I've been thinking about how different industries are responding to #Covid19 w/r/t social isolation. It's notable that many of the biggest companies telling their employees to work from home are tech companies. And although I poo-poo'd it at first 1/
I actually think it IS because tech companies, especially those in social media, fundamentally understand exponential growth and virality like, deep down in their bones, in a way that other companies don't. ALSO, obviously, they have infrastructure and know-how for remote work 2/
But if you think about what any investor is saying to a portfolio company, it's exponential growth, up and to the right. Any social media company has deeply studied network effects to see how 1 can become 1 million as fast as possible. 3/
So then when it's an ACTUAL virus, in the real world, the exponential spread and the threat that seems abstract to others seems completely understandable to people who have used that exact behavior as their North Star for business. 4/
As proof, I will point you to this video from 2012, wherein Mark Zuckerberg explains exponential growth and uses my favorite line of his ever: "Humans are really bad at understanding exponential growth." (Attributed to ... an investor.) /5
So, if you're a different company in the Bay Area, in a different industry, or anywhere in the US right now, and you're wondering why Google just told 10,000 people to work from home because the number of cases of #Covid19 seems so small right now ... well. /6
Humans ARE really bad at understanding exponential growth. But it's time to get better at it. Like, now. /fin #FlattenTheCurve #CancelEverything
I know I said I was done but here's a simple set of illustrations. Every tech company has internalized this as "hockey stick growth." This is what it looks like. khanacademy.org/math/algebra/x…
Bonus learning: khanacademy.org/math/algebra/x…
