Startup Stash - Leaving To Date & The Long G-Plan 💛

Just a Perk OR a Wacky Hiring Trick?

Forget free coffee and beanbags—one Thai company is “Tindering” to make employees happy. Whiteline Group has introduced “paid Tinder leave,” a bold move that lets its 200 employees take paid time off to, well, go on Tinder dates. Yes, you read that right.

Though anyone who’s braved modern dating might argue it’s more of a rollercoaster than a wellness retreat. Still, Whiteline seems serious: not only do staff get to clock out for love, but they’re also treated to six months of Tinder Gold or Platinum.

The idea was sparked by an overworked employee lamenting that she had no time to date. In response, leadership rolled out this quirky leave policy, available from mid-July to December. One employee even shared a TikTok about her “Tinder Leave” date—highlight: her match feeding her watermelon on a stick.

While it’s undoubtedly a fun morale booster, and a great PR move, it’s possible that there’s also a strategic side to this. Whiteline’s hiring for 13 roles, and a headline-grabbing benefit like this? It might just be their way of matching with fresh talent. If that is the case, this might just be the world’s wackiest recruitment trick.

Steps to Redeem the Offer
1. Simply log in to Notion using this link
2. Select Startup Stash from the partners list
3. Use Code: STARTUP4110P70786 to redeem

Seal Your Lips & Copy The Lawyers

Google has spent the last 15 years trying to tightly and covertly control internal communications. The New York Times reported so based on evidence from hundreds of documents, exhibits, and witness testimony from three antitrust trials against the tech giant over the past year.

According to the Times, Google began implementing these measures in 2008 amid antitrust scrutiny over an advertising deal with Yahoo and a series of legal battles over patents, trademarks, and copyrights. A confidential memo from that period urged employees to avoid speculation, sarcasm, and discussing sensitive topics without all the facts. The goal, as outlined in the memo, was to minimize the risk of incriminating communications being revealed in potential lawsuits.

Google also adjusted its technology to support this strategy, changing its instant messaging tool’s default setting to “off the record,” ensuring messages were automatically deleted after a short period. Over time, this approach evolved into a broader culture of minimizing internal records.

The documents and testimony presented during the trials revealed that employees were encouraged to use legal privilege strategically, often marking communications as “attorney-client privileged” and copying lawyers on emails—even when no legal advice was sought or provided. These practices, the Times reports, reflect a deliberate effort by the company to shield internal discussions from scrutiny, creating what some observers described as a culture of deletion.

The Long Work Hours Debate Is Missing The Point

The problem isn’t hours but the clarity, consent, and context. Employees sign up for jobs imagining one thing and are thrown into an entirely different grind.

Are You Even Working?

A research by Stanford University conducted on the performance of >50k engineers from 100s of companies found that 14% of software engineers working remotely do almost no work, compared to 9% in hybrid roles and 6% in the office.

On an average, 9.5% of software engineers get paid to do virtually nothing: AKA Ghost Engineers.

The research suggests that ~58% engineers make less than 3 commits/month. The other 42% make trivial changes, like editing one line or character--pretending to work.

This unfairly burdens teams, wastes company resources, blocks jobs for others, and limits humanity’s progress. If each company adds these savings to its bottom line (assuming no extra expenses), the market cap impact of 12 companies laying off unproductive engineers is $465B–with no decrease in performance!

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➗ Breaking-up The G-Force - US lawyers are reportedly trying to force Google to sell Chrome and unbundle Android.

🛩️ Penny Spirits - Spirit Airlines is now officially a penny stock.

🌝 Meanwhile - Its CEO got a $3.8 million bonus not to jump ship.

💥 A Big Blow Up - A city in Georgia - named Macon - is planning to blow up an entire vacant hotel as fireworks to welcome 2025. The county spent $4.5 million last year to buy the hotel.

🥮 Expecting Food - Office holiday parties? 78% of surveyed employees said they'd attend the parties for the food.

🥱 Men Like To Be Bored - The Dull Men’s Club is a giant Facebook group dedicated to mundane activities .

🖊️ Ghosts Make Money - A publishing survey found that the top echelon of bestseller ghost writers make more than $300,000 a year.

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