ETCH Weekly Update 8/1

Byju’s boardroom turmoil, an evolving stance on the promise and peril of AI use in the classroom, and why unionization might be on the upswing in the US

Aug 01, 2023

Hello!

I hope that you enjoyed Sunday’s edition of Weekend Reading. This Weekly Update newsletter includes stories about Byju’s boardroom turmoil, an evolving stance on the promise and peril of AI use in the classroom, and why unionization might be on the upswing in the US.

As a reminder, Tuesday’s Weekly Update is for paid subscribers only - if you are a free subscriber, see below for how to upgrade.

On to the update!

1. Most clicked link from Weekend Reading: Star Founder Broke Down in Tears as Crises Engulfed Byju’s

Context: More major media companies are starting to cover the situation at Byju’s, including this article from Bloomberg. I particularly appreciated this reporter’s efforts to remind readers of what a superstar teacher Byju was prior to taking venture money to build the company we know today.

I said my piece on Byju’s a month ago and think that most of the new reporting on the topic corroborates my position: the company suffers from a jarring lack of accountability and governance.

What makes this complicated is that Byju’s, the business, is probably doing OK. It is still worth something, particularly their Aakash subsidiary. In normal circumstances (as much as something like this can be normal), you’d expect the board to install a new CEO to salvage what’s left. We’re seeing this play out in real-time with both WeWork and Bolt, to admittedly poor results.

The story I am still waiting for is how Byju, the company’s eponymous founder, won the struggle to keep his position as CEO. Prosus and Peak XV (Sequoia India) are 2 of the most powerful VCs in the world, with hundreds of millions of dollars of unrealized returns tied up in the company. (Chan Zuckerberg is formidable in their own right, but playing a slightly different game as a philanthropic entity. The returns would have still been material to them though.)

Yet, Byju somehow outmaneuvered these top VCs to keep his job. They somehow ended up in a place where their only option was the nuclear one — to leave the board entirely.

To say this a little more concretely: whatever happened in that board room was so egregious that a publicly traded investment manager (Prosus) went on the record to say that the CEO of one of its largest investments, “regularly disregarded advice and recommendations relating to strategic, operational, legal, and corporate governance matters” and “did not evolve sufficiently for a company of that scale.”

2. 65% of teachers already using AI to help in their jobs

Context: Quizlet polled 1,000 students and 500 teachers on their use of AI in the classroom. Among other interesting findings, a higher percentage of teachers (65%) currently use AI tools than students (61%).

I’ve been wrestling with my stance on AI use in and around the classroom. Last fall, I took the position that adoption was inevitable unless instructors chose to adopt the luddite approach of assigning (and grading) work in blue books. I figured there would be bumps in the road to adoption, but didn’t give them much credence. Honestly, I mostly ignored the complaints about the changes AI use wrought on classrooms.

I started re-considering this position when Tyton’s Time for Class survey data came out. In that survey, preventing cheating leaped from 10th to first place as the top instructor concern this year, presumably due to the effects of AI usage. Further, 54% of instructors surveyed believed AI would have a negative effect on student learning compared to only 16% who thought AI’s effect would be positive. As someone who does not spend a lot of time in the classroom, maybe I wasn’t being empathetic enough to those who were in it?

This Quizlet survey brings me back to square one. Are there problems with AI use in the classroom? Sure, yes, absolutely. But the boots on the ground are using it regardless. We’ll find a way to solve those problems on the fly - in the words of UCSD teaching assistant Sam Lau:

“At some point as an instructor there’s the question of how far students are going to go” to cheat, he says. “If they’re willing to go that far, we don’t think nor believe we should try to spend time getting these students to do their assignments.”

3. It’s not just Starbucks: Why cafes are hotbeds for unionizing

Context: Independent coffee shops around the country are starting to unionize. They join nascent unionization movements at Starbucks, Apple, Dollar General, REI, Trader Joe’s, Amazon, and Chipotle.

This is the last one because it lies somewhere between a Story and a Hot Take. I have anecdotally observed something, but do not yet have the data to declare it a full-on trend.

I think we are at the start of a new labor movement. After peaking at 35% of the labor force in 1954 (not coincidentally another period of high employment), union participation in the US has declined to just 10%.

Taking unions’ place, at least in terms of workforce participation if not bargaining power: gig workers. McKinsey estimates that 36% of the US workforce identify as independent workers filling freelance, side hustle, and gig roles.

A larger overall number and percentage of the workforce than labor unions ever reached is now working gig-economy roles. And we celebrate this! The Uber driver who built a 6-car fleet. The Airbnb property manager who made $205K. The Upwork consultant who made $1M/year working from Aruba.

These examples are, of course, the exceptions rather than the rules. The finances of the vast majority of gig economy workers probably look a lot more similar to the folks working at all the retail companies listed above.

That may change with policy moves. Uber already classifies its drivers as employees in the UK, and California may not be far behind.

Policy aside, I am curious to see if there are businesses to be built empowering gig workers to build stronger financial and professional profiles. I don’t think the answer is as simple as rebuilding the industrial-era unions of the 1950s.

What does a labor union purpose-built for the knowledge economy look like?

I think there could be an opportunity for new startups to fill union-like functions. Like 81cents, which helps workers negotiate salaries. Or like Reforge, which is building a guild (little g) for product management talent. You might even include some of the organizations delivering “apprenticeship degrees,” though I’d like to see more longitudinal relationships with these organizations and fewer dependencies on employer relationships for success (yes, that makes it harder).

I want to find more examples of these!