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When I tell fellow tech executives that every employee at sunday, from our engineers to our finance team, must complete a restaurant shift before they can fully onboard, I usually get confused looks. “You mean like, shadow someone?” they ask. No. I mean they tie on an apron, take orders, run food, and yes, deal with the 15-minute wait for the check that our product was literally built to eliminate. It sounds extreme. It is extreme. And it’s also one of the smartest business decisions we’ve made. Here’s why: business is often removed from the industries we serve. Were keeping that empathy right there. The Empathy Gap in Tech I’ve spent 25 years in the tech world, scaling e-commerce unicorns in Europe before cofounding sunday. I’ve seen brilliant engineers build elegant solutions to problems they’ve never personally experienced. I’ve watched product teams debate restaurant workflows they’ve only seen in wireframes. The result? Products that work in theory but fail in the chaos of a Friday night dinner rush. Using our industry as an example, the restaurant space cant be disrupted from a distance. It’s intensely human. A server manages six tables, remembers who wanted dressing on the side, tracks which kitchen orders are running late, and still needs to radiate warmth when checking on the anniversary couple at table twelve. When we ask them to adopt new technology, we’re not just changing their workflow, we’re asking them to trust us with their tips, their table turn times, and their relationship with guests. You can’t design for that kind of stakes without understanding them viscerally. What a Saturday Night Shift Teaches a Software Engineer Last month, I watched our newest engineer finish his restaurant shift at one of our partner locations. He was confident going in; he understood our API integrations, he knew our payment flow inside and out. But after five hours on his feet, he had a revelation. “At the end of my shift, I had to manually enter tips from 22 tables into the POS system,” he told me, exhausted. “Twenty-two times typing in amounts, double-checking I got the numbers right, worrying I’d accidentally shortchange myself or mess up the restaurant’s accounting. The whole time I’m thinking about the train I’m about to miss, and I’m doing math in my head to see if my night was even worth it. It took 15 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.” This wasn’t theoretical anymore. “I finally understood what we’re actually saving people from,” he told me the next day. “It’s not just 15 minutesit’s the mental load of worrying you made a mistake, the frustration of doing data entry when you’re exhausted, the indignity of technology making your life harder instead of easier. When I use sunday now, I know exactly whose time I’m giving back.” That’s the point. Empathy at scale isn’t built through user research reports. It’s built through experience. Hospitality as a Business Philosophy What started as a practical requirement has become central to how we think about everything at sunday. Hospitality isn’t about being nice. It’s about anticipating needs, moving with urgency, and making people feel valued even under pressure. Those principles translate directly to how we run our business. When a restaurant partner calls with an issue, our support team doesn’t respond with ticket numbers and SLAs. They respond like servers handling a complaint: with immediate acknowledgment, genuine concern, and a bias toward solving the problem now rather than escalating it later. Our customer success team knows that “I’ll get back to you tomorrow” is the tech equivalent of “your food will be out in a few minutes”a polite deflection that erodes trust. We’ve also borrowed the restaurant world’s obsession with the guest experience. In hospitality, there’s no such thing as “that’s not my table.” If a guest needs something, you handle it. We’ve tried to instill that same mentality. When a new market launch hits a snag, our engineers don’t wait for the ops team to flag it. When a sales issue arises, our product managers jump in. We move like a restaurant team during a rushfluid, collaborative, and focused on the experience we’re creating. The Metrics That Matter Here’s what surprised me most: this policy has become one of our best retention and recruiting tools. We’ve had a 94% retention rate among employees who complete the restaurant shift program, compared to 78% at my previous tech companies. Employees consistently rank it as one of their most valuable onboarding experiences. New hires tell us they appreciate working somewhere that values understanding over assumption. They like that leadership doesn’t just talk about customer obsessionwe quite literally make them walk in our customers’ shoes (and sensible non-slip ones at that). And when we hire, the restaurant shift requirement self-selects for people with the right mindset. Candidates who balk at the idea of working a shift often aren’t the right fit for our culture anyway. The ones who light up at the challenge? Those are our people. The tech industry loves to talk about disruption, but we’re often remarkably detached from the industries we claim to understand. We optimize for what we can measure: clicks, conversions, load times. And we miss what we can’t, the relief on a server’s face when they don’t have to chase down a credit card, the gratitude of a mom who can split a check without asking for help, the pride a restaurant owner feels when their team has more time to create memorable moments. Making our employees work restaurant shifts isn’t a cute culture quirk or a team-building exercise. It’s a business imperative. Every hour our team spends in a restaurant is an investment in building a product that actually solves real problems, not imagined ones. A Challenge to Tech Leaders I’d encourage every tech CEO, especially those building B2B products, to ask yourself: When was the last time you personally experienced the problem your product solves? Not observed it. Not read about it in research. Actually lived it? If the answer is “never” or “it’s been years,” you have a dangerous knowledge gap. Your team is making decisions based on assumptions, building for personas instead of people, and probably missing opportunities that would be obvious to anyone who spent a day in your customers’ reality. You don’t need to make it a formal policy like we have. But you do need to close the empathy gap between your builders and your users. Shadow a shift. Take customer service calls. Use your competitor’s products. Do whatever it takes to remember that behind every user statistic is a human being trying to do their job, feed their family, or simply have a nice dinner without waiting 15 minutes for the check. At sunday, we’ve learned that great technology in the hospitality space doesn’t come from brillian engineers alone. It comes from brilliant engineers who’ve burned their hand on a plate, forgotten which table ordered the gluten-free option, and felt genuine panic when the payment system hiccups during a Saturday night rush. That’s not just good culture. That’s good business.
