Note to self:
The retort “What could go wrong” is one of my big pet peeves.
It’s often used in response to a failure of a complex system or operation. Sometimes the system had clearly poor design, making it warranted. But more often these comments reek of hindsight bias and carry an arrogance — as if the speaker could have easily avoided the failure if they were the one in charge.
It’s possible to construct that kind of retort for almost anything if you try hard enough:
But if you did so, you’d actually be wrong a lot — because there are many complex systems that function correctly for most users, most of the time. They function because many people have poured blood, sweat, and human ingenuity into them to make them reliable. And it’s often not intuitive that they can work.
Even if sometimes people are truly negligent and deserve it, I don’t find the phrase of net benefit to the culture. I consider it harmful because it ups the consequences of failure — a necessity for innovation — in exchange for cheap virtue signaling from bystanders who often have no experience in the domain.
So rather than assuming incompetence, let’s all be a bit more charitable. The world is complex and less intuitive than it looks.
A common misconception I long held is that core devs of a product must be the top product experts.
The reality is that, as a core dev
Yes, you will have the absolute expertise on certain product behaviors or possibilities. But almost certainly never for the whole product at once; just the part you’ve been working on lately, where the knowledge is most fresh.
This is why it’s so important to surround yourself with “power users” — those that are untainted and unburdened by the implementation, and can use their full mental power to absorb and innovate on the product simply as a product.
These are often the people that find the most interesting uses and abuses of systems, that the core devs weren’t even aware of.
This can happen for any kind of product, including and especially programming languages. Many of the interesting programming “patterns” are created not by the developers of the language, but by “power users”.[citation needed]
There are a few main reasons why we get busier as we get older:
As you age, you increasingly lose free time towards dealing with “adulting” type of tasks: taxes, paying bills, taking your car to the shop, researching insurance alternatives
We as age, we accumulate relationships. And while they have numerous benefits and make life worth living, they don’t come for free. They require time and energy to maintain — and at the end of the day, become tasks on our todo lists. Even something as innocuous as an old friend reaching to send a text or schedule a call can, at times, feel like burdensome tasks to accomplish.
When you’re a child or teenager, the only people you know are your family and your friends (your first generation of friends). Since you barely know anyone, you don’t really have to keep in touch with anyone. Thus, more free time.
We as age, we accumulate interests, hobbies, and pursuits. These also don’t come for free.
As an adult, you begin to explore the world — reading books, picking up rock climbing, learning to paint, planning & taking trips one or twice a year. Your old interests don’t exactly go away, and there are always worlds of new interests to discover. Part of you feels like you should maintain or get back to some of those old interests you cherished so much. Another part is excited to get into scuba diving.
When you’re a child or teenager, you you might have just one or two pursuits that occupy your time outside school. That lack of all the historical hobbies from your past = more free time.
Aging implies that your body will start to perform worse and more slowly, likely even breaking in ways. You’ll spend more and more time going to doctor’s appointments, surgeries, tending to medical conditions. It will take more effort to maintain your body through fitness. This all takes time.
Like many problems in life, the frustration at your seemingly decreasing time as one ages can be helped by setting expectations properly. Instead of feeling cheated as you feel your allowance of time seems to shrink year by year, expect it. Expect that by all logic, given the adulting to do, relationships to maintain, pursuits to keep up with, and the natural course of aging, you should have no free time at all — which gives you more reason to celebrate and appreciate the rare free moment when it comes along.
I’ve been thinking about leadership lately.
Many children’s programs are designed to foster leadership skills. Why? Does this imply that everyone should have leadership skills? That everyone should be a leader?
This interests me because for the longest time, I never felt like a “Leader”. I didn’t have anything in common with “Leaders” I saw. It didn’t resonate.
But I’ve realized the answer is yes. Everyone should learn leadership skills.
Even if you have no aspirations to start a company or lead a nation, leadership is everywhere.
It’s obviously present on smaller scales — in local organizations, communities, and workplaces. And even if you don’t aspire to be at the top, in any non-trivial organization, it’s still leadership all the way down. Even if you explicitly reject managing people, you can still find yourself as a leader — for example, being a skilled individual specialist carries leadership in its own way.
