A collection of longer, more in-depth posts representing some of my better writing
Providing Leadership Advice
A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a panel of engineering managers and directors to chat about a few of the details and nuances of our jobs. It was set up by Plato, a startup that latched onto this idea that people management…
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…
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 a run tech…
I Built my own Financial Planning Spreadsheet
I’m a personal finance geek. Starting with Mint and their budgeting tools and having moved on to Personal Capital for their investment tracking, I appreciate understanding where my money is coming and going, both in terms…
A Counsyl Retrospective
It started when I was thinking about how technology has failed. Or, to be more accurate, where it has failed. Post-Square, I had approached my job hunt slightly differently than in years past. Opportunity and role were still the most important…
Reflecting on Final Fantasy XV
I’ve been playing Final Fantasy games, by my count, for the past 24 years. It’s the premiere Japanese RPG series, one that guarantees high production values and solid gameplay, spectacles equivalent of long-running summer blockbuster sequels.…
Year in Review — 2016
Man, 2016 has been a hell of a year. Globally, it has been a year that defied expectations. Brexit and the US presidential elections were at the forefront of political turmoil, but there has been major instability in various regions of the world…
An Era Hostile to Innovation
140 characters instead of flying cars. Peter Thiel quipped this back in 2011, succinctly and pointedly describing the state of technological progress in the 21st century. It’s damning our modern tendencies to seek incremental improvements over…
You Don’t Deserve a House in the Bay Area
Time to check-in on the Bay Area housing crisis in 2016. … Yep, still as bad as ever. The latest controversy is that, contrary to silly ideas back in 2015 that two working professionals could afford to own a home in Silicon Valley, it’s…
The Folly of Stack Ranking and Measuring Impact
Recently I came across a brief statement on Facebook about the well-explained evils of stack ranking, with a half-hearted Devil’s Advocate argument about how impact can absolutely be an objective metric, measured and ranked. I still think this is…