Category:
E-Commerce
So, youve finally done it. No more putting it off, pushing through the grind, waiting for a more opportune time once things settle down. Alas, youve mustered up the gall to cash in on your paid vacation time. Now you have several days strung together to travel, rest, or do whatever the heck your heart desires. I love that for you. But before you slam your work laptop shut and Yabba dabba doo! your ass out of the office, theres one last thing. Youve gotta leave behind a message letting folks know youll be gone. You need to draft an out-of-office message. Out-of-office notes tend to be pretty standardcourtesy auto-replies letting folks know youre not working, when youll be back, and who, if anyone, they can contact in your stead. Sometimes people add a pop of color hinting at a life outside the office. But these things generally tend to be pretty vanilla. I, for one, wish corporate peeps got more real with this messaging. Treat these notes like early-stage Facebook status updates: Share what youre really thinking, feeling, and experiencing. This year is already a mess; immigrants continue to be targeted by the federal government, unemployment numbers remain dismal, and it seems like everyones got the flu. Why not keep it 100 for whoever reaches out in the interim? Longtime readers will remember when I presented a list of pandemic-era openers as alternatives to I hope this email finds you well. Here are some OOO notes I wish I had the heart to schedule. Deploy at your own risk. I am currently out of office, taking advantage of PTO that is technically unlimited but spiritually frowned upon. I am currently out of office, taking advantage of PTO that is technically unlimited but managerially frowned upon. I am currently out of office to recharge after running on vibes, caffeine, and anxiety for six consecutive quarters. I am out of office avoiding the news for my mental health. Please do not forward any think pieces. I am currently out of office closing the approximately 637 tabs I have openboth literally and mentally. I am currently out of office, wearing a quarter-zip sweater and drinking matcha. I hope this auto-reply finds you doing the same. Im OOO using the gym membership I will abandon by February. I am currently out of office, ignoring my inbox like its a group chat that is doing the most while Im trying to do the least. Ill be out of the office while my outie binge-watches Severance and realizes this job feels familiar. Upon my return, the work will continue to be mysterious and important. I am currently out of office, unpacking last year with a licensed professional. I am currently out of office, pondering the spiritual meaning of six-seven. I am currently out of office, updating my résumé just in case. I am currently out of office, rewatching Sinners so I can feel something again. I am currently out of office but will absolutely read this message anyway and respond once my brain stops buffering. I am currently out of office and launching my side hustle. Please subscribe to my Substack. I am currently out of office, but will be bumping that new A$AP Rocky album until further notice. Im OOO until my burnout is no longer a personality trait. I am currently out of office pivoting to my new self. Lets table this and circle back in Q2, when I have the bandwidth to get my ducks in a row. I am currently out of office, but dont expect a response as soon as I get back. Ill need a few days to remember how to do my job. I am currently out of office, but unfortunately still mentally available.
