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Friends,
I’m back home after a quick trip to Sydney last week, where I overindulged in all the delicious-ness the harbour city offers. To counteract my gluttony, I did a two-day water fast: no food from Sunday night to Wednesday morning 😮💨
I have a love hate relationship with fasting.
Everything points to how good it is — and I love the idea of it — but I struggle to incorporate it into my rhythm in a sustained way. Instead, I just do sporadic fasts like this one in response to ‘feeling pudgy’. I’ll take any wisdom from the masses on how to better stick to it (please).
In other news I’m back enjoying a few shows. Black Rabbit and Alien Earth most recently (both were solid). I’m getting into season 2 of Gen V and about to parallel that with Slow Horses — arguably one of my favourite shows of all time. If you’re into crime-y espionage shows, dig in.
Enjoy this weeks edition ✌️
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
For companies who want performance that happens for them, not to them.
One of the biggest challenges I faced as a Head of People was running a performance program that felt like it was imposing on our teams rather than enabling them.
Now: product-led thinking is the future of the People function, and rightly so.
By building tailored systems anchored to the business and its people, people teams can deliver solutions that are designed for people, not imposed on them.
That’s where Crewmojo shines, with a platform that lets you define how performance works for you.
No more off the shelf software that your company needs to adapt to. Instead, work with a platform that is right for you from the start.
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Know a startup Head of People looking for answers 🙋 why not forward this to them for some instant karma? ✨
THE WRAP UP
The most interesting content we’ve come across in the past month, with ideas and reflections on what they mean for the modern Head of People.
Articles
Remember when we all thought that the next evolution in modern workplaces was the 4-day work week? Well it looks like we might be about to go the other way, with signs that the 996 work pattern (9am to 9pm six days per week) is increasing. And while it’s a small sample size, we shouldn’t dismiss the outsized influence Silicon Valley has on tech hubs around the world.
Reports of [early career role] deaths have been greatly exaggerated.
Or at least thats the takeaway here, with a great meta-analysis of several studies to dive into whether it’s true or not. While yes, graduate roles are down, we were headed that way anyway. AI just poured fuel on the fire for a particularly vulnerable subset. My cards are still on this swinging back to bite employers in the long term. There’s a great opportunity for companies that are prepared to invest in early careers now.
If the bible were periodic, Carta’s State of Startup Comp would be comparable as a go to resource on startup compensation insights, and this one is no different. For a <500‑employee startup, the report implies tighter headcount growth but continued upward pressure on offers (especially in product, engineering, and AI/ML) making compensation calibration and retention strategies important, even amid slower hiring.
This piece struck me for a few reasons. 1) That it confirms what many of us know but often forget; that money isn’t everything when it comes to working at a company. 2) That pay structure and fairness have a value in addition to the literal dollars someone is being paid. I love that Anthropic’s CEO is sticking to their guns on pay structure, despite the risk of poaching from Meta (and presumably other AI companies), because the system is more important than the individual dollars.
Finishing off on a lighter one. This piece seems to be hitting on a general trend I’m seeing towards the rejection of established platforms and the embrace of a simpler time when things were a little less connected. We saw it with the shift back to books from Kindles. We’re seeing it with the rejection of streamers for MP3 players, and I’m increasingly hearing about a shift off LinkedIn to… to what exactly I don’t know. But as someone who is too present on LinkedIn, I felt a lot of this, and it left me wondering: if we’re all deplatforming, how do we find the stuff we like anymore? (Maybe this will also bring back myspace pages, if so plz add me to your top 10 friends)
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That’s all for from me this week.
Sure, this is technically the end of the newsletter, but we don’t have to end here! I’d love this to be a two-way chat, so let me know what you found helpful, any successes you’re seeing, or any questions you have about startup compensation.
Until next week,
When you’re ready, here’s three ways I can help you:
1. Tools & resources
Resources and tools that give you what you need to build your own startup compensation practices.
2. Comp consulting
I run FNDN, a global comp consultancy that builds compensation practices that are clear, fair and competitive for startups.
3. Startup People Summit
I run the Startup People Summit, a one day annual event focused on creating the playbook for startup people practices. Grab recordings from past events, or subscribe to the newsletter to join the next event.
