Thursday Thoughts - 12/08/2022
In this short newsletter, I share the most interesting things that I’ve read, heard, and/or watched over the past week.
What I Read:
Consumer Trends: 2023 | The New Consumer
The New Consumer puts out powerpoint slides each year that summarize American trends. The presentation is simple and effective. There’s one big headline followed by a graph or table. It tells you what’s important and shows the rest of the data.
Two statements from this year’s trends surprised me. The first was layoffs this year cancelled the hiring from last year. I thought that tech companies were significantly downsizing. But it appears they are just correcting for hiring too much during the pandemic.
The second surprise is that Facebook is still the most used social media platform. It has 2 billion daily active users. I thought that Facebook was dead and that everyone was using TikTok.
I do have concerns about the sample size used in this report. Roughly 3,000 consumers were surveyed for this study. The US population is about 330 million. If I compared that to Hawaii’s population of 1.5 million, that would be a survey of only 14 people.
What a Chicken Chain Can Teach Us About Culture | Gapingvoid
This blog post grabs lessons about work culture from a Chik-Fil-A in Florida. At this particular restaurant, the owner offered his employees three 12-hour shifts instead of the standard five 8-hour shifts. He also lets his employees schedule their shifts up to six months in advance. This created such a great work environment that 400 people applied for a recent job opening.
I liked how the owner brought healthcare style scheduling to a fast food restaurant.
What I Watched:
Andor
Andor is the latest Star Wars original series on Diseny+. It’s the prequel to Rogue One and tells the origin story of Cassian Andor. Andor, the character, reminds me of Han Solo. He’s a reluctant hero with street savvy.
This series was fantastic. It’s a cross between a heist, prison escape, and underdog movie. My favorite scenes involved the prison sequences. I was entertained throughout the entire twelve episode season.
What I’m Pondering:
The more confident somebody seems, the more cautious you should be in taking their advice.