Posts by Allen Cheung
The Big, Slow Company Stereotype
The playbook for “startup disruption” has remained the same for a while: the small startup moves faster than its much larger competitor, hustling out new features, products and markets at a much higher clip. Raw speed and iteration overcomes money…
The Risk of Failure
Silicon Valley is often derided as a place that non-ironically accepts and celebrates failure. For people who have not bought into this culture, it’s natural to make fun of the notion that people are failing their way to…
Developer Ageism and the Escape into Management
Is the software development industry ageist? For some industries, this is not an unreasonable proposition. Professional athletes peak in their late 20s[1]; professional gamers (e.g., e-sport atheletes) peak even earlier, in their early 20s. If you were…
Misusing Apple Design as a Shortcut to Success
About a month ago, there was some discussion over this provocative Quora post on how design-lead products have not worked out as well as the industry has hoped. That is, despite design's elevated status the last few…
Hatching Twitter
One of my guilty reading pleasures is tech company biographies. That I'm a part of the industry and can relate to the motivations of founders and early employees is a given; I've followed companies' chronologies…
Cloud Atlas
I'll admit: I picked up the Cloud Atlas novel mostly because the trailer for the movie adaption of the same name looked pretty interesting, a juxtaposition of what seemed like many different places and time periods and themes.…
