Ted Audio Collective Hi everyone, you're listening to After Hours.
I'm Young Neem. I'm Felix.
And I'm Me here. And how are you guys doing tonight?
Oof. Pretty good. But we are in deep on Halloween right now.
Tell us more. So, you mean decorations, costumes?
No, no. Costumes. So, you know, we figured out a couple of years ago that, first off, I have this friend Alan, who's amazing at costumes for his kids.
So immediately I got competitive.
And I have nowhere near his skills.
But we have figured out this little recipe for creating costumes at relatively low cost in terms of effort, but with high impact.
So, last time we did it, it was candy.
Okay. So, one was like Skittles.
But here's the key.
This year we're going to repeat the technology, which is basically by these big lawn bags, and then spray paint them.
And then they become like a Doritos bag.
One is going to be like a Pringles can.
And it looks great, but it's not that hard to do.
And what are you? You have to dress up, too, right?
You know, I don't, in fact.
I don't have to, because I'm the father.
But I get to help them with all of it, and then bask in their reflected force.
Which is nice. We live in a street that the city blocks off for Halloween.
And so it's this magnet for families from all over town, really.
Just like the imagination that goes into the costumes.
Which is also really nice.
All the neighbors in our building, we all sit on the stoop, and we comment on what we see, and we hand out candy.
And it's extra special.
Usually one of the highlights on the block is Halloween.
That's great. And then have you guys started your holiday shopping?
Holiday shopping. Way too early, no.
Well, you have to start early, because, you know, of all the supply chain.
Supply chain. Oh my God.
Well, speaking of shopping, Meir, you brought in a topic that you thought would be fun to talk about.
Yeah. So sometimes it's just great to look at an industry that people think of as being highly problematic and kind of dying on the vine, and just looking for those really wonderful exceptions that are coming out in that industry.
And I can't think of a better industry to do that than retail.
So this is legacy retail, like retailers that have been around for a long time?
Yeah. Oh, okay. Not like the most sexy, most recent Instagram slash DTC thing.
Okay, that'll be fun.
And then we have more letters from the listeners, which will be fun as well.
All right, so let's get into it.
Okay, me here. Yeah, so legacy retail seems on the surface to be kind of a problematic place.
But I think there are some really exciting things going on there.
And I'm curious who you think in the world of legacy retail is really showing us the path forward and really doing something interesting.
Well, here you go first, because I'm trying to decide which one I want to talk about.
Okay, I'll go. And I'm going to go with Nike.
Just to be clear, I'm not a Nike consumer.
You have never bought anything Nike in your life?
I'm sure at some point in my life, but I'm not really a Nike person.
But I got to tell you, they are really humming.
I mean, they are doing things in stores that is fascinating.
They have this house of innovation in New York, which is absolutely spectacular as a store.
You walk in there on Fifth Avenue, you are getting experience.
So it's completely experiential.
You are getting seamlessly integrated with their digital side of their business.
It is just a magical place to be.
So for example, when you walked into an Apple store for the first time and you were like, wow, this is different.
I don't even like Nike.
I walked into that store and I wanted to buy something.
It is just so magnetic, but it's not just a flagship store.
They're doing this set of stores all around the world called Nike Live, which are these smaller format stores that are really attuned to hyper local need.
They did the first one in Melrose.
Now they're doing it in Shibuya.
They're doing it all over the place.
And by the way, it's actually membership oriented, which is you have to become a member to join that because you have to be part of the Nike app and the Nike membership program to go into those stores.
So you're totally seamless with digital.
So now they have DTC comprising more than a third of their sales.
Yeah, it's really amazing.
And then, well, by the way, guess what happens when a third of your sales are direct to consumer.
Guess what happens on the margin side.
They are now getting gross margins of like 45, 46%.
10 years ago, that was like mid thirties high thirties.
And so they're growing like at an incredibly rapid clip, almost 10 % year on year, and they have gross margin expansion and they're owning the customer and they're doing everything you would want to do in retail, make it experiential, make it hyper localized, make it membership based.
And then what does that lead to?
Fantastic digital sale.
So I got to say, I think they're kind of killing it.
Here, I couldn't agree with you more.
I think one of the hardest things for a player like Nike, which 10 years ago was so dependent on its wholesale business, to begin to turn and shift to a more direct to consumer model.
I think that is very difficult to do without damaging your relationships with your existing retail partners.
But of course you have to do it.
You have to own more of that customer relationship.
And so they have done it in a very methodical, deliberate, and thoughtful way.
But it wasn't like they ripped the band -aid off.
In other words, I think 10 years ago, maybe 10, 15 % of their sales were direct to consumer.
Today, as you put it, it's about 40%.
So it's just been a steady drumbeat of shifting the business from one to the other, which then means, of course, as you own more of that customer relationship, you are building better leverage with your wholesale partners as well because you're building your own demand.
I mean, it's a really virtuous cycle.
So that's the first thing I'll say.
The second thing I'll say is for a giant like Nike, one of the most difficult things to do is to maintain your cool.
Maintain being regarded as being on the edge of something.
And they have this app called their Sneakers app, which is for sneaker heads essentially, where they have launched their limited release products.
They garner a huge amount of buzz that exists among the frontier of sneaker heads.
In other words, they've been able to maintain their edginess, even as they have become this very, very big mass market brand.
So they've really created a very diverse portfolio of channels to market that I agree with you.
Really, really impressive.
I think all that's exactly right, Youngmi.
What I'd love to know your thoughts about are this leverage over the wholesalers and these other channels.
Like what happens over time?
So right now there's like some peaceful coexistence going on.
But if you imagine your footlocker or some of these other players, you're pretty dependent on Nike.
You know, like 30 plus percent of your sales are Nike.
And now you have these Nike live stores.
If we fast forward 10 years from now, Youngmi, how does this play out?
If you're footlocker, I think you benefit from the fact that just like in so many other consumer categories, the long tail of brands continues to expand.
And so now just an ever increasing percentage of the shelf space is devoted to niche brands.
Right. So I think there's always going to be a space for the category specialist like a footlocker.
I think there'll be a place in there for Nike.
But I think the importance that each has to each other diminishes over time.
And you know, in an interesting way, even for the big specialist stores, given what's happening in the category overall, maybe being a little less reliant on Nike is not the worst thing.
So we saw the on running shoe company.
Great example. With its IPO.
In a way, it's emblematic.
If you had asked me, like try to do something novel in running shoes, I would have said that cannot happen.
And then it's exactly the combination that you pointed out, Youngmi, where just their social media presence, their marketing is just out of this world.
I think sometimes later this fall, if I remember right, Alberts is going to be public.
And that's an idea around a particular type of material wool in their case.
And so you look at a category, you see Nike, you see Adidas, and you think we're basically done.
And then the category just explodes.
This is the long tail.
And on the retail side, having a little bit of a buffer against, you know, Nike is flying very high right now, but who knows exactly having a larger portfolio, I think might actually feel pretty okay.
Yeah. It goes a little bit Youngmi to your comment from last week, which is everything ultimately becomes fashion and experience and entertainment.
And Nike is doing that on steroids, I think.
It's made it into fashion.
It's allowed for customization.
The stores create this experience, and then you are tracking it on your sneakers app, and you're tracking it with your fitness app.
It's really taking that to the limit.
And what's so fascinating about this is that even as Nike gets stronger and stronger, it doesn't preclude, and this is to Felix's point, a company like On Running to come in and really make a dent in the space.
It doesn't prevent an Allbirds from hitting the market.
It doesn't preclude this long tail of brands from emerging and also creating a different kind of excitement in the category.
So I think it's a great example.
Felix, did you have one?
I do. We want to talk about one of the granddaddies of legacy retailing, and that is Walmart.
Walmart is on fire.
It is. Didn't we give it up for dead 10 years ago?
That's right. And I think that general consensus was maybe their best opportunity is to expand globally, and then as you know, that had very mixed results.
So they essentially doubled their share of e -commerce in the U .S.
over the last five years.
And now you might say, well, Amazon is at 40 % or so, but that in a way is not quite the right comparison because Walmart e -commerce is first and foremost about groceries.
And so the relevant comparison is more Costco, Kroger.
They're all stuck below 2 % and Walmart is making like this amazing advance.
And it reflects really, I think, four things that they just do really, really well.
The first one is Walmart Plus.
I don't know exactly why everyone now calls every new service plus, but it's Walmart Plus.
By the way, this is After Hours Plus.
Yeah, exactly. Maybe we should think about After Hours Plus.
So it's essentially their version of Amazon Prime.
If I told you, compare Amazon Prime and Walmart Plus, which of the two programs has customers that are more affluent, younger, and more urban?
Wow. Wow. Every one of my instincts would have said it's Amazon.
And it's not true. I didn't know that.
That's great. It's essentially accretive to the Walmart customer base.
So in particular, thinking that Walmart Plus customers are much more urban than Amazon Prime customers, that just blew my mind when I saw that.
So they're doing something really right there.
On the last mile issue that we talked about last week also, they created what they call the Spark Network, which is essentially Uber Eats except by Walmart.
They're now in 600 cities.
I mean, the scale of everything that they do is just really exciting.
They're now in 600 cities.
It's all independent contractors.
So that's a very different model from the direction in which Amazon is trying to move.
So that's really interesting.
And then finally, Walmart Connect is this really quickly growing advertising business on Walmart .com.
They now have 100 ,000 merchants, one third of them they added last year.
I mean, it's just unbelievable.
What I find impressive about Walmart is how they have doubled down on their brick and mortar in many ways, really thinking about what it means to have a physical footprint across the country.
And so you walk into a Walmart super center today, you can get a prescription for your eyeglasses.
You can get a flu vaccine.
Just a range of services there that I think is really difficult for any new player to come in and compete against.
And so in many ways, they've built upon their history.
They've built upon their strengths, which at the time they did it, these were all regarded as weaknesses.
I find that to be quite extraordinary.
I think we talked about Walmart and Doug McMillan a couple of years ago.
He is kind of a remarkable CEO.
And the other piece that we didn't talk as much about, Felix, is the sustainability piece of this.
He's also making progress at the same time on all these different margins in a really interesting push towards sustainability.
The one thing I'll just mention that is a little bit of a conundrum.
You know, the markets aren't that excited.
Yeah, that's right.
Still, you know, just quickly.
So their market cap, it's been an under performer for the last five years.
It is one quarter of the market cap of Amazon.
And yet they have 20 % more sales.
Obviously that's complicated because Amazon's got a lot of AWS, got a whole bunch of other stuff.
But despite everything you said, Felix, it remains a show -me -story to like a lot of investors.
And so I think that is interesting to see over the next couple of years, which is if all these transformations are real, then why isn't it showing up?
And should it show up going forward?
Yeah, so you're exactly right.
They essentially track the broader market.
Then they get, of course, a push during COVID because they're often the only game in town.
But to me, the one sign of hope or promise that I find actually, not many people talk about, but I think it can be really important is all the strengths that the physical environment had to young me's earlier point also implied some weaknesses.
So for instance, if I was a brand that looked towards a higher positioning, like I wanted maybe more affluent customers or I wanted more edgy customers, I was very reluctant to have my brand at Walmart because all the connotations that come with the legacy, with the history of the company, that is no longer
true on Walmart .com.
You have Swell, you have Ray -Ban, you have Champion, you have all of these brands that were super hesitant to be in the store.
And so unlike many other e -commerce businesses, so much of what they do really seems in addition, the kinds of things, they never penetrated the cities.
Now e -commerce seems a real chance to penetrate the cities.
They never penetrated the space of brands that were more aspirational.
Now, Walmart .com seems like a way to do this.
And so I wonder if in the financial market valuations, if there's too much legacy thinking here that we're thinking they're doing the thing that they've always done.
But actually, my sense is what they're doing is not what they've always done.
Well, there is a storytelling aspect here too.
Even Meir and I were surprised to hear some of the statistics and facts you threw out.
In other words, the narrative hasn't really penetrated.
And so maybe what you're seeing here is a lag between what people believe Walmart to be and what it truly is.
But I think this reflects something even broader, young me, which is, we talked a little bit about this last week with IPOs.
Financial markets have been very robust, but it's actually not been robust for everybody.
And so there's this real heterogeneity.
So we see Big Pharma really underperforming biotech.
We see legacy retailers like Walmart really underperforming, flashier e -commerce players.
So there is a real thing going on in the world.
And that either can mean investors are super smart and they're right, or maybe they're attached to old scripts and they're attached to old narratives and they haven't updated in an interesting way.
So this conversation about Walmart has inspired me to want to talk about Costco.
Ooh, excellent. So Costco, from an investor standpoint, I mean, I'm just looking at this now, if you invested in Costco stock five years ago, you would have more than tripled your money in the last five years.
For that space, it's amazing.
That's amazing. Yeah, so this is a company that has close to 80 million members, operates 800 stores around the world.
And they operate with exceedingly low profit margins, and yet they continue to just kill it.
And so when we think of Costco, we think of their incredible supply chain efficiency.
In fact, many Costco shoppers may have noticed that the stores today have far fewer shortages than lots of other retailers.
And part of that is because they have a much simpler supply chain.
They offer much less choice, which means their operating model is just much simpler.
So a typical Costco has maybe 4 ,000 or 5 ,000 SKUs.
A Walmart super center, by comparison, probably has, I'm guessing, 150 ,000 SKUs.
So there are two things, though, that I really love about this company.
Number one is they make a profit before selling a thing.
Almost all of their profit comes from their membership fees, which means they have the best incentive to keep prices as low as possible because their profitability is dependent on just one thing, offering enough value to convince people to pay 60 bucks a year to maintain their membership.
And so their incentives are really aligned with their customers, which means the retention rates are fantastic, close to 90%.
And it also has these incredible ripple effects.
So, for example, they spend essentially zero on advertising.
Why? Because it doesn't make sense to spend on advertising because they're not trying to remind you to visit every week.
They don't even have an advertising budget.
Walmart, by comparison, spends more than $2 billion a year on advertising.
So the fact that they have this particular profit model has these really, really nice ripple effects.
And then the second thing I love about this company is that despite their low profit margins, they pay better than almost any retailer in this space.
So the average wage is at $23, $24 an hour.
Their employee turnover is among the lowest in the business.
And if you look at any employee survey, their employees are among the most satisfied in the industry.
And then the final thing I'll mention is that they are so, so good at merchandising, which is such an old -fashioned concept.
Yeah. Yeah. So they have a treasure hunt retailing philosophy.
So they have a bunch of evergreen products that you expect to see, and they're always there.
But they also had these surprise products.
But they also really understand the merchandising mentality.
So I'll tell you one story that really reflects this.
There was this one year where a manager at one of the big Costco's, he decided to take a gamble and buy a bunch of holiday plants.
And so he bought a bunch of holiday plants, and he put them in the store.
They had never done this before.
And after a few days, no one was buying these plants.
And so his people came to him and said, hey, should we get rid of these plants?
No one's buying these plants.
And the manager said, no, no, no, no, no.
I tell you what, let's double the number in the store and let's put them right in the front.
Buy twice as many, put them at the front of the store, and they sold out the next day.
It's just the way they do merchandising is just so brilliant.
So this is why I love this company.
Their e -commerce is terrible, by the way.
Which just also makes me love them, right?
But for understandable reasons, right?
Yeah, exactly. I do think the way they have created better jobs in an industry that is infamous for terrible working conditions is just really, really amazing.
You see this excellence in everything in management that they do, and you ask, how is it that you can do all of these things just a little better than anyone else?
And of course, the answer is engagement of the people you hire.
I do worry a little bit about the extent to which it's driven by compensation practices.
Now, I think the competition has essentially pulled even at least on starting salaries, right?
So there is a little bit of risk factor here that, to the extent that this is the kind of job where just how much do I get paid has a big influence on where the best people end up working.
I think their competitive advantage has probably melted to some degree.
I think that is such a good point, Felix, because that is the secret to their success.
The entire flywheel starts from this point of employee engagement.
They feel really well treated.
They don't turn over.
That means they spend less on having to hire and train, and they keep people for longer periods of time, which has all kinds of benefits to running a smooth operating model.
And if that were to start to erode as other companies catch up, then it does create a threat to them.
Yeah. I mean, I've got to say, I love this story and I love Costco.
In part for something that I just want to emphasize about what you said, young me, which is, yes, the employees are a big part of the story for sure, as you said, but the customer loyalty and the customer feelings towards Costco are kind of off the charts.
90 % retention. This is crazy.
And there is deep, deep affection.
And I think that is something in combination with the subscription model, which is just amazing.
In a way, the puzzle young me for me has always been like, the subscription model is so attractive and it looks so good.
And yet you don't see many followers.
No, because if you think about it, it requires such a leap of faith.
I mean, think about the rules they're breaking here with retail.
They are charging people to enter stores.
No, you can't buy two rolls of paper towels.
You need to buy 16.
And oh, by the way, our website is terrible.
When you have that differentiated a model, one of the barriers to entry is the fact that it is so differentiated, it takes such a leap of faith to try to replicate.
And then you're at scale with Costco, and then you have scale backing you up, so it's really hard.
And then the biggest question really is, how well does it travel internationally?
I think in particular, the quantity aspect to Costco.
The bulk, the bulk.
We know from the Walmart story in Japan, you just don't have the space at home to store the kind of quantities that we want you to buy.
The way I think about it, a version of Costco that has the same merchandising philosophy that is much more culturally appropriate for more densely populated cities, where people shop two or three times a week, as opposed to twice a month, is Aldi, is Lidl.
That value proposition, but adapted to better match the cultural geographic circumstances, my prediction will be pretty hard, at least in Europe and Japan, pretty hard to make the Costco model fly.
So my question for both of you is, do you shop at Costco?
Yeah, I do. I don't go that often, but I go.
What's your go -to item?
I will say as a baker, I like the cakes.
I love the salmon. Oh, yeah.
My problem now that the kids have moved out is the quantities are so large.
The quantities are large.
Although they have beautiful fruits and vegetables, but you think, do I really want 300 cucumbers?
I don't think so. Anyway, thanks, guys.
So we continue to get lots of really great emails from listeners.
You ready to do a couple, guys?
Yeah. Let's do it. Okay.
So this one's from a listener from New York who says some really, really nice things about the podcast.
Thank you. And then writes, I'm curious as to how closely you three are following President Biden's $3 .5 trillion spending program.
Given that it's likely to change as politicians haggle over the details, what is your strategy for following a story like this?
So the first thing that I would typically do is to think about whether the story is really as important as, say, the newspaper or the news make it sound.
So three and a half trillion dollars, obviously, sounds like a really big number, but it's three and a half trillion dollars over ten years.
That's about one percent of US GDP each year.
So it's ambitious. Is it like, oh my God, we're restructuring the entire economy?
No, actually not really.
And then inside the package, once I decide I'm interested in, to say climate change is obviously one big component, I'm not following the details for the exact reason, I think, that the reader points out.
What I try to do is I try to roughly classify what I think we can expect from the bill.
So, for instance, is it a carbon tax which would have a whole set of particular implications for the economy?
Is it mostly subsidies or is it mostly taxes?
And putting things in buckets gives me a sense of how businesses and how we as individuals might think about the desirability of the policy.
But bucketing the kinds of detailed measures that they're talking about helps me not being lost in the details.
I think that is not a good use of time.
Yeah, I would add a couple of additional pieces of advice.
The proposed spending program, it's a mix of many programs and every single program, I think we would all agree, is noble in its intention.
And so it's difficult to argue against any single program, but I do think it's important for citizens to have a sense of what they really care about, what they prioritize.
In other words, if you were to assume that we cannot have everything, what piece is the plan do you want to pay particular attention to because you feel like they are very important?
And then the second thing is that there are some themes that cut through many of the programs that people are divided on.
So a good example of this is means testing.
Should a program say the child tax credit, should you have to qualify for it depending on your economic status, or should it just be available to everyone regardless of your economic status?
And I think having a point of view on some of those really fundamental issues I think is very important.
Mehear, would you add anything?
Yeah, well, two things.
The first thing is try to ignore the day -to -day politics.
So like Mansion Inn, Cinema Out, God knows.
Like I try to just block all that out because I think it's shifting day -to -day and it's not my game and I don't think it's the game of many people.
So you want to block that out.
And then there are these sources of information that are really fantastic.
So I'll give you a couple of different sources.
In the UK there's something called the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
In the US there's something called the Tax Policy Center.
Really great non -partisan efforts to understand policies.
And in addition, in the US we have governmental bodies that actually provide a lot of analysis.
One is called the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Incredibly professional, thoughtful people analyzing legislation.
And similarly the Congressional Budget Office.
This is like super wonky.
Super wonky. Listeners, this is so wonky.
But let me tell you, if you go there you'll actually find the actual substance that you're asking.
And it's written in a pretty plain spoken way.
So I would suggest in some sense try to not read the day -to -day media accounts.
Try to go to some of those sites and you get to call yourself a wonk.
Which is I'm sure what everyone is aspiring to.
Okay, here's the next question.
Thank you for the great content.
Appreciate the deep analysis of topics.
Could you please provide your insights and advice for selecting stocks to invest in?
So looking for some very specific stock advice.
My guess is from the two of you.
So what do you have guys?
You know, so look, I think at a first approximation I want to do the standard thing.
Which is it's not clear that you should be picking stocks.
If you want to we can talk about it.
But there's like good evidence to think that most folks aren't terribly successful doing it.
Having said that, it is enormously interesting and it is enormously fun to do.
And if you want to do it, I think that's great.
First, what do you not do?
And the answer is you don't listen to your buddy who tells you he's got a buddy who told him that you got to invest in XYZ.
That's not what you do.
What you do is you think about what you're interested in.
And you think about companies that are in those spaces.
And you then start to develop it as a hobby.
Where you start to think deeply about, oh wow, I really am interested in life sciences.
And I want to figure out all this MRNA junk that I hear about.
Then go and learn about these businesses.
Or alternatively, man, I just bought a Peloton.
It's just incredible.
Should I buy that stock?
Go read the 10K. Go read the 10Q.
So don't do a scattershot effort.
Focus in an area that you know something about, that you care about deeply.
And then do the work.
And do the work means listening to the conference call and reading the 10K.
And yeah, visiting some Peloton stores.
That is really fun and great.
And for a fraction of your portfolio, it can be a great thing to do.
I think it's very similar for me.
Most of my investments are in broad market indices.
Because like me here, I know that I cannot pick the winners.
And of course, you can think a little bit about which indices to pick.
Do you have a view on international versus domestic?
Do you have a view on small business versus large business?
So I think there's some interesting thinking that go into even picking broad swaths of the market.
And then on top of that, think about which part of your quote -unquote investing activity is truly investing.
And how much is consumption?
How much is just the joy of learning about companies, thinking about who has the biggest prospects, who can win, who will lose.
And when I get involved with startups or when I get involved with companies that I end up investing in, I mostly think of that as a consumption activity.
Young me, what do you think?
I think it's really good advice.
I think like the two of you participate in a lot of indices, but I also enjoy investing in particular stocks.
My two rules of investing are I never invest money that I'm not okay with losing.
And number two is I never invest in something I don't understand.
For example, a life sciences company, if I just can't get my head around it, if I can't answer the questions I have about it, I just stay away.
I think the point about research is so important.
Research is so accessible now.
Anybody can access an annual report.
Anybody can access industry reports.
And so if you do truly enjoy it and want to consider the legwork associated with the research to be enjoyable, then I think it's great.
Okay, let's do one more.
This is a listener from Hong Kong who writes, I thoroughly enjoyed the recent episode on China and then writes for some personal advice, I have been with my current firm first job for nine years.
And I'm very fortunate to have been presented with two opportunities, one internal and one external, both at an elevated role.
At this crossroad, I'd like to seek your opinions on whether multiple firm experiences valued for recruitment at management level.
The reason I like this question is we in fact got a number of questions from people who are in the early stages of their career, looking for career advice of this sort.
And I'm wondering what it is that you tell people at this stage about how to think about building their professional resume?
No, it's a great question.
And it's a really hard question.
And of course, I don't think we know enough to exactly know what the right answer is.
But let's think about the ways to think about that problem.
The thing I think that most people don't spend enough time thinking about is the most important thing, which is, are you learning and where will you learn the most?
So if you have like many, many things you're trying to trading off like, oh, there's money here, there's prestige there.
And the answer really is who will you be working with?
How much can you learn from them?
And are you going to be happy doing that?
And if you are learning as a young person at the highest rate possible, that is all that will matter over the long run.
Nine years, frankly, I think by most standards today for a first job is unusual.
I happen to think it's great.
I think what you want to make sure of is, are you stagnating?
Are there challenges?
And are you learning?
And as long as you're getting challenged in learning, there's nothing wrong with sticking around in a place.
But you have to be challenged and you have to be constantly learning.
That is the only golden rule I think of in these settings.
What I would add is I think it's worth all paying attention to can an outsider see that you grew?
So, for instance, if I see someone's resume and you've been in the same role in the same company for an extended period of time, it might be quite hard for me to know that, oh my God, this role that you had totally changed over time.
So if you change titles, if you change divisions, if you change the functions, I think all of these kinds of evidence on personal growth, I think is really important.
And then another aspect to think about if you decide to change is that you have this one really big advantage if you move inside your organization and that is you know the people.
Often when we choose new jobs, we're thinking about what's the brand name?
What's the function?
What are the challenges of the company?
And for day to day, I think what matters more than anything else is who are you working with?
Are you enjoying the people around you?
So whenever you compare inside and outside, I think getting a good sense of what is it going to be like if you move to another company?
How much will you enjoy working with the people there?
That I think is a really big consideration.
And if you get it wrong these days, very little cost.
People move all the time.
So I think this is probably different from an earlier phase where sometimes you got punished for not showing loyalty.
Today, if anything, I think the three of us are a little surprised that someone would stay nine years in their very first job.
If you get it wrong, no harm really.
You decide it's not for you.
You move on to something better.
I think it's interesting too that you can't really tell from this note whether this listener is already experiencing personal fulfillment in what she's doing.
And I think there are a lot of people in the early stages of their career who aren't quite sure they're doing what they want to be doing.
Maybe they are. Maybe they're not.
And this is to your point, Felix, experimentation will never get easier.
It will only get harder the older you get.
And so in your 20s, to move around from job to job has really become quite normalized.
And so there's a possibility that you don't know yet what you're good at.
You don't know the kind of tasks that you really enjoy doing.
And you don't know where you might excel.
And it's only through experimentation that you begin to learn those things.
Yeah. I think that's a very deep point, young me, which is these choices actually determine who you are and the way you make them.
And if you're at a job for nine years as a young person, the one good news version of that is constant challenges, great organization, wonderful.
The other version of it is you're becoming more and more risk averse over time, and it'll only make it harder for you to do this in the future.
I think the one thing I feel better about for this person is if they have external validation that they are in demand and that they're being perceived as valuable, then that's great.
And in fact, Felix, to your point about, you know, make sure you look like you're changing, make sure you're testing the markets.
Even if you stay wherever you are, just constantly be out there testing the markets to make sure you're in touch with how you're perceived in the labor market or wrong.
Yeah, I think that's good advice.
Thanks, guys. OK, pics, do you have much luck with Netflix recommendations?
What do you mean? Like you fire up Netflix and you see the shows that they recommend for you to watch based on?
No. I was just thinking about it because recently I saw, I don't know if I would have a reason, old shows promoted that I used to watch.
And so I started rewatching some of the shows that I was really into.
I watched a couple of episodes of Weeds, which is still fun to watch.
But then mostly I got really sucked into watching Seinfeld.
Oh, my God. Are you recommending Seinfeld?
I'm recommending revisiting shows that you really love.
That is such a great idea.
Interesting for two reasons.
One is sort of reliving some of those moments, of course, is fun, but also like what are the kinds of things you totally forgot?
Like there's entire Seinfeld episodes that I have.
If you ask me, I have no recollection, even though I must have seen them.
And then to sort of think about, like, what's the appeal?
So for Seinfeld, for instance, the way they pick out these so human interactions like your friends with someone and you're deciding, can I be more generous than my friend?
Like, you always see it like when people think about how much they should tip when they split the bill in restaurants or like feelings of revenge.
Like it's all of the topics that are really just like the way they do it, it's just fabulous.
And then also, I don't know if you remember this, this episode, they go to a Chinese restaurant.
Yes. It's a famous episode.
So racist. Oh, really?
It's unbelievable. And I think that's the other interesting part, how it reminds you what you learned in the meantime.
How culture has moved on, the kinds of standards that we hold ourselves to that, you know, used to be different.
And yeah, so watch it all.
I love it. I have to say Felix, I love this recommendation in part because it makes me feel so much less guilty because I have actually recently been rewatching things like Inspector Lewis and Morse, and I feel so guilty about it.
Like I'm like, I can't believe I'm doing this.
You're wasting time or something?
Like I can't believe I'm rewatching this.
But it's actually very pleasurable.
And it's a very guilty pleasure, right?
It's amazing. It's like a comfortable thing to do.
Yeah. I love it. I'm going to go back and watch some Seinfeld.
Yeah. Should I go next?
Yes. What's going on, Youngmi?
So my recommendation is a documentary by National Geographic, and it is called The Rescue.
Mm. Remember back in 2018, there were a dozen boys and their soccer coach trapped in that cave, that flooded cave in Northern Thailand?
Oh, yes. So this is a documentary about that rescue.
Oh. And the directors, they did Free Solo, you know, the one about the guy that...
Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah.
Yeah. This is the best of documentary.
And what's incredible is how they are able to create so much suspense, even though you already know what happens at the end.
And the way they tell the story of the Thai Navy SEALs and the collaboration with this sort of ragtag group of the world's best cave divers from different parts of the world who all come together to try to do a kind of rescue no one has ever done before, it is absolutely riveting.
Oh, wow. That sounds great.
It really takes you inside some of the most difficult decisions they had to make.
So, for example, one of the really difficult decisions.
Was whether or not to use drugs to knock the kids out for the rescue, because it would take two and a half hours and you didn't want them waking up.
Oh. And these divers didn't want to do it.
I mean, they said the idea of injecting a drug cocktail into a little child and then pushing them underwater.
Yeah. They just couldn't fathom doing it until they realized they had to do it.
It takes you inside the mindset of the people involved in this rescue.
So, I couldn't recommend it more.
It's an incredible story.
So, National Geographic documentary called The Rescue.
Wow. That's my recommendation.
That's a great pick.
That's really great.
And then here, what do you have?
Well, I can't remember what the last food recommendation I had, but it's always been so much fun because when I did butter, for example, I ended up reconnecting with umel butter, which was such a great experience.
Thanks to a listener and a friend.
But here, I'm going to push the limit on this.
Okay. I'm curious. I have to say, I have been discovering tinned or canned fish.
Yes. Sardines, mackerel, anchovies.
I'm with you, Meher.
Are you? Yes. Oh my God.
My husband and I have been playing around with preparing them in different ways.
I'm with you. It is so good.
I mean, you can just put it on a piece of bread.
You know, as a kid who kind of grew up a little bit on like, StarKist and Bumblebee Tuna, you think like canned fish and you're like this is not what I want to do.
And then you realize that there is this.
Universe. Absolutely spectacular world, and it is a whole world of tinned and canned fish, which is so tasty.
And you just put it on a piece of bread.
Not just bread. It can be a salad, one piece on top of your pasta or something.
Exactly. And it just changes everything.
I completely agree with you.
There are a couple of brands I love.
There's Porto. That's a Portuguese one.
There's Nuri. There's Ortiz.
And it's a whole world.
The thing I love about this is lots of small brands, lots of variations.
Everything is different.
It sort of makes you feel like you're, I don't know, sitting on the Mediterranean Sea.
Exactly. And it's really worth thinking about the bread.
I hadn't had pickled herring in a little while.
And I ate it with a friend not too long ago.
And he was very sophisticated about how to pair it, which type of herring, which type of bread.
And in the beginning, I thought, yeah, that's a little bit overdoing it.
Like how sophisticated can you get?
And then much to my surprise, it really did make a difference.
It also spans like some herring can be sweet, sweet fish.
It can actually be very sweet.
And then you have others that are very spicy.
Oh, I love that one.
It's really, I don't know, it's just a fantastic world.
So I recommend canned and tinned fish to everybody.
And I know I'm giving away cultural heritage, but can I recommend herring and cheese?
That is just the best combination in the world.
If you try herring and cheddar -like cheese, or if you can get some Swedish cheese, some Scandinavian cheese, the combination out of this world.
Really? You will never go back.
Hey, I'm with you. That's interesting.
Okay, I'm there. All right, so for our more adventurous listeners, that's something for people to try.
And we hear you will put a few links to some interesting recommendations.
I will, absolutely.
Sounds good. So that's it for tonight.
Thanks everyone for listening.
This is After Hours from the TED Audio Collective.
Thank you.
