Good morning,

In his book Zero to One, Peter Thiel says he liked to ask the following question in his interviews: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

He goes on to explain why. “It’s intellectually difficult because the knowledge that everyone is taught in school is by definition agreed upon. And it’s psychologically difficult because anyone trying to answer must say something she knows to be unpopular.”

Balaji Srinivasan, entrepreneur and investor, who is known for such contrarian views, has explained his own method of arriving at them, which is captured in The Anthology of Balaji by Eric Jorgenson. 

Balaji says: “The newest technical papers and the oldest books are the best sources of arbitrage. They contain the least popular facts and the most monetizable truths. What do you know to be true that others cannot or will not bring themselves to admit? There is your competitive advantage.

I read a lot of old books and new technical journals. I’m less focused on the contemporaneous and more focused on finding things that are true but that most people don’t know.

Brian Chesky, founder of Airbnb, learned from a bunch of articles written in the late 1800s about rooming houses. Room sharing was much more popular around 1900 than in 1950. He saw solutions in a sharing economy from a hundred years ago. Then he modernized, transplanted, and used those ideas today. Reading books about societal arrangements at other times and places is a very useful thing.

“Technical journals are another source of underappreciated truths. In biomedical papers, you will see that life extension and youth extension for mice is much more advanced than people think. Brain-machine interfaces are also much more advanced than the general public realizes. We have mice telepathically controlling devices. We can do fantastic things with tissue regeneration as well. The technology is here, being held back by the FDA or a lack of distribution.

Technical journals and old books are what I read with intent, as opposed to tech news, which I get in my peripheral vision.”

Have a great day!

What hits the headlines most are news of layoffs in Big Tech. But what isn’t making the headlines enough is how bad Indian tech workers are hurting. Sanghamitra Kar P reports on this in Rest of World. It isn’t a pretty read.

“More than 200,000 tech workers have been laid off in the U.S. between November 2022 and January 2023, according to Bloomberg, of whom 30%–40% were Indian IT professionals. Around 80,000 Indian IT professionals on H-1B and L-1 visas have faced job losses in the U.S. since late 2022, with the tech industry experiencing a significant impact,” Krishna Vij, business head of IT staffing company Teamlease Digital, told Rest of World. “After the pandemic, the overall startup ecosystem hired aggressively,’ Vij said. ‘Now, what we’re also seeing is that because of overall macroeconomic conditions, the startups are not hiring.”

Meanwhile, India’s tech industry has had over 30,000 workers laid off since 2022. Prominent startups including Paytm, Byju’s, Unacademy, Meesho, and Sharechat have cut jobs in the last year, and the bigger tech companies have announced hiring freezes in India.

The primary reason potential employers are sceptical about hiring from the pool of workers who have returned from the U.S. is trust deficit, Kamal Karanth, co-founder of HR firm Xpheno, told Rest of World. “Employers find it difficult to trust this cohort as there is always an inclination to return to the U.S. So, they are hesitant about hiring these people,” he said.

“[This talent] comes with hefty salaries … so either they are over-qualified for the role or they are not able to take up their offered compensation,” Vij said. “Even if they want to take a pay cut of 10%–20%, Indian companies … are offering about 40%–50% less.”