Does anyone know any other tech publications at the level of Stratechery? Ben Thompson seems to get his analysis right and provide useful correct perspectives more than basically anyone else I’ve seen.
I wonder does reading anything at the level of stratechary make any impact? I use to religiously read this blog and matt l.'s 6-8 years ago, then i started growing my family and haven't read it in years - I realized 3 years ago, there was no difference in my life, the trajectory of my career, or my understanding of the tech industry without these blogs. I also have 2 VC friends who say blogs like these waste their time. I always thought I was gaining an alpha by reading these blogs, but going into my 40s, I have yet to see any benefit.
According to Ben (the author and proprietor of Stratechery) every major influential VC firm and/or head subscribes. He once remarked that something to the effect of there's no major VC that isn't subscribed, I deliver email to their inboxes daily. I do think he's also quite popular with many big time CEOs (Mark Zuckerburg being a confirmed subscriber for one. Who knows who reads what though).
I'm not sure if that means anything though, to be quite honest.
That said, I think its really the business of technology, and that could make this useful, but for ICs or those on a more technical path that don't plan on owning a business? That is less direct.
All of this is to say, I think the more one understands the systems at play in which they live and work, the better they are at making informed decisions, especially about where to work. I left a job a few years ago for another one at a company that was working in the space that publications like this were talking about - but the market itself hadn't seen as high growing fields yet - and having that ahead of time analysis lead me to believe it would be lucrative for me to switch companies, and that really did work out for me.
> According to Ben (the author and proprietor of Stratechery) every major influential VC firm and/or head subscribes
To play the devils advocate - its important for leaders to know how their companies/efforts are generally perceived - whether or not the analysis itself is accurate is immaterial.
Secondly, the newsletter may simply be a way to learn about recent events. These folk have in-house analysts with possibly better quality data
I definitely use his blog to be thoughtfully informed when it matters. As a 40ish startup guy myself I take on many roles, including helping set product and technology strategies. But I also need to work in the weeds most of the time and don't often have the opportunity or headspace to just ponder the big picture, so having someone else inject perspective at the right time can be very useful. Thus I tend to read Bens work in huge gulps as a new project kicks off, grabbing as much perspective as possible to feed a new initiative with ideas that have evolved and simmered over time.
Moreover, being able to think at a strategic, systems level about the technology landscape is a trained mindset and it helps to have sources of inspiration accordingly. Reading the work of people who think in ways you also wish to be able to think seems like good training for your mental muscles. Like all commentary and advice you learn to keep what you think is relevant and supplement it with your own information and ideas, but having the framework and the examples can absolutely push your further, faster.
Interesting that you use the word "impact", which I interpret as software engineer performance review jargon to quantify the larger results of engineering work, and the word "alpha" which I interpret as financial jargon to indicate some investment advantage. I think reading anything is at best just a starting point to moving the needle on any of those, and will provide nothing without further action. That said, I see two kinds of value:
If you are operating in a business-level capacity in tech where you have shallow but potentially valuable interactions with a lot of other people in the industry (eg, founder, operator, salesperson, marketer, etc), then there is significant value in reading the same things they do so you can anticipate their state of mind and have plenty of fodder for small talk. Your VC friends' comments notwithstanding, I think this is probably the biggest direct impact.
Secondarily, I think there is a good amount of passive value in reading good industry analysis if you ever want to run your own business or rise to a level of contributing strategic input within an established business. This is less of a straight line, but considering all the garbage put out by even reputable mainstream publications, and the sheer volume of zero-value entertainment options, I think reading expert analysis by well-informed, well-written and consistently committed individual authors is probably one of best ways to get quality information. That is no small thing in today's world.
All that said, I think you are right that focusing on your family and more local concerns will probably be higher ROI, but it depends what you're optimizing for.
I've had a similar thought. I read a LOT of these various blogs and I frequently ask myself whether its valuable and how much time I should invest in these. I've concluded its probably valuable and a few hours a week is probably the right amount of time.
I think where the value lies is in when I am asked to give input into product or technology strategy. Having a broader understand of the technology ecosystem is a useful foundation for making recommendations to my specific scenario.