Category:
E-Commerce
While it seems that some agreement has been reached to placate Donald Trumps obsession with taking over Greenland, details are still being revealed. So the possibility that the nascent trade war over the issue that was heating up before the announcement of an agreement could restart. If it does, leaders in European capitals have looked at what levers are available to pull to try and dissuade the U.S. president from moving toward more aggressive action. Some of the most significant U.S. exports are its tech apps, services, and platforms, putting them first in the firing line. U.S. social media platforms, for instance, account for more than a third of the entire value of the S&Pmeaning any impact on them could be deleterious to the broader American economy. Within Brussels, the hub of European legislative decision-making, there has been discussion of how to bring some of the U.S.s more outlandish ideas into line with the global order, says Zach Meyers, director of research at the Center on Regulation in Europe, noting, Since they mostly provide services rather than physical products, reciprocal tariffs would not work. The European Union could use what has been described as its big bazooka: the so-called Anti-Coercion Instrument. Thats specifically designed to deter and address this type of geopolitical bullying, says Meyers, and includes a huge menu of other restrictions on how Big Tech [companies] operate in Europe, such as limitations on exploiting IP rights, on being able to compete in public procurement, and constraining incoming investment. However, European leaders have held off deploying the bazooka in this current skirmish, fearing that it could raise the geopolitical temperature and invite an equally (or more) harmful response from Trump. But the inability to use one method, and the skittishness about using another, doesnt mean there arent ways to try and bring Trump back to reality. Unlike the brash, geopolitics-altering Truth Social posts that twist the world on its axis, any European response would likely be much more subtle, though no less significant, experts argue. There will be no ‘slamming of the door, as banning major U.S. platforms would anger a lot of European consumers, disrupt businesses, and undermine Europes own digital economy, says Francesca Musiani, senior researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Researchnot to say what it would do to the U.S. presidents blood pressure. Subtler strategies give Europe some room to keep the market open but make success inside it progressively harder. Musiani adds, If a trade war between Europe and the United States were to spill into the tech sector, it probably would unfold more like a slow, grinding campaign: legal, relentlessly procedural, and very expensive for American firms. Such a war would likely be waged through the European Unions comprehensive tech-focused laws, including the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act; both were passed in 2022 but more recently began being enforced. Europe is also considering a handful of other legislative packages, including a Digital Networks Act, which would govern telecommunications providers, and an amended Cybersecurity Act proposed this week. The continents proclivity for cracking down on tech has already prompted plenty of noise from Trump allies, who have called it foreign censorship. But enactment and enforcement could be ramped up significantly if European legislators deemed it necessary. Nothing would be framed as retaliation, rather as consumer protection or competition, but the targets would be obvious, Musiani says. Indeed, long before Trump stepped up his rhetoric on acquiring Greenland, Europe had been considering implementing taxation on tech firms operating in Europe. That would likely be the next lever to pull, Musiani believes, including digital services taxes that could expand or be harmonized across more member states, hitting online advertising, cloud services, and marketplaces. Those are all short-term measures designed to act as a stopgap while the longer-term, larger goal is achieved: decoupling Europes tech stack from an overreliance on U.S. entities. In the long run, the huge loss of transatlantic trust caused by Trump’s threats will almost certainly support the growing push for Europe to act more assertively to boost its own tech sector, says Meyers. That could take the form of buy European rules, but is already shaping up in the movement to develop a European tech stack that doesnt require paying money to, or the threat of being held hostage by, U.S. hardware providers. For Trump, whose focus tends to be on his own personal short-term and immediate gains, that longer-term impact might not be front of mind. But it ought to be for the Americans he represents.
Category:
E-Commerce
We cant afford to maintain the roads we have, so why do we keep building more? The Highway Trust Fund is the primary federal mechanism for surface transportation. It receives revenue mainly from the federal fuel tax (18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon on diesel) plus taxes on tires, heavy vehicles, and some other sources. The fund has two accounts: (1) the Highway Account (road construction, maintenance, and other surface transportation projects), and (2) the much smaller Mass Transit Account. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} Debates about how Americans should pay for roads are endless: General taxpayer funding, regardless of whether someone drives Per-mile charges (vehicle miles traveled fees) Weight-based fees, since heavy trucks and EVs cause disproportionate damage And the less common full privatization, letting owners/operators set tolls and other forms of charging road users But the debates often sidestep or ignore any sense of urgency. The fact is there’s a massive and growing funding gap. Under the current setup, we cant afford to maintain whats already been built, let alone pay to build and maintain new construction projects. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) sounds the alarm, even if its in dry, academic language. Shortfall Historically, most federal spending for highways has been paid for by revenueslargely from excise taxes on gasoline, diesel, and other motor fuelsthat are credited to the highway account of the Highway Trust Fund (HTF). For more than two decades, those revenues have fallen short of federal spending on highways, prompting transfers from the Treasurys general fund to the trust fund to make up the difference. The CBO projects that balances in both the highway and transit accounts of the HTF will be exhausted in 2028. If the taxes that are currently credited to the trust fund remained in place and if funding for highway and transit programs increased annually at the rate of inflation, the shortfalls accumulated in the HTFs highway and transit accounts from 2024 to 2033 would total $241 billion, according to CBOs May 2023 baseline budget projections. The HTF is in a state of bankruptcy, but we keep chugging along as if theres no real financial urgency. For more than 20 years, taxpayers have been subsidizing roads because the people who use the roads dont pay enough to cover the costs. The fund has avoided collapse only through repeated bailouts from the U.S. Treasury’s general fund totaling more than $275 billion since the mid-2000s. Who should pay? Tapping into the general fund might seem fair if all taxpayers put the same amount of wear and tear on the transportation system, but thats obviously not the case. About 19% of people ages 20 to 24 dont have a drivers license, and 30% to 40% of people older than 85 dont have a drivers license. Not to mention the wide variety of driving contexts of people who are licensed, the types of vehicles used, and how often they contribute to clogged street networks during rush hours. The underlying revenue problem has to be fixed, which means the debate has to go deeper, from Who should pay? to How do we make sure revenue covers road expenses? Systemic problem is an overused term in urbanism, but thats the best way to describe the transportation funding debacle. Cars are more fuel efficient, EVs pay no fuel tax, and other taxes have stayed the same since the early 1990s. Im not even arguing in favor of taxes, Im simply drawing your attention to the obvious problem that there isnt enough money to cover the costs of road maintenance or road expansion. Basic budgeting If we treated this issue like a household budget facing chronic overspending, the questions would be straightforward: How can we reduce expenses? How can we increase revenue? Is maintenance more important than new construction? If we can’t even afford to maintain the current system, how quickly can we halt new spending on expansions? What alternative mobility options (transit, biking, walking, ridesharing, remote work) can ease the burden using the infrastructure we already have? This fiscal disaster isn’t abstract policy wonkery, it’s a hard constraint on what the U.S. can realistically build and maintain. Ignoring it risks more patchwork bailouts, more maintenance delays, and eventual service breakdowns. Bottom line, we need to ask better questions and vigorously explore and debate the trade-offs. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
Six families are suing TikTok after their children died emulating the so-called “blackout challenge” they had seen on the social media platform. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok’s algorithm exposed the teenagers, ages 11 to 17, to content that encouraged them to choke themselves to the point of passing out. Each of the children were found dead with some form of binding around their neck, hanging or otherwise attempting the challenge, according to the lawsuit. Filed in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware, the lawsuit names two TikTok legal entities and its parent company, ByteDance. ByteDance and one of the entities, TikTok LLC, are incorporated in Delaware. The suit claims the children’s deaths were “the foreseeable result of ByteDance’s engineered addiction-by-design and programming decisions,” which were “aimed at pushing children into maximizing their engagement with TikTok by any means necessary.” TikTok is bidding to dismiss the filing, arguing that because five of the families are British, the court has no jurisdiction over defendants mainly based in the U.K., and under the First Amendment and the current law called the Communications Decency Act, which shields internet companies from liability for third-party user-posted content. Matthew P. Bergman, the plaintiff’s attorney, countered that the lawsuit is about product liability and dangerous design choices, according to reporting from the Delaware News Journal. We appreciate the Delaware Superior Courts careful attention to the arguments presented yesterday, said Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, in a statement to Fast Company. The families we represent have waited far too long for accountability, and they deserve the opportunity to uncover how and why TikToks product targeted their children with this deadly Blackout Challenge content. Bergman continued: We look forward to a ruling that allows this case to move forward into discovery so we can finally hold TikTok responsible for the harms its platform has inflicted on these kids and their families. Justice won’t be fully served until these families have their day in court.” Fast Company has reached out to TikTok for comment. The bereaved parents say they hope the lawsuit will bring accountability and clarity around their children’s death. Ellen Roome, the mother of Jools Sweeney, has been campaigning for legislation, called Jools’ Law, since her 14-year-old sons death in 2022. The campaign calls for the automatic preservation of a childs online and social media data within five days of death. Without preserved digital evidence, harm to children cannot be properly examined, and social media companies cannot be held to account, the campaign website reads. The parents still don’t know what their children were exposed to on the social media platform, alleging that TikTok won’t release the information. TikToks community guidelines prohibit videos depicting, promoting, normalizing, or glorifying dangerous acts that may lead to serious injury or death. In a statement posted to social media, Roome wrote: “We now have to wait for the judge to decide whether the case is dismissed or whether we are allowed to proceed to the discovery stage. “For the court, this is about motions and procedures. For us, it is about our children. Our dead children.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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