Book Reviews
Cairn: Flow Within Constraint
Cairn is a game about climbing. It was released merely days after Skyscraper Live , a Netflix special also about climbing. I'm not a climber; the closest I've gotten was fumbling on gym walls back in high…
Eccentric Founders
Despite changing its corporate structure and name to Block, and even though it's been over a decade since I last worked there, I will always think of the company as Square. Those were formative years. For me, Square…
A Retreat from Game Subscriptions
Remember the persistent idea of an evergreen gaming service, a "Netflix for games," that gamers had been clamoring for since…well, since Netflix became a household name? We did enjoy a brief era of subscription gaming, but just…
Executing Organizational Cartography
A few years back, during my early days at Affirm, a couple of us engineering leaders[1] were trying and struggling to orchestrate a reorg across our teams. There were a number of strong personalities to manage and key communications…
Exclusively "A" Players
Steve Jobs supposedly said, "A players hire A players; B players hire C players." Silicon Valley takes this to heart, a guiding light for tight hiring process and keeping a high bar when building out teams. Better to…
Lucid Motors, the Tesla of a Decade Past
Before AI dominated the headlines and capital investments, electric vehicles and autonomous driving were poised to be the defining technologies of the 2020s. It's been a fascinating industry to follow: first Tesla and their rise to prominence, then…