But less obviously, as soon as you start any kind of project or endeavor of any kind — guess what, you’re now a leader. Any kind of pursuit creates an opening for a leader. By default, the creator fills the role.
Examples of endeavors:
Without leadership, you can only ever be a “leaf” node, at the end of the chain. Without leadership, you can only ever be a consumer, a viewer, an audience member.
Even if you never start any endeavor, at the very least, you are the leader of your own life. (Which, by the way, is a creative project.)
So, yes, everyone should have leadership skills — not because everyone “should” be a leader, but because everyone already is.
Traditional forms of capital include money, relationships, and health. There’s another I’ve discovered but never heard mentioned before: location capital.
Location capital is how much experience you have with a physical place on Earth. For example, if you have a lot of New York City capital, you’re the one that knows all the cool restaurants and bars in NYC. Friends ask for recommendations for the perfect spot for their birthday.
Everyone has location capital of some kind. But no one can have all the location capital for every place, so everyone (even Jeff Bezos) needs to decide what places are most important for them to build capital in.
It’s useful to be aware of location capital because it can affect your decisions around where you spend time.
Let’s say you’re alone and deciding whether to eat out at a restaurant you’ve never been to. What’s the cost/benefit? In exchange for money, you get good food and save time & labor (from not cooking/cleaning/grocery shopping).
But that’s not all — because you’re going to a new restaurant, you also build location capital. This is a one-time “boost” you get from going to a new place. On further visits you’ll still get some, but less.
Your decision will ultimately depend on how much you value food, time, labor, money, and location capital.
Location capital can also act as a hedge against risk. If you’re planning a date, preferring a new place will help make sure your time isn’t totally wasted if the date goes poorly.
I wish I was aware of location capital sooner. I used to prefer staying in over eating out in order to save money. But now I realize those decisions came with opportunity cost. And as a result, I’ve built less capital for the cities I’ve previously “lived” in than I’d like.
In general, I think it’s a good policy to always be building capital (mostly the non-monetary kinds). Location capital is an interesting form of it and being aware of it can influence how you live your life.
The biggest challenge when onboarding remotely was getting a feel for the culture. Without this, you have to play it safe and act conservatively (i.e. maximally professionally), however it can be draining to always be so buttoned-up.
The two things that helped me feel more comfortable were:
1. Seeing “micro unprofessionalisms” during zoom calls.
One colleague had a large drawing of “No Face” from Spirited Away on his wall.
Another’s cat jumped onto the desk, and then a baby ran into the room.
Another just had a mess in the background.
All of these show humanity and personality. They let the new team member know that the tone is relaxed and that there’s no need to stress over behaving perfectly “professionally”.
2. Getting hints from coworkers about work norms.
I have a coworker that’s brutally productive. But one day he said, “I’m going to be out for a few hours this afternoon to get my trombone fixed.”
It’s easy to overlook such a remark if you’re been on the team a while. But for a new joiner, even small comments like this provide valuable insight into what is and isn’t acceptable on their new team.
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To make your new team member’s remote onboarding experience more comfortable, be intentional about showing humanity — visibly display things that are unique to you (and un-blur your background). Also, remember that your team’s culture exists, must be learned, and can be proactively communicated.
or alternatively:
It was probably going to hurt my career. I was fine with that.
The plan was cliché: quit my job, sell my stuff, spend nine months in Southeast Asia. Produce electronic music, read, and maybe code a little. Then find another tech job and pick up where I left off.
Fast forward twelve months. I haven’t set foot on a plane, I created a software product for DJs, and I’ve developed an obsession with copywriting and digital marketing. What happened?
In this post, I’ll share how, despite all expectations, my gap year catapulted my career into a far more exciting trajectory. I’ll debunk two myths society tells us about gap years and share a framework you can use to generate your own life-changing insights, whether you can take a year or a week off. Lastly, I’ll share advice for taking a gap year of your own.
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As a founder, picking your market is the most important decision you’ll make. It will impact every aspect of your journey, from product development to sales, and ultimately determine how profitable you’ll be. A good market compensates for poor execution on your part, while even the best execution will struggle with a bad one.
So what goes into a good market?
The key attributes are:
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Are you one of those people that believes their time is their most valuable resource?
I think this is wrong. Your time is valuable, but what’s most valuable is your decision making & creative energy.
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