JonPaulUritis.com

Demolishing the oldest house in Nevada

2026-03-28T00:00:00Z

Circa the Spring of 2023 (yeah, I forgot to write up this article for a while) I popped into a garage sale while I was driving through midtown Reno. The garage sale was a multi-house garage sale on a weird lot close to a old recording studio. The lot was deeply overgrown with lots of unmanaged bushes, untrimmed elm trees, and landscaping that hadn't been touched probably since before I was born.

The 3 houses on the lot were beat up and looked older than everything around; which is basically 1930's construction for that neighborhood. Nothing to raise a brow about but also made me kind of "huh" about it. The garage sale didn't have anything particularly interesting (Reno has great garage sales), but when I went inside of the house I was shocked to see wood walls made from 2ft to 3ft wide rough cut timber.

For those of you who aren't familiar a (3) ft x (10) ft (1) inch old growth ponderosa board would probably go for $400 (if you could find it)... and every wall in the house was made from them. Furthermore, you could still see the marks from the circular saw on the board, which means they were OLD. REALLY OLD.

...You don't see something like that everyday.

So I asked the guy running the garage sale... whats the deal with this house?

He explained to me that the three houses on the lot were all moved from Virginia City for their historical significance, and that the house I was standing in was, at that time, the oldest house in Nevada. It was built in the mid-late 1800 (I can't remember the specific year but he knew it, lets call it 1870 in case someone runs into this article).

The houses and the lot had actually just been sold to put up a handful of town homes, and were scheduled to be demolished. The historical society was working on trying to save the house and get it moved again (the other two houses were just going to be demolished either way).

I was shocked to hear that the oldest house in Nevada was going to be demolished to throw up some trash townhomes.

Reasonably speaking, there was nothing I could about the house, I didn't have the money for a lift and I don't think it would fit on my lot even if I wanted to do... no telling how much lead paint, asbestos, etc there was either (I had young kids). So the best I could do is hope that someone with more resources would solve the problem. (note: I did later try to work with the crew to reclaim some lumber, the scrapers bailed on me... which I'm pretty angry about still)

A month or two later, the bulldozers came by and put the houses into a handful of dumpsters in a day or two. I mourned the building a little bit at first, but I gradually I changed my mind.

Reflecting on the event, 1870 seems really old at first but by European standards its a spring chicken. My house in Philadelphia was built in 1899... a mere 30 years after "the oldest house in Nevada" and the houses in Society Hill are early 1600s.

Why was I so upset about this particular house?

It occurred to me that not everything should be considered beautiful, historic, interesting just because it is old. That house wasn't particularly nice by the standards of the time. By the standards of 2023 it was actually pretty crapy. The materials would be exceptional by today's standards, but thats actually just what they had to work with at the time. I couldn't fathom sleeping in that drafty house during a Nevada winter.

So what was I upset about? It wasn't the house. I was upset, like many people are, by the idea of destroying valuable things from the past for the sake of having something new. Our society does a poor job of honoring our past. We are terrible at maintaining things or finding creative ways to reimagine the old into the new (as an example just check out any remodeling forum with people trying to figure out how to mount 1000 inch tvs in a house built before there was TV).

...but as bad as we are at caring for our heritage, the "other side of the sword" might be worse at dealing with the past. That is letting things die that should die.

Some Entrepreneurs just have a feel for it

2026-02-16T00:00:00Z

I had a conversation with an executive who was trying to guide a full time Entrepreneur through some business nuances. He was asking this entrepreneur about their sales cycle time, funnel management, prospect/account attribution... he was calling out a bunch of important indicators that professional sales teams always have on lock down, and he was right to ask about that stuff... its useful. But I noticed a thing that he was missing and frankly a lot of MBA types do the exact same thing. He was missing that some entrepreneurs just have a "feel" for it.

The entrepreneur in question here has been independent, and successful for 20 years... doing a lot of it without a ton of process. What may surprise a lot of people is that many entrepreneurs do stuff without process, AND they do it successfully. They have mental models or domain knowledge or pattern recognition that may make formal process unnecessary.

To the MBA this would seem improbable - modern sales process is what it is because its effective right? It seems unlikely that a person whose entire prospecting system is effectively "going out for coffee with connected people" would be able to sustain a business, but it can. Actually, in the circumstance we were talking about it was doing better than sustaining... it was outright successful.

**So who's right here? The executive with the process, or the entrepreneur working from a "feel?" **Well they both are.

Sales processes are useful for a bunch of things: coaching, fixing mistakes, financial projections, attribution, etc... but a lot of these techniques are actually for the management of sales people NOT the growth of an individual sales person. An entrepreneur might choose to skip these methods to focus on all the other stuff they have going on in their world, which can be a lot.

...And as crazy as it sounds some successful entrepreneurs might not even know HOW they are doing something, but they can reproducibly do it and what they are doing is effective... If thats the case it just might not matter. That's one of the weird parts about capitalism and markets - you are allowed to guess, and if you guess right the market may reward you. Of course this screams survivorship bias (and I'm sure there is some degree of that) but observationally I think the process is just intuitive. Its just not formal.

I don't want to make this seem like its only entrepreneurs though. Companies, executives, and employees do this all the time too. A dirty little secret of corporate America is that a ton of people are just taking guesses, sprinkling some numbers on it, and claiming they followed a rigorous decision making process. As the saying goes: more fiction has been written in excel than in word.

The thing I'm just looking to stress here is that some people can actually just operate from a "feel" and it works for them. I'm not saying it works all the time, I'm not saying it works at scale or in competitive markets, I'm not saying it works for me... but there are people out there who are successful by every measure, and its because they trust their gut and their gut is right. So if you run into one of these situations, don't immediately say we need to jam a lot of process on this stuff (for the entrepreneur at least). Make sure that the missing process is actually a problem first.

Everyone has a boss

2026-01-18T00:00:00Z

I had always expected to be an Entrepreneur. As an American, we are born into a world where your safety and health depends on having deep pockets when (not if) an emergency occurs.

Around the turn of the century the safest road was being a "company man." Stay on the rails: Work hard in school, go to a good university, work at a big company... and 10-15 years later after 60 hours a week of mind-numbing work, corporate politics, with your body (and soul) deteriorating you would no longer be "pay-check-to-pay-check". 10-15 years after that you might even pass for successful.

This was the narrative of success, and it sounded terrible to me. For better or worse, I was born with a chip on my shoulder, impatient, idealistic, and with a deep curiosity about how the world really works. To me, high school was the ultimate prison. The thought of staying "on the rails" to a "successful" corporate career, was just an extension of that prison.

So I prepared myself and learned "the way" of the entrepreneur. Make hay. Be resourceful. Hustle. Be creative. Only the paranoid survive. Be your own boss.

Then, to use the words of Tolkien, a thing happened that [I] did not expect...

Millennials had all been given the same advice to stay on the rails BUT the world we came into had changed. The financial crisis and technology cleared out the entry level positions we were all counting on. Liberal arts, or soft science degrees became worthless overnight.

**The reality settled in- the student loan payments didn't give a shit about recessions or mega corp entry level hiring... the ticket to a middle class life wasn't on those rails anymore. **

At the same time the greatest force of change since electricity had finally come into play - the internet! And the internet needed people to build it! Unlike previous revolutions though, the internet needed divergent thinkers, and a lot of them. Thus began the arms race for talent!

This isn't the story of the internet. You know that one.

The arms race for the creative, technical, talent needed to build this new world was immense. And the "capital holders" made a concession to get the talent: All the things we hated about the previous 100 years of corporate life were done away within 10 years.

Suits? Lmfao. Most of the people I now work with have never owned one. 60 hour weeks? How about 40 but with free lunches, yoga sessions, "20% time" and off-sites. A boss responsible for driving efficiency? Ha! Bosses were now there to retain the talent, not get the most out of them. The job was to make working at the company pleasant so you wouldn't go looking for a new gig. Need to run an errand during the day? "Why are you telling me? I'm your boss. not your mom"

The whole paradigm had changed... it wasn't just tech companies either. The tech companies created a vacuum - and all the other companies had to follow suit or be completely drained of talent.

What a bizarre change of fate...

Suddenly the world I had been avoiding had evolved into something nice? and the world I had trained for was very very different. Entrepreneurship looked nothing like it had... American companies were eager beavers to outsource everything to Latin America, Eastern Europe, and India. Zero interest rates let companies an entrepreneurs and established firms gobble up markets and take wild bets.

There was still plenty of money to be made but you've got a 5% chance of an exit worth ~$10M to $30M and its going to take 10 years. If you're smart you're using the IRS upper limit for salary: ~$148K (or whatever it is now) and putting every extra penny into your business.

10 years.

10 years of 70-80 hour weeks.

10 years of MAX $148,000 salary in a costal metro.

10 years of employees or contractors treating you like crap... but you need the talent, so you deal with it.

10 years of customers treating you like crap... but you need the revenue, so you deal with it.

...and that is if everything goes well. 95% of the time it won't.

I still did it. I went after it... and I did fine surprisingly. I was able to pay my rent in SoCal living on the beach. I was able to pay my student loans. I didn't get rich but built a business!

...but I had all the headaches - 60 days late on a Net 30. Ugh. My stud contractor decided he just didn't feel like finishing the project. I still haven't heard back from him 12 years later. The late nights trying to turn my service into a product... lol just kidding, I've got 90 hours of continuing ed to do because wordpress had another security vulnerability and I need to switch that site to rails and the latest rails made a lot of changes.

At least I was my own boss!

Wait no I wasn't. I had tons of bosses - customers, employees, contractors, vendors. Myself.

Some of my bosses were great! Some of them were terrible... just like when I was an employee.

Who the hell said Entrepreneurs get to be their own boss? Everyone has a boss.

2.5 years into my business one of my friends sent me a referral to a company. They had skateboards in the office, happy hours, and craft beer Fridays.

"I think it would be a good a good fit for you." He said after listening to me bitch about a client for the 12th time.

"Nah, I'm okay, I like being my own boss" I said.

That week 2 of my clients told me that they weren't going to pay their last invoice. One guy got in a motorcycle accident and the other guy wasn't happy with my work... 1 out of the last 40 customers, thats actually pretty good... just really bad timing. $4500 gone. Poof. Ouch. I could make it work, but where is this going? You don't get rich like this.

The company from the referral- those guys were good people. They seemed like they would be good bosses... Imagine not having to do taxes? that would be nice. I haven't had my teeth cleaned in 2 years - I hope I don't have a cavity? And entrepreneurs never talk about the loneliness. Its super lonely. You are always fake it till you make it with people because that confidence grows your business.

So I fired some customers, kept the good ones... and added a corporate job. Since that point I have been doing corporate work AND part time entrepreneurship (Note: This saved me and my family during covid when my corporate job shut down. And I'm proud of the work I do. I NEVER do my business on the clock for my W2. Thats morally bankrupt in my book).

I've changed my mind...

Now a days, I don't separate entrepreneurship and employment into buckets like I did - they are different, but like I said everyone has a boss and its still work.

Corporate work changed, so did entrepreneurship. They are different than the were in 1999.

Had I known a principle engineer at Google or Jane street can make more than a GREAT entrepreneur over that same 10 years, with a fraction of the risk. I'm not sure my path would have looked the same. But thats also why the world looks like it does right now and its not great. We need the best and brightest people building companies, spread out on different problems, and building a better version of the future. They shouldn't be working to grow the mega corps.

The good news is that I think things are changing. I would be terrified to be a Mega Corp right now... LLMs are changing the power dynamics yet again. Capital and head count are starting to look like disadvantages not advantages. I hope you spent some time learning entrepreneurship... You might need to go get some more bosses.

The only rule is change.

There is no budget for books

2026-01-04T00:00:00Z

There is no budget for books at my house or at my company. Now this may be a confusing statement to read so here is what I mean: "There is no budget for books" does not mean that we have not allocated money for books. It means that as long as you are reading the books you can buy whatever the hell you want, whenever you want. There is no budget or no restriction on how much you can spend on books.

Are you interested in Roman Architecture? Amazon has a "buy now" button, go use it. Did you see a classic that you've always wanted to read at Barnes and Nobel? Here's my card, go buy it. Did you notice the second hand store had a bunch of good deals... here's a brick of 20s.

I buy extra copies of Zorba the Greek just to give away. Seriously, you can never have enough copies of Zorba the Greek hanging around. Want a copy dear reader? Shoot me an email. jp@the domain of my business in the link earlier in this article (if I get overloaded and need to renege I'll let you know). I've had to start custom designing bookcases for the house even though we are constantly giving books away.

Why is this? Why is there no budget for books? Well the total cost during my "bad" years where I'm really click happy is like ~$1000 a year (We use libraries too. I'm not crazy)... what has the lifetime return investment been on the $20,000 to ~$40,000 I've spent? I can't even calculate. The stuff I have learned in those books has made me sooooooo much money over the years. Gotta be hundreds of thousands if not millions. It has to be the best investment you can ever make.

Take care of yourself first

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Take care of yourself first.

Life's most important moments, the ones who shape us and determine our success or failure by our own definitions largely occur when individuals are under pressure and stress. While life is full of second chances if you can't perform what you need to in spite of outside forces it will be hard to succeed. Therefore, the first and most important thing you can do is take care of yourself.

If you can manage that, You might be able to take care of another person.

Do not seek out a person who can't take care of themselves. They need to be able to do that. Look for a person who needs support because they want to accomplish great things and be a great person. Being great does not mean famous - in fact most great people are not famous. Great people horde wisdom, resilience, strength, kindness, and love. They may be wealthy, and there is nothing wrong with that but be skeptical of people who's main store of wealth is money or money-like things. As the saying goes: "some people are so poor all they have is money."

Being great is a form of excellence; excellence in the context of your peers. Excellence should be without harm and provide something for posterity. Being great is excellence in spite of your former self. Being excellent at things takes sacrifice, and sacrifice requires vulnerability. When you are vulnerable, reality has a tendency to knock you down. It is in those moments that a person needs care.

You can provide care if you possess empathy, strength, kindness, and love. You can only provide love where there is respect and a mutual understanding that two people (or more) can do more than a single person. You can love anyone. If you meet truly great people you will notice that the people around them tend to also be great. This is no coincidence.

Caring for yourself is more than most people are capable of, and caring for another person is even more unlikely- do not kid yourself, it takes great skill and perseverance to take care of just yourself- and it is also enough. You will have massively improved the state of the entire world just by taking care of yourself. If you stop right there you will have been a great success in life. You will have made the world a better place.

Adding the ability to care for another person is more difficult. So much suffering is caused because people just don't care for themselves. And much suffering is caused by people who try to take care of another person when they can't care for themselves.

If for some reason though you have found strength, courage, and tenacity enough to take care of yourself and another person, you might be able to share in the care of another person.

There are many people who need care out there and many ways to provide it, don't get bogged down in the specifics of who, what, or where. This activity is a form of wealth. As such, don't give more than you have, and don't overcommit. Having a child, taking care of an elderly family member, providing for a community are not small endeavors. If you don't have wealth then you have nothing to share and thats okay - build wealth first. I meantioned this earlier but do not fall into the trap of thinking that wealth is money. It's not. Many people think that money can solve all problems - it doesn't, and it can't. As I heard it phrased one time: "Money is to provide for family, and thats it."

If you can take care of yourself and another person (or a few), you have built a family. "Family" is not a genetic thing. It's not a tax status. It's definitely not a workplace. A family can be anything where people take care of each other, provide love, work on things together. It is different things to different people and people take different things out of it. Families are important, but people in a family are still individuals and should be treated as such. Those individuals do need to understand that they hold a place in a family, and that family itself is important and more important than any single individual. Families should be respected and patriarchs/matriarchs of families should also be respected. Again, it is not easy, simple, and there is a lot of personal sacrifice being made. There is a reason why so many mothers say the "labor is the easiest part of having a child."

If you've read this far, you can likely extend what I've written to the next natural step... some people have built so much "wealth" in their lives that they can extend it to communities, cities, regions, and even the world... and I am explicitly not representing this to mean government or organizations. There are many forms or shapes that it could take. Government, companies, non-profits, etc are not the only embodiments of sharing wealth. I'm not in a place to talk about that because I haven't done it yet. I have been able to take care of a family, and I contribute to our community. I don't presume that a greater scale is easy or intuitive.

Why are there still 7 continents?

2025-07-05T00:00:00Z

We've been teaching my kids about "the continents" and to the credit of my kid he asked me "what makes a continent?" Off the top of my head I didn't know precisely where the definition came from. I did however love the fact that my 5 year old has enough sense to ask why this thing is a thing. So I looked it up. Turns out the whole thing makes as much sense as a football bat.

Even after reading up on it I still can't figure out for the life of me why we have 7 continents. To be fair, when I say "we" I am talking about the American/ Western European model. There are other models, but they also feel pretty silly. Here are the most common continent models right now:

6 continents (The United Nations): Africa, Asia, Europe, "Americas", Antartica, Australia. This is taught mostly in Greece and Latin America according to wikipedia
6 continents (Russia/ Eastern Europe): Africa, Eurasia, North America, South America, Antartica, Australia
5 continent model: the 6 (UN) continent model but it just removes Antartica due to the fact that people don't live there.
5 continent model: A different 5 continent model just kinda says fuck it and starts combining things randomly (like Africa and Europe?)
4 continent model: cause why not?
And there is an 8 content model which arbitrarily includes Zealandia, a submerged landmass that is large, but its also only like ~700,000 square miles bigger than the indian sub-continent, has no people, isn't a tectonic plate.

Oddly, the only pre-existing one that sort of makes sense to me is the 6-continent geological/ Russian model. They have Africa, Eurasia, North America, South America, Antartica, and Austrailia. This is roughly a geological model. Presumably, they are the largest landmasses on tetonic plates. (See tectonic image below)

When I look at the status quo, the obvious problem is Europe calling themselves a continent, which is clearly a historic/ cultural legacy situation. Europe is on a contigous plate with Asia, its a relatively small landmass. If you are going to make Europe a continent and keep some level of intellectual consistency you definitely need to add the Indian subcontinent, and probably the Arabian Peninsula/ Greenland.

I think the Europeans are just using good old fashioned marketing by making all the important maps show Europe as larger than it really is...

When I look at the overall situation though, I really don't hate Europe as a continent. It's geographically separated from the other population centers on its tectonic plate, has a large enough landmass, and a large population.

What are continents anyway?

I think all the definitions kind of suck so lets say continents are an organizational tool that help to break down the world into more manageable pieces. By that definition the current models still suck, BUT we can likely build a more consistent model.

Building a better rubric

I get that arguing about the continents is about as useful as turn signals on a bmw. but here's my "I can build a bikeshed" model for you. Feel free to tell me its trash or improve it.

Geology

Separate geologic features such as tectonic plates, continental shelf, make up of the landmass.

Size

At a certain point the size of the landmass and divisibility is really what we're talking about here.

Distance and separation

How "distinct" is the thing. Kansas is a hard sell, but Madagascar is pretty darn separate.

Population

Since the continental model is mostly for organizing things, the population is actually a useful feature.

Definitely Continents

Asia

1-3 tectonic plates
Largest single landmass with or without Europe being included.
- Without Europe - 44,579,000 km2 (17,212,000 sq mi)
- With Europe - 55,000,000 km2 (21,000,000 sq mi)
Separated from other contents (except potentially for Europe) by oceans. or narrow strips of land.
4,694,576,167 people or 5.4 billion (with Europe)

Africa

Contains 2 tectonic plates with the majority being on one tectonic plate
Second largest landmass
- 30,370,000 km2 (11,730,000 sq mi)
Completely separated from other continents by water
1,393,676,444 people

North America

1 tectonic plate
3rd largest landmass
- 24.709 million km2 (9.54 million sq mi)
Basically separated from other continents by water
592,296,233 people

South America

1 techonic plate
4th largest landmass
- 17,840,000 km2 (6,890,000 sq mi)
Basically separated from other continents by water
434,254,119 people

Probably Continents

Antartica

1 tectonic plate
5th largest landmass
- 14,200,000 km2 (5,500,000 sq mi)
Completely separated from other continents by oceans
5100 people (summer)

So the population element is really the only point of contention. Does a continent need a population? To me it feels like it shouldn't. When we nuke ourselves into a nuclear winter Antartica will still be just chillin'... Continents should be able to out last people.

Australia/ Oceania

1 tectonic plate
7th largest landmass
- 8,600,000 km2 (3,300,000 sq mi)
Separated from other continents by water
39,357,469 people

From a landmass standpoint Australia is smaller than Europe, but still larger than The Indian subcontinent (3,287,590 square kilometers (1,269,346 square miles)) or Greenland (2,166,086 square kilometers/ 836,330 square miles)... thats the only knock on it though. Otherwise it fits every other reasonable criteria.

Debatable Continents

India

Separate tectonic plate
Large Landmass
- 3,287,590 square kilometers (1,269,346 square miles)
Not separated by water, but separated by the largest moutains in the world
1,463,865,525 people

I think the case for India being a continent is stronger than Europe's case. Yes, it is smaller. The only thing it is missing though is separation by water, but thats basically because the continent or sub-continent is running into another continent (Asia). Sure its a smaller landmass but its still huge - the numbers on the landmass are also hard to get with a quick google search... since the sub-continent is crashing into Asia where does one begin and the other end? If population were the determining factor, India would be second only to Eurasia.

Arabian Peninsula

Separate tectonic plate
Large Landmass
- 3,237,500 km² (1,250,000 sq mi)
Mostly separate from other landmasses by water
77,983,936 people

Similar to the Indian sub-continent the Arabian Peninsula has many features of a contient, probably more than Europe. It is on its own tectonic plate, it is a large landmass, and has a large population. It is however joined with Europe in that it branches off of Asia and is less distinct.

Europe

Not a tectonic plate
6th largest "landmass"
- 10,000,000 km2 (3,900,000 sq mi)
Not separated from other landmasses by water (Asia, Arabian Peninsula), but separated by mountains.
744,398,832 people

Lets pretend our criteria were strict and at least 3/4 were required and strong cases... Europe shouldn't be in, but lets be real... its its own thing. It's big enough and separate enough it should be able to be considered a continent. The problem with that is, where do we draw the line on size, population, and geographic separation... Does the Sahara warrant being its own continent? Its larger than Europe. If we are going to call Europe a continent India DEFINITELY needs to be a continent, and probably the Arabian Peninsula.

Probably Not Continents

Greenland

Not a tectonic plate
Large Landmass
- 2,166,086 square kilometers/ 836,330 square miles
Separate from other landmasses by water
56,583 people

With climate change this should become a renewed argument.

Zealandia

Not a tectonic plate
8th largest "landmass"
- 10,000,000 km2 (3,900,000 sq mi)
Covered by water
(0) population

Really not sure how this thing slips into the literature other than its kind of big.

Should we really care about this?

Well I'm now ~1400 words deep on a topic I really don't care that much about. This came around because we've been teaching my kids about the contenients and I'm having a tough time explaining Europe as a continent without India or the Arabian Penninsula being in the same classification. Even my 5 year old has enough sense to be like: "that doesn't really make sense"... and he's right.

With that said even if all OECD countries decided to change the definition of what a continent is in every school across the world its really not going to impact my life in any meaningful way.

The only reason I really care is that we keep rolling with something that is so fabulously wrong and telling people that its right (technically theres no real criteria so whatever they say is right, but still)

I don't care if the number we use is 4 (Africa, Asia, North and South America), 6 (Africa, Antartica, Australia, Asia, North and South America), 9 (Africa, Antartica, Australia, Arabia, Asia, North and South America) or 11 (+Greenland & Zealandia) ... I just know the number aint 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, or 15 continents... Like come on?

I know this whole article is ranty, but I feel like we can do better. Just using some basic rubric that has some logic to it would probably work fine.

My only real take away from this is that people are silly, and that we probably have a lot of "facts" that need to be re-evaluated.

The J.J. Reddick model - What makes a great basketball player?

2025-07-05T00:00:00Z

I've watched a couple of interviews/ podcasts where JJ Reddick has talked about what makes a great athlete/ great basketball player. Here's his model:

Strength
Vertical jump
Speed
Stamina
Flexibility/ mobility
Balance
Coordination
Change of pace
Plyability
Reflexes
Change of direction
Anticipation
Spacial awareness
Pattern recognition
Cognitive load

Without over-analyzing the list, I feel the list is pretty solid. As an example, many of the MVPs we've had in the last few years are actually fairly weak at certain elements on the list things like vertical jump/ speed are not strong points for Nikola Jokic... he's obviously not slow compared to the general population, but he's likely one of the slower players in the NBA. Same could be said for Steve Nash, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki. Jokic is off the chart though with spacial awareness , patern recognition, cognitive load, and anticipation.

When analyzing myself I

On the Possible Return of Fascism

2025-01-18T00:00:00Z

Author's Note: In November 2024, I was researching fascism, and how that could present itself in the United States. I was unable to finish this article, but wanted to publish the content that was written up in November 2024. As things have unfolded, much of what I thought was going to happen has started to happen. With that said, the Trump/MAGA administration has actually, surprisingly, kept within the rules of the law, they've gone into territory where the law was vague and aquired it as privileges for the executive branch, but thus far the state of affairs has been aggressive, manipulative, but ultimately within the powers of the executive branch. I appologize for not finishing the article, I regret not having this in writing before things started to unfold.

'November of 2024. For the second time in under a decade a rather suspicious, geriatric, former reality TV show host has been elected to the presidency of the United States of America.

Despite his constant gaslighting, vague language, and ambigious agenda its pretty clear the guy has fascist tendencies.

Now I live in the real world but I can't help but ask myself: "What if...?"

I am aware he is exceptionally old. I am aware that the United States is a fairly resiliant country. The chances are very low... but, bad behavior winning out is not unprecedented. The United States can likely withstand a reality TV show host who's most successful venture to this point was selling branded steaks.

**What if this time is different? ** As I've written before things often seem "normal" even when they aren't.

For the last 8 years we've been constantly gaslit by every politician in the US. How will I know a fascist regime has control over the United States?

Yes, I am aware that this is unlikely. Black Monday was unlikely. September 11th was unlikely. Often the fact that its unlikely makes for a great target- people leave their guard down. For the skeptics out there I would quantify this as probably a sub 2% chance in reality. Something less than of a tornado demolishing my house if I live in Kansas but significantly more likely than being trampled to death by a unicorn stampede. That's just living in the real world with real people - there's always a chance.

If a fascist regime were to take control I want to be able to identify it before something bad happens to me or people I care about. That way I can do something about it.

So what does that look like?

Fascist Leaders need people who can conduct violence on their behalf. It could be military, it could be a militia or gang.
Fascists need to be allowed to silence or eliminate opponents. This would generally take the shape of falsifying criminal activity or slander.
Fascists have a special love of targeting minority groups to build indifference in people not aligned and to embolden those who follow them.
Fascists are always on the prowl to preserve or increase their power or influence.
Typically Fascists will create emergencies to assume extra priveledges or temporary access to emergency powers.

Ok so what would be real world examples (i.e. indicators) that would align with a return of fascism at this time (Specifically the Trump administration):

Pardoning the January 6th Rioters is an easy one. I think its a forgone conclusion at this point, but would definitely be an indicator. Mixed bag on this one though because many people see the event as a rally that got out of control. While that may have been the narriative for many of the people at the event there definitely were people at the rally with nefarious intentions.
Attempting to stay president longer than term. An indicator for Trump would be any attempt to stay president after Thursday, January 20, 2028.
Allowing allegiant malitias to be above the law and conduct violence without punishment (Proud boys? Oath Keepers?). To get tangible on an indicator it wouldn't necessarily need to be Kristallnacht, though that would obviously do it, but it does need to be something that couldn't be written off to gang violence (or a normal run of the mill US mass shooting). I would say 2+ incidents with >5 people dead where a targeted group (i.e. burning a latino neighborhood in Chicago or Milwaukee) are the victims.
Public persecution of minorities. This one is hard to build a clear indicator of but if I had to I would look for a very visible round up or maybe a Stalin-style secret police going after illegal immigrants.
Imprisioning rivals (Pelosi, Joe Biden, Harris, etc)
Dividing opposition groups by Pitting them against each other.

Best Practices are Dead. Long Live Best Practices.

2025-01-18T00:00:00Z

Went down a rabbithole on the old web and I learned that "Bloodletting" was a common medical procedure for the better part of 3000 years. I'm kind of spellbound by the duration- it was one hell of a lindy effect. Our first evidence of its use appeared in Egypt, as indicated by the Ebers papyrus, an Egyptian medical papyrus dating to circa 1550 BC (link).

If you are hip in the academic world you might know that medical "doctors" are differentiated from PhDs in that they were practitioners and associated more closely with barbers during the middle ages (link). The red and white stripped pole of a barber shop was meant to represent blood and bandages... as the bloodletting procedure would often be recommended by doctors but carried out by barbers (link). In the 1830s, Bloodletting was so popular in Europe that more than 40 million (!) leeches were imported into France for the procedure (link).

By the end of the 19th century of course we had figured out that bloodletting was bad science. It was no longer considered a "best practice" and it was a bad idea to recommend it as a medical procedure.

What is a "best practice" really though? As far as I can tell its often a cliche or a discussion dead end for: "I don't know why everyone does this thing but they do, so just do it, and don't ask questions." Alternatively, in the best case, best light, they are perhaps industry conventions or short hand expressions intended to save time.

...Swinging back to bloodletting. You may be surprised to learn there are medical professionals still doing it.

It turns out there are a handful of situations where (in the 21st century) bloodletting is actually useful. Of course they changed the name to "therapeutic phlebotomy", but yeah its still used as a treatment for hemochromatosis and polycythemia. What about the leeches? Yep, there are circumstances where they use them too- leeches are used in certain surgeries (link) like when someone gets a finger reattached or if a limb is having trouble getting blood out after a trauma.

Modern bloodletting is certainly wild, but I think it illustrates a point nicely- We should all think critically about WHY a best practice is considered a best practice in the first place, and even more critically about our individual situations. It might not be the right practice in a situation or something that might be considered "wrong"... might actually be useful.

In my current profession (software stuff), we are overloaded with "best practices". There are a LOT of best practices in the software world, but they are not to be discussed or challenged. You should be wise to accept the canon of Robert C. Martin or Joel Spolsky as infallible.

Maybe we should take a look at something like this agile diagram¹ and reconsider if this methodology is the optimal way to do agile?

In my former profession (sales), "best practices" were rarely dogmatic (except maybe "Make sure you send thank you cards"). However, we rabidly attempted success modeling on everything and anything. I quickly found out as many others did that things which work for another person might not work for you. Hell, it might not work for you even if it is working for everyone else.

My contention about most "best practices" we should probably be more aggressive in challenging them rather then less. Industry conventions as I pointed out can be outrageously incorrect (e.g. single use rockets in space missions, Monocropping) . Even if they aren't outrageously incorrect there are still latent improvements that we might be forgoing (often for a catch acronym) because we aren't thinking critically about these concepts.

(Note: The waterfall picture was a joke to see how many people would pick up on it)

A Normal Day in one of the Wealthiest Places on the Planet

2024-08-16T00:00:00Z

I used to live in one of the cheapest apartments on the Newport Beach Peninsula. 450 square feet of beautiful shitty beach hut. My upstairs neighbor was a former rock star. The house behind me sold for $3.1M. Across the street was the Lovell Beach House ($6M). If we want to be generous, Kobe Bryant was one of my neighbors (~1 mile away). No clue who most of the people living there were but we were loaded to the brim with wealthy (some famous) people in the general vicinity.

Newport Beach however, was not "exclusive" - there were plenty of normal people (like myself) around too. There was a great basketball game weekdays @2pm at the 38th street park. Some people bought houses when Newport Beach got messed up by a storm in the 90s (supposedly there were houses going for $300K). And every weekend during the summer we filled up with every kind of person there was hitting the beach.

Despite the hodgepodge, its impossible to not notice this sort of a thing when you are walking down the street:

And if you are anything like me, you start to wonder:

These people have the kind of wealth that the rest of the country dreams of having... I wonder what they are doing in there?

Well it turns out that the open, modern, architecture in Newport Beach makes it easy to see stuff going on. Especially during my nightly jogs. I'm sure you'll be as surprised as I was to learn, that they mostly just sit on their asses watching Fox News (or CNN, or MSNBC).

What the hell?

They could be having huge raging parties with famous celebrities. Nope, parties were rare. Good parties didn't happen. They could be sitting around drinking Pappy 25, eating caviar, smoking Cohibas, riding ostriches and tigers while shooting skeet inside the house. They didn't. They could be playing strip poker with super models... yeah nope.

5 years of jogging, walking, biking around the Peninsula/ Balboa Island and I saw a couple of instances of domestic abuse, (1) Porn moving being filmed, and a whole lot of nothing from the Ultra wealthy. Most of the time they were just sitting on their asses watching TV, occasionally they were having family over.

In light of the "eat the rich" movement that is yet again going on in our country, I thought it might be useful to know who the ultra wealthy really are... and for the most part, they are boring old people (& families). They drive very nice cars. They buy expensive real estate... and they sit around watching Fox News. Pretty sad and definitely not a group to hate.

Note: I'm assuming the photo can be used under fair use since this is non-commercial and educational. If you are the owner of the photo and would like it removed, please contact me. the photo was found on zillow

Some thoughts about tech debt...

2024-08-16T00:00:00Z

Note: I generally try to stay away from software engineering topics. They often don't generalize well, and can be quite pedantic. Plus there's the trap of finding yourself complaining about your day-to-day. Making an exception here...

Some Thoughts About Tech Debt...

When I see people complaining about tech debt, I'm always curious to understand if they are actually talking about "tech debt" as described by Ward Cunningham (video transcription here) or just normal corporate disfunction (Check out my other article on this: "All Companies are Fucked Up"). Sort of like when you meet developers/people who think "agile" just means doing the work without any planning.

To me "tech debt" is a useful but flawed analogy, it describes a common trade off that we make in our profession - business needs now; system needs later. However using it occasionally to explain a trade off when building real world systems is completely different than describing every single thing you do in your job as some degree of tech debt, and it fails to describe the realities practitioners face when actually doing software engineering/development. One of the problems with the analogy is that its vague enough it can generally cover ALL decision making when developing software, because nothing is ever perfect.

To be obtuse for a moment, lets say there are 3 types of decisions in software: crappy decisions, good-enough decisions, and great decisions. When you live in the "real world" and not some imaginary theoretical world, great decisions are hard to come by. Just think about how difficult it is to pick a stock that will make you a deca-millionaire in 10 years... or maybe picking the perfect spouse? Truly great decisions are freaking tough and rely on a lot of luck. Theres a lot of stuff you just can't plan ahead for because thats life.

Aside from the abstract concept of decision making, what else gets lumped into the "tech debt" analogy? Observationally, there's a lot of Shitty Engineering™ out there that people want to call tech debt. They could have done a decent job with whatever they were working on, but they decided not to. Ward Cunningham explicitly says this is not what he was talking about with the metaphor. Tons of these situations feature a negligible time cost to do the job well versus poorly, but "they" choose the worse option (and used the cliche "tech debt" as their shield).

Why? Better to talk to your therapist about it. When people live in the real world - not everyone takes pride in their work and not everyone is capable of doing good work.

Along with Shitty Engineering™, I feel that Undisciplined Engineering™ is right up there... It seems like most companies are finally drinking the cool-aid on using an iterative approach over a large planning phase (you know, because it's generally better). However there is one caveat with an iterative approach... you have to be disciplined and actually iterate. Meaning, if you build something quickly to test a hypothesis, and the hypothesis turns out to be right (and valuable), you need to iterate and improve the systems. If you, as a software professional, left a @TODO... you need to actually go back and do the todo.

As an aside, another thing I've noticed- I hear the word refactoring throw around a lot and the word factoring is basically never used. If you didn't architect, design, and factor your system in the first place... its not really a production system, its just a prototype and a long research phase.

Back to my main point though, I feel like complaints about tech debt are typically coming from the people who built the system. Kinda weird when you think about it. It is their work but they are also the people most displeased with the state of it. What gives?

Well, the for some people their concept of tech debt is roughly: "At this time we can't properly build a program because we need to meet a business deadline" (again, not the original metaphor) Guess what... it's totally reasonable in some instances to make exceptions. To beat the dead horse, that's just the real world. Sometimes a sorority girl pukes in the bathroom of the bar that you are working at, and you are the lucky person that gets to clean it up. Some times a competitor releases an important feature and you need to catch up fast. This is life.

The important point in light of this concept... is "tech debt" something that happens occasionally? or is this the default way your team goes about building products? Now, if it is the general state of affairs, what have you personally done to fix this process failure? More often then not I see developers shrugging off personal responsibility for their company process here. In my book that's not cool. Highly compensated employees (many/most software people are highly compensated employees) should take some ownership of the process.

Continuing on with other things I see somewhat frequently (shout out to @DrThunder for reminding me)... Often enough people just don't understand why something was built or how it works. This is especially common with required complexity. Many times people will complain about something being complex or built incorrectly, and then they come to find out that the complexity was necessary, and its not tech debt at all... just a complex feature that NEEDED to be built a certain way.

There are also tons of things we build, that realistically just aren't valuable enough to warrant a refactor or even a strong design. We all know this will occasionally bite you in the ass... sometimes someone decides a crappy feature should be a flagship feature, but its not a daily occurrence. We all intuitively know this. Not every script you write in your dev scratchpad will turn into a multi-million dollar business or feature. And not every endpoint is worth getting the latency down. So why then sit around complaining about this kind of tech debt when you know the system isn't that valuable?

Another thing, which is tangential but important - poor interim decisions. There seems to be the idea out there that "tech debt" is black and white. Either a system is in great shape or its in terrible shape. Either it needs work or doesn't need work.

This belief system in particular bothers me. No system is perfect. Most systems aren't irredeemable. So lets say that you don't get the full time necessary to clean a system up. Is all hope lost? Hell no. What's wrong with trying to get as close as possible to the right solution? What's wrong with setting stuff up so the next time you're in there you can do more of gods work getting the system to where it needs to be? If the tech debt is that bad, progressive improvements should be no problem. Solid improvements should happen every time you work on the system. Any valuable system should give you numerous opportunities for improvement. So how come there aren't more incremental improvements?

The last thing I will say before I close out. Unless I have just inherited a legacy system its rare to catch me complaining about tech debt in a system. Why? Well for starters, I'm generally a happy person. That helps. The next important thing though is if I own a system and its in bad shape I'll work some extra hours to get it in to respectable shape. Why? Because I don't like being miserable at work everyday. I also don't like giving away my time, but thats the real world. More often than not you can do some major fixes pretty quick if you don't let the codebase shift too much while you are working on it. If you want a system to be in good shape you have to take ownership of the system.

</rant>

What makes you not give up on life?

2024-08-13T00:00:00Z

The question was asked "What makes you not give up on life". This is something I feel strongly about so here is my answer:

Humans are a bunch of talking communal apes hurling through the galaxy on an organic space ship that as far as we know there is nothing else like it in the known universe.

Any time before 100 years ago by the age of 25 you and/or half your friends would have died or been maimed for the rest of your life by a war, a disease, a natural disaster, or some other crazy shit that you have no control over... But since you are reading this, you likely aren't going to be eaten by a sabertoothed tiger, incapacitated by a brain eating microbe, or killed by some crazy dictator who woke up on the wrong side of the bed. That in itself is amazing.

The fact that I am able to communicate all of this to you because some dude got the crazy idea to make sand think, and then another dude thought that his thinking sand should be able to talk to your thinking sand is beyond AMAZING.

You live in a time during where you are endowed with the freedom (in 165 countries at least) that you can do basically whatever you want when you want, with only the slight inconvenience of having to pay for it, which again due to the time in history, is more of an inconvenience than a deterrent.

If you want to paint a painting, go paint. If you want to talk to the pretty girl/guy at the coffee shop go talk to them! If you want to cliff jump in Norway you can! If you want to go to burning man, do a bunch of drugs, get naked and ride around on a bike and get a sunburn... you can do that too! There is an infinite number of amazing, beautiful, crazy things to tickle your fancy in this world. You just need to walk out the door and go do it!!!

So what makes me not want to give up on life? I have experienced the tiniest little bit of it, and its AWESOME. The people, the places, the thoughts, the art... literally the only fucking problem (in the western world) are the people, companies, schools, governments, etc that are trying to make us unhappy so we buy more shit. That's not what it is all about... so ignore them. Get off their rails. Their version of what this is about sucks.

I cannot recommend enough that you should get out there and try it.

5 Marbles

2024-05-26T00:00:00Z

Did a corporate dinner with the team in Monterrey last year and it was a pretty standard event till about 3/4 through. Two of our executives were having a conversation and inadvertently drew the attention of the rest of of the group. Our CTO decided to open up to everyone what they were discussing and it turned out to be a nice little nugget of wisdom so I thought I would share it here.

The Analogy

When you take a role at a company you can think of it as starting with "5 marbles."

Every time you take some action such as: speaking out against your boss or taking on a high profile project that doesn't go flawlessly (but not a complete failure) you lose 1 marble.

Every time you get promoted you reset back to 5 marbles.

Now lots of people may think that the way to "win" is to keep your all of your marbles safe and never lose any. Protect them. Well, that is also a bad thing. Roughly, it means that you aren't taking any risks, which means you shouldn't be promoted, and maybe shouldn't be trusted with important, strategic activities.

Some Thoughts

I really like this analogy. It's simple, but also leaves some room for various interpretation.

We all have our own journeys but there's some parameters you should be mindful of when you choose your path. It should also serve as a reminder that failure is not fatal but inaction may leave you in a no-man's land career wise. You also can't be so miserable or aggressive to work with that you piss everyone off around you.

Say something that will surprise people and be useful

2024-03-24T00:00:00Z

I've been writing this blog since ~2009, and the reason I write has both changed and stayed the same over that period.

As I understand it, there are just certain things in my life that I can't stop doing. I've been writing in some fashion since I was 12. Writing seems to be an experience that is growing richer and I appear to be improving. There are other things in my life though which follow the same pattern- despite having every reason in the world to stop... I just can't stop doing.

I'll pause and highlight athletics for the sake of brevity. For most of my life, I have been sporting some sort of injury that is in the process of healing. Right now my nose is still healing from a stray elbow in a basketball game. This has been a constant in my life. I've broken my nose, a rib, ruptured a tendon in my ankle, greyed out a tooth, and a bunch of other inuries... but for whatever reason... I can't stop playing sports. Entrepreneurship, drinking, music, et cetera are all the same deal- I would have a lot less suffering if I would just retire, but for whatever reason my soul won't let me do it.

Setting that reason aside, why write?

These days I just want to say something that will surprise people and be useful.

At a high level, these two things are debatably the foundation of Western culture... but the thing I realized is that it doesn't need to be grandiose. Nor do you need to surprise everyone or be overly useful. Just a little bit still makes the world a better place.

As an example, a thing I recently learned: Porches are American. Is it surprising? A little bit but not overly surprising. When I first heard this concept I was reading a book about architecture, and it made me pause. I could reason that this was most likely true, but it's sort of weird that it never was emphasized. Why would that be? Americans take a lot of pride in American culture (Rock and Roll, Blues, BBQ, Football, etc) why are porches off that list?

This has led me to believe that the fact that porches are American is probably useful too... Many of my interactions with my neighbors and community have come from being on a porch or a deck. If you think about how Americans use porches, the country would probably be improved if there were more porches, and if we highlighted and shared that they are prime American culture.

This is why I write. Even being just a little surprising, and/or a little useful is something worth sharing. I think people should do more of it.

Better Corporate Communication

2023-12-31T00:00:00Z

I originally wrote this stuff up for my wife's company which was struggling with it but then ended up giving a talk about it. And since I basically post all of my important talks as articles here it is for your reading pleasure.

TLDR; Communication can be made more or less effective by working with or against Human biological limitations. To put it another way, the way you organize and provide your information can increase your throughput, retention, and utility of the information you are providing.

Human Biology

People can read and comprehend up to 400 WPM but average around 200 WPM
People can listen and comprehend up to 150 WPM
People can type ~45 WPM on average, with an upper limit towards 80 WPM for stronger typists.
People will average roughly 100 - 150 WPM when presenting
Human beings are capable of memorizing a shuffled deck of cards in ~19 seconds, but normal people can remember roughly 7 items for 20- 30 seconds (link).

Understand Timecosts

Let's assume a hypothetical cost of $100/ hr per person after benefits etc (using round numbers for ease). This is roughly what costs would look like for 1 person communicating, and different size groups of being communicated to.

People	1hr Meeting	30min Meeting	Long Email	Short Email
8	$800	$400	$275	~$110
4	$400	$200	$175	~$75
2	$200	$100	$125	~$58

Example: A long email: It takes 60 minutes to write and 15 min read. A short email: It takes roughly 15-30min to write and 5min read

Let's compare some real-world scenarios. We're working on defining design/requirement tasks for an upcoming "widget".

An expensive way to do this might look like this:

60min "brainstorming" with 8 people ($800-$1000).
1 person writing down Tasks for 30min (~$50),
A 30 min decision meeting with the group to close out ($400 - $500)

Total Cost: $1250 - $1500

A cheaper way might look like this:

One person sits down alone and writes out 90% of the tasks in an email to 8 people ($275),
Everyone reads the email ($100- $150)
3 people send feedback and additions ($225)

Total Cost: $600 - $650

Naively, the above examples make it seem like all communication should be written and/or meetings are expensive. This is not true. This example is just designed to show how real factors such as human biology can impact the throughput and efficiency of communication.

Tricks and Tips

Choose the right medium for your message

Email Messages (or confluence type systems):
- Anything you might need to reference later and/or search for
- Communication that might be shared
- Long communication where people might need time to process (reports)
Phone Calls
- Communication that might require more clarity or further explanation
- Multiple decisions reliant on each other (decisions in a chain)
- Communication that is emotional
Async Communication => Text Message, Slack/Teams
- Quick questions where you don't need a record
- Sharing links or other resources
- Text Message => for Urgency.
Hand Written
- Great at expressing gratitude or respect

Here's an obtuse way to think about it:

Medium	Cost	Quick Feedback	Shareable	Searchable	Asynchronous
Meeting	$$$$	✓
Email	$$		✓	✓	✓
Phone	$$	✓
SMS/ Slack	$	✓		✓	✓
Handwritten	$$$$		✓		✓
Carrier Pidgeon	$$$$$				✓

How to handle meetings

Per Andy Grove: There are 2 types of meetings: Process-oriented meetings and Mission-oriented Meetings. Generally, they boil down to Information sharing or decision-making.

Process-oriented meetings: are to identify latent problems, course-correct issues, create alignment, make type 2 decisions, and share information (think: standup, one-on-ones, etc)
Mission-oriented meetings: are to make (type-1) decisions (should be rare) [strategic/ irreversible]

There are a lot of other authors or business leaders to talk about this as well.

Meeting Tips and Tricks

Written Communication > Meetings
Meetings are the best mediums for:
- A series of dependent quick decisions that impact a lot of people.
- Information share, especially where deeper questions may arise
- Creating alignment on key decisions
Meetings are bad for:
- Adhoc Brainstorming (which is different from workshopping)
- Type 2 decisions - decisions that are easily reversed.
Always invite the fewest possible number of people you can get away with- ESPECIALLY managers.
- If you have to ask if a manager should be there... they probably don't need to be. Send them the notes.
Try to book meetings for 20min or 40min. NOT 30min or 60min.
Power Point/ Slide Decks are used to present visual aids*.
- I wrote a special section about this below...
Meeting Etiquette:
- Show up prepared.
  - (Protip: If you are leading and you don't need to prepare... it probably shouldn't be a meeting)
- Send out an agenda ahead of time. Include goals and reference materials
- Send out action items

IMPORTANT! Slide Decks

Misusing the slide deck format is HANDS DOWN the biggest mistake people make in corporate communication, and it's not even close. Because it's so bad it's worth going into a little detail about.

Let's run through slide deck norms:

An information/decision meeting is called so the person calling the meeting feels obligated to make a slide deck to make the meeting "professional", organized, or to have an artifact for later.
The person quickly throws up their jumble of text notes onto a slide deck in itty-bitty size 10 font just before the meeting. Because it is a giant rat's nest of text they spread it over 10-15 slides.
When they show up the speaker reads straight from their deck because they didn't rehearse.
Because people read faster than they can hear they either finish reading before the speaker finishes talking OR they struggle to read the small text and ignore the speaker
They format the deck as a "narrative" which positions a climax (decision) later... In this format, executives and managers will constantly interrupt to point out the thing that is on the next slide.
With all of these distractions, the decision gets lost and the meeting goes long. Another meeting with the same people will often be called or the decision/information will become muddled.

Notes on how to use slide decks properly

The slide deck medium is a "speech with visual aides."
Don't feel you need to use a deck. Many meetings could benefit by using a one-pager instead.
You should need to rehearse if it is a "speech with visual aides". Make sure you rehearse.
If your slide deck is primarily text don't use a deck. Formatting wastes time and People struggle to Read and Listen at the same time
Narratives (story with climax) SHOULD NOT be presented as a slide deck.*
Reports (numerical or empirical information) SHOULD NOT be presented as a slide deck.
Visual aids (e.g. graphs, pictures) are a superpower. They can convey more information in a smaller time and less space. Use these media extensively.
After every part of your speech/ each slide ask yourself: "So what?" or "Why is this important"... if you are unable to answer that question fix the section/slide.
Executives love to interrupt slide decks. It should be a goal of yours to avoid interruptions.
- They will not interrupt if all of the most important stuff is at the front of the meeting stated concisely.
- They will not interrupt if "So what" or "why" is answered.
- They will cut the meeting short if there is enough information to make a decision (GREAT)
- They will cut a meeting short if more information gathering is required (GOOD)

* I talk about Form/ Formatting in the next section

Form/Formatting your Written Communication

The form/ format you present information can increase efficiency, retention, and the utility of the communication. The following picture is a minimalist way of viewing different formats:

[insert picture here]

Here are some notes about different formats for your written communication. Keep in mind that a corporate setting (internal) is very different than a corporate setting (external), or things like art. A well-built narrative format is great for Fiction, but TERRIBLE for a corporate email.

AVOID Narrative Format (generally)
- Background, Build Conflict, Climax, and Resolution
- (Note: There are many exceptions such as mission-related communication, product releases, etc)
Journalism Format/ BLUT
- Format: Top to bottom, Most important info to least important info
- Great for emails, reports, some presentations
- The format was designed so that editors can compose a publication quickly. That is, they know that they can chop off bottom up based on how long they want a piece to be.
Academic Format / Experiments
- Format: Abstract or Summary of Results (most important info) then sections with background research, ideation, hypothesis, methods, and citations
- Great for reports, presentations, etc
Outline Format/ Information systems
- Format: Information in a hierarchy, with the most important at the top and top level, moving down toward elements of lesser importance.
- "The Classic model"
  - Wisdom (top level),
  - Information (second level),
  - Data (bottom level)

How to improve your Content

So What??? Why should I care Theory
- Make sure your communication answers the question "So What?" or "Why should someone care?"
Use Examples.
- Human beings are hardwired for examples. Show > Tell
Provide Context
- If we're working as a team effectively we're usually working on very different things. That's a good thing... the only caveat is that you will probably need to provide context on the thing you are talking about when we get together.
Simplify- Less is more
- People can really only remember 3-5 things from a 30-60 meeting. Don't try to do more than that in a meeting.

Writing Tips

Use Active Writing if longer than 1-2 Sentences

EXAMPLE

Break things into SECTIONS
Use bold, Underlining, CAPS, and italics to emphasize key points
Change Font Sizes to change flow
Use Bullets but no more than 3-5 bullets
Delete anything in parenthesis, unless it's a useful reference

Words

DON'T USE Acronyms unless your Grandmother would know it. Companies LOVE acronyms... but they slow down communication.
Replace Adjectives with Data
- "Nearly all users" => "93% of users"
- "We did significantly better" => "We increased our performance 25 points"
Only use $10 Words when there are no better options.

Know your Audience

I'm going to write another article about this at some other time but it's important to know who your audience is. One of the first ways to think about it is at an organizational level. Though there are other forms of corporate structure the most common in the United States, Japan, and the Western world is a hierarchal corporate structure. The Japanese (naturally) have a thing for this:

Vertical communication | Reporting ("Hokoku")
Horizontal communication | Informing ("Renraku")
Both directions | Consulting ("Sodan")

Cultural, ESL, and Subculture factors

Credit to Charlie Main for teaching me this. A weird cultural thing that the United States does is that we use a lot of sports analogies in business to communicate. Turns out that the rest of the world doesn't do this. Avoid sports analogies in business comms when you work in a multicultural/ multi-ethnic environment. When you are working with Americans... increase your use.
People who speak English as a second language are going to prefer written communication.
Certain personalities gravitate towards types of communication. Leverage this fact. Software Engineers READ and WRITE text all day long, therefore use written communication. Artists view graphics all day long, therefore use visual communication. Sales people and managers talk all day long... use verbal communication.

Lastly, Conclusions

Conclusions are one of the most important parts to communication. It will be the thing that people remember the most from your communication. So don't just end abruptly.

Thank you.

Old Books, Strategy, and Tactics

2023-08-20T00:00:00Z

Though it's fading recently, a major pursuit of the front half of my life was trying to become prematurely wise.

I did the "work": I studied great humans, read all of the classics (minus the Brothers Karamazov), read books acclaimed for their wisdom, searched out wise people to be around, et cetera, et cetera. But it didn't have the effect that I thought it would.

I don't think my time was misspent. I crush it with anecdotes at cocktail parties, I've made friends by discussing books with interesting people... I always have a great quote for the situation and usually a witty one.

It's useful stuff, but nothing that will make me wealthy, help me create beautiful art, help me live longer or more fully, or any of the things worth doing during our short stint in this world. Put another way: Studying wisdom didn't make me wise.

Old Programming Books

These programming books are one of the weirder aspects of my current profession (software engineering). Go to pretty much any library in the United States and there will be a small section of books on general IT topics, like using a computer, doing web design, and programming.

From what I've seen these books are always horrifically dated, frequently covering dead/dying languages, ancient frameworks, and software that doesn't even exist anymore. Bookstores are only slightly better- they have the new books but by the time that they're published things have already changed.

Every time I see the library section or the programming section in a bookstore... I'm always asking myself: "What gives? Why would someone dedicate so much time to crafting a book that will be obsolete so soon?" These books seem to be the opposite of the books I read all of my youth - so devoid of "wisdom" that they can't be read more than 5 years after they were written.

Years later I've come to realize that books are written for different reasons, for different audiences, and there are even some books that aren't meant to be read. BUT there is more wisdom in these obsolete books than I had realized when I thought books were supposed to be for reading. As an example, Authors Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Ryan Holiday (and others) seemed to have picked up on this. Their writing careers are primarily re-writing 3000+ year old "wisdom" for modern audiences.

Wisdom not found in books

Here's a thing you can try. Think of the most successful or talented person that you know. Now go ask them how to become either as successful/talented as them (or more if possible). Listen to their answer. Chances are they either won't be able to explain it in any detail, that is, they won't be able to provide the steps to reproduce their success.

Many of the successful people I know have difficulty explaining "how" they do it. 2 main reasons:

Learning how to accomplish great things is complex. Becoming a great athlete, artist, business person, etc may be as complex as building a skyscraper or nuclear reactor, but it doesn't feel that way to the rest of us.
Successful/talented people might not actually know how they do some of the things they do that are difficult.

Much wisdom can't be documented, but why?

Strategy and Tactics

It took me way longer than I'd like to admit to figure this out, but I spent the vast majority of my life conflating wisdom, strategy, and tactics. It's an easy mistake to make and it's difficult to interpret the nuances. But here goes...

Strategy will describe how to interact with the world at a high level. People tend to avoid describing where they failed, fell short, or nuances they discovered when they are talking about things at a high level. They skip the little things. They avoid the details of the process, the surprises, or things that only an expert could execute.

This makes sense - they are the narrator and they get to shape the way people experience their description. As an example: Saying that everyone is right-handed, is incorrect, but saying "pretty much everyone" is right-handed is accurate.

Most books by virtue of the media form are typically strategy. The book would become outdated if it focused on tactics.

Tactics are how to do a thing effectively.

Tactics change quickly because more effective tactics are discovered and counter-tactics are developed... But strategy is useless without tactics.

Wisdom is possessing a beyond-expert vocabulary of effective tactics that will work in a given discipline at that time.

You need to know WHEN to use a tactic.
You need to know when tactics are no longer effective.
You need to be able to create more effective tactics to continue to be successful.

Wisdom is expensive. It requires resources, experimentation, trial and error when you find a tactic you need to retain it and know when to apply it.

Putting a bow on it

What are the take-aways? I think there are a lot of different take-aways so "to each their own" for what you can take away from this.

For me, "strategy" might be over-rated since effective tactics are probably more valuable day-to-day. Would you rather be really good at 3 point shooting or know how to coach someone to be a good 3 point shooter? Would you rather be really good at making money or know how people make money? Not really a straight-forward answer, but I'd probably take "tactics."

Also, after coming up with this observation I'm less concerned about "wisdom" these days. Both acquiring it and/or the general concept. Don't take me the wrong way, it's definitely valuable... but I just want to focus on the underlying structure... in the words of Steve Martin: "be so good that they can't ignore you," or put another way, the journey is the destination.

Lastly, I can't help but think that some extra existentialism has crept into my life around this topic. Even the wisest of us will still end up 6 feet under, so we should enjoy the journey - that predominantly means tactics.

Some Haikus

2023-03-21T00:00:00Z

Adulting
A moment is all
look around and see beauty
no time anymore...

The Buddha
Walk through the forest
do not disturb a grass blade
don't seek what you want

Results and Context

2023-03-17T00:00:00Z

Making a resume? Here are the only 2 things you need to do on your resume to be a finalist for whatever job you are after:

Don't suck.
Provide context and results.

This article is about #2. (Maybe someday I'll do a follow up about #1)

Let's compare the following 2 hypothetical snippets that could be found on a resume:

Experienced manager and leader in the accounting and accounts receivables space. Expert in multiple accounting technologies such as Microsoft Dynamics, Turbotax, and Zen. Worked directly with senior management to make accounting processes more efficient. Worked with junior team members to improve their skill level and communication skills.

Sounds totally fine right?

Um no. This person lives a sad, miserable corporate life, with no accomplishments, accountability, or responsibility. They couldn't find success if it was covering their genitals while they were walking naked around a whore house holding hundred dollar bills. The fact that they don't have one, single quantifiable accomplishment that they can talk about should be a giant red flag to anyone reading their resume.

Let's compare the above snippet with a similar snippet that focuses on results and context:

Experienced manager responsible for directing the day to day activities of a 14-person accounting team. Over the course of 2 years the team was responsible for accelerating our accounts receivables from an average of 160 days to payment down to 45 days. This resulted in an increase of free cash flow by $2M. This change coincided with a 35% increase in Net Promoter Score for our finance team.

Night and day right? They could literally be the same person. I don't know anything about accounting but I know that snippet #2 is someone that gets stuff done. Whether or not the results and context are necessarily impressive, that's up to the reader (see point #1). Regardless, there is a difference between the type of person who cares about results and context and someone who does not.

In short, want to improve your resume? PUT MORE NUMBERS ON YOUR RESUME!!!!

(...in case bold with 4 exclamation signs didn't get your attention... here's the same thing in a bigger font)

Resume Rule #1: PUT MORE NUMBERS ON YOUR RESUME

Resume Rule #2: Seriously. PUT MORE NUMBERS ON YOUR RESUME

Wait what's that? You are having trouble getting numbers on your resume?

You might want to ask yourself why that is....

Is it because you're just doing what you're told instead of making sure that the work you are doing is having an impact? Probably should go back to that job... do better (in a quantifiable manner), THEN start looking for another job.

Is it because your job makes it excruciating painful to provide great results? Get out now.

Does your office have a library?

2023-02-15T00:00:00Z

Let's get weird... here are some questions. These questions aren't special questions or specifically meant as only this set of questions... they are just questions that capture the spirit of "pause and think on some stuff that you don't". Fill in your own questions if you have better ones.

Does your office/company have a library? Why or why not?
Would it be okay to sit and read a book at your job?
When was the last time your senior manager said: "I don't know the answer, but I'll research and get back to you"
When faced with a new problem when was the last time one of your coworkers said "why don't we find someone who has actually done this and ask them about it?"
How often do people at your company reach out to their friends for something?
How often do the grey hairs at your company reach out to the new recruits and ask them about stuff?
How often do the new recruits reach out to the executives and ask them questions?
Does your company care about diversity? If so are they hiring conservatives, the religious, or people with unrelated degrees? Hell are they hiring people without degrees or from places with no major metro around?
Do your hiring managers hire people like themselves or people that are very different from themselves?
If someone is really really good would you hire their wife/husband? How about their friends?
If someone is really really good why are or aren't they working with their friends?
How long would it take you to 180 and go into the your opposite profession? What is your opposite profession? Do you have any friends in that profession?
What would you take a pay cut for? What would you work on for free that makes money for someone else?
How often do you question narratives? How about personal narratives? How many narratives do you run into now that are complete bullshit?
Do you have any enemies? Why doesn't someone out there dislike your strongest beliefs?
What do you value about your enemies?
How often do you turn around and ask your self what aren't you asking yourself?
What are the people you envy doing that you won't do?
What are the people you envy doing that you aren't doing?
Have you ever asked yourself any of these questions?

The 5% Rule

2022-12-30T00:00:00Z

I've mentioned this before (e.g. Lowest Common Denominator) but between the years of 2009 and 2013, I talked to something like 13,000 to 15,000 people while I was doing retail and SMB sales for Verizon. I learned a lot from that period, but one of the things I learned that I did not expect was what I now call my "5% rule."

No matter how kind, warm, thoughtful, amazing, cheerful, consistent, and perfect I treated people roughly 5% of them would just be terrible (yes, I have the numbers to back this). I'm not talking about people who were having a bad day or people who were trying to work the system. There was a legit 3% to 5% of people that just wanted to be mean, nasty, selfish brutes. People that were unpleasant to be around. People who for one reason or another "wanted the world to burn" ( in the words of Christopher Nolan).

I know what you're thinking: "sure buddy... you were doing sales and you're blaming the customer for being nasty...never heard that before." The thing is... this number has held up in other parts of my life too (dating, restaurant customers, etc). And if you ask anyone who has done big numbers working with people they'll say the same thing (my doctor friends specifically would say I'm being generous).

I went on many many fewer dates than sales calls but pretty much the number was something around 3%-5% where the women were just terrible - like only going out to get a free meal and drinks, or bigots, or were completely self-absorbed, or just generally nasty people.

My experience serving/bartending in restaurants was the same... As an example: one time a lady threw a huge fit about a 2-3 inch smooth brown hair being in her meal when her server was a blond girl and the entire kitchen staff were 35+ year-old Mexicans/ African Americans with completely shaved heads. Now I'm not saying this woman brought the hair into the restaurant and planted it in her meal... but I know for a fact it couldn't have been from any of our staff in the restaurant, so you can make your own decision.

Of course, the optimistic take here is: Wow! 95% of people are nice, kind, wonderful human beings...

Sorry. No. That's not the take here. 3% to 5% of people for whatever reason just plain suck.

The optimistic take is that if 3%-5% of people just suck, you really have permission to free your mind of those people and just focus on taking care of the people who don't suck. Just expect it and move about your day.

Is this customer terrible because they need help, and empathy, and are having a bad day? Probably. The 95% probability says YES. It says that you should bring your best self to those people and try hard to make their lives a little better.

However, if for some reason a person comes into your store, pulls down their pants pisses on your merchandise, and claims that they are doing this because Motley Crue used to do it before shows at the Whiskey a Go Go... that's the 5% rule and you should just call the cops and let that moment go - it has NOTHING to do with you. You didn't create, enable, or plan for them... nor could you. They are just part of the 5% of people in this world that suck. Eventually, they'll get some come-up-ens but often enough, you just need to let the moment pass.

On Giving Better Advice

2022-12-23T00:00:00Z

Note: This article is a little less coherent than a lot of my other pieces, and still really a draft. I decided to publish knowing I plan on making a lot of changes in the future. I just felt like getting it out and hopefully it will be useful to people.

There's a joke I say sometimes: "I know my advice is good because no one ever takes it." Although it's a joke I realized there's a lot of truth to that statement. When I reflected on why that might be what occurred to me is less so about anything to do with it being my advice and just advice in general. So why are people so bad at giving and receiving advice?

Ignoring delivery/ content... maybe the person might not be asking for advice? they might be looking for empathy or sympathy. They want you to feel/experience/relate to the emotions that they are currently feeling. They want a compatriot in the experience. They want some help getting through the thing... which I understand. This life is hard and homo sapiens weren't built for the stress and mental agility we need to make it through modern life.

Sometimes advice is geared towards having a person make a change in their identity/behavior/personality they might not "take the advice" not because they don't want to take the advice but because a change in those aspects of their life may require many small nuanced changes that won't be directly attending to your advice, even if it is in the spirit of your advice. In my experience, people can change but it's slow-moving. Often it's too slow for normal people to observe because they aren't paying attention to small, long-term changes.

Another situation that frequently occurs: is when a person is trying to decide between a short list of options- it's common for the advice-giver to just tell the "receiver" things that they know already know, restating the problem, and not provide any decisions or tactics for moving forward. Real advice requires a decision or tangible guidance on making a decision in the face of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. There's an assumption that the receiver will figure it out on their own if you just have them look at it differently- but that's not reasonable.

What's interesting about this to me about the "limited options" problems is how often the correct answer is just picking the "harder" option. It's as if people are asking advice to get out of having to do the "hard" thing - hoping someone will permit them to take the easy route.

Similarly, if your advice isn't counter-intuitive it might not be advice. "Counter-intuitive" in this sense is not meant as a colloquialism. If the person has thought of the thing that you are providing as advice before with a similar context... it's not advice. Your statement needs to be somewhat novel to the person to provide value. But of course, there's a paradox here - If a piece of advice truly is counter-intuitive, novel, etc it's probable that they won't be open to it.

Another concept about giving good advice is the difference between "strategic" and "tactical". Often people need is tactical advice but they are too novice or lack the personality traits to utilize it... so strategic advice is offered but strategic advice ends up being too contrived to create any tangible benefits. This is the concept of "theory vs practice."

All Companies are Fucked Up

2022-11-13T00:00:00Z

Belts in Karate are ordered from white to black. This is of course a new invention. Originally, new colored belts were not given upon arbitrary levels of attainment, a white belt was given at the beginning of one's training and you just never washed it. Over the years the belt would gradually turn from white to yellow, to orange, to red. And if you trained hard enough eventually you'd go black.

All companies are fucked up. There I said it, you're welcome.

One restaurant I worked for had a tremendously talented chef who was a straight-up alcoholic. Not the kind of alcoholic where the guy just gets plastered every weekend and is constantly nursing a hangover... the kind where he needed 2 shots and a beer before the dinner rush or he would cut off his fingers because of the shakes.

I'm sure you're asking "how did he manage to avoid getting fired if he was plastered every shift?" Turns out the restaurant was a great place for him- we were basically allowed to drink on the job, for free, as much as we wanted. Hell, it was debatably our "competitive advantage" because everyone in the restaurant liked to drink... and we had this tremendously talented staff that treated the place like a party where you got paid... the owner made a lot more money for it too.

Fucked up right? ... well, all companies are fucked up. I worked an office gig one time where my boss just stopped telling us what to do. We were just supposed to "know." For some people, this probably sounds amazing right? No corporate politics. No bullshit meetings. Just do whatever you feel like! It was great for half a heartbeat but then it turned into "Lord of the Flies" ... the inmates running the asylum sort of thing. Of course, some of the people at work LOVED it. They showed up every day just ecstatic that they were getting paid to do nothing.

Fucked up right? ... well, all companies are fucked up! But this was surely less fucked up than the restaurant above? Nope, not for me. I'm a high performer. I like competing and winning. Doing "nothing" feels like getting my fingernails ripped off one by one. It's masturbating with sandpaper or getting impaled by a pineapple.

But surely if it's YOUR company, and you are calling the shots it won't be fucked up right?

lol. All companies are fucked up... the trick is finding a company that's fucked up in a way that works for you. It's kind of like finding a spouse or where to live - don't live in California if earthquakes freak you out and if you're a misanthrope Manhattan is probably a bad place to live.

If you're trying to figure out "how do I find the company that's fucked up in the way that works for me?" here's my advice: Do whatever you are into as fast and with as much focus as you can. Learn as much as you can about the stuff that you care about, and put yourself around people that are doing the same thing... or put another way: "Turn your belt black."

Eventually, you'll end up with people who are fucked up in the same ways that you are fucked up... and by the transitive property, you'll find yourself at a company that's fucked up in its own special way just the way that you like.

Silly Dog Tricks, Billionaires, and Making New Friends

2022-11-03T00:00:00Z

Way back when I was attending the University of Kansas, my roommate's Uncle Kenny had one drink too many at a hunting auction and came home with an adorable Labrador retriever puppy. I wrote his stories here if you're interested. A week after the fact Uncle Kenny realized that a puppy probably wasn't the best idea at that point in his life. One thing led to another and the next thing you know I had a Labrador retriever puppy.

Everyone thought a college student having a puppy is a bad idea. You're always on the move; You study a lot; There's lots of partying... not a great environment for a dog right? Nah, it was a fabulous environment for a dog. That dog got more love than a keg of shitty beer at a frat party BECAUSE there were so many people around with no serious responsibilities. I made a lot of friends because of that dog. Hell, people would come by randomly just to take him out for a walk. Not to mention all the frisbee golf, hikes, tailgaters, etc. The biggest thing though was that I had basically unlimited time to train the little guy, so he ended up as a pretty well-trained dog.

As an example one day he got into the trash and spread it everywhere in the house. This pissed me off, so I taught him how to pick up trash... and he helped me pick up every last piece (it also turned out to be a handy trick for picking up Christmas wrapping paper).

Another time, in the middle of winter, I had to go turn off the lights in our drafty old victorian in my boxers. Not pleasant. So I spent the next day teaching my dog how to turn off the lights.

Everyone's favorite trick of course was the dream of most college students. I taught my puppy how to get me a beer from the fridge using a towel tied to the fridge door (AND shut the door behind him).

All said and done he ended up being a well-trained little guy with a nice set of parlor tricks, and I had a few more friends because of it.

*Fast-forward a few years...*

I go to visit my grandparents and I show my grandfather a video of my silly dog tricks, and he thinks it's the greatest thing since America Online.

My grandparents live in Appalachia, which has a small professional community (business owners, doctors, lawyers, etc). Because it's so small everyone knows everyone and they all hang out, and it's not uncommon for say a family doctor and a CEO of a manufacturing company to be friends, whereas in other places in the country they would be in completely different tribes.

By virtue of geographic isolation, my grandfather happens to be golfing buddies with a billionaire who owns a beverage company. He insists that I run down the next day and show his buddy my videos, thinking that they might make a commercial out of it or something. So I did.

The meeting itself wasn't particularly eventful. Mr. Billionaire-Golfing-Buddy was a nice guy and got a chuckle out of my dog bringing me a beer from the fridge. We talked for a little bit, then I headed off to do whatever it is I was doing at that time. It was a generally pleasant conversation, and great to meet the guy.

Making New Friends

Now if this was a Buzzfeed article the headline of this story would probably read something like: "Man trains dog to generate meetings with billionaires" or some other gibberish... but that's obviously not what it's about. I wanted to tell this particular story because I think it says a lot about creating new friends and new interactions.

My silly dog tricks were interesting to people and they gave us something to share, talk about, etc. Doing fun, unusual activities helps build friendships. Being the kind of person who's willing to do some weird stuff gets people out of the humdrum of day-to-day life - people want to be around people like that... people also want to introduce you to other people. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or a broke college student.

As a sub-context, my grandparents made a diverse group of friends in Appalachia because there aren't a lot of people that are extremely similar to them, and they are fairly isolated from the major Metros. That isolation brings people together who might not come together in other places... but it also shows that by being willing to live where they live ... they perhaps share similar values.

Lastly, I can't recommend enough getting a Labrador puppy, just make sure you train it well.

Some Funny Interviews I Have Done

2022-06-27T00:00:00Z

I never interview anymore, but the handful of times I have miraculously produced some funny stories. So here you go:

Career transition

I transitioned to development/engineering from a successful telecom sales career. The process was a little rocky, but after I had my feet under me (but before I knew what I was doing) I got offered an interview for a frontend gig at a large auto manufacturer (technically the Digital Marketing agency of record for the auto manufacturer). The salary listed was solid and I'm basically a mercenary, so I said "why not?" and did the interview.

The CEO of this company, who was one of those "work 18 hours a day for your entire life" executive types insists on doing all of the first interviews (totally not weird at all). For me this was a godsend because executives love me, and they ultimately make the decisions, so I'm looking at it like any following interviews would just be a formality cause Mr. CEO would override them anyway.

I go in and do a great job right off the back of being personable and charming, with a small sprinkle of tech talk here and there. Turns out Mr. CEO was an Engineer for most of his career and about ~20min into the interview he interrupts me and says:

"Sorry, but I have to ask... are you actually a developer? You seem much more like a PM or Manager. I have a hard time believing that you are a coder"

I forget the exact rest of the interview because I was trying to sell my tech skills hard after that (so take this at a minimum as hyperbole) ... but it ended up with me being like: "So let me get this straight... I'm too personable to work as a developer for your company?" and him being like: "Yes. I mean, no. You are personable and our developers really aren't personable."

¯_(ツ)_/¯

The answers in another tab

So an NYC buddy of mine works at Transfix (a company I have nothing but the highest respect for) and he said they were aggressively looking for developers and told me I should come interview. I was like: "Why Not? Seems like a cool company..."

I passed the phone screen no problem. The behavioral interview turned out to be a funny side-story because they had a fire alarm (fire drill) go off mid-interview. The guy interviewing me, who was awesome, didn't know what to do because he was leaning towards passing me but still felt like he should be more rigorous. So we set up another time to chat.

After I get through those 2.5 interviews, they send me over to the CTO to do a tech screen/ code challenge. At this point, I'm like... yeah I gotta study, cause these guys are good (I was SUPER junior at that point). I study for like a week trying to tighten everything up... straight up to the minute before the tech screen, still feeling unprepared.

The interview starts and the CTO starts telling me about himself. Turns out he knows one of my other friends who was an executive with him at a different company (which was super cool), which causes me to get some really good vibes from the guy (foreshadowing). Enough chit-chat of course so we kick into the code.

First question: reverse an array. No problem. Built-in method. Next question.

Second question: reverse an array ... in a different way. When he asks that question, I trip out... I have this exact interview up in a different browser tab that I forgot to close out, staring at me from my other screen. I pull myself together quickly, answer the question, and wait for the next one.

Third question: reverse an array ... in a different way than the previous two ways. He asks this, and my moral compass gets the better of me. I like the guy, we're friends with the same people... so I gotta let him know that I accidentally have his interview up on my other screen, and I did. Turns out that this was a big mistake- He ends up giving me his other standard interview, a senior-level interview, which I fail miserably.

I still have a lot of love for that company though, sharp people work over there.

A little too much help

Not too far after the aforementioned interview, I started doing the meetup scene and making friends with the developers and recruiters in Orange County, CA. One of the recruiters I met at a meetup was a nice guy and would send me new/ cool gigs even though I was fully employed.

One time he sent one over and I was like: "that seems cool. why not?" (you're probably noticing a trend already with my "Why Not?"s). Anyway, I crushed the phone screen, so they pushed me forward to do the technical screen. Before I went in for the technical though, my recruiter buddy calls me- turns out that he learned what the the whiteboard challenge would be from a previous candidate and sent it over to me.

This is awesome of course, but I know that at my level of experience (still green) they'd be surprised if I just came in and started crushing it (in hindsight, they probably never even read my resume, but I didn't realize companies will blow >$150K on a dev without anything more than a tech screen). So I conceived a plan of making a few intentional mistakes along the way to make it seem like I have never seen this before but could still figure it out.

If you haven't guessed it by now my plan to look a little bad ... but not "too bad" at the code challenge blew up in my face. My intentional mistakes looked super amateur. This caused me to course-correct, but my subsequent attempts to make it seem like I knew what I was doing all along made me look even worse!

I couldn't help but laugh when I got rejected for that one. I should have just done the interview.

Getting ambushed

I did a short stint managing the company I was working at in 2020, which we eventually decided to close (another story for a different day). The whole experience was largely a positive one but took a lot out of me so I was looking forward to a break before trying to find a new gig.

Turns out that one of my buddies needed additional headcount on his team to maintain their budget so he'd said he could fast-track me if I could interview quickly. While I was definitely not ready to get back to work, it was a great opportunity, so I had to go for it.

Now important asterisk to add to this situation- the interview was for an engineering role but it had been almost a year (~9 months) since I had coded anything major. I had done plenty of: financial modeling, strategy, management, recruiting, sales, reporting, marketing, and writing... but effectively zero coding. My buddy assured me I would be fine and that the interview would go smoothly... Well turns out that he lied. They set me up to interview with an architect who we will call "Edward" (just making up a fake name). Edward was reserved so I'll call him "Shy Eddie" or "Shy Ed" from here on out.

Shy Ed, in my opinion, wins the award for worst interviewer I've ever met in my life (25 years of working, hundreds of interviews). This is not only my opinion, but the general sentiment of anyone who has interviewed with him whom I've talked to (not a large group, but still). It's also totally possible that he might actually be racist/xenophobic... but that's hearsay, since there's no way to substantiate a statement like that, you know, besides his hiring history.

Anyway here's what happened: Ole Eddie started by using a code challenge that Facebook uses, called the "Move Zeros" problem (you can see it here if you are interested). I was vaguely familiar, but couldn't remember the "right" way to solve it. I leveled with him that it was probably going to take me a longer than I would normally since I had been out of the game, but if he would bear with me, I'd figure it out - which I did after ~5 min or so (a slightly uncomfortable duration for this type of thing).

(Important note for technical audiences: algorithmic performance/ space & time complexity is now a daily part of my work, and I'm well aware of how easy the code challenge was. My prior work was a lot of frontend, scraping, duct-taping ML framework stuff, and simple framework-based backend stuff... so "performance," in the engineering sense, really wasn't a day-to-day activity for me.)

The way that I solved it wasn't a great solution. It wasn't even a good solution. There are a bunch of ways to solve this problem and I was just hoping for working code - which I was eventually able to write. However, the working solution I provided he very curtly rejected... which I was a little perturbed by. I knew I was doing a bad job at the task, but he was, in a word, exasperated about me and being tremendously snarky for fumbling around. Furthermore, the comments he made during the interview were borderline rude. Call me old school, but I don't care how badly someone messes up an interview, it's not right to be a dick to them. So me being me, I naturally started making snarky comments right back. The rest of the interview "had a lot of room for improvement" on both sides.

I was heated. Within 5 min of dropping the call, I let my buddy know that I wanted nothing to do with that guy, I'm shocked (still am) that anyone let him manage anything, and if that's the way they operate they count me out now and forever.

My friend was extremely surprised that things went the way that they did. However, he did the right thing and went above the architect and requested an interview for me with the department head. Well in a complete reversal, the director in charge of all things technical for the department loved me and gave me a pass. The stars aligned further, the next week Shy Ed took a job with one of the major streaming services, and he is now making their teams shittier.

Just so you know it was a happy ending for the company as well - At the time of this article, I've been on the team for 1.5 years, and I am the SME (Subject Matter Expert) for the team's primary product, have been given 3 pay bumps, and according to our KPIs have been one of the most productive members of the team during that period. Not bad for a guy who failed his interview.

This is not normal

2022-06-03T00:00:00Z

May 2022. For the last few weeks the stock market, bond market, VC markets, crypto-currencies, and anything else related to money has been taking an absolute nose dive. Tech stocks have in some cases lost upwards of 80% of their value. Inflation has been cranking at 7%-10% for the last year.

Things are bad.

The "financial gurus" have started chiming in saying that this is all a normal part of the business cycle, nothing to worry about. Great time to start buying, because **the stock market ALWAYS goes up**™.

I get that the "financial gurus" make money off of convincing people that they have some deep fundamental knowledge about the world... even so, pretending that the last 70 to 80 years is "normal" is a flat out lie.

In all of human history there was 1 prior period, late 1860s to early 1910s, roughly ~60 years that was relatively peaceful, with limited natural disasters, plagues, etc. The rest of human history has been a constant war with crazy amounts of terrible things interjecting themselves in between. Unless you're over 70 years old, what you have experienced in your lifetime has been extremely unusual in the context of world history.

More specifically to contradict the financial gurus there were countless previous companies, stock markets, countries, empires, etc that were dominant in their hay-day which have since fizzled or faded into oblivion. The easiest stock market examples are the Netherlands and Japan.

Japan in the 80s looked like it could over take the US based on its growth, then it fizzled out and stagnated. The Netherlands (VOC) was the first stock market (and massively successful for its time), which eventually went into massive decline in the late 1700s.

Right now the financial gurus are basically like: "this has all happened before™" ...what they are failing to realize, at some point it will stop being true. As Chuck Palahniuk would say: "Over a long enough timeline the survival rate of everyone is zero." The same could be said of companies, stock markets, and governments.

I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a major world power shutting down a huge chunk of their economy for over a year, printing 25%+ of their GDP, giving it away to largely unproductive causes, and then everything ended up being totally normal as a result. Sure, we're unlikely to collapse tomorrow, but the second and third order effects of the last 2-3 years have barely begun to hit us.

(Note: I did go ahead and look at The Mississippi Bubble, The Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe, and Argentina... but couldn't find money supply in the context of GDP to provide comparable references.)

Now of course I'm being incredibly cynical. While this current period of history is unusual, it doesn't rule out that it is possible to continue building a world with ongoing peace, fewer pandemics, longer individual health, greater human cooperation, and financial prosperity. We certainly have had a string of major human successes recently. Maybe this is just the beginning of a beautiful period in human history where we are able to fight against the worst parts of our nature to build a better world. My point with all of the above is: if we were to revert to the mean, eventually one of these stock market downturns will actually be the start of a collapse. Historically speaking that would be more "normal."

But back to reality... I'm going to keep on the rails for this one (recession/depression/correction/etc), and you should too... but I do so with the belief that it could all disappear in the blink of an eye. The financial gurus could use to open up a history book once in a while because THIS IS NOT NORMAL. NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL. When people start to think that it is "normal," that these hard fought battles for peace, individual liberty, and technological progress are just the natural way of our world... that's when when we will lose these things.

A Short Eulogy for Chesterfield Uritis

2022-04-30T00:00:00Z

(Note: Written mostly in 2018 as notes, Published in 2022 as an article)

I lost my best friend yesterday. The poor little guy stopped being able to breath after he responded badly to a surgery. I already miss him a lot.

I'm hurting pretty bad on this one... I figure I'd let everyone to know why, and to tell his story.

The Start

I got Chester in College Softmore/ Junior year (probably '06). My roommate Jenn Cox and Swamp Donkey showed up one day with a 12 week old puppy that Jenn's uncle got at a charity hunting auction while under the influence (drunk). Everyone thought I would flip out and be pissed off. Couldn't be any further from the truth. We were buddies immediately, and I excited to have some help in getting through this world (Having a happy furry friend makes life much easier).

Chester got a puppy education!

Mom likes to take credit for convincing me to take the dog to puppy school, which is fine, but the reality is that Chester was going to get educated one way or another. So we took him to puppy school! He had a blast and eventually got his degree.

Regardless of the degree, I spent a ton of time training the little guy right off the bat. Best guess would be that I probably trained him 5-10 hours a week for the first year or two.

licking problem

While we were training, Swamp Donkey thought it would be cute to teach the dog to kiss her. Bad Idea? probably not for a puppy... but eventually Chester became a full grown dog and still loved licking everyone's face and hands. Thats the only bad habit we could never shake. They even were mean one time and let him lick the battery they happened to be holding (I had nothing to do with this)... but he was still a licker even after that

Took a shit in the bookstore & chipotle

Once we trained Chester there were only two incidences where he actually didn't stick to his training. The first he accidentally took a shit in one of the bookstores near campus. Total whoops moment... in his defense though the book store had no problem shitting on students all day long.

The second time we had a problem was when we went to chipotle one time. Chester got yelled at for being in the store. Of the 50 different places I would take him chipotle was the only one that ever had a problem... which is actually kind of surprising considering we never used to use a leash.

How he learned to throw trash away

One day I came home from school and the little guy had gotten into the trash... I was so pissed off because the trash can was one of those big ones and he spread shit all over the living room and dining room. One of my buddies told me that when his dog did that he hit him and then his dog never went in the trash again. I thought about doing that for a second but decided instead that chester was going to help me pick all the shit up that he scattered everywhere. So I spent the afternoon teaching the dog how to pick up trash and throw it away in the trash can.

He never learned to spell his name

After Chester had gotten the hang of some harder dog tricks I wanted to go completely crazy and try and teach him how to spell his name. Unfortunately, it didn't work, but we did try for a couple of afternoons

Pray to Mecca trick

At one point I was working from home (and bartending) in Philadelphia. At that time we used to get a ton of door-to-door religious fanatics. Of course when they knocked on the door the dogs would go nuts barking like crazy and trying to see who was there. I realized if I taught the dogs the "go to your place" trick that would solve my problem... But then I got the brilliant idea to kill 2 birds with one stone.

So I created a trick that I called "pray to mecca". When a religious fanatic showed up at the door I would tell the dogs to "pray to mecca" (and bow) at which point they would run to the rug, lay down, and face east. The dogs would chill out, and the religious fanatics knew that they had the wrong house!

Chester was really good at tailgating

I taught Chester to walk without a leash almost immediately. He was great at it, so I rarely used a leash. Of course he was a dog so on occassion he would check out something when we were walking, which was rarely a problem. All of this was great but the thing I was really surprised by was how good at tailgating he was. We would usually tailgate at my brother's place and Chester (off the leash) was allowed to move about freely. Even though he was barely ever by my side he never ran off when we were tailgating... he would just hang out with whoever was giving him attention. If I called (yelled loudly) he would always come in and check in to make sure we were both on the same page. Pretty awesome behavior for a dog.

Mom stole my dog

When I moved up to NYC I didn't know what my living situation would be like, so I sent Chester to go live with my Mom and Dad in California for a while. I requested 6 months or so... which my mom was NOT happy about (she didn't want another dog). 6 months eventually turned into 9 months but I asked for Chester back once I was in a good living situation. I was surprised to find out that my mom who didn't want to take Chester in the first place flat out refused to send him back to me! She had fallen in love with cute little Chester and she didn't want to lose him!

Chester impressed a billionaire!

Pop-pop was blown away that Chester could get a beer out of the fridge so he sent me to go show Dick Yuengling. Pop pop was thinking that maybe Dick would make it into a Television commercial or something. At the time I was looking for jobs so I figured it couldn't hurt. So I filmed Chester doing his beer trick then went down to the brewery to show Dick. Dick was thouroughly impressed with the video but was super surprised that I would drive all the way over to the brewery to show him the video for 20 seconds. Me too.

And similarly...

Turns out that Chester was a posh little playboy... he's flown private before in the main cab!

Chester protected us from a possum attack

The possum attack is actually part of a MUCH longer story, but the punchline is that Chester woke us up because a possum snuck into the house and woke us up by barking at it. He definitely bailed us out on that one.

Hunting

we would go "hunting" sometimes, which to be completely honest was more walking in the woods with my dog ... but one time when we were walking he jumped straight into barbed wire fence got stuck then bounced out. He was bleeding all over the place... but happy as a pig in shit. Thats part of the reason why I love labradors.

Mountain climber

So we went on a trip to the Adirondacks and wanted to go on a hike, we jumped online and found a decent one and asked one of the locals if it was a good one. The guy couldn't tell if we were woodsy or not so he let us know that it was a "decent hike"- which actually meant 12 miles and 4000 ft of elevation (Whiteface mountain). Chester crushed that whole Hike... we were all super exhausted by the end.

Potty Training

Chester was super duper easy to potty train, and after he was potty trained he only peed in the house one time for the rest of his life.

Freezing

One odd night while I was in the process of getting divorced, I decided to get weird and drive to Skaneateles NY, to go see the town I grew up in. I got to town late and ended up having to sleep in my car. I was completely unprepared and turns out it was absolutely freezing. Chester got my back and cuddled up with me, keeping me warm.

Divorce

Chester helped me through hands down the worst time in my life while I was getting divorced. He helped me exercise, stay positive (he's always been a happy pup), added some weight to the other side of the bed, introduced me to girls again... he really got me through the hard stuff.

###Chester's hidden life

Chester moved in with my Mom and Dad (in California) while I was bouncing around the New York metro region (as I previously mentioned). Which was a much better situation for him. One time my parents happened to be out of town so my brother and sister in law went by to check on him.

As they walked by the window to get to the back door they found Chester sitting like a human on the couch. They locked eyes, then Chester went back to chilling, like he was. My brother and sister in law were cracking up.

Every beer ever

Chester had a tail that would knock over every beer ever that was near him. You'd think that it was just a coffee table, but no, he was a tall dog and would knock over beers on tables and desks too. Crazy how much beer I've had to clean up over the years.

Baby Bunnies

One time he was out in the front yard and he found some baby bunnies hiding in the ivy... he literally started bringing them to me (as a retreiver should)... I was like: "what the hell am I supposed to do with a bunch of baby bunnies Chester?"

He saved my life

One time we were out hiking by Clinton Lake and Chester saw a pretty large rattlesnake on the side of the trail. I would have totally missed it if he hadn't been barking at it. The snake ran off into the bushes.

Wheatfields

Not a eventful story but for years I used to go to Wheatfields (in lawrence) with Chester to get muffins, then go walk around the farmers market on Saturday mornings.

A Wake for Chester

This article was inspired from the wake that we had with my family for him. We all told stories about Chester and drank Angel's Envy Rye. I'm not religious or whatever, but I hope he felt like he had a good life... and if I am wrong about life there after I hope he ends up in a better place. During life Chester was loved by many people, and made all of our lives better.

An Interview with Zach Wade Betz

2022-03-17T00:00:00Z

Give us a quick intro to yourself, your blog, and why someone should read your blog.

Yo. I'm Zach. I work as a software developer. Kylynn and I have 2 little kiddos. Hmm... why should someone read my blog? They probably shouldn't. There's much better content out there.

How long have you been writing, and when did you become "serious" about writing?

I started this blog (zwbetz.com) in 2018. I'd always wanted one, but never found the right tool for it. It wasn't until I discovered the static site generator, Hugo, that I feel in love. "Serious?" I am not serious. I leave that to the pros. I'm just a regular dude who posts an article once in a while.

What motivates you to write?

Sometimes I'll hear something and post a snippet of it to share with others. Other times I may learn something new at work, then condense that down into a bite-sized writeup.

What aren’t people talking about enough?

Embracing boredom. Like, I think it does you good to just sit there with your thoughts. Resisting the urge to check your phone, or watch tv, or eat a snack, or whatever. You'd be surprised what your mind bubbles up to you.

What have you changed your mind about in the last decade?

I used to think routines were dumb. Like, why would someone script their life? How boring. Fast forward to now. Dude, I could not manage day to day without a routine. I'm like the most routine person now. Total flip flop.

What would you like to know about the economy/world that we can’t know?

If/when the U.S. dollar with crash. Would be nice to move my money elsewhere. Or maybe by that point I'll have bigger problems.

What is something that you believe that few or no other people believe?

Hmm. Am not sure how many folks would agree with me on this, but I have an odd view of the learning cycle, or, at least, how I experience. In a nutshell, when learning a new concept, I first "see the world" by it. Like if the world is full of nails, the concept becomes my hammer. Once I've wrestled with it enough, it goes back to being a regular old tool in my toolbox. I wish it started out as a tool, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

How has your writing changed since you've been writing, and can you point to any pieces that would strongly show these changes?

Hmm. At first I was a bit stiff. I've loosened up a bit. I try to let myself have more fun now.

What are your favorite pieces that you've written? How do these do with your readers?

One of my favorites is my tutorial on how to make a hugo blog from scratch. Tutorial can be found here Scroll down to the "Emails I’ve Received" secton, they're heart warming.

What’s a piece of commonly accepted writing advice you think is wrong?

What they teach you in high school english. Man, it's so stiff and full of fluff. I respect folks who write in real, plain language.

What have been the biggest "meta-moments" in your software career that have changed how you build/think about software, and by that I mean what are your sort of "software" virtues and how did they come about?

I had been a Windows guy all most life. So, mostly dotnet development. And in that world, a lot is abstracted away from you. It's great for productivity. But not so great for understanding. Around 2018 I was forced to use a Mac for a new project. I resisted at first. Then I dove head first into the world of Unix (and Java). My experience was nearly the opposite. It was easy to drown in configuration and choices, but the understanding I gained was much greater.

What is one thing in software development that you wished you had run into sooner? and don't say testing.

Declarative programming. In my book, it's not better or worse than imperative programming, but it has some cool benefits, like less code needed to do what you want, and less branches to test.

Who are the software people that you follow, read, and/or are interested in?

Just a few off the top of my head:

Martin Tournoij, @arp242, creator of GoatCounter
Joe Mooring, @jmooring, top notch forum contributer, jack of all things

What is something that you don't think programmers get? what is something that you think "normies" get about our world

Programmers don't get that talking in technical jargon all the time is not cool. Like, if you can't describe things in plain language with nontechnical folks, you have some self-work to do. I'm drawing a blank on the normies question. Am sure I'll think of something laying in bed tonight.

What questions would you like your favorite bloggers to answer?

Let's go with Nietzsche's The Eternal Return. It's more of a thought experiment, but I like to see how folks respond:

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!'” –Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Thunderstorms, Margaritas

2022-02-05T00:00:00Z

I was hanging out in Dallas with my buddy Joe Venuto (who is a badass photographer btw) before a flight, and a massive thunderstorm came rolling through Dallas. Joe and I figured we'd get off the street, so we popped into a taco joint for a bite and a margarita. Just as we got to the bar, the power was knocked out and a huge gust of wind smashed the glass out of the front door. The whole series of events scared everyone in the place half to death.

I had been watching the weather per my flight and it said that this particular storm was going to be in and out faster than the babysitter's boyfriend, so I wasn't all that concerned. A busted door is a pain, but in my opinion, thunderstorms are just part of "business as usual" on the plains. So I flagged down the bartender and asked him to hook me up with a margarita.

"Sorry our systems are down because of the power. I can't ring you up" (bartender)

"No worries... this is why I keep cash... I'll just have to tip you a little extra since I don't have change"

"I CAN'T do it..." he responded.

I get kinda cheeky in these situations since there's nothing about throwing tequila, Cointreau, lime, sugar, and ice together that needs electricity... so I made a quick quip:

"(laughing) just use the Don Julio... it's the 'batteries included' tequila"

The guy (unamused) walked to the other side of the bar to watch more rain and lightning. Not one bartender in sight would take cash, and put it into the system in 30min when the power was back. I was even willing to pay extra.

The crazy part to me is that bartenders get paid in tips. They weren't making money the whole time. If I had to guess Dallas was probably loaded with restaurants doing the same thing- basically shut down because of a blip in the electrical grid.

Fortunately for me, the servers were as dumbstruck as the bartender was. They stopped delivering cocktails because they didn't know what to do when the power went out - so I nabbed 2 abandoned margaritas off the drink mat and left a $20.

An interesting tidbit that I learned years ago about the D-Day invasion (WW2)- Hitler slept through most of it. Bombing, Paratroopers, etc all night.

The weather was bad that week (thunderstorms and rain), so the German high command thought it would be smart to get some R&R since the allied forces wouldn't be able to do much. Well turns out a hole opened up in the weather and the allied forces were able to invade. Now you'd figure... So what? How would Hitler being asleep change anything? They had hundreds of thousands of Natzis armed to the teeth ready to fight just sitting there waiting.

The problem was that Hitler had decided to personally dictate strategy... so no general, officer or enlisted man was allowed to make a decision without an explicit order from Hilter on how to handle the situation. Sure the Germans on the beach were allowed to fight, but all the tanks and troops waiting to know where to go and what to do to support the guys on the beach had to sit there till 11 am when Hitler woke up. So the Allied forces went ahead and "grabbed a margarita."

Edits

This link was shared as a response to the article. It is in the "spirit" of the article:
- https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.803/pdf/hubbard1899.pdf

Stop Breaking My Glasses

2022-01-03T00:00:00Z

I worked at a tap house in college serving and bartending. It was a great job and I learned a lot of life lessons from the place.

At one point, the management team made a decision to bring in 23oz glasses that we could sell as an upcharge to customers (bigger than a normal pint). The glasses were a big hit on both sides of the bar. The customers saved a little money, the restaurant made a little more money, and by transative property the service staff made more money too. There was only one problem- the glasses were these thin flimsy things that would basically break if someone farted a little too loud.

Now financially this situation was a conundrum. A bad night could take away all the surplus gains, making the 23oz glasses not worth it. So David our GM gathered up the staff to figure out why all the glasses kept breaking.

David gave everyone a chance to talk. One bartender suggested buying sturdier glasses. They cost 2X the thin ones and were a problem for our dish sink under the bar with zero guarantee that they wouldn't break either. A server suggested that we change the pricing to adjust for the loss. Another server suggested that we do some light construction on the bar to keep them from breaking in all the places that they had been breaking. One by one everyone voiced their opinion on different strategies and explained why the glasses were breaking.

After everyone had a chance to speak, David stood up, and in a scary loud voice yelled at everyone: "HERE'S HOW WE ARE GOING TO FIX THIS! STOP BREAKING MY GLASSES."

I'll never forget how quickly the glasses stopped getting broken. I think I broke like 2 over the next 2 years.

The Lowest Common Denominator

2021-12-29T00:00:00Z

One of the dumbest things a person can ever say is: "People are dumb."

No doubt you've heard it out there in a wild. I used to hear it all the time from sales reps, managers, ops people, etc. Now I hear it from software devs, PMs, technical writers, etc.

They even have little cartoons for it, that they send around:

Everyone seems to think that these humans that they are working on behalf of are not capable... and that things need to be "dumbed down" for them. Brought down to a easier level.

To the idea of "lowest common denominator," that peope are dumb, I call bullshit.

People are lazy, tired, and distracted. They are drunk, high, tripping, over/under caffeinated. They are are bombarded with requests for their focus/attention, their money, and their time. They have family, debt, pets, jobs, kids, coworkers, broken appliances, neigbhors, trees, and priests. They have racoons getting into their trash at night keeping them up, and robbers stealing rims in their neighborhood. They have a baby that got COVID-19 and a husband/wife with a medical condition that doctors don't understand. Their boss is getting a divorce and their kid is getting bullied at school.

The thought that a "normal person" could be some sort of subject matter expert in whatever you're selling, or that they are able to operate in your world at the drop of a hat, no matter how "easy" it is, is laughable. People are actually pretty smart, they just have a lot of things in the way of them acting like it.

Now a decade ago I probably would have said the same thing as everyone else, but then something magical happened- I interacted with those "dumb" people that my coworkers talk about. Not just a handful either. From ~2009 to 2013 I talked to somewhere in the realm of ~13,000 to ~15,000 different people. And what I found: Most people are pretty smart. They aren't "Rhodes Scholar" smart (chances are neither are you) but they're smart enough.

So whats all this business about serving the "lowest common denominator," making sure you dumb things down??? In my book it's laziness.

Here's what I'd recommend: instead of bringing the subject down to a place where even a corpse could understand you should try to bring people up to your level, or at least a place where they can operate. It isn't easy, and it's definitely a goal... but the world will be better for it. Your customers will thank you, and your users, clients, audience, whoever will thank you for it.

I'm going to leave off with a quote from John Collison (cofounder of Stripe):

"That one of our principles when it comes to the marketing at Stripe is that we speak up to the reader. You’re not trying to dumb things down for someone who isn’t familiar with something like this. You are speaking to an intelligent person who is busy, but knows what they’re talking about, knows what they’re doing. And it’s your job to kind of help educate them on this. And so we certainly made that a big part of the culture early on. And I think, I mean, like any culture, it’s self perpetuating. I think people for whom that’s important tend to be drawn to it.

4000 years

2021-12-29T00:00:00Z

My favorite Professor at KU, John Younger, was at Duke for about 25 years before coming to KU. He was their expert in classical studies (Greece, Rome, etc) and was considered a world expert. He left when they gave him a little clock to say thank you for the 25 years. For whatever reason he moved to Kansas. One time I was hanging out during office hours and he explained to me the difference between Duke and Kansas (paraphrased in my own words):

"When I was at Duke everyone was very attentive, they were all on their way to be doctors and lawyers, etc they studied hard, but never stopped to look around at all the interesting things that they could learn... at Kansas I was sitting in my office during office hours and a random kid who grew up on a farm 200 miles away from any town I've ever heard of came in to ask me some questions about an ancient dialect of greek that hasn't been spoken in ~4000 years. The kid had taught himself how to read this language sitting on a farm in the middle of Kansas- making him one of maybe 100 people in the world that could read/write in this anchient language... I could have sat at Duke for 4000 years waiting for something like that to happen and it never would have. These things happen here..."

I think about that interaction every once in a while... there's a lot in there.

My Top 10 Money Rules

2021-08-08T00:00:00Z

This is my response to Morgan Housel's Top 10 Money Rules and Barry Ritholtz's Top 10 Money Rules.

Earn More. Spend less.

"A penny saved is 1.4 pennies earned if you consider taxes" -from the internet

This sounds like a "duh" rule but it's not. The two concepts work against each other and require different soft skills.

To increase your earning potential you need to free your time for activities that make more money- this often requires spending money (e.g. eating out to save time, paying to have your shirts pressed, etc). Reducing your expenses requires the elimination of excess, or being conservative with your existing resources... this also has a cost. It's a mindset that will keep you from making more money.

To put this another way: High earners are usually big spenders, and fiscally conservative people often have difficulty increasing how much they earn.

If there was only one rule to wealth creation: you need more coming in than going out. Being good at both is a paradox that you must master.

Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe

My grandfather is friends with a billionaire. I'm not sure what he's driving these days but for ~15 years his daily commuter was a beat-up Ford P.O.S. Most days he wears jeans and a flannel shirt/work shirt. He has no problem going to the grocery store, gas station, or sandwich shop. He can do these things because, like several other wealthy people I know, he hides his wealth/ money intentionally.

Wealth, and having money, are about freedom or having options. When you display wealth publicly (cars, houses, clothes, consumables, etc), you trade your options. For some people, this is desirable (such as celebrities) but for most people, especially those with REAL money, this is a nightmare. You lose your humanity (not to mention it's dangerous). So if you start accumulating wealth, keep it to yourself. You will be thankful you did. As Morgan Housel says: "Wealth is everything you don't see" (paraphrased).

"Enough" is Hard. Very Hard.

There's a famous quote by Coco Channel: "The best things in life are free, the second-best things are very very expensive." What Coco is talking about is something that we all inherently know: it gets progressively harder to deliver higher and higher quality, and so the cost to do so increases as well (or put into mathematical terms: quality is logarithmic, cost is exponential).

For most people, this experience is why they can never get out of the rat race- a better human experience always costs more, takes more time, requires more knowledge, and is often compared to others around you (i.e. "Man's reach exceeds his grasp").

This is why having "enough" is hard. It requires that you decrease your expectations, appreciate what you have, and find the middle road with these concepts in your culture/ community. With that said having "enough" is incredibly powerful. It's a form of freedom and something that should be strived for.

Most Pop-Financial Advice is Useless or Bullshit

Financial gurus (Tony Robbins, Dave Ramsey, Ramit Sethi, Money Moustache, etc) are trying to sell you content and build their audience. "Famous investors" can neither relate to your financial world nor do they want you educated on theirs. Financial advisors provide a service... they need you coming back and spending money to stay in business. In short, just know that you're swimming in a pool of sharks - you generally have to form your own opinions the hard way: research and experimentation.

Be Wary of Consensus

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

- Mark Twain

My "first investment" was a mutual fund in the 90s. Of course, it wasn't really my investment- my parents picked it out because mutual funds were "the thing" at the time. I used my birthday card money to buy half - my parents covered the other half. If I remember correctly it was a $1200 minimum for the mutual fund (a LOT at the time). ~12 years later when I went to college it was worth $1500 (in a good market). My story of course wasn't unique. For a period in the late 80s to the 90s mutual funds picked by rockstar managers were the consensus advice to retail investors. No one was paying attention to expense ratio/ fees and "survivorship bias" just wasn't talked about like it is today. And for that short period, the mutual fund industry made a lot of money.

In financial history "the 90's mutual fund" period isn't the only time this has happened. These financial movements aren't just about "bubbles" either. Any time there is a "consensus" among investors, opportunists take advantage because they know those investors aren't paying attention. I don't care if it's 2000's real estate or a 2020 total stock market index fund - it's fitness. When everyone is doing something and not paying attention - cookies are about to get stolen.

Invest in Yourself and Things That You Know

Pound for pound reading books, courses, training, seminars, tutoring et al. is one of the best investments you can make. In growing industries, you can readily add +30% to +40% to your income every 16-18 months. Almost no other investments out there can keep up with that kind of return.

...BUT the knowledge you gain can give you more than just a bigger paycheck. It also gives you a deeper understanding of an industry, relevant technologies, and upcoming trends. You can use this knowledge to choose investments that will also have higher returns than laypersons will. Just be sure to make those bets when you get there.

Be Aware of "Shadow" Financial Decisions

Some decisions impact you a lot more than you expect. Some decisions are structured so you can't easily quantify how it will financially impact you. I call these "shadow" financial decisions. Outsized impact on your finances, but hard to understand or predict.

As an example, your marriage will probably impact your financial life (for better or worse) more than any other decision you make, except maybe your career. Being in good physical shape is probably the most underrated financial investment - it impacts earning potential, healthcare spending, energy levels, and much much more. Moving, travel, friends, networking, hobbies, are all examples of "shadow" financial decisions. So don't forget to think through these decisions as actual financial decisions and how they might impact you before you make them.

Avoid Taxes like the Plague

Tax avoidance (NOT evasion) can make a massive difference in your financial situation (think millions over a lifetime). I can't recommend enough spending some time to learn how the system works and how to take advantage of ways to avoid paying taxes (I'm still learning, but it's been very valuable).

(Note: I also would heavily recommend reading up on where our government spends our money. It's very sobering how little regard our elected officials have for our tax dollars.)

Creativity Starts When You Remove Two Zeros from the Budget

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." (Oscar Wilde)

Generally speaking, I like money. Not because of the things I can use it for, but because the lack of money creates conditions where better solutions can be found... and sometimes better problems. Rory Sutherland provides a great example in this video, where he discusses a different approach to fixing a transportation problem. His approach reduces the money needed to 10% of the original budget - but comes up with better results. This is why I think capitalism is more fun - because money doesn't do that much to make things better - people do. People make things better through creativity.

The narrative isn't reality.

Early in my career, I worked for a tiny little billion-dollar company that you've never heard of. It was a great business that was bootstrapped by a solo founder and grown for 20 years from a mall kiosk, to roughly ~10,000 employees and something like $3 billion today. The founder was self-made and achieved all of this through hustle and grit.

It's a great story. It's an especially good story for a bunch of mid-20s salespeople hungry for success. The problem is the narrative is missing some details.

The sole founder wasn't solo, he wasn't even the majority owner of the business. The majority owner of the business was actually his wife, who had plunged her life savings into that business to get it off the ground. Her current occupation is "homemaker" ... which is probably less inspiring if you're trying to get a sales guy to work 80 hrs a week for you.

There are a lot of narratives out there, but don't confuse a good story for reality. Warren Buffet's returns have pretty much been the same as the S&P total return for the last 10+ years. A Rockstar that signs a Million dollar record deal might take home $45,000 that year.

But its not just about other people. We also tell ourselves stories that don't match reality: When you start a business you should be working 80 hours a week and never sleeping. If you want to have a successful career you don't have time to be a good parent. These are all false narratives.

Bonus Answer!

I asked my wife what her top Money Rules were... and she answered:

"Find a husband who likes this stuff and offload it on to him!"

10 Technologies You Need to be Aware of (2020)

2021-05-24T00:00:00Z

"Predictions are hard. Especially when they're about the future." -Yogi Berra

A hobby of mine is to try to understand where things are going. I love knowing ahead of time what's going to happen - aka "the future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed."

Inherently I think we all know that there is an advantage to being ahead of the curve, but I like to challenge myself to take it up a notch and document my thinking at reasonable intervals (then review when the time comes up). This particular article is based on a speech I mostly wrote in 2019 and conducted in ~2020. I'm turning the speech into an article at the request of my buddy Patrick Thurmond so forgive any lack of cohesion since they were originally just notes.

(Note: this article is focused very specifically on developer/engineer software tools, frameworks, languages, and systems... meaning it will offer very little for laypeople. I plan to follow up with another article that will touch on larger technology trends that will be influenced by this piece)

Setting the stage
According to the Experts...
General Predictions!
Vaporware
Tech I'm on the fence about
10 Technologies you need to be aware of

Setting the stage.

Imagine the world back in 2014 ... MVC frameworks (Rails, Laravel, Django) are big, jQuery dominates the web development frontend (framework). "Big Data," "Cloud Computing," and the tools powering distributed computing are all the rage. Node.js is picking up steam, Swift is announced to great fanfare, meanwhile, AWS releases their Functions as a Service product (Lambda) and virtually no one notices. Oculus/ Whatsapp are acquired by Facebook and Satya Nadella becomes Microsoft CEO.

What would safe predictions look like in 2014?

Perhaps Node.js seems like it will be a big deal. Maybe Angular.js will replace jQuery? NoSQL might challenge SQL databases. Mobile is CRAZY hot and compile-to-native mobile frameworks might offer a path for web developers to offer mobile (making mobile even bigger)... and Apache Spark is a must-learn for any serious cloud practitioner.

How safe would those predictions be? I would argue they're pretty "meh.

What is next according to the experts

According to "experts", "venture capitalists", "thought leaders", etc the following are the big blocks that make up the future of technology:

Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning!
Robotics
Neurotech (e.g. Nueralink)
Biotech (e.g. Ginko Bioworks, 23andMe)
Custom Microprocessors
Quantum Computing
New Energy storage
Space
IOT & embedded systems
Health Tech

(Note: if you notice, all of these technologies are expensive and will take a lot to move the needle on)

My 10 Year General Predictions

Note: I believe in having "skin in the game" when I make predictions, so these predictions also often represent my real financial positions. Meaning this isn't hot air and "thought leadership"... these are real bets that I have made wherever possible

Voice-controlled applications will significantly grow in use and users (e.g. Alexa, Google, etc)- Why? 1billion people in Southeast Asia have to type in logograms... which is way WAY slower than talking to a smartphone.
Unmanned retail and/or unmanned warehouses (dark warehouses) will grow significantly in use. Why? There seems to be a tipping point coming with labor dynamics that no one seems to be appreciating. A raise to the minimum wage could/will force the hand of Entrepreneurs to switch from people to technological solutions. Example: Amazon Specialties.

Electric vehicles (NOT Fuel Cell) will overtake Internal Combustion vehicles. Why? Fewer moving parts (lower cost of ownership), Quieter, Don't require Gas or Petroleum infrastructure. Plus we're getting very close to a place where economies of scale for EVs equal or overtake ICE vehicles - purchase price, gas, insurance costs for ICE vehicles will start to go up as EV adoption increases. Lastly, there has been a move on the part of institutional investors to pull "Energy Companies" out of their portfolios - this is a non-trivial change in the economic environment of ICE vehicles.
The Death of Traditional Retail (but NOT all retail) will occur. Why? Large retail spaces with premium rent for prime commercial locations made a lot of sense when consumers were able to get the largest/best selection from these large retail locations (AKA drive from far away to a central car-focused retail center). The unit economics are ceasing to make sense though as ecommerce (Amazon) has better selection with lower prices (and no driving!). I would expect some companies to transition to mixed digital/retail models and/or experience-focused retail experiences but not all companies. Death is probably a strong word because I don't think it will be very "visible", but JC Penny employed more people than the entire coal industry.
Drone delivery will become a thing. This is HIGHLY dependant on regulation... but I feel like it will come through, the Unit economics make a LOT of sense in urban/suburban environments. I imagine it will be kind of like Waymo at first- restricted to a few cool cities (till 2030) but will be generally available by 2040.
Ag-Tech will add tools such as precision weeding, ML in agriculture, hydroponics/ Urban/ vertical Farms - Few people outside of agriculture are aware of what GPS did for crop yields. The next set of technologies could have a similar impact, and a nice bonus would be the decrease in pesticides that make it into the ecosystem
Nano Satellites for the "other 2 billion people" - Elon Musk built perhaps the largest (barely talked about) business that may have ever existed with Starlink. My prediction is that a non-trivial amount of people end up using it for their internet before 2030.
ImmunoTherapy- though I'm really surprised this hasn't had faster adoption I still feel strongly about treating cancer with immunotherapy. I know a bunch of people that head down to Mexico for Stem Cell and Immunotherapy- so it's started but I'm still genuinely pissed off that it hasn't become a full-fledged offering to Americans right now.

Vaporware

The following is a list of things that I do not believe will materialize.

Hands down the biggest waste of R&D dollars I can think of are flying cars. Energy isn't cheap enough to warrant adoption, it's an FAA nightmare, but mostly there are a vast number of other technologies easier to implement than flying Cars.
There's been a lot of hype around this generation's Virtual Reality iteration, but I think it will again be vaporware. Why? It's fighting for dollars in the already heavily invested entertainment segment as opposed to trying to pry dollars away from businesses. The main turning point in my decision making was that John Carramack resigned from his CTO position from Oculus, citing he didn't think VR would end up where he wants it to in his lifetime. That guy is one of the smartest people in computing... and if he thinks it ain't going to happen I trust him.
"Smart" Cities. (e.g. Google in Toronto; Bill Gates, New Mexico). So billionaires love the idea of smart cities, but they always fail on the premise that a city is primarily a people thing not an infrastructure setup. Personally, I can't help but think about Disney's Epcot Center which was originally supposed to be the "city of the future" until Walt Disney died.
The Hyperloop project. Not a lot to say about it... but I will say I don't think its much of an improvement over MagLev. projects or High Speed rail - both of which were conceptualized ~2 generations ago and can't even be built as a prototype in the United States.
Universal Basic Income - I believe this warrants a full-fledged article or series itself, but the TLDR; is that none of our current major forms of civilization are equipped to implement such a thing. I have yet to hear a fiscally conservative means of achieving it, so I will retain my skepticism for at least 20 years.
Food Service Robotics. Zume Pizza made big waves with it's $300M+ investment (note: since my original speech Zume has actually gone out of business. +1 to me) and there are at least 2+ Robot coffee shops built in the last ~5 years (I've tried one... and it was a great cup of coffee IMO)... and yet none of these things represent novel technological improvements. Zume Pizza specifically could have been built in the Early/Mid 1800s from what I can tell with the technology that existed at that time. Burger flipping Robots, Coffee, Sandwiches, etc are all things that historic automation could handle and yet we chose not to, in lieu of human labor. I'm pretty confident that it will be a while before someone is overtaking Domino's model.

Where I'm On the Fence...

K8s (Kubernetes) and Docker. As I understand it the Docker/K8s is the cheapest way to do horizontal scaling and distributed computing... but they come with a major cost of HIGH complexity and they require specialized (expensive) engineering talent to keep the software entropy from eating a project. BUT they are backed by Google and Y combinator. Also worth mentioning Docker might not be financially viable with an open source model. Basically, my heart says companies/engineers will want the control but my head says: the major cloud providers provide the infrastructure. (Important note: over the last year I have reversed my opinion about Docker/ K8s. I now believe they fall into the vaporware category since IaaS provides superior financials for the majority of companies.)
Ruby (Programming Language) - Over the last few years Ruby has seen a major decline in bootcamp programs (of course bootcamps have also seen a decline) and overall language prevalence. It has been the last major language to get infrastructure provisions (AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc) but still has a solid opensource offering - Sidekiq, Rails, Sinatra, Jekyll. Seems like a coin toss in my book on whether the language will prevail.
Blockchain Technologies. There are a ton of companies playing in this space with a lot of investment. Notable companies include: Brave, Defi, Square Cash, Coinbase... but the Libra Project was basically shut down by congress AND there are HUGE energy consumption considerations- E.G. China stepped in and stopped miners. I feel like the benefits of Blockchain technologies outweigh the negatives... but it's more of a gamble on whether projects can get their energy consumption under control. (2021 Note: I still feel like blockchain technologies are on the fence but I am starting to see governments interested in controlling the technology. I believe this actually bodes well for Blockchain tech but it still has a long way to go I would love to see a useful commercial application start picking up)
Augmented Reality - AR has more uses than VR, but more importantly I actually believe there are more commercial opportunities for AR technology than VR. With that said, developers working on AR problems are still focused on the consumer markets and I'm not seeing enough movement to remove my skepticism. Of course the hardware is less expensive than VR, and there are more business-related uses for AR that I'm leaning towards higher adoption.

10 Technologies you need to be aware of...

1. Infrastructre as a Service

5 years ago we would be talking about what "Stack" you work in... I think those types of discussions are moving towards infrastructure and tooling. Of course, this is kind of "Duh" since everyone is on AWS already right? Yes and no... companies still seem to be managing a lot of stuff themselves still... which leads me to believe that companies that are willing to outsource these infrastructure tasks will ultimately gain market share. The same goes for Developers/ Engineers that learn how to piece Infrastructure components together.

Why you should care?

It's a massive productivity boost You no longer need to setup your own authentication, configure load-balancers, or split out read/write instances of a database. Someone did it for you and did it better than you. AND it's cheaper - No one seems to like doing the math but DevOps engineers cost ~~a lot~~ fuck ton of money. IaaS is extremely cheap until you are really using it. (note: I am even more bull on IaaS than I was when I wrote this speech... and in a related note the costs for IaaS have come down substantially so I feel like it is no longer an advantage to configure your own infrastructure)

2. Machine Learning (isn't a fad)

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning had a moment recently where they became incredibly sexy. Hell, when you can sell a shitty sci-kit learn implementation for a $300 Million valuation... some heads will naturally turn... but underneath the "sexy" exterior there are real solutions that the technology can solve. That doesn't mean it's all kittens and sunshine. In my book there are two completely different AIs at work: the "AI"/"ML" that will do something useful for you and the "AI" the sales guys are selling. The stuff the sales guys are selling is going to go the way of the dodo... but the stuff that helps classify and makes edge cases easier to solve... I believe fully in that technology. Examples of Machine Learning utilities that are incredibly useful right now: recommendation systems, anomaly/ fraud detection, Image/facial recognition systems, Translation systems, etc

Why you should care?

Classical Machine Learning Algorithms (e.g. Scikit Learn), Tensorflow, Pytorch, etc are all going to increase productivity. Sure there is a lot of bullshit hype around "AI" but there's a reality that programming rules that can be inferred by an algorithm is just more efficient than having a person try to code the same thing.

##3. Serverless / FaaS

FaaS are an aspect of IaaS (see above), but I feel that they are owed their own section because they are such a big deal. Functions as a Service offer a unique value proposition that you can just worry about code (business logic) and nothing else. Why does that matter? Because Code is a liability, Software is an asset. Software you own, where you can externalized the maintenence costs, will ultimately provide companies the most value for their money (assuming all other factors are equal). This is why FaaS are SOOOOOOOOOOO powerful. You just need less code. You don't need a framework... you don't need routing, middleware, additional auth systems, etc. You need fewer dependencies... fewer everything really.

Looking for more reasons? If you are doing a serverless stack (FaaS) you don't need (or you need fewer) dedicated devops engineers (who are, as previously mentioned, very expensive). Furthermore, it's effectively infinte scale for very little money.

Also a BIG deal: Cloudflare Workers

Important sidebar - there is one serverless product that seems to stand out against the others based on its performance and cost: "Cloudflare Workers". Cloudflare workers function similarly to any other Serverless/ FaaS product the only difference is that they use V8 isolates rather than containers (Note: which only support JS/ WASM). It turns out that this makes workers 441% faster than AWS (according to smashing mag) and the cheapest FaaS available (3x Cheaper than AWS). Additionally, because Cloudflare's primary offerings are security and CDN related Workers provide the highest availability- lowest latency around (thanks to their 165 data centers)

4. NewSQL

Databases have a problem... actually, they have two problems: 1) There is a LOT of innovating left to do in perhaps the most lucrative area in software ...and in full dramatic irony, 2) SQL is perhaps the stickiest technology ever to have been built in software. Over the last ~10 years there has been an incredible increase in the velocity and deployment of data persistence technologies (Spark/HDFS, NoSQL, Column stores, Graph Databases, key-value stores) and each of these technologies has its own very useful niche. Yet, most developers that I know still default to a good old Relational Database Management System when they build a new project. The NewSQL movement seems to be mostly about this. Databases like CockroachDB are trying to innovate in the data persistence space while making adoption simpler with good ole SQL as their query language.

Why you should care?

(As always, if you're doing a simple CRUD app/API or doing basic analytics just use Postgres - it could be the most boring technology in the world. Which more than likely makes it perfect for your application.) For people/companies that are trying to get the most out of their technology and/or are doing something novel... use the right tool for the job. NewSQL technologies might be that tool. As an example, Cockroach DB provides better availability and automated sharding while still offering the familiarity of SQL for a query language. Column Stores such as Redshift or BigQuery offer a major speed increase for working with big data.

5. SSGs & JAM Stack

So let me start by saying I think JAM stack is the world's lamest name- I in the camp where I don't feel we need a 3 or 4 letter acronym every time we string together a couple of pieces of software.

...but now that we've gotten that out of the way. Everything that was old is new again. The JAM stack and Static Site Generators are effectively a new spin on our old favorite technologies (Javascript, CSS, APIs, and Markup). Put another way, it's a movement to utilize our most basic web technologies as a sort of software minimalism (but with new tooling).

I am a BIG fan of this kind of minimalism, but it turns out I'm not the only one. Several products such as Netlify, Cloudflare Workers Sites, and Firebase have all taken advantage of new technologies to allow developers to easily work in the JAM stack. At the same time the opensource community has embraced these new paradigms by growing the foundational technologies. SSGs like Jekyll, Gatsby, Metalsmith or Eleventy, Frontend frameworks like Vue, React, or Svelte have all become quite mature and are frequently used as the core technologies for modern applications

Why you should care?

JAM stack and SSGs offer Performance improvements over traditional backends, Productivity improvements via simpler deployments but best of all it is Cheaper!

6. Rust

Rust is a low-level, performant language developed and maintained by Mozilla (2021 Note: Rust has been split out into its own foundation and is even being considered as the second language for the Linux Kernal. Quite a lot of moment in the last year). Rust is type-checked, memory safe without garbage collection, and extremely performant. The language places a high value on quality error messages and has a killer ecosystem. It is fast becoming the default choice for low-level development in all sorts of technological areas.

Why should you care?

Well its been Stack Overflow’s most loved language for four years in a row (via the stack overflow survey), it's elegant, but performant and is useful for other stuff that's coming up in the next couple sections of this article.

7. WASM/ Web Assembly

WebAssembly is a new type of code that can be run in modern web browsers and it provides low-level access to the browser/ V8. It is designed to be an effective compilation target for low-level source languages like C, C++, Rust, etc.

(A quick note about performance/ speed: For the bulk of my career I never understood why people cared so much about the speed/ performance of their software. Over the last few years though it has become incredibly clear why it matters. Speed and performance are the ultimate empathy for the users of your software. It takes a great amount of technical skill and forethought to be able to provide performant software, as well you need to care about EVERYONE ... which can be a big challenge at scale. Providing your users a quick, snappy experience is one of many things that will make using your software enjoyable and consequently more useful as a whole. Therefore technologies like WASM are valuable because they make it easier to be empathetic to your users)

Why should you care?

Um... Crazy performance improvements and it adds C, C++, & Rust to the list of languages that can work for the browser.

8. Deno

Deno is a Typescript runtime written in Rust. What is Deno really? It's an improvement and a replacement for Nodejs. Deno offers better security, a standard library, a module system that uses URLs and decreases dependency fanning, and is delivered in a single executable file so it's awesome for Serverless!

Why should you care?

Deno was created by Ryan Dahl and it's going to replace Node and become the default environment for building applications. Period. Full stop.

I could (and might) write a pretty massive article on just this topic, but I am just going to go all cryptic and say you should check this out for yourself.

9. Entropic

(2021 Note: I took a little bit of a risk when I threw Entropic on this list and it turned out that I have to eat crow on this one. C J Silverio has been a big deal in open source for a long time and knows how to publish. Unfortunately, it looks like my intuition failed and the project was eaten by entropy)

Entropic is a federated package registry and CLI created by C J Silverio previously of the NPM company. The federated part is the interesting part- It mirrors all packages that users install from the legacy package manager - meaning there can be multiple copies out there but a single source of truth.

Why you should care?

Entropic offers an improvement over NPM and YARN as removes control from central entities while maintaining secure transport of packages. In my opinion, the really big deal about this is that there is a movement towards taking back the web from the mega-corps.

10. Apache Arrow

Apache Arrow is a column memory format organized for efficient analytics operations on modern hardware.

I was previously a little "meh" about the project until learned that Wes McKinney is the original author and leading development efforts. Wes is a prolific software developer both in the commercial and engineering sense (the guy builds great software and great companies)- so that carries some weight with me. Of course, one developer wouldn't validate a technology by themselves, but as I started digging I began to see the problem that they are solving is somewhat akin to the reason why Pandas exists, but the approach is lower level and very much needed for the future of data analytics.

Why you should care?

If you are doing data analytics and/or need to build a proof of concept for something that you would love to do in memory... Arrow might make a big difference in your life coming up.

Closing thoughts

The above technologies are my best guess for how things will shake out. I think its worth noting that I believe there is an underlying theme to all technological movements (aka the things that make up the future):

The technology is actually superior in a way that makes a difference over the status quo. (conceptually related to "the innovator's dilemma")
There is usually a voice or a narrative that helps the rest of us move forward.
There are people involved that we are willing/wanting to put our faith in.

...with that said, even if a technology has these aspects, it is far from a guarantee that it will proliferate. There are many externalities that factor in and they are impossible to predict. So in the least, be aware. These technologies might the future, or they might show you "what not to do" so you can better predict the future for yourself.

How To Improve Your Luck

2020-11-04T00:00:00Z

In September 1928 a bacteriologist name Alexander Fleming came back from a "holiday" (vacation) to find a set of petri dishes which had been "necessarily exposed to the air" had become contaminated by various micro-organisms. One of those petri dishes had grown a mold that appeared to be inhibiting the growth of a colony of Staphylococcus aureus. (You can read the original paper here)

To quote Dr. Fleming: “When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer."

You've probably heard this story before. However, there is a second part to the penicillin story that is told a lot less.

What happened following the discovery on the part of Dr. Fleming was practically nothing. He published a paper on his findings, and that was pretty much it. Sure he did some more research in the area, but he ultimately concluded that his discovery wouldn't be useful for treating infection and wasn't worth pursuing further. Effectivity his part in the story stopped right after publication.

I want to pause to let that sink in for a second.

Not many people realize that it is entirely possible that the publication could have been the end of the story... or worse it might not have even made publication. If that were the case no one would would have benefited from perhaps the greatest life saving discovery in the 20th century.

What did happen (a decade after publication) was that an Oxford Scientist named Dr. Howard Florey was reading back issues of The Journal of Experimental Pathology and ran into Fleming's article. It interested him enough to try and reproduce the work, eventually culminating in a streptococcus study of mice in 1940 with Dr. Ernst Chain & Dr. Norman Heatley. That study produced verifiable results that the production of antibiotics were indeed possible (though engineering efforts were required to make mass production viable).

How narratives shape our perception

Dr. Fleming's story is clearly in the genre of "dumb luck" (supposedly he even used the most famous phrase in all of science: "Huh. That's funny..."). Sure, he was a trained bacteriologist, and he had been working on infectious disease studies for a long time, but the mold literally fell out of the air perfectly into his petri dish.

Dr. Florey's is on the other side of the "narrative" coin. He built a top lab at Oxford through hustle and grit. According to a PBS article on Florey he was "a master at extracting research grants from tight-fisted bureaucrats and an absolute wizard at administering a large laboratory filled with talented but quirky scientists." His "discovery" of the Fleming study was the result of searching, learning, and accumulating resources to be able to leverage.

These two versions of the "luck narrative" form a dichotomy for the way people like to look at luck. Either 1) serendipity is out of our control and "the gods will gift who they deem worthy" or 2) we can make our own luck through hard work, and determination.

What is luck anyway?

So the following is what is called the "Probability Mass Function" (one way of defining "luck"):

$$ f(x,n,p) = \frac{!x}{n!(x-n)!}p^n(1-p)^x-n $$

# Defined
p = probablility of success
x = is the number of attempts
n = the number of winning attempts / successful attempts

To be "lucky" in the mathematical sense is where an agent achieves a successful (or unsuccessful) outcome that exceeds its probabilistic expectation given an environment. (link)

"Luck", in the colloquial sense, is the result of chance. It's a surprise, an unexpected event. You have "bad" luck when bad (unexpected) things happen to you or "good" luck when good things happen to you. Luck in this sense is all around us, impacts us all, with the only difference being how much it effects us.

[This colloquial luck has powerful psychological effects too... Higher socioeconomic status is correlated with lower belief in luck and vice-versa (e.g. research). ]

How can one improve their luck?

So how can you improve your luck?

...Well, you can't. Thanks for reading my article! (just kidding)

That is to say, you can't improve your luck in a "mathematical sense." Luck in that sense is actually random... otherwise it wouldn't be luck.

"Luck" in the colloquial sense however is arguably more about narrative than probability. The magnitude of the outcomes in "colloquial luck" create the perceived "luckiness." Receiving an "asymmetric payoff" makes you appear to be more lucky. So if you are interested in improving your luck in the colloquial sense you can accomplish this by exposing yourself to environments that have outsized payouts.

...Ergo the process of "Improving your luck" is simple. Marry together what we know about mathematical luck and colloquial luck.

Start by finding environments that can provide outsized payouts. I cannot stress enough how important it is to FIND THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT, as it will basically be the single largest influence on your probability of success. Searching for these sorts of environments takes work. You need to figure out as accurately as possible what your probability of success will be, so that you can commit to working in that environment... which is no easy task.

After you have chosen the right environment you want to search for ways to improve the probability of being successful and execute them. More often than not the simplest way to improve the probability of a successful outcome is just to increase the number of attempts. But similarly, there are often ways to decrease the total number of attempts needed to be successful- basically influence your environment in a way that is favorable to you.

And of course the last piece of the puzzle is to figure out ways to increase the narrative value when you are successful. Being perceived as being lucky is a powerful attribute and can help you improve your "luck" for future opportunities.

Hundreds of millions of lives saved...

When looking back at Dr. Howard Florey, his search through back issues of the Journal of Experimental Pathology was effectively his way of choosing the environment he wanted to work in. He was beginning in a place that already had some level of success and he knew he could increase the chances of success by starting with something that was already somewhat successful. The work of Alexander Fleming wasn't just a starting place- it reduced the total number of attempts it would take to be successful... all Florey had to do was put the work in and there was a good chance that luck would find him. The final piece of the puzzle was that Florey was choosing to work on something that had an outsized payout or impact.

...If you want it distilled, here's your recipe for improving your luck:

Select what you work on carefully.
Make sure that you can be successful and that the payouts are outsized.
Try to find ways to reduce what it takes to be successful.
Be focused and work hard.

Why aren't developers paid more?

2020-07-11T00:00:00Z

Over the last few years I've randomly run into articles and/or posts (example, example, example, example, and others) that assert definitively that software developers/ engineers are paid too much for the work that they do. The "TLDR;" is that the jobs are considerably easier than many technical jobs (Doctor, Electrical Engineer, Lawyer, etc), and often so is the training, so it seems almost unfair that software engineers are paid the way they are. Especially considering that many software jobs are working on seemingly trivial details such as optimizing buttons or forms.

In general, I've held conflicting opinions about this thesis. On the one hand if you're getting paid $250K/year to update the css for a button yeah maybe the pay is a little high (seriously though who leverages their people that way?)... but on the other hand some software engineers are up there with the greatest minds on the planet right now and they probably aren't capturing a fair amount of the value they are generating for the businesses that they are working for.

The latter point of the two made me wonder:

What if developers are actually underpaid?

While it may seem a little odd to question if individuals making 2X-8X the average US salary are being underpaid I think there's actually a reasonable argument to be made. For starters, there tend to be lots of theories around developer pay that focus on labor market efficiency (danluu identifies a number of theories in "Is dev compensation bimodal").

Aspects such as: the limited supply of developers or increased demand as the technology sector continues to grow (i.e. "software is eating the world"). Another theory is that software engineering salaries can be high because certain individuals are actually just more productive (i.e. the mythical "10X developer"). This situation creates an "anchoring" effect to these over-productive individuals which raises salaries as companies fight for talent ( dev salaries are bimodal comes from). There is yet another theory that Software Companies are just worth more and so the people that know how to build them are therefore worth more.

Personally, I find many of these theories can provide some explanation, but I think the macro economic environment is a better explanation.

The US loves Venture Capital

Over the last 30 years the number and size of US Venture Capital investments has increased dramatically. In 1991 $3.4 billion in venture capital was invested by US venture funds (ref: SBA Trends in Venture Capital Funding ~1997)... in 2019 there was $136.5 Billion invested. Put another way: "there's a shit load of money in the system"

[Note: I am very aware that not all companies are Venture Capital backed. I am focusing on Venture Capital backed companies because they are the "rising tide that lifts all boats"... meaning other companies have to compete with VC backed companies for the same employee talent pool. If you want a pretty solid explanation on how Venture Capital works read this article]

The reason that there is a shit load of money in the system is because technology companies, and more specifically, software companies have had great return on investment for the last 30 years. Sorry did I say great? I meant mind-blowing returns (example). How do they get returns like that?

Simple. They only invest in high-growth, high-return businesses (like software).

To restate- there's more venture money than ever being invested in (software) companies, with the sole condition that they grow like crazy or die (e.g. the Gumroad story is very illuminating). This state of affairs has influenced the developer labor market by raising developer salaries for those with experience and consequently making it more difficult to break into the industry which furthers the developer "shortage".

... but is there method to the madness?

Let's say you're a founder (software) and per your deal with the VC you have to grow fast. To do that you have to build your product fast, which means you need experienced people to build it (because you don't have time to train new people). You go out and recruit looking for talented engineers, but everyone already has a job. Not just that, but they all have good jobs because this VC cash has been flying around for 30 years already. So you finally find someone, and they say they're only willing to come over to a high-risk startup for an extra $30K above market comp for their skill level. Well you look at your situation, you have tons of money but no time... your answer is almost certainly: "fuck it... hire them."

...And this is the state of the industry.

Hell, only ~25% of US STEM graduates even work in STEM jobs (link) - no doubt at least a few of them would be smart enough to be retrained to do software engineering.

Here's the thing though, we don't need more STEM people or more programmers... we need more EXPERIENCED programmers because our industry doesn't have time to train new people. So long as there are enough over-sized returns going back to venture capitalists, software developer salaries should continue to go up.

To some extent developer salaries are influenced by the fact that:

We don't have enough experienced people building software to meet the demand
Software is eating the world and/or more software is still needed to be built
Experienced engineers are actually more productive than people manually doing it or multiple junior engineers
Software companies are worth more (and they return more)

... but as true as these points are, $140 billion is being spent basically telling founders to ignore the "rounding error" on compensation when hiring an engineer and get building your business.

Which brings me back to my main point...

Assuming you don't completely disagree with the aforementioned state of the industry (I totally get it if you don't agree).

Venture Capitalists need software companies to get their returns.
Software companies aren't software companies without software
You can't have software with out software engineers.

So are software engineers being underpaid?

Yes, or maybe.

Venture capitalist returns have been fairly consistent and Software Company founders have enjoyed an asymmetric risk/reward payout when they succeed... it feels like labor is missing out on their chunk of the pie when considering their leverage and the actual work being performed.

Now, I totally get that there is a labor market and that the returns for an individual startup could be hard to predict... but I think we also need to be realistic that many of these businesses are simple conversions of analog businesses into digital businesses. It is reasonable to believe that the market could actually bare higher developer salaries as a whole if employers thought that they were receiving adequate value for their money. And if the market can tolerate it why then wouldn't we expect the labor market to react in turn?

I'll start by saying I don't know the answer (not to mention that would be a whole other article on its own), but my guess is that the labor market is just inefficient - which is something that software engineers could possibly take advantage of. I think we all know (anecdotally) the industry is really bad at evaluating developer productivity (the way project estimation is conducted should be all the evidence that you need). The industry is also really (really) bad at interviewing and evaluating talent opportunities. Things could be confounded further because engineering culture doesn't value soft skills (such as negotiation) nearly as much as technical skills. This arguably causes engineers to "leave money on the table"... by not maximizing their compensation opportunity.

Larger Trends

The last thing I want to add is that VC related macro economic trends probably aren't the only thing making us FEEL like engineering compensation is a bit high. A missing asterisk with all these discussions is that US hasn't seen any noticeable wage growth for what, 4 decades? Compare that to a 75% increase in entry level wages at the larger tech firms over the last ten years (~$80K in 2010 to ~$140K in 2020)... yea things are going to feel a little off. If wages across the country were up 40% like we experienced between 1947 and 1960 I feel like the narrative would be different. Other historical periods that compare well to the "information age" saw wages grow considerably (the industrial revolution, post-plague Europe, post-WW2, etc.), so why is this transformational period different? I don't know but we certainly are feeling it more.

Closing

Obviously this is an essay not a research study, but if you are going to take anything from this:

I think it's reasonable to assert software engineers are actually commanding reasonable wages that probably seem inflated more than they actually are inflated. Similarly, I would guess that the industry could benefit from building a better understanding of developer productivity/ how to train engineers rather than just throwing money at the problem... which would probably benefit a lot of engineers too. Chances are they are probably worth more money than they are currently being paid but have no way to know it.

A Better Way to Hire People

2019-08-27T00:00:00Z

Preface (2021)

Over the last few years I've come to realize that like most other things in life hiring or recruiting excellence is more readily achieved if you play the long game. Meaning, you should try to be strategic- aka proactive rather than reactive. Don't look to make a hire when you need someone, look before you need someone. Don't interview someone for 3 hours to decide if they are a good fit, get to know them progressively over years, and know with confidence that they are the best person for the role. Don't try to build good interview questions, try to build an amazing network. (and so on...)

Though I allude to the concept of the "long game" at different points in the original article, it has become glaringly obvious to me that you should only use a "normal" hiring practice as a last resort. My suggested improvements still work within the existing framework- a framework that is deeply flawed and does not provide either reproducable results or excellence. My naiveté was thinking that my article could help companies or managers make an incremental improvement to their hiring processes. I now believe we should just burn the whole thing down. My suggested improvements are nothing more than lipstick on a pig.

With all that said, I have decided to leave the article up, both for posterity and because sometimes you are in a situation where you can't play the long game. Maybe there is someone out there who it will benefit.

A Better Way to Hire People (2019)

Are you the sort of person that likes getting married after 3 dates?

Perfect! Then standard corporate hiring practices are for you.

However, if you are not the type of person that likes making huge life-altering decisions on a whim (with very little knowledge about that decision)... might I propose a different solution?

I think the way we hire people is backwards.

... well sort of at least. There are two ways that people get hired: 1) they hire people that they know, or 2) They do this wonkey interview process where different people in a company try to guess if you are as good as you say you are at what you do.

It's the second one that doesn't make any sense to me.

When you hire people you don't know it usually looks like this:

Phone Screen with HR
Talk to someone that will/ could work with the candidate
[For technical positions] Some sort of a example/puzzle/game type thing related to technical skills (Chefs cook omelets, Sales people make cold calls, Coders do little coding problems)
A conversation with someone (A "Big Boss") that signs checks

... it probably feels eerily familiar. But you're probably wondering why this is backwards? Here are some observations:

At no point in this process do you actually see what the person is like to work with. They never do any work!
When you do 2 to 4 interviews for 1 hour each you are only spending 2 to 4 hours with the person, and a similar observation... the person only has to be able to fool you for 2 to 4 hours!
This process favors people that are good at interviewing over people that are good at working. In some professions that might be similar to what they will be doing for work... but in other professions it couldn't be a more different skill set.
It discourages "taking a chance" on individuals that have the potential to be really amazing. You are forced to filter out candidates that could have tremendous upside due to "red flags".

How to hire better (in the real world):

Step 1: Build a "Score Card" for your ideal candidate. Know what you want before you begin the process and make sure any questions you ask will help predict future success. Make sure any questions you ask are the same for all candidates. You are looking for ways to predict success, and changes by the interviewer candidate to candidate will make it more difficult to predict. (Note: Always filter out jerks as soon as possible)

Step 2: Use resumes, references, and phone screens to filter down to candidates that you could actually want to hire if everything is as good as advertised. Feel free to do this in 2 steps (yes... more like traditional interviews) but if you are doing it in two steps create overlap on questions that are being asked to see if the candidate is consistent and to make sure your interviewer is consistent.

Techniques:

Before the phone screen/ interview send an email that provides an agenda and let them know what they can expect from any discussion.
When giving the screen/ interview use this phrase to elicit a more forthright response: "When I call your supervisor from {previous position} what will they tell me about what it was like to work with you."
Ask for as many references as a person is willing to provide. Call all of them. Look for indirect references that you might be able to call to learn more as well... this comes in 2 forms: People they might have intentionally left off (a supervisor etc) or people you might know that know the candidate that could inform you honestly about the individual.
Remember the impression you give them is incredibly important. Always treat candidates with respect. People talk and you do not want your company's reputation hurt by conducting a bad interview.

Step 3: Actually do work with the person. Hire the individual(s) for a 1 or 2 month long contract. Structure the contract as follows:

Write down your expectations beforehand and what you hope to get accomplished. This will be the candidate's grade/ hiring criteria. Be open with the candidate about this.
Pay them well. Really Well. Even if you don't hire them, they should feel as though it were a good experience.
Set up the contract so that they are working in longer chunks of time (5+ hours) on real work with you. Unfortunately for you, this will probably occur on their off day. Don't make it every Saturday or Sunday throughout the time period (they are giving you precious time) or else you're both going to be unhappy.
(Note: don't be afraid to cut the contract early if they aren't meeting your expectations. I also recommend starting on work that is non-critical for your company, but moving towards real production assignments)

Step 3: At the end of the contract evaluate what you have learned about the candidate against the scorecard and make a decision on whether or not you want to hire them. You now know what you are both in for and that makes decisions a lot easier.

Step 4: Make sure you are playing the long game. By the end of this process you have invested a ton of money and time into a candidate. Do not just discard candidates if they don't fit right now, and try to make your job of hiring easier down the line by building resources you can use later.

Techniques:

If they need more experience or don't have the hard skills right now buy them books or recommend online classes. $50-$100 now and waiting 3-4 months could save you $30K on trying to recruit someone in the future. It will also create a positive reputation for your company.
Ask them and add your candidates that don't fit right now to a pre-screened pool of applicants for future jobs that might fit them better. Start with this list when you are looking at a new position. If they are currently happy ask them for referrals.

Other Notes

If you have the ability build a corporate alumni for your company. Host events, send out a quarterly newsletter letting everyone know whats going on with other alumni, and provide a directory to help everyone network. Use this network for recruiting... it will save you SOOOOOO much money.

How this works?

This technique is designed to build trust and a relationship slowly between both parties. It's designed to know what you are getting as opposed to guessing.

Multiple hours > a few hours
Actually Doing work with someone > Looking at proxies about how they work
Waiting to hire > hiring quickly

Best of all? You can both make mistakes, while still seeing if the person is a good fit.

Of course your process won't be exactly like this... but by virtue of removing the bad things from your hiring process you will have improved the quality of your results. Is this process perfect? Nope... we're just looking at better.

Changelog

2021-06-15: Updated long game/ short game
2020-10-20: Improved phone screen process, documentation utilization. Added corporate alumni concept.

Big Questions Right Now

2019-04-01T00:00:00Z

It is better to have some of the questions rather than all of the answers

Here are some questions that I've been pondering related to income inequality, prices, and modernity in the U.S.

Why has the price of a college degree skyrocketed in the last 30 years, and yet tenured professors don't get paid any more than they used to?
Why do we want people to own homes so badly? Why are mortgagues are federally backed, and mortgage interest to be tax deductible still?
Why is income always stratified into lower, middle, and upper class without talking about velocity, or class movement?
Why are our doctors in this country paid more than every other country and yet if you ask them they feel like they work longer hours for less money than comparable earners in our society (Investment Bankers, Lawyers, etc)?
Why does an X-ray cost about 1/15th of the price of an used X-ray machine? Similarly MRIs can cost ~$150,000 used and an MRI scan costs $3,000.
Why are there almost as many homes sold as their are realtors in California?
Why is life expectancy going down in the developed world?
Why do we have to pay for published papers twice (once in taxes, second from the publisher)
Why do we have to go through intuit (or similar) to file our taxes online?
Why are more than half of software developers from computer science backgrounds despite 1) computer science not being explicitly a coding degree, and 2) learning software development is free online and easily available.
Why does it cost $1 billion dollars to develop a drug?
Why did the Ford Model T have the same fuel economy as the "average vehicle" for the Big 3 auto manufacturers in 2010?
Why have half of the conservative presidents in the modern era been film/ television stars before becoming politicians?
Why will people stand to pay $60 for a tablet of Tylenol during an emergency room visit? Why will insurance companies pay prices like that?
Why is the cost of some surgeries equal to the price of a doctor's degree?

How To Improve Public Schools

2019-01-27T00:00:00Z

In between the years of 1991 and 2003, I went through the public school system in the United States. It was an atrocious, frustrating, failure of an experience for myself and has caused me to spend a decent amount of time thinking about "the system." Here are some of my thoughts for strategies that might help fix U.S. public schools. I believe these fixes if instituted correctly would lead to happier, creative, more productive and more responsible adults.

I will add to this that I don't believe that there are any "cure-alls" or "silver bullets" for the US school system. It is a complex system, perhaps intentionally, but complexity is the one failure that makes it really hard to fix the rest of its other systemic issues. A move in a positive direction, like many of our issues in this country, would be simply to reduce the amount of complexity we have to fight just to get basic things done. Aside from that though there are some changes that I think could do some immediate good:

Sleep, Physical Fitness, Healthy Eating

In the news recently have been some studies showing the dramatic effects that allowing kids to sleep-in has on their performance at school. I myself wonder why the hell it took everyone so long to figure this out. Kids are still growing thus they need more sleep, more food, and better food. Giving them an adult schedule and feeding them like irresponsible adults doesn't earn points in my book for great strategies, but it does win the award for easiest failure to make. It's easily the quickest high impact fix, that no one wants to make. Why? because it's probably the only thing in the school system that could actually be fixed with money.

Leverage Technology correctly

Generally when lay people talk about "bringing technology into the classroom" they mean one of a few limited things: Content that is primarily on a TV or internet, Giving kids some sort of physical device, Teaching programming, corporate apps that promise 10X improvements for efficiency... these things are all fine and good but the won't really help anything, and they're almost certainly guaranteed to cost a ton of money.

The reality is that the best way to use technology for positive improvements are incredibly simple things:

Making it easier for teachers to collaborate (think like Github for teachers)
Provide faster feedback loops in between Students, Parents, and Teachers. (literally can be as simple as google sheets)
Improve data collection making it easier to improve the curriculum.
Improve the availability of teaching materials for teachers or schools may have gaps (think MOOCs / Udemy for rural students).
Improve teacher training using online resources (MOOCs / Udemy)

It takes a village, and parents make the difference

The big difference between children that do well in school is generally the parents. Teachers, Genes, School system, friends... yea they matter, but nowhere nearly as much as a hardworking, focused individual with vested interest helping out for 2-3 hours a day. In fact, one of the most frustrating things in looking at the broken system is that no one recognizes that it's really the parents that are doing the hard work. Teachers teach for 6 hours then (if the child is lucky), then they go home and are taught by their parents for another 2-3 hours. They call it "homework", but it isn't... its the parent's lesson plan.

Having parents teach their kids isn't bad. It's awesome. In fact, we need more of it... and the results would be fantastic. Furthermore, you can extend this concept by involving more family, neighbors, and/or small connected groups. Creating vested communities that take pride in educating children.

Career, Guild, or Cult?

Teachers are unionized, but they are actually more than that. They are an entirely separate culture that policy creators fail to recognize. We hear a lot about how teachers are underpaid. We don't hear a lot about why highly educated people (masters requirement) CHOOSE to go into a profession where they are underpaid. Think about that for a second... why would someone choose to work a job that is very demanding, that comes with a low salary, and requires a relatively high education level? It's a job for passionate people, but there is also a naiveté there. This is part of the reason why the Gates study failed so dramatically. Attempting to motivate people with things they don't care about isn't a particularly useful strategy.

Perhaps, we shouldn't invite insist on a walled garden of passionate people, and perhaps make it more like a normal job. Easy fix on this one is to:

Get rid of pensions (which by the way, anyone who says teacher's total compensation is low needs to learn about their pensions)
Pay teachers appropriately for their skill level. (and without a pension)
Allow qualified, normal people, that do not come from "teaching backgrounds" to be teachers. I.E. Hire good quality people that can teach and not just "teachers"
Use tenure only as it was designed - to protect researchers and lecturers from negative backlash for voicing unpopular (but often true) academic perspectives. Primary school educators generally do not need these protections - though they should be afforded some leeway since parents are notoriously opinionated.

I believe the effect of having the weird pension system leaves a bunch of disenchanted, passionate people in a position where they are just waiting to get out. They think of it as a tour of duty they need to put up with until their number is called. In other professions, when your performance drops, or you don't like your job anymore you leave. This is not the case for teachers. Allowing new people into the system will also create a new infusion of ideas and passion. Revolving doors are Bad, but so are stagnant workplaces.

Schools are not Hierarchical Corporations/ Factories (or Prisons)

American's love their giant hierarchical institutions... we as a country are absolutely obsessed with them. Normal Americans want to go to school at the Harvard's, Stanford's, or University of Texas' of the world They want to work for the Google's, Goldman Sachs, and Deloitte's. And while no one wants to eat at a McDonalds... Americans all would like to be CEO of McDonald's.

We fashion our school systems from the same cloth... its as though schools are supposed to be some sort of factory for injecting information into kids. Inside this concept is a fallacy though... In the same way that not everyone wants to work for Google... not everyone learns best in a big building with a lot of other people around. The assertion that there is only one way is wrong...

We should be providing ourselves with options for the environment. And yes I know that there's Sudbury schools, private schools, Montessori schools, and so on... but these have not been normalized NOR have they been, probably, more importantly, Subsidized. No silver bullets, just good old fashion competition, and options for the people involved. Give parents/kids a choice in the environment they put their kids in and make sure their tax dollars go towards environments that they want to be a part of.

Math isn't Math

Probably my most subjective argument on this list, but we don't seem to be making good use of the actual academic research regarding how people learn. Math is my prime example.

The math education for our standard subjects (geometry, algebra, calculus) from over a hundred years ago looks incredibly similar to the way that we teach it today. It's a rote style of teaching that by-in-large focuses on memorization, and the permutation of those items memorized. ZERO real-world application, ZERO stories (Humans are hardwired for these btw), ZERO history, and no attempts to infuse any creativity or novel synthesis. (Every seen a kid write a math report? or build a math project?)

This form of education confuses students because they confuse perseverance for talent... or worse, confusing perseverance for interest (often it is not even their perseverance, it's their parents). The biggest issue though is that human beings don't learn particularly well by beating formulas into their head. So far as we can tell its actually the worst way to teach. It isn't just math though, this style of teaching spans across many subjects. Our schools would benefit from teaching in a way that 1) increases subject and concept connectivity 2) Infuses application, varying real-world examples, and student teaching 3) requires novel contributions to the subject 4) Increases performance feedback loops 5) uses actual research for improving our teaching practices (we basically fly blind right now)

Build modern subjects

In the United States, our curricula is based on a curriculum that was standardized roughly a hundred years ago. As an example, they've finally removed cursive, which was still standard material in the schools up until circa 4 years ago. Cursive aside, there are all sorts of artifacts that exist in our curricula. Strictly speaking, educational artifacts aren't a problem, they are a problem because the world has changed significantly and we are doing a disservice to not prepare students for the world that they will exist in 10-15 years from now.

Programming is an easy example, but there are many forms of digital fluency all of which are desperately needed right now... as well as an understanding of key technological improvements that have impacted all industries (manufacturing, transportation, etc). A modern approach to ethics is certainly something we should be teaching. Basic primers in things that have been automated would also be useful - easy example: legal drafting, which is almost entirely online now.

Far and away the simplest modernization to high school curricula would be swapping Calculus for statistics since stats is certainly more relevant to everyday life.

Grow apprenticeship programs and other formats.

Along the lines of changing curricula, we also need to acknowledge that much of the work/everyday life in the future will be considerably more "niche" than it exists as we know it today (due to automation). Therefore, providing alternative formats for secondary education (late high school) such as apprenticeship programs, independent studies, and immersion programs should all be looked at as useful tools in education to expose young adults to different paradigms of learning.

This also coincides with previously mentioned items such as it takes a village, building modern subjects, providing teachers that aren't "teachers", and making school not seem like a factory or a prison.

Erudition in the Grey Area of Adulthood

2019-01-01T00:00:00Z

One of the more beautiful aspects (and under-appreciated) about becoming an adult is that "the gray areas" in life become more pronounced. The moral high grounds of innocence recede to leave in there wake all of the most tangible and real aspects of being a person. It's beautiful in a sense because people's choices have real implications. We are defined by our choices, and typically as an adult, the choices aren't clear cut... and will almost always have unintended consequences. As we become older we attempt to consider these consequences to a greater degree - ultimately it is the root of wisdom.

But as I've grown older I am looking at "the gray area" with new eyes. I've begun to realize that many adults attempt to be consistent in our thoughts and actions and to achieve this we avoid "the gray area" which is really a shame... I've come to discover that much of the "real work" gets done in contradictions.

Some contradictions are blatant. So blatant in fact that we don't even think about them. The simple example in the US is our government. Democracy, Capitalism, Freedom, etc... all carry asterisks. Our Democracy isn't a Democracy because an individual's vote gets filtered and mutated through a medium/ representative, except perhaps at the neighborhood level. Capitalism in the US is actually socialism by all definitions... but we just can't seem to willingly use the word- it is "un-American." Regarding "Freedom" ