Whenever I think about what did the most damage to internet culture over the past ten years, xkcd 1357 comes out on top. Not Twitter. Not Facebook. This simple comic. | Continue reading
Years ago I wrote about the three bucket model of product management. Here's a quick recap. You categorize all possible features into one of three buckets— gamechangers, showstoppers (called table stakes in corporate vernacular) and distractions. A gamechanger is a feature that s … | Continue reading
A few days ago I finished reading Leander Kahney’s book on Jony Ive. Here are the parts that I highlighted. I don’t recommend reading the book unless you’re really deep into Apple history and design, but I did find many of these interesting. For Jony, it's all about the work-- bu … | Continue reading
I've been hacking non-stop for over two weeks. During this time my tech stack has grown to many libraries and multiple services. I've done a lot of experimentation; there are parts of the toolchain that are excellent, and there are parts that are difficult to use, buggy or immatu … | Continue reading
Almost everyone who does great work toils in relative obscurity. Performance reviews are social fiction. How do people really advance through the corporate hierarchy? | Continue reading
A few days ago I realized something. I don’t like writing. I realized it because I found creative energy to work on programming projects again, and I experience writing programs differently from how I experience having to write. Even the turn of phrase “having to write” betrays m … | Continue reading
Interviews are filled with posturing, political correctness, and socially convenient falsehoods that have everything to do with large company recruiting constraints and nothing to do with you. | Continue reading
Read clusters of five books. Visualize clusters as instruments to inspect the world. Collect instruments into a mental lab. Read ~40 pages/day. That's ~20 books/year, 40 new instruments per decade. | Continue reading
Envy is a bad north star. Spend time with people who don't feel it. Avoid people who do. Pick a mission. Find the equivalent of practicing scales in your field, and do that. | Continue reading
Engineers don't have a daily ritual that reminds us why we got into the field. Without a ritual, the drudgery creeps closer and the vision of the monastery recedes. | Continue reading