“I don’t want to be a manager” is always a sad line to hear from software engineers. Granted, I have a conflict of interest: I’ve chosen this line of work as my profession for the …
Meta-Blog Thoughts, 2017 Edition
Two years removed from being an employee at Square, I made a trip back to the offices to greet familiar faces and check out the updated decor. One of them offhandedly mentioned that I still …
The Cruel Startup Job Market
It starts innocently enough with a Ben Thompson tweet: Hiring is probably the single largest arbitrage opportunity available. Letting degrees/admissions committees make choices for you is dumb. https://t.co/Xis3JWGqH7 — Ben Thompson (@benthompson) July 21, 2017 …
Review: Stories of your Life and Others
After watching the excellent Arrival, I was compelled to find and devour the short story that inspired the plot in that movie. This is a persistent habit of mine, seeking out source materials that inspire …
Shadow of the Colossus
Shadow of the Colossus was a PlayStation 2 game released in 2005 about a hero tasked with the seemingly impossible mission of defeating giant colossi, in order to revive a comatose companion. It was a …
Smartwatches as Glorified Fitness Trackers
I temporarily ditched my Withings hybrid watch for a slightly smarter cousin. My curiosity got the better of me; I knew that a hybrid smartwatch could represent the best of both worlds, but I imagined …
Review: The Manager’s Path
I forget who mentioned The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change to me as an interesting book to pick up, but I do remember thinking that it sounded like the …
Impressions of the Switch, Three Months Later
The Switch is my first Nintendo console since the SNES. Having missed all the great Nintendo franchises in the past decade or so, I’ve been excited to wait for the updates the classics, and so …
Review: The Upstarts
The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World is a journalist’s take on how Uber and Airbnb came to exist. These two startups are two …
Revisiting the Square IPO
Unicorns are overvalued.The general trend was obvious for a while: the emergence a glut of companies just clearing the $1 billion valuation mark with special conditions, funds downgrading or writing off their private company shares, and …
Review: Arkwright
I’ve been on a sci-fi reading binge lately, and between the likes of Seveneves and the Three-Body Problem trilogy, I’ve had a good dosage of high-flying, civilization-wide stories that tickles the imagination. From that context, …
Educational Tradeoff
My new favorite podcast is Exponent, a podcast hosted by business analyst types Ben Thompson and James Allworth. They tend to talk a lot about the tech industry and its movements, but often provide subtle …