It’s quitting szn friends. What work are you doing that you don’t have to do? What work are you doing that you don’t want to do?
Personally, we will continue to say yes to everything until we become tasty little paper-thin crepes BUT at least we can enjoy the vicarious thrill of standing up for ourselves via this newsletter. So tell us: What are you quitting?
More than 10,000 John Deere employees walked off jobs in Illinois, Iowa and Kansas after the company failed to agree to the union’s proposed contract terms. For reference, Deere is expected to turn an almost $6 billion profit this year, and just gave its CEO a 160% raise.
Workers are asking for a 5% to 6% raise.
Other companies are quitting their offices. Allstate is selling the Northbrook headquarters it’s called home for 54 years, betting that the 95% of employees working remotely will continue to do so. Edelman is likewise shedding office space, moving from the Aon Center to the red brick Gogo building next to Ogilvie and dropping half its footprint in the process. Even Uber, which committed to opening up an office for its Freight business in the Old Main Post Office, has scaled back its footprint. Logistics company Loadsmart, meanwhile, is opening a 35,000-square-foot office from which to grow its freight pricing, booking and shipping algorithms.
SMS Assist is also going the other way — though considering it sells management software to commercial and residential property owners, it does have a vested interest in the return of physical offices. It’s moving into a slightly bigger space on Randolph, pointing to 100 open jobs as reason to expand. Though if it can’t fill those 100 jobs, it does beg the question whether workers want to come work in an office at all.
The startups are also coming: Australian healthtech company Perx is opening a U.S. headquarters out of the MATTER incubator while farmers’ marketplace — not to be confused with farmers market — Farmers Business Network — is opening a Fulton Market office to connect farmers from a more central location. Hologram is also opening a new Fulton Market office, hot on the heels of its $65 million funding round. It plans to more than triple its staff of 70.
The Mom Project has raised $80 million with the hope of filling some of those jobs with women looking to succeed in the workplace while raising a family. And look — we’re the last ones in the world who should be complaining about a website helping women find jobs. But if it’s moms specifically that you’re looking to help, pointing out that the jobs are available isn’t necessarily the solution. It’s finding a way to provide the structural support caregivers need to keep up a career while managing all of the responsibilities of dependents. Anyway, they’re hiring.
Halo Investing is riding renewed consumer interest in financial products to a $100 million Series C. The company’s pitch is to democratize more arcane financial products, like structured notes, which were previously only available to big money investors. Considering structured notes protect you from risk (at the cost of a bit of your upside), yeah, that seems like something people might want to get in on. The company isn’t there yet — right now only institutional investors and advisors can use its platform — but it does have plans to expand.
And then there are the companies trying to make cryptocurrency more accessible, which, yeah, no, we’re good! You can keep it, Zero Hash, give back the $35 million funding round and stop trying to help fintech firms push crypto.
Doctors, that’s something we need. Walgreens is investing another $5.2 billion in VillageMD to bring more primary care physicians to its pharmacies. Let’s hope this goes better than Walgreens’ last big healthcare investment.
Jobs, Glorious Jobs
Email Marketing Coordinator at Tock
ICYMI: Earlier this year, Alinea co-founder Nick Kokonas sold the Tock reservation system to Squarespace for over $400 million. Meantime, Squarespace has been upgrading and promoting its Email Campaigns feature — as well as adding a ton of tools and integrations to support its new “Everything To Sell Anything” vision. So you’ll be kind of ground-floor with room to grow, while getting solid benefits at a big sexy brand.
Internal Communications Manager at Heartland Alliance
Inform and engage like-minded colleagues working to advance human rights and champion human dignity. Optimize employee feedback channels, serve as a point of contact for leadership, and manage policy changes and other high-level internal comms projects.
Marketing Specialist at Chicago Meat Authority
A little cautious on this one, but including it here for low-carb hustlers with a soft spot for Chicago history. You’ll bring literally all your tools to this Back of the Yards job: writing, editing, social, analytics, internal and external comms, Salesforce, customer service, sales and HR support, “excellent graphic design experience.” Could be a chance to hone a big chunk of skills, or you could turn into everyone’s assistant (e.g., “Support the sales team with their administrative needs”). A few more watchouts: The Marketing Specialist reports to the Vice President of Industrial Division Sales, so you may be on your own for marketing support, best practices and trends. And the job wasn't yet posted on the company site when we wrote this, but note there’s a busted link on the Careers page that says, “Check out our new employee sign on bonus!” Be sure to dig into that. 🚩
Inspiration of the week
“I still believe in telling people I encounter what I am looking for. Or perhaps the better way to phrase it is, I believe in telling people what I am lacking.”
—It can be hard to remember, or to believe in the first place, that people in general would rather give you something you’re missing than mock you for not having it. But it is true, with the possible exception of tweens. Glynnis MacNicol — whose book No One Tells You This is SOOOOOO good — offers a needed reminder that sometimes the best career advice is just to tell everyone everything all of the time. Maybe they will have the thing you are looking for. Maybe you’ll set an example that they’ll follow, giving you a chance to share something they need with them. Maybe it will just feel better to admit that you do not have everything you need to make it in this world, and could use some help.
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