Friday 7th March 2025

The great pretender: how Ahmed al-Sharaa won Syria

One summer morning in 2021 a debonair-looking man approached the crossing point into rebel-held Syria. As he left Turkey behind, Khaled al-Ahmed felt his chest tighten. He was a member of the Alawite sect, a minority group from which the Assad dynasty, which had ruled Syria for 50 years, was drawn. Until 2018 he had been a close adviser to Bashar al-Assad, the country’s president. Now he was about to enter territory controlled by Sunni Islamist rebels, many of whom would have been happy to see people like him executed.

Continued here

The Hackers Who Stole the Eras Tour - Vulture (No paywall)

Two people have been charged with stealing 900+ tickets and reselling them on StubHub.

Continued here

Does Your Company Have a Culture of Quiet Retaliation?

Quiet forms of retaliation are incredibly common and can be contagious in the workplace. The organizations that accept this form of retaliation as a standard practice have difficulty hiring and retaining great people. Retaliation — in all its forms — not only harms current team members, but a culture that tolerates retaliation results in harm to the mission and the organization’s ability to deliver to its customers and stakeholders. To create cultures where psychological safety is the norm, innovation thrives, and team effectiveness is high, it’s critical to address the retaliation that happens in the shadows.

Continued here

Tired All the Time? There May Be a Surprising Explanation, According to a Clinical Psychologist

Do you often feel exhausted at the end of the workday, even though you're careful to get enough sleep? There could be a simple explanation, one that might surprise you. You might be overloaded with emotional labor. What's more, your role as a company founder or business leader might make you feel responsible for the emotional well-being of everyone who works with you.

That intriguing insight comes from clinical psychologist Shannon Sauer-Zavala, Ph.D. In an insightful post at Psychology Today, she connects the dots between emotional overwork and exhaustion. She blames emotional labor for making people feel more tired than they should.


Continued here

Tech Industry Workers Have Become Cogs In a Broken System

What's wrong with the tech industry? That's the question that has kept me up at night, and also wished me good morning, and also haunted my dreams over the last few years. It's the one I get asked again and again, usually early in the conversation when I'm expecting to be asked about my kids and stuff.

The tech industry drama has been escalating, especially over the last year, during which I've been uncovering various big tech industry problems—from lousy products nobody wants, to the over-reliance on the misguided promises of AI, to the quagmire that hiring is stuck in, to scared executive leadership, to the rapid decline of productivity.


Continued here

How to Understand--and Help--Your Neurodivergent Employees

I have a friend—let's call her Laura—who's a 28-year-old executive assistant in the fintech industry and finds the office environment to be "incredibly taxing," leaving her feeling "burnt and crispy" by the end of the day. 

As an individual with autism and ADHD, for Laura the excess of social expectations—such as being interrupted or pressured to join in on collective cubicle conversations—is more difficult and taxing to process and navigate than for folks who are not neurodivergent. 


Continued here

How 2D Printing Sheets of Oat Milk Can Cut Shipping Costs

Is the future of plant-based milk … flat? Milkadamia thinks so. This April, the plant milk brand is launching Milkadamia Flat Pack, an oat milk product that comes in thin, lightweight sheets—requiring consumers to add their own water before drinking. By ditching bulky cartons, the company aims to slash packaging waste by up to 94 percent, and packaging weight by approximately 85 percent.

"We've spent years sending off truckloads of glorified, thinly disguised water. Plant milk and actual milk is something like 87 percent water," says Jim Richards, 71, Milkadamia's CEO. "We need to be punishing our planet less, and if we can find a way to do that, we feel a responsibility, but also a real excitement, to do it."


Continued here

Warren Buffett Doesn't Care About Degrees. Neither Should You

Every year when Warren Buffett releases his annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter, experts and media outlets scour the contents for the best bits of business wisdom. This year perhaps the most useful thing Buffett said wasn't something leaders should do, but something they shouldn't — namely, care where job candidates went to school. 

There are obvious exceptions to this principle. If you're looking to hire a surgeon, you definitely want someone who went to medical school. But for many roles, Buffett's commitment to skills rather than degrees shouldn't be an outlier. 


Continued here

Don't Miss the Boat! Even Entrepreneurs Need to Save For Retirement

In March 2005, I was 38 years old and really beginning to find my footing as a self-employed copywriter. My wife and I were in front of our accountant at the time, Tom. We always believed that for business, an accountant was money well spent. And this day it proved to be much more than that, even for my little one-man writing business.

I was a bit surprised, because until that time, the thought of anything even remotely close to retirement savings never crossed my mind. I was always a job hopper/serial entrepreneur and was never at a company long enough to build anything of note in a 401k. And at 38, I was simply happy making decent money on my own. Retirement? Yea, whatever…


Continued here

How Industrious Became an $800 Million Brand by Building a Sense of Belonging

In an era where companies wage costly battles to solve the return-to-office puzzle, Industrious has quietly cracked the code. Its secret: It harnesses the power of experience by creating a sense of belonging among its members. 

What began in 2012 as a single location founded by childhood friends Jamie Hodari and Justin Stewart has grown into the world’s largest premium flexible workspace provider, with more than 200 locations across 10 countries. The company’s meteoric rise—culminating in its recent acquisition by its long-term partner, commercial real estate giant CBRE, for approximately $400 million at an implied enterprise valuation of approximately $800 million—offers a master class in transforming a startup into an industry leader. 


Continued here