A lot of these articles and social media discussions miss by not contemplating the fact that by increasing productivity and incomes we have also increased the cost of leisure.
In the vein of The Harried Leisure Class, the more opportunities that are available to you, the more likely you are to feel like you are wasting time, need to optimize everything, etc. People are also pushed to be even more individualistic because the cost of slowing down and interacting with the community has increased.
There are many other factors at work but this one seems pretty clear but doesn't seem to see enough discussion.
Many AI initiatives have had massive ROI though. The implementation problems are similar to any pre-AI tech rollout and hugely expensive non-AI tech implementations fail all the time.
Name one that has at least $200mn ROI over capital investment. Show me the balance sheet for it as well. And make sure that ROI isn't from suddenly not paying salaries.
I recently started looking into Zulip and while I can see that it is a complete product its mobile UI is so cluttered and funky I don’t understand how anyone could use it. The desktop web UI seems OK but try this on your phone: https://zulip.com/new/demo/
They have the iOS Safari problem with the keyboard and body scroll, tiny icons, super busy UI. I was hoping to help some folks move off Discord to something else and Zulip is not what I would volunteer to do support for when the users are not techies. Heck, as a techie my eyes glaze over looking at it. I really wish it was slicker and more usable but it simply isn’t.
Another component or view of this is that automating the rote work is "eliminating the boring parts" (I love this and have worked extensively on this) but it is also eliminating the less cognitively demanding work.
Once you have automated extensively, all of the remaining work is cognitively demanding and doing 8 hours of that work every day is exhausting.
In 2022, Brex shifted away from SMB to refocus their offering. They cut "tens of thousands" of SMB customers who didn't fit their new ICP. They announced this in June 2022 and gave all of those customers 2mo to find a new provider and move their funds.
The new qualifications to be a Brex customer at that time were:
> Received an equity investment of any amount (accelerator, angel, VC or web3 token);
> More than $1 million a year in revenue;
> More than 50 employees;
> More than $500k in cash;
> Tech startups who are on a path to meeting the criteria above, and are referred by an existing customer or partner.
Just to avoid confusion, while SMB as used above may be referring to the owner it typically means "Small and/or Medium Business". Where what counts as small and medium varies a bit but is generally <500 employees and annual revenue <$10 million.
Pretty surprised here and I think it was really just bad marketing or I guess unsustainable unit economics.
Price out the cheapest F-150 (XL) with a supercrew cab and 4x4 and you are looking at $50k. Trucks are just expensive. The Lightning is expensive but not that much more than any other truck and the Ford incentives + EV credit brought it down quite a bit. The Lightning Flash (extended range) was routinely selling OTD < $60k with 0% financing.
I'd put off buying a pickup for a decade because I couldn't find the right one and the Lightning is awesome. I was skeptical at first due to range concerns but there are chargers in the middle of nowhere in 2025.
I think a lot of the other commenters might change their thoughts if they drove one for a bit.
Edit: I get somewhere around 50mpg (dollar equivalent when charging at home) in a full-size truck that fits my whole family and our gear + handles better in the snow than any ICE truck + can do plenty of hauling and light towing.
I need to read books like this with extra intentionality or it all just flows through and I might retain a couple of key concepts if I'm lucky.
1) Highlighting or underlining along with folding page corners to make it easy to find high impact passages when flipping through later.
2) Writing a short chapter summary in the blank space at the end of each chapter. Just a couple of minutes to reflect on what I just read and to summarize the core message of the chapter.
Sounds like they're getting paid based on his note to employees:
> "The proceeds from Meta's investment will be distributed to those of you who are shareholders and vested equity holders [...] The exceptional team here has been the key to our success, so I'm thrilled to be able to return the favor with this meaningful liquidity distribution."
Honestly if this acts as a liquidity event for a whole bunch of current employees, while at the same time giving off "Meta hand picked the CEO and whoever they felt were the best AI engineers and jumped ship" energy, I wouldn't be tooo surprised if current "scaliens" view this as the inflection point, and decide it's not worth staying for the other ~51% of their shares.
In the vein of The Harried Leisure Class, the more opportunities that are available to you, the more likely you are to feel like you are wasting time, need to optimize everything, etc. People are also pushed to be even more individualistic because the cost of slowing down and interacting with the community has increased.
There are many other factors at work but this one seems pretty clear but doesn't seem to see enough discussion.
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