Icelandic women shut their country down 🪧

Hey there and Happy Halloween! 🎃 In the mood for a treat? We recently interviewed two investors from Shark Tank (yes, that Shark Tank) and got some behind-the-scenes info: 

• Investor (and absolute icon) Barabara Corcoran earns a yearly salary of $300K from being on Shark Tank. She also earns $4.5 million annually from stocks, bonds, etc. 

• Meanwhile, Mark Cuban has no salary: He gets paid through his investments. He didn’t disclose an exact amount, but our guess is it’s way up there—he’s worth an estimated $5.2 billion. Casual.

 1   Iceland women strike against gender inequality 🪧

Thousands of Icelandic women and nonbinary people—including the prime minister—walked off the job last Tuesday to protest for greater gender equality. For 24 hours, the country found itself at a standstill as schools, banks, and shops operated at limited capacity (if at all). 

Iceland is often seen as an “equality paradise”...but their own Prime Minister would beg to differ. Iceland is one of the few countries to have closed 90% of the gender pay gap—and has ranked first in the world for gender equality by the World Economic Forum for the past 14 years. But Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir won’t rest until full gender equality is realized. And Iceland still has a ways to go to get there:

• The country currently has a pay gap of 10.2% according to the OECD, and a higher proportion of women in lower-paying jobs doesn’t help.

• Gender-based violence is still prevalent: Nearly one in four Icelandic women have been subject to sexual violence. 

• Immigrant women in Iceland are often silenced and their contribution to society is “rarely acknowledged or reflected in the wages they receive.”

Can you say deja vu? This is Iceland’s seventh strike (or “Kvennafrí,” as you’d say in Icelandic). The first time Iceland protested in October 1975, the entire country changed: 

Proves to show: Unified solidarity gets things done. 👏 And it doesn’t just help Icelandic women—it impacts all workers and their families. Equal pay for women means more income for working-class households.

 2   Companies are rolling out all types of benefits to keep employees onboard 🤨

The number one priority for businesses? It’s not innovation, expansion, or even revenue (shocker): It’s talent retention. To prevent employees from submitting that dreaded two-week notice, companies are rolling out all kinds of benefits—and there are a few that we didn’t have on our 2023 bingo card: 

• Psychedelics: Tech company 15Five has started offering ketamine-assisted therapy. 

• “Family Building” Benefits: The number of companies offering fertility benefits (egg freezing, intrauterine insemination, IVF, etc) has grown by 8% since 2021. 

• Cold Plunges: Team-building company Grand Dynamics noted an uptick in cold immersion requests. Who doesn’t want to chat KPIs with your boss while sitting in a freezing tub? 

But is that what employees want? As we covered last week, yes…and no. Employees are looking for their basic needs to be covered first: mental health benefits, supplemental health insurance, and work-life balance perks (read: WFH optionality and flexible working hours). And businesses that provide easy-to-use and affordable health insurance, like Curative, are seeing positive feedback from both companies and their employees.

 3   Workplace satisfaction among tech workers has plummeted 📉

Silicon Valley’s glory days might be over. Juicy bonuses. Sky-high salaries. Meaningful innovation. All this (and more) once made the technology sector a coveted career path. Before the pandemic, over 80% of tech employees said they’d recommend their company to a friend. 

But there’s been a vibe shift. Job satisfaction amongst tech workers has plunged in the past three years, per Insider. With less investment money being funneled to tech, companies are slashing bonuses, pausing hiring, and trimming talent—meaning employees aren’t exactly feeling “stable” at work. 

But the bigger culprit? The “managementization” of tech. The ratio of managers to tech workers has increased by 9% since 2018, leading to red tape and bureaucratic bloat. It’s a stark difference from the tech industry’s usual flat-hierarchy structure, which facilitated fast decision-making and open communication. 

• Looking Ahead: Silicon Valley isn’t dead (yet). To re-invigorate tech, experts suggest flattening organizational structures and more importantly, prioritizing and listening to technical talent.

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It’s been a wild past few months for Detroit. The city is home to the nation’s largest automakers (Ford, GM, and Stellantis) and is the epicenter of the United Auto Workers strike. To celebrate the UAW reaching a tentative agreement with The Big Three, we’re throwing it back to our interview with fellow Detroiters. 🚙

Before you watch, let’s play a game: Can you match the profession to the correct salary? 

Answers below! 

• Content creator Vivian Tu (@YourRichBFF) shares her six-figure salary and best financial advice. 

• This just in: 🗞 Massachusetts is poised to be the next state to require salary transparency. 

• Looking for jobs in social media? Here’s a great list (with all salaries included, of course). 

• Whether your first job was babysitter, dog walker, or something else, you should 100% add it to your LinkedIn. 

Thanks for reading! As promised, here’s the total cost breakdown of our wedding. We managed to spend ⅓ of the national average. Which brings us to the next question: How much do you think a typical wedding costs in the US? 👀

See you next week!

_{Answers to the mix-and-match: 1C, 2B, 3D , 4A}