Dear friends,

In JC’s Newsletter, I share the articles, documentaries, and books I enjoyed the most in the last week, with some comments on how we relate to them at Alan. I do not endorse all the articles I share, they are up for debate. 

I’m doing it because a) I love reading, it is the way that I get most of my ideas, b) I’m already sharing those ideas with my team, and c) I would love to get your perspective on those. 

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👉 Inside Temu: the fiery culture and a perpetual efficiency machine (The Low Down)

❓ Why am I sharing this article?

• Being aware of other cultures of (very) successful companies help us to know what we cherish in ours

• Crazy culture at Temu, but worth investigating in being very, very flat. 

• Keep communication really simple

• I don’t like their approach to competitive teams. 

• I find the automatic 10% termination completely stupid. 

• Giving the option of people to reduce their scope can be useful (sometimes, in specific conditions)

• Interesting to see how different we are, being radically transparent. There are many ways to build a huge business. 

• Flat:

• Continuing the flat management style of Pinduoduo, the entire team’s management is only three levels. Abu is the first level, “Winter jujube” and “Grape” are the second level, and the category managers are the third level, and everything below is the lower-level employee. 

  • For example, “Winter jujube” has 40-50 direct subordinates, including P8 level talents from other tech giants, but they are only implementers. (a manager at the level of P8, in Alibaba’s job rank commonly referenced in China, already leads large teams in other tech companies). 

  • The three-level management system makes internal communication costs extremely low. 

• In order to improve work efficiency, Temu has very few internal meetings, and even for annual reporting, no PPT is needed, it’s enough to just write a few data and paragraphs to summarise the work outcome.

Competition:

• In the eyes of outsiders, “Grape” and “Winter Jujube” are Temu’s core executives and should work together, but they are actually in a competitive relationship. 

  • According to Temu’s rules of the game, “Winter Jujube” and “Grape” will each designate the other’s primary business as their secondary business. 

  • Once the revenue from Party A’s secondary business exceeds the revenue from Party B’s primary business, the Party B’s team and business will be moved to report to Party A. 

  • In order to avoid a monopoly of power, outstanding individuals will be promoted from the team to fill vacant positions.

• Demoted supervisors will be moved to be supervisors in first-level departments of other projects; if the project they are responsible for fails again, they will continue to be demoted and be responsible for secondary business, and so on

  • Only when the project succeeds will they have the opportunity to be promoted back to their original position

  • Colin Huang and Abu regularly monitor data and conversion indicators. If the conversion data of a team is low, they will break up the team and merge it into a team with a higher conversion rate, and then establish a new team to continue the competition.

  • In addition to the endless internal competition, Temu also follows Pinduoduo’s 721 elimination system. This means that 10% of employees in each project are eliminated, and 20% of employees do not receive the full bonuses.

Where they source:

• Pinduoduo discovered through big data analysis that young people from poor backgrounds with strong financial needs are often more eager for success than some local residents in first-tier cities.

• Pinduoduo is also very silo’ed internally, with almost complete isolation between departments.

  • Thus, the vast majority of Pinduoduo and Temu employees do not understand the work of other departments, nor do they understand the overall business and even strategy of their own department. Due to the use of nicknames for internal communication, colleagues do not know each other’s real names.

👉 Mark Zuckerberg: "Our philosophy on perks"  (Internal Tech Emails)

❓ Why am I sharing this article?

• I agree directionally with drawing the line on where we have a positive impact on the work & health of Alaners.

• Excellent quote from Aristotle. 

• From: Mark Zuckerberg 

  • Date: Friday, September 18, 2009 9:40am 

  • Our philosophy on perks is that we want to provide services that are utilitarian and help people with things they need in order to help them focus on our long-term goals. Everyone needs to eat. Everyone needs to do laundry. Everyone needs health services. Everyone needs to get to work. If we can make these parts of our lives easier, then it helps us focus on what we're trying to accomplish at work and it makes us all more productive. 

  • We should draw the line at productivity and convenience though. We are not in the practice of providing random perks, colorful bouncy balls or access to luxury cars. Sometimes we make mistakes since we're all moving quickly, but if you see us doing any of these things you should question openly why we're wasting our money.

• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

👉 Mark Zuckerberg: “Please Resign” (Internal Tech Emails)

❓ Why am I sharing this article?

• When people start doing politics based on information they got through radical transparency (starting spreading DMs, WhatsApp about messages), it kills the culture.

• So I'm asking whoever leaked this to resign immediately. If you believe that it's ever appropriate to leak internal information, you should leave. If you don't resign, we will almost certainly find out who you are anyway.

• We are a company that promotes openness and transparency, both in the world at large and here internally at Facebook. That's culturally important to us and I'm committed to keeping it. But the cost of an open culture is that we all have to protect the confidential information we share internally. 

  • If we don't, we screw over everyone working their asses off to change the world. And leaks like this make everyone a little less willing to share information more broadly and undermine the culture we're fighting to build, especially as we grow. 

  • I want people to continue to be able to ask difficult questions at our Q&As and have a strong dialog because they’re confident those discussions will be kept within Facebook.

👉 1-1 Template (Sabrina Wang)

❓ Why am I sharing this article?

• Very important to send 1on1 prep 24h before!

• Very important to follow-up on past action items

• Feedback should be written first

• Interesting questions to ask!

• Pre-work

• For the direct report - at least 24 hours before the meeting 

  • Pre-write your Good Things or Celebrations

  • Populate topics and issue proposed solutions

  • Check off past actions

  • Prepare written feedback for your manager

• For the manager - at least 24 hours before the meeting

• Pre-write your Good Things or Celebrations

• Populate topics

• Prepare written feedback for your direct report 

• For both - day of the meeting

• Manager to read issue proposed solutions and add comments

• Manager to read through direct reports’ past actions and new actions. Prepare questions and comments

• Both will read the entirety of the entries from the other person

• Magic questions quarterly for career development and motivation. You can add this as a topic.

  • Please refer to Motivating your team for the full write-up on magic questions

    • "How are you feeling about your life at work, 1-5?"

      • If the answer is <3, then "What would make it a 3?"

      • If the answer is 3 or 4, then "What would make it a 5?"

    • "How are you feeling about your personal life, 1-5?"

      • If the answer is <3, then "What would make it a 3?"

      • If the answer is 3 or 4, then "What would make it a 5?"

    • "How are you feeling about your Work From Home (WFH) setup, 1-5?"

      • If the answer is <3, then "What would make it a 3?"

      • If the answer is 3 or 4, then "What would make it a 5?"

    • "How are we performing as a company, 1-5?"

      • If the answer is <3, then "What would make it a 3?"

      • If the answer is 3 or 4, then "What would make it a 5?"

    • "What is it like to work with the rest of the team, 1-5?" 

      • If the answer is <3, then "What would make it a 3?"

      • If the answer is 3 or 4, then "What would make it a 5?"

    • "What is it like to work with me, 1-5?"

      • If the answer is <3, then "What would make it a 3?"

      • If the answer is 3 or 4, then "What would make it a 5?"

👉 Reality is Undefeated (Farnam Street)

❓ Why am I sharing this article?

• Good quotes about quality and being optimistic enough to change the future

• The Winner's Edge "I think there are — there are plenty of players in history who have been immensely talented, but they’re — they’re just too pessimistic. They see too many dangers that are not there and so on so they cannot perform at a very high level." 

— Source

• “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

— Steve Jobs

👉 Labor Shortage (The Split)

❓ Why am I sharing this article?

• Interesting data point on labor shortage in the US

• Mentions of Labor Shortage on Earnings Calls Down 70%: In signs the labor market is loosening up, fewer public companies are mentioning labor shortages in quarterly earnings calls.

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