The Sage Young, Hidden Jobs, Pricey Meetups 🦉

In 2015, founder David Feinman hopped on Skype to crack an SEO problem along with a bunch of experts. Once they solved that puzzle, the group started discussing other marketing problems. As the community grew, they moved to Slack, and boy, did it blow up! Today, Online Geniuses boasts a whopping 40,000 digital marketers from all corners of the world.

There is a growing number of private (invite only) channels like this on Slack that enables professionals to network. But these secret networks are more than just a professional gathering. They’ve fostered a “hidden job market” or what some may call the “dark web of jobs". 

A lot of hiring in startups is now happening in secret without the general workforce knowing about it. Founders are no longer posting openings on their websites or job boards such as Indeed or LinkedIn. They’re simply reaching out to their secret networks. HR professionals also have their own communities — such as the Secret HR Society and People Geeks — where they share details about employees.

In some ways, these hidden job networks are nothing new. But they may have ramped up following the hiring crisis and are primed to become a more ingrained part of job seeking. 

The unintended consequences? Unfair hiring and lack of diversity in invite-only channels. There can be a barrier for qualified people who aren’t able to get into these communities because they may lack the “exclusive” connections.

The creative folks of the internet have repeatedly publicised some fancy/wacky tools of making work more productive or simply calling out the imbeciles for what they are. 

• There’s the meeting punctuality score, which tells you which colleague is most likely to show up to the meeting 10 minutes late. 
• The fictitious LinkedIn nepotism disclosure tool, which adds a label to tell you which manager is actually just related to the boss. 
• A version of Zoom that lets you skip throat-clearing intros like a Netflix series. 

Sadly, as much fun as these ideas sound, none of them exist so far. 

Since 2020, our work lives have been invaded by never-ending meetings. According to Microsoft, the average Teams user witnessed a whopping 252% increase in their weekly meeting time from 2020 to 2022. It's like we're constantly stuck in the boardroom, whether in person or through those virtual screens. And all this meeting madness leaves us with precious little time to actually get some work done. 

The idea of calculating meeting costs isn’t an entirely new one. Plenty of online tools let you track the cost of time you put on the calendar. But sadly, few of them took off despite the very obvious meeting fatigue. 

But what are their credentials? Well the fact that they’re young is all that seems to matter to their audiences. Millennials and Gen Zers value relatability over years of experience or institutional affiliation when seeking guidance.

The obvious problems with this trend? 

• Relying solely on younger coaches could narrow their knowledge scope. 
• On social media, people often conflate popularity with trustworthiness. Audiences tend to consider follower count a good measure for credibility without even considering whether the influencer has the expertise to dish out such advice. 
• Many of the decision-makers in the workforce belong to older generations; so advice from 20-somethings with 3-4 years of experience may not be so useful after all. 

📰 Blocking News - Meta and Google are blocking links to news in Canada in protest of the "link tax" law. The US may be next. 

🪵 Wooden City -  Sweden is building the world’s largest wooden city with 7,000 office spaces and 2,000 timber homes.