Personally I find that if I read something that I enjoy, I’ll usually find a way to incorporate it into my life somehow. For Stratechery and information economics in particular, it’s been finding ways to leverage my skills to make myself indispensable professionally.
I read it because I think about these kind of things quite a bit. I used to do so for a living but now days I do it because I still find it interesting. Ben is a very good analyst. He doesn't get everything right but this is a field where that's not really possible. He's as good or better than anyone I know of and I also appreciate he does review where he's been wrong and, even better, spends time exploring why.
Thanks! Money Stuff is great and of a similar caliber for sure.
I think Platformer is solid, but seems to fall a bit more into media-punditry, though there are a lot of interesting reported stories which you don't get on Stratechery.
I don't really read the other two, but I'll check them out. I do think Noah Smith falls into a category I'm wary of, which is folks who seem to cast their net really wide, but not super familiar with his work so hard to criticize specifically. Maybe he is really good too.
Same, but really wish he was less of an apologist for corporations; I guess a lot of his readership are corporate people who are interested in justifying the world they run, but it constantly rubs the wrong way if you're at all skeptical of, like, giant business or ads or AI... at a social level.
Basically I'd love to find a publication that's similar but better reflects my values.
I get it, but also I think this is one of the things that makes Ben so good at his job and is also a bit more nuanced than might initially appear. He (mostly) isn't interested in being an activist for a certain perspective and really just seems to think about things in terms of systems, incentives, and revealed preferences as they exist today. I think this can butt heads with idealist types who want things to be a different way, but to me it's a big part of what makes his writing and analysis so good.
You may be right, but you may also be exemplifying am unconscious bias that pro-corporate/pro-existing-power-structures = neutral, and anti- those things is "idealist" and so not neutral.
I think of idealist = different from current reality based on some principles. Often to me idealist also means that they wish things were different from the way they ended up on ideological grounds, but those grounds are incompatible with the current incentives/systems that led to the current state for some reason.
I don't really think the current system is neutral, more that is just is what exists today for some reasons, and that anything else proposed has to actually contend with those reasons/forces/incentives.
>> Basically I'd love to find a publication that's similar better reflects my values.
Beware of an active search for an echo chamber. Because for example:
>>it constantly runs the wrong way if you're at all skeptical of, like, giant business or ads or AI... at a social level.
Is a viewpoint that could very well be wrong when faced with the analysis from a different perspective from yours. Having someone repeat your values to you doesn't make it true or take into account trade-offs that are being made which could prompt you to change your opinion.
That doesn't make any sense. I'm looking for someone whose fundamental ethics reflects mine so that their analysis of e.g. "should society work this way" has some overlap with what I actually want to see in the world. They are fully capable, as am I, into taking into account tradeoffs and changing our opinions.
Stratechery's analysis is, when it broaches on ethics, based on ethics shared by a subset of rich people and (imo) amoral technologists and, I think, pretty much no one else.
Like I have an aesthetic interest in disallowing corporations from implementing psychological manipulation to prevent me from e.g. quitting their services. Ben can see no problem with Amazon's arcane process for quitting Prime. So, fine, he's not a person I want speaking for me or, like, affecting any policy on the matter whatsoever.
But your fundamental ethics are something that can be changed by criticism and exposure to opposing viewpoints. If you have such a static view of your beliefs and opinions I would urge you to reflect on that.
>>They are fully capable, as am I, into taking into account tradeoffs and changing our opinions.
That may be, but people generally are incentivized to be far more charitable to their position than the opposition. Reading the opposition from the oppositions own formulation will be a far greater defense of what they actually think in terms of tradeoffs.
>>Like I have an aesthetic interest in disallowing corporations from implementing psychological manipulation to prevent me from e.g. quitting their services.
Ben himself in the article you are referring to says this is shady, but he also points out that its generally not nearly as bad as say the NYT which requires you to call via phone to unsubscribe, and that the conflict with the regulators is comparatively heavy handed and doesn't take into account the tradeoffs he wants to discuss in his article.
>>So, fine, he's not a person I want speaking for me or, like, affecting any policy on the matter whatsoever.
Ok, not really up to you though. Ideas enter the marketplace and compete with each other. The ones that people find the most persuasive end up affecting the policy. Clearly his view points are not affecting the policy that much seeing as he is directly responding to regulation that is occurring and antithetical to what he believes is correct.
Perhaps I don't have a static view of my beliefs at all? You really don't know much about my beliefs. I'm just saying I don't like stratechery's and I don't see why that's threatening to you.
And yeah of course it's not up to me, that's why I'm griping in a comment section.
Can't imagine where you got that impression. Calling out screwed up things in the world is entirely compatible with optimism, and really it's required to make optimism possible, because to believe in a good future you have to believe that we're allowed to fix the things that are bad about the present.
Generally any mainstream news covering tech will cover it from an anti-tech or tech-skeptical stance. You really have to go out of your way to get the other side of the debate, which is why arguing that one of the few places that is more charitable to tech should be less so in order to fit a pre-held bias is a strange proposal.
If you're looking for tech-skepticism read any mainstream news outlet. Even the majority of articles on tech centered news like ARS or TechCrunch are from a tech skeptical viewpoint.
I strongly sympathize, but my thinking on this is that it's _extremely_ hard to find someone whose ethics match yours without thinking deeply (and you and the writer both being exceptionally transparent) about what _motivates_ your ethics.
What I've found is that it's not at all hard to find someone who comes to conclusions that frequently make me feel 'satisfied'. But that, if I'm honest, it's often exactly the kind of echo chamber the parent post is warning about, precisely because the 'analyst' is avoiding transparency about their priors - and in fact avoiding any examination of them at all. And without that transparency and curiosity, the 'analysis' is really just very basest form of partisan politics, which is to say "We'll support each other as long as we agree."
I wish you luck in finding thoughtful and transparent analysis, though!
As other comments said, Platformer might be one you like. The author also is hosting a podcast (which is free) if you are OK with the audio media: https://www.nytimes.com/column/hard-fork
It has a bit more anti-tech vibe as one of the co-hosts comes from NYT. I think it's a good complement to Stratechery.
I mean this in the most kind way possible but you might be reading within your echo chamber too much. You might be correct but your view are completely different than the normal person.
The average person would not have any issue with have a couple more buttons to press to cancel prime. Thinking this is the view of only “rich, amoral technologists” is just wrong. Extending that dismiss anything else they speak about policy is the point of view of an extreme zealot.
Most people like Amazon overall. The process to cancel prime is orders of magnitude easier and more clear than countless business that force phone calls, letters or in person to cancel. Most people would shrug if you told them about this case.
I think most people would be opposed to that stuff in principle, but don't have a crystallized model of it that allows them to be opposed in practice; it's mostly by working in tech and/or spending a lot of time online that you become able to discern those designs as an intentionally manipulative strategy instead of simply bad design.
Like, my relatives will complain about e.g. things being hard to quit and literally not realize it was designed for that. It's really weird.
There is absolutely a tech optimism bias which he is upfront about. I would find it very hard to find any one that deeply understands technology and makes their living writing about technology that does not think technological progress is a net positive.
There is another part where he just saying how things are which people don’t like to hear. They don’t like how powerful the big tech companies are but don’t want to grapple with the reasons they are big or delve into the nuances of the impacts of changing the status quo. People just want to hear big tech bad, let’s hurt big tech. If your looking for that, there countless pundits that will provide that “analysis”.
He is absolutely willing to regulate big tech. He was immediately against the purchase of WhatsApp and Instagram.
He's more on the industry insider side than industry analyst side. It's interesting, but not like Stratechery.
He's on the top of the substack tech category. There is Platformer too.
https://substack.com/discover/category/technology/paid
This list may interest you since substack seems to be the primary place for serious (and wannabe) writers these days.
Really? He strikes me as professionally wrong. I still find some of his stuff interesting because it challenges my own perspective, but man… he's an expert at stretching a Tweet-length thought to 5,000 words.
