The Newcomer Podcast

While I was in Lisbon for Web Summit, Dead Cat co-hosts Tom Dotan and Katie Benner kept the podcast going without me. They brought on my old colleague Aki Ito, who is now a reporter at Insider, to talk about her reporting on coasting culture, which helped to spark the global discussion of “quiet quitting.”The trio discuss how a recession will yet again change society’s relationship with work.You can read Ito’s stories here:* How hustle culture got America addicted to work* 'My company is not my family': Fed up with long hours, many employees have quietly decided to take it easy at work rather than quit their jobs* Everyone's talking about “quiet quitting.” Here's what it means — and how the term got its start.And here’s her latest on how the trend is reversing: RIP, quiet quitting — layoff fears have workers back to the grindShe writes,One of the first documented cases of quiet quitting was a recruiter I'll call Justin. Deep into the coronavirus pandemic, after working 10- to 12-hour days for much of his career, Justin had decided to dial it back on the job. When I spoke with him in February, he had whittled his workweek down to 40 hours. In the ensuing months, he went even further, working as little as 30. Every week he worked a little bit less, freeing him up to spend more time with his wife and their newborn baby.It was Justin, in fact, who helped spark the national debate that's been raging over quiet quitting. After speaking with him and other recovering overachievers, I wrote about how hustle culture, thanks to the job security granted by the roaring economy, was giving way to coasting culture. When a popular career coach on TikTok riffed on my story, the phrase "quiet quitting" became something of a new cultural dividing line. You either loved the Justins of the world for striking a reasonable work-life balance, or condemned them as slackers and cheats.But by the time the US was furiously debating his new approach to work, Justin was already shifting gears. Over the summer, as the economy began to slow, he noticed his clients were scaling back their hiring plans. Performance reviews seemed to be getting tougher. Some of his colleagues were let go. "It made me nervous," he told me. "It hit me that I'm the only one who works in my family." So he decided to "play it a little more safe." Today Justin, the OG Quiet Quitter, is back to going above and beyond. He's working 50 hours a week.Give it a listen Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

This week, we invited Tim Miller — the repentant former Republican operative and author of Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell — on the Dead Cat podcast to talk about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and the upcoming midterm elections. Dead Cat co-host Tom Dotan and I talk with Miller about Peter Thiel-backed Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Blake Masters. (FiveThirtyEight gives Vance a 78% chance of winning and Masters a 33% chance.)We discuss the populist future of the Republican Party and mourn the languishing low-taxes-at-any-cost wing of the Republican Party. Give it a listenRead the automated transcript Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Nathan Benaich, the lone general partner at Air Street Capital, has long been on my radar as an artificial intelligence obsessive. And so now that the artificial intelligence is suddenly the fixation of the venture capital world, I invited Benaich on the Dead Cat podcast to talk about generative artificial intelligence. With my co-hosts, Tom Dotan and Katie Benner, we talked about the promise of generative AI and the ethics of a machines borrowing from the vast depths of human creativity. I pay homage to the AI overlords, cheering for the triumph of generalized artificial intelligence while Benaich warns us that the conversation about generalized artificial intelligence is a bit of a distraction.Benaich is the co-author of the State of AI Report that came out this month. It’s worth a read. At the 42:40 mark, Nathan departs and Katie, Tom, and I change topics dramatically. Tom reads from the former Mailchimp CEO’s email to the email marketing company discouraging employees from stating their pronouns at the beginning of a meeting.The article in Platformer, which first published the email, carries the headline, Did this email cost Mailchimp's billionaire CEO his job?Here’s an excerpt of Mailchimp’s then CEO Ben Chestnut’s message to the company: I am noticing that whenever new employees introduce themselves in Zoom before asking their question, they’re also announcing their pronouns. This is completely unnecessary when a woman (who is clearly a woman) to tell us that her pronouns are “she/her” and a man (who is clearly a man) to tell us that his pronouns are “he/him.”Tom, Katie, and I weigh in on the conversation around pronouns in the workplace, heavy-handed HR policies, and embarrassing CEO emails. Give it a listenRead the automated transcript Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Insider’s anonymous first-person account of a ghostwriter for venture capitalists’ tweets captivated tech Twitter last week. Everyone wanted to know who exactly was paying $100,000 for a tweetstorm.How could anyone make $200,000 writing thought leadership. Why would anyone pay for that?So on this week’s episode of Dead Cat, hosts Eric Newcomer and Tom Dotan talked with Redpoint Ventures managing director Logan Bartlett who is a bit of a VC Twitter expert. Last November, Eric wrote about Bartlett's analysis of VC media output in a piece called A Twitter Troll’s Take on the Future of Investing.Since then, Redpoint hired a TikTok creator to help bolster the firm’s brand and Bartlett launched a podcast called Cartoon Avatars.On this week’s episode of Dead Cat, Bartlett insists he’s writing his own tweets, but he explains why VCs are so interested in building a Twitter following. Also Bartlett cast doubt on whether there’s a real market for people ghostwriting tweets for VCs.Later in the episode, we spitballed a ranking of some of the most important accounts on VC Twitter.Give it a listen. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

In November 2017, with Dara Khosrowshahi a few months into his job as Uber CEO, the ride-hailing company came to me with some explosive information: The company claimed that during Travis Kalanick’s time as CEO, Uber had covered up a massive data breach. Hackers had downloaded sensitive information about Uber’s riders and drivers, and the company’s chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, had kept it under wraps by paying the hackers $100,000. Uber fired Sullivan and one of the company’s lawyers. I published the exclusive story with the headline, Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57 Million People.Cyber security reporters have — for years — raised questions about the Khosrowshahi regime’s story. Sullivan tried to frame the $100,000 payout as part of the company’s white hat bug bounty program. And Sullivan’s defenders argued that Kalanick era Uber’s effort to conceal the payout — at a time when it was under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission over a prior data breach — looks even less anomalous today in a world where companies pay ransoms to hackers all the time. So I’ve watched the case closely over the years to see whether I’d been had. Had Khosrowshahi and crew whipped up a fake scandal? (I never quite understood why they would need to — Kalanick era Uber already had so many.)Over the years, the legal system has consistently validated Khosrowshahi era Uber’s account. * In 2018, Uber reached a $148 million settlement with 50 states and the District of Columbia over its handling of the data breach. * In 2019, two men pleaded guilty to the Uber hack. * In 2020, the Justice Department indicted Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor, for his handling of the hack. * Finally, last week a jury found Sullivan guilty of both counts that prosecutors brought against him. (Those charges were obstruction of the Federal Trade Commission and misprision of a felony.) Still, parts of the cyber security world defended Sullivan’s actions.Joseph Menn, the well-respected cyber security reporter for the Washington Post and author of Cult of the Dead Cow, recently quoted security experts raising concerns about the potential ramifications of the guilty verdict.Menn wrote,Most security professionals had been anticipating Sullivan’s acquittal, noting that he had kept the CEO and others who were not charged informed of what was happening.“Personal liability for corporate decisions with executive stakeholder input is a new territory that’s somewhat uncharted for security executives,” said Dave Shackleford, owner of Voodoo Security. “I fear it will lead to a lack of interest in our field, and increased skepticism about infosec overall.”John Johnson, a “virtual” chief information security officer for multiple companies, agreed. “Your company leadership could make choices that can have very personal repercussions to you and your lifestyle,” he said. “Not saying everything Joe did was right or perfect, but we can’t bury our head and say it will never happen to us.”So Tom Dotan and I invited Menn onto the Dead Cat podcast to get his perspective on Sullivan’s conviction. We also asked Menn about crypto currency hacks, Cult of the Dead Cow, and Twitter’s whistleblower. Give it a listen.Read the automated transcript. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

The Twitter / Elon saga entered a new phase today. Elon Musk reversed course and agreed to buy Twitter at the previously agreed upon $44 billion. But we’re still thinking about Musk’s text messages that came out as part of discovery in the Delaware court case.On the latest episode of Dead Cat, we reveled in the many bizarre and often sycophantic texts that emerged during discovery. Tom Dotan and Eric Newcomer, along with recurring guest New York Times reporter Erin Griffith, give a close reading to the private messages of the Silicon Valley glitterati.We dish on texts from All-In hosts Jason Calacanis and David Sacks, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff. Would Emil Michael or Bill Gurley make for a better Twitter CEO?Fellow Substacker Alex Kantrowitz did a great job compiling some of the greatest hits. So you can read along.We mourn our shattered reality that Musk’s texts aren’t full of Grade A genius ideas for reforming Twitter.Give it a listen. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

On this week’s Dead Cat, co-host Tom Dotan and Eric Newcomer talk about the sputtering scooter industry. Starting at 36:00 we hear Tom tells us about his jury summons. Give it a listen. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

This week on Dead Cat, Reed Albergotti — the technology editor for the soon-to-be launched media startup founded by Ben Smith and Justin Smith — joined the show to talk about the Biden administration’s executive orders shaping how the U.S. does business with China.Albergotti reported earlier this month that the Biden administration is looking to crack down on American investors cutting checks in China. He wrote for Semafor:Administration officials were particularly alarmed this March by a report in The Information that the Chinese arm of the Silicon Valley venture firm Sequoia Capital has begun raising a new, $8 billion fund for investments in Chinese technology, according to people close to the administration. A Sequoia spokeswoman declined to comment.…The details of the order could still change, but the administration has considered at least two ways of dealing with U.S. investments in China. One approach would be to require disclosures for any investments in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and potentially other industries like rare earth minerals and electric cars. The other would be to set up a system that would give the government the ability to block investments outright, in the way that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States can block inbound investments from China and other countries.A third option being discussed by those involved is to do both. Biden could require disclosure and then, if something problematic arises, take further action to block it. That option is more appealing to U.S. companies and could be just as effective.Relatedly, the New York Times reported on another executive order that would expand the power of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to block Chinese investments in the United States. The Times reported that the executive order “directs the committee to consider whether a pending deal involves the purchase of a business with access to Americans’ sensitive data, and whether a foreign company or government could exploit that information.”Albergotti helped make sense of the Biden administration’s various executive orders — both planned and announced. Albergotti, with co-hosts Tom Dotan, Katie Benner, and Eric Newcomer, speculated about whether a TikTok ban was forthcoming and reflected on Senator Josh Hawley’s TikTok grandstanding.In the latter half of the episode, we turned our attention to Patagonia owner Yvon Chouinard’s donation of the outdoor clothing retailer. We discussed the New York Times’ glowing coverage of Chouinard’s donation.Or was the media being unnecessarily dour? Was the media being too skeptical by declaring that Chouinard had avoided $700 million in taxes by giving his company away and by comparing him to the shadowy donor Barre Seid, who donated his device manufacturing company to support conservative causes?Give it a listen.Read the automated transcript Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Dead Cat host Eric Newcomer already said his piece about Kara Swisher’s epic final Code Conference. Now you can hear directly from Swisher about what she thought. On this week’s Dead Cat podcast, Tom Dotan and Newcomer catch up with Swisher fresh off her final Code Conference. Together, we puzzle over Amazon chief Andy Jassy’s deference to his old boss and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai’s tough time denying that he wanted to buy Pinterest. We talked about Bob Iger’s charm and Swisher’s affection for Mark Cuban.We dug into Swisher’s interview strategy. We asked her whether her media publication Recode has been a success. Were they aggressive enough ahead of #MeToo? And what’s next for Swisher? Will Pivot replace Code?And we quiz Swisher on some of her favorite Code interviews. Why did she tell Mark Zuckerberg to take off his sweatshirt? How did Steve Jobs keep Bill Gates on his toes?Then we end the episode with a discussion of her final Code main stage panel — Tim Cook, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Jony Ive. Give it a listen. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Bloomberg’s Mark Bergen is the world’s top Google Kremlinologist, chronicling the rise and fall of technocrats and technologies inside Google parent company Alphabet.This week, Bergen published a book on Google subsidiary YouTube called Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination.That Bergen decided to set his sights on YouTube, Google’s massive user-generated video site, reflects YouTube’s significance inside of parent company Alphabet. The video platform is shaping culture worldwide without receiving Facebook-level scrutiny.Dead Cat co-host Tom Dotan and I talked with Bergen on this week’s Dead Cat about his new book and YouTube’s ascendancy. We asked: * Why does YouTube's early legal battle with Viacom explain how YouTube evolved? * What does it mean that YouTube star PewDiePiew has been displaced by a ubiquitous Mr. Beast?* Why has YouTube been so weak willed about punishing the worst actors on its platform?Give it a listen. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe