How to Make Strategic Trade-Offs

When CEOs lay out multiple high-level objectives, like increasing market share, entering new markets, and pursuing innovation — all at the same time — they enthusiastically tout the advantages of each. They set ambitious numerical targets. They rally the troops behind the vision. But they rarely talk explicitly about how much value they are willing to sacrifice in one of those objectives to achieve more value in another. When it comes to their strategic objectives, they naturally “want it all” and resist talking about sacrifice. In the absence of explicit guidance, executives and the managers beneath them substitute their own judgment for the CEO’s, weighting conflicting objectives differently and, by doing so, pull the organization in many misaligned directions at once. READ MORE

SpaceX employees draft open letter to company executives denouncing Elon Musk’s behavior

An open letter to SpaceX decrying CEO Elon Musk’s recent behavior has sparked open discussion among the company’s employees in an internal chat system. Employees are being encouraged to sign onto the letter’s suggestions, either publicly or anonymously, with a signed version of the letter to be delivered to the desk of SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell. READ MORE

Wells Fargo says the US will fall into recession after the Fed delivers its biggest rate hike since 1994

Economists at Wells Fargo said Wednesday they expect the US to tip into a recession in 2023 after the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates by the biggest amount since 1994 in a bid to choke off inflation.

The Fed's move prompted a shifting of views on Wall Street about the US growth outlook, with analysts across the board saying the risks of a recession are rising. READ MORE

From Great Resignation to Forced Resignation

The Great Resignation is pivoting to a Forced Resignation.

Thousands of layoffs in the tech sector, compounded by hiring freezes and a slowdown in hiring, highlight the abrupt shift in fortunes over the past several months as a result of rampant inflation, fear of stagflation and recession, supply-chain interruptions, the war in Ukraine, an ailing stock market and other red-alert economic factors. READ MORE

Remote work is killing big offices. Cities must change to survive

I was born in Manhattan and lived much of my life in the Big Apple. I went to school on the Bowery and worked in office complexes that sat adjacent to storied destinations like Wall Street, Times Square, and Madison Square Park. I met sources for lunch and attended concerts and conferences that moved my career forward. But like many knowledge workers, in the wake of the pandemic, I’ve moved away from the concrete jungle and relocated to a small, rural town a few hours north of NYC. READ MORE

The stock market could soon see a massive change to how it functions

The agency that oversees Wall Street is weighing major changes to the way millions of everyday investors buy and sell stocks. That could be bad news for so-called free-trading apps like Robinhood as well as the lesser known firms that underpin their business models.

Today, when you buy or sell a stock on an app, the trade appears to be instantaneous. But beneath that simple buy/sell action is a complex web of Wall Street players exploiting tiny differences in price to rake in huge amounts of cash. READ MORE

The CEO who fired 900 people over Zoom is accused of misleading investors

Vishal Garg, the Better.com CEO who fired 900 employees over Zoom just before Christmas, has been sued by a former executive for allegedly misleading investors.

The SoftBank-backed online mortgage company agreed to a $7.7 billion merger with a blank-check firm to take the company public just over a year ago, but the so-called SPAC deal has yet to close. Since then, Garg's public controversy — and surging mortgage rates — have hurt the company's image and business. READ MORE

CEO of ZipRecruiter, on the radical job market shift

During the COVID-19 pandemic, CEO Ian Siegel of ZipRecruiter witnessed incredible shifts in the American employment market, both for employers and for job seekers.

In a recent interview with FOX Business, Siegel, who founded the employment marketplace, opened up about remote work, his best advice for job hunters, the recruiting landscape and the overall labor market as the U.S. economy sees solid job growth in 2022. READ MORE

Gen Z should be feeling great about the job market right now

Young workers who entered the US job market in the throes of the pandemic in 2020 faced an uphill battle. Hiring on LinkedIn dropped off dramatically, and widespread layoffs hit Gen Z more severely than most other groups.

Fast forward two years, and the picture looks much brighter for Gen Z and younger millennials joining the workforce today. Despite recent headwinds like inflationary pressures and geopolitical tensions driving economic uncertainty, opportunities still abound for entry-level roles in the US. READ MORE

What Leaders Need to Know Before Trying a 4-Day Work Week

Despite the gains workers have made through the Covid pandemic in increasing flexibility in where they work, bigger workloads have meant that there is little slack in the system for people to take time out and recover. The effects are obvious. In 2020, 62% of people reported that they had experienced burnout “often” or “extremely often” in the previous three months, and in 2021, 67% of workers reported that stress and burnout had increased since the pandemic. Perhaps it is no surprise then that initiatives such as the four-day workweek, remote and hybrid working, unlimited paid time off, and right-to-disconnect have been gaining in popularity in an attempt to tackle these high-workload, always-on cultures. READ MORE