Elsewhere: Week of June 21, 2021
Elsewhere is a series of interesting things I came across during the week, published every Sunday.
- “Amazon is ahead of the curve in deliberately creating a workplace development designed to increase churn, prioritize operational success over employee happiness, promotion, or retention, and push people out who might agitate for change.”
- “[One person cancelling Prime is] statistically insignificant to Amazon. They’ll never feel it, [but] the small businesses in your neighborhood will absolutely feel the addition of a new customer. Individual choices do make a big difference to them.” I've been thinking of cancelling Prime myself lately, as I almost never order from Amazon anymore anyhow.
- I've always had an appreciation for wristwatches, and so I loved this Hodinkee article on Rolex's history and facilities. While I could look at photos of watch movements all day, there's an important story here about signing your name to the work you do; for example, they don't sell many watches set with precious gems, but developed a machine to help identify fakes. “The machine costs tens of thousands of dollars so I asked how frequently they received a stone from a supplier that wasn't an actual diamond. The answer? About one out of 10 million. They do it anyway, because this is Rolex.”
- More wristwatches: this video showing the restoration of an old Tissot mechanical watch has been making the rounds on Twitter this week, and it's both fascinating and mesmerizing.
Magicians do exist. pic.twitter.com/w1s1pSVTMx
— Adil Najam (@AdilNajam) June 20, 2021