your examples are explicitly "to the media", which is being discussed here.

4. Most companies are thrilled to help you advance your cause and theirs in things like running for public office or industry leadership, and will give you great resources like media training.

5. Straw-men: I bet the company would care if you were running on a policy platform of reducing sanitation in minority neighborhoods, or speaking at a KKK rally.

If these activities have nothing to do with work, then why are you bringing work into it? And if you're bringing work into it, then it doesn't strike me as unreasonable to tell your company about it.

It's not about "being afraid to talk to the press"... that's my point.

Simply those employees referenced in the title of this post.

> They were making comments to the press while being Amazon employees something Amazon was in breach of company policy.

Well, and identifying themselves as such. That second part is key. It's not just, "I think XYZ about climate change." It's, "I, bjorne, an Amazon employee, think XYZ about climate change."

> So the policy requires people to not disclose that they work for Amazon while talking in a public forum. That's insane.

Why is that insane? It happens all the time. I don't feel the need to trumpet my employment status when talking about things that are entirely unrelated to my work there.

Titular "employees" were informed that they were in violation of media policy by making comments to the media both as a named representative of Amazon and critical of Amazon without prior approval.

Neither of those elements strikes me as shocking. 1) Companies are sensitive—including for legal reasons—to employees clearly noting that "their opinions are their own" and may not reflect the corporate entity. And, 2) media perception, particularly in a negative light.

Maren Costa is quoted as saying, “Any policy that says I can’t talk about something that is a threat to my children – all children – is a problem for me.”

Which, uuh, is not what the policy says. It says "don't bring Amazon into your personal views unless we say it's OK" and "hey, probably don't be openly critical of your employer". Talk about climate change all you want!

Victoria Liang is quoted as saying, “Amazon’s newly updated communications policy is having a chilling effect on workers who have the backbone to speak out and challenge Amazon to do better. This policy is aimed at silencing discussion around publicly available information. It has nothing to do with protecting confidential data, which is covered by a completely different set of policies.”

Which... yep. The entire point is media and PR relations, not confidentiality agreements. To limit one's own employees from making you a pariah in the media.

So none of this is shocking to me.

Note also that this is different from a thesis of, "Workers should be protected for criticizing their employers in the media" or "Amazon should be doing more for climate change."

And if you want to be really pedantic, technically the stat here is "arrests", not "committed a crime" or "found guilty".

Specifically: 4,209 (48.7%) "murders and nonnegligent manslaughter" ("murders") are categorized under race=Black. Incidentally, still less than race=White (4,261 or 49.3%).

Indeed, 12.6% of respondents in the 2010 census self-identified as "Black or African American".

That's your 13/50 meme.

However, murders are <0.085% of all crimes tallied in the FBI report, and are far outweighed by crimes like larceny (1M instances), drug abuse violations (1.27M), DUIs (1M), and "Other" (2.9M), where race=White are all by far the majority.

Thus, 69.4% of crimes are committed by race=White, so "white people commit way more crimes in the US" is also true.

You can get builder-grade and often-ugly crap from Home Depot (see also: Brands not being an indicator of quality), or spend hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on designer pieces.

I ended up finding one I really liked off a no-name website, with the product shipped from Hong Kong for like $80. Solid metal, reasonable-looking electronics, arrived in 2 weeks, good communication... very happy!

For example, I'm shopping for landscape lighting right now. You can spend a lot on landscape lighting. A nice bronze spotlight from a "good" brand like Kichler can run you $100+ ea.[1], and I need 8–10 of them.

Conversely, I can get an 6-pack of albeit-plastic spotlights off Amazon from a Chinese company for 40 bucks, with 4.5 stars and 252 reviews.[2]

I am getting ripped off with Kichler? I am getting crap from Zuckeo? Who knows!?

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Kichler-16012BBR30-10-Degree-3000K-Br...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/ZUCKEO-Landscape-Spotlight-Decorative...

So the FOMO is paying a brand markup for consistent quality you could get for less.

Then you have "established" brands that are just trying to maximize profit. And "new" brands that are just AliExpress resellers. So trust that even a Brand™ experience will be a good one is waning.

In other words, the premise that you're paying for time savings is less assured, and the information to actually make comparison shopping worthwhile is right there.

I'd add that's it's worse because the world is flatter. Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman? But then when the version from Alibaba is total crap, there's no recourse. It's not like a local shop with reputation at risk.

So you end up in this world where nothing matters and it's a race to maximize attention. Which means, as a consumer, you have to do your research or risk getting taken for a ride.

It comes down to the "calling a lawyer constitutes guilt" argument, which seems like it would cause any judge to roll her eyes.

Would that even be admissible?

Specifically, this:

1. Rossi Adams founded State Snaps.

2. "The slogan 'Do It For State' sprouted organically, and soon became synonymous with the State Snaps brand — a catch-all when referring to [State Snaps]..."

3. Ethan Deyo "had side hustles as domain brokers: buying up URLs and flipping them for a profit".

4. Deyo buys DoItForState.com specifically to capitalize off State Snaps.

5. Deyo starts using #DoItForState and trademarks the name.

6. Adams gets mad.

So Deyo is a total parasite. IANAL and all that, but Adams had should have been able to show prior use / common law trademark protection. USPTO should have denied Deyo's trademark application—or Adams should have been able to get it revoked—then this should have been a pretty clear-cut ICANN trademark dispute ruled in favor of Adams.

All that's to say that I understand Adams' frustration. Though I haven't seen any evidence that Adams tried to protect his trademark legally.

Then, of course, you get into the threats and the gun violence and the ridiculous, immature, illegal stuff.

[1] https://onezero.medium.com/the-influencer-and-the-hit-man-6c...

At the end of the day, what cool tech for legitimate purposes! Hollywood VFX, training video or PR customization, etc. Nixon giving this speech is a cool look into "what-if", without the moral burden of someone trying to convince me that an alternate reality is the real one.

At the time, the Beats noise cancellation was considered sub-par compared to the Bose. That may have changed.

I haven't tried the new AirPods, but I do very much like an over-the-ear form factor for long sessions. (I have "regular" AirPods, too.) Anything in or on my ear get uncomfortable after a while for me.

As of this comment, there are 9 entries, and more than half have to do with similar link/button behavior (#8, #5, #4, #2, #1... and also kind of #3).

Some of these are also semantically invalid (e.g., #7). That's less a "bad practice" and more "invalid HTML".

I understand the the highest legislative body in the land is calling him to testify. Are there limits to their ability to do that? Or is the PR from declining to testify really likely to be worse than actual testimony?

However you feel about Zuckerberg, politics, Facebook, etc., he's still the CEO of a half-a-billion dollar company. Doesn't he have better things to do that show up to be the punching bag for a handful of politicians looking for a soundbite?