From time to time, I get asked for career advice. Sometimes it’s folks looking to get into product management, and others just curious about working in technology generally. I’ve thought a lot abou… | Continue reading
In 2020, I started the Long Leaf Pine Slate, the biggest independent source of funds for Democrats in North Carolina. Here's how it worked. | Continue reading
Today, I’m going to write a little bit about fundraising. Back in January, I decided to launch a project that has come to dominate the non-work hours of my 2020: The Long Leaf Pine Slate. Almost every night and weekend of this year, I’ve done something (or a lot of things) for “t … | Continue reading
Today, I’m going to write a little bit about fundraising. Back in January, I decided to launch a project that has come to dominate the non-work hours of my 2020: The Long Leaf Pine Slate. Almost every night and weekend of this year, I’ve done something (or a lot of things) for “t … | Continue reading
There is really only one Big Tech monopoly that I actively worry about. It’s not Amazon, Facebook or Apple, though they are all extremely dominant in their respective fields and do act in anti-competitive ways that merit regulatory remedy. Rather, the tech monopoly that I wonder … | Continue reading
Remote work compensation has suddenly become a controversial topic. But there's a right answer - and a wrong one. | Continue reading
For the last several years, I’ve been mostly absent from Facebook. I posted very rarely and checked it almost never. This wasn’t because of any particular choice so much as a lack of desire. The folks I wanted to check in with, I already text with. Twitter provides me with instan … | Continue reading
For the last several years, I’ve been mostly absent from Facebook. I posted very rarely and checked it almost never. This wasn’t because of any particular choice so much as a lack of desire. The folks I wanted to check in with, I already text with. Twitter provides me with instan … | Continue reading
There is really only one Big Tech monopoly that I actively worry about. It’s not Amazon, Facebook or Apple, though they are all extremely dominant in their respective fields and do act in anti-competitive ways that merit regulatory remedy. Rather, the tech monopoly that I wonder … | Continue reading
There is really only one Big Tech monopoly that I actively worry about. It’s not Amazon, Facebook or Apple, though they are all extremely dominant in their respective fields and do act in anti-competitive ways that merit regulatory remedy. Rather, the tech monopoly that I wonder … | Continue reading
I spent the better part of last week hiking through the Grand Tetons backcountry with my friend Brian. Upon emerging from the mountains and getting back to Jackson, we soon learned that there had been another mass shooting. In between showering for the first time in days and trea … | Continue reading
A current joke that has been circulating around the tech world for a while now is that the way to get VCs to eat out of your hand is to slap the words AI, “machine learning” and/or “blockchain” on your pitch deck. A1: Companies have learned that referring to “machine learning” as … | Continue reading
One of my basic beliefs is that virtually every job function in knowledge-based industries can be done effectively regardless of geographic location. Living in New York obviously does not magically make one a better stock analyst any more than San Francisco makes one a better sof … | Continue reading
One of my basic beliefs is that virtually every job function in knowledge-based industries can be done effectively regardless of geographic location. Living in New York obviously does not magically make one a better stock analyst any more than San Francisco makes one a better sof … | Continue reading
Something that I’ve thought a lot about over the years, but never quite formed an opinion about, was work cultures and the relationships forged through them: what makes for a good work culture? How can you identify (and remediate) bad ones? How do we as individuals, and independe … | Continue reading
Something that I’ve thought a lot about over the years, but never quite formed an opinion about, was work cultures and the relationships forged through them: what makes for a good work culture? How can you identify (and remediate) bad ones? How do we as individuals, and independe … | Continue reading
Chances are, if you’re a twenty- or thirty-something, and especially if you’re a dude, you’ve given some thought as to what you’d do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. What you’d do, where you’d go, what you’d stockpile, and what kind of ranged weapon you’d specialize in (obvio … | Continue reading
A current joke that has been circulating around the tech world for a while now is that the way to get VCs to eat out of your hand is to slap the words AI, “machine learning” and/or “blockchain” on your pitch deck. A1: Companies have learned that referring to “machine learning” as … | Continue reading
Chances are, if you’re a twenty- or thirty-something, and especially if you’re a dude, you’ve given some thought as to what you’d do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. What you’d do, where you’d go, what you’d stockpile, and what kind of ranged weapon you’d specialize in (obvio … | Continue reading
One question I get from time to time is from people considering getting an MBA, and whether it’s worth the investment. I’m going to try to generalize my answer here so it’s applicable to folks from a variety of different backgrounds/career goals, even though I wound up in technol … | Continue reading
They say that the future is already here, just unevenly distributed. One area where this adage is manifest is in working arrangements – or, if you like, the organizational technology – in software companies. At most software companies, there are two business functions that are ve … | Continue reading
One perennial area of debate in the tech industry centers around who’s in it (and who’s not). The constant background noise about the supposed scarcity of developer talent has led to any number of new approaches aimed at bringing more skilled candidates online. All manner of “boo … | Continue reading
One perennial area of debate in the tech industry centers around who’s in it (and who’s not). The constant background noise about the supposed scarcity of developer talent has led to any number of new approaches aimed at bringing more skilled candidates online. All manner of “boo … | Continue reading
One of my more controversial opinions on product management is that most PMs do not need to touch code, and in fact, usually shouldn’t. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that Product Managers can’t use code in common tools of the trade. Testing APIs, running SQL queries and simply und … | Continue reading
I’ve said before that distributed working models – which I prefer to the term “remote working” but whatever – are a disruptive organizational technology cycle that is already well underway. The number of salaried, professional workers who work remotely at least part-time has been … | Continue reading
One of the biggest generational schisms on the internet today (besides your level of gif game) is your connection to the idea of the “free and open web.” Anyone in their mid-20s or younger does not remember an internet not utterly dominated by today’s giant digital platforms. Aft … | Continue reading
For a couple of weeks a while back, there was a brief bubble of media personalities pressing the case for “breaking up” Big Tech. In a current events cycle dominated by news of Russian hacking, institutions under siege, “fake news” and the like, the GAFA companies’ ascent to glob … | Continue reading
Depending on who you ask, “remote” working is either gaining steam in the tech industry or still a coveted-but-rare perk for the lucky few. A pattern that seems to be emerging is this: Tech giants like Amazon and Google, wagering that their corporate brand and bidding power are s … | Continue reading
Depending on who you ask, “remote” working is either gaining steam in the tech industry or still a coveted-but-rare perk for the lucky few. A pattern that seems to be emerging is this: Tech giants like Amazon and Google, wagering that their corporate brand and bidding power are s … | Continue reading
Social entrepreneurship and "having an impact" are all the rage. But in the real world, making a difference is more complicated. | Continue reading
So what does a Senior Product Manager actually do? | Continue reading
I was discussing recruiter spam with a friend of mine the other day. He mentioned a recent message he received soliciting his interest in more than a dozen open Director and VP-level gigs. Cool, right? Except here’s the problem: virtually all of the positions were based in San Fr … | Continue reading
“Total Addressable Markets” (TAMs) are typically something you see investors and other “money people” obsess over, and for good reason. Obviously, big market problems are more lucrative to solve than little ones. But TAMs are also relevant for product managers, albeit in differen … | Continue reading
“Total Addressable Markets” (TAMs) are typically something you see investors and other “money people” obsess over, and for good reason. Obviously, big market problems are more lucrative to solve than little ones. But TAMs are also relevant for product managers, albeit in differen … | Continue reading
So perhaps you’re burned out in the consumer software game, or are just considering a pivot into the enterprise (“B2B”) market. You’ve heard that there’s a lot of opportunity in “selling to enterprises” – and maybe, you’re thinking, after you build some revenue there and make you … | Continue reading
The prospect of labor organizing has long lived on the outer fringe of the technology industry. It’s long been assumed that highly skilled technology workers, particularly those in the most spectacularly successful Silicon Valley firms, were too spoiled with the industry’s famous … | Continue reading
The prospect of labor organizing has long lived on the outer fringe of the technology industry. It’s long been assumed that highly skilled technology workers, particularly those in the most spectacularly successful Silicon Valley firms, were too spoiled with the industry’s famous … | Continue reading
Many of us today have jobs that are difficult to explain to our Boomer parents. Product Managers famously have this problem, but so do many flavors of knowledge workers: try explaining to someone who retired twenty years ago what a “social sentiment analyst” or “devops engineer” … | Continue reading
Many of us today have jobs that are difficult to explain to our Boomer parents. Product Managers famously have this problem, but so do many flavors of knowledge workers: try explaining to someone who retired twenty years ago what a “social sentiment analyst” or “devops engineer” … | Continue reading
The first phase of enterprise SaaS was taking all the stuff that used to run on-premises, putting it in the cloud and changing up the billing/business model. This has unlocked a tremendous amount of flexibility, innovation and improvement in enterprise software, ranging from desi … | Continue reading
One of the “first world problems” that I seem to hear most often, but understand the least, is people who complain about email: getting too much of it, how it’s a waste of time, interpreting it, the list of complaints goes on. Usually, the people making this argument are selling … | Continue reading
One of the “first world problems” that I seem to hear most often, but understand the least, is people who complain about email: getting too much of it, how it’s a waste of time, interpreting it, the list of complaints goes on. Usually, the people making this argument are selling … | Continue reading
Fair warning – this post is going deep into Geek territory. If you’re not into Star Trek, you can probably safely skip this. This is a re-edit of a piece I wrote on Medium a few years ago. That said… here we go. Late in 2017, the sixth major Star Trek TV series – Star … Continue … | Continue reading
A popular parlor game around the Raleigh/Durham area of late, like in many other cities, has been handicapping our region’s chances of being picked for Amazon’s HQ2. My guess is that we’re in the top 3 or 4 cities, but hey, who knows? There are lots of pro/con positions for Ralei … | Continue reading
I’ve written a bunch lately about enterprise software and why its future looks bright. (Check out Tech Has Grown Up and Enterprise Software and the Deployment Age if you’re interested.) I’m gonna continue with that theme in this post, in which I’m going to hit a pet interest of m … | Continue reading
In the last several weeks, we’ve seen an enormous amount of chatter about market valuations. The Dow hit a record 26,000 points the other day, only two weeks after hitting a previous record of 25,000. Bitcoin traded above $20,000 not long ago, then crashed to somewhere less than … | Continue reading
One question I get from time to time is from people considering getting an MBA, and whether it’s worth the investment. I’m going to try to generalize my answer here so it’s applicable to folks from a variety of different backgrounds/career goals, even though I wound up in technol … | Continue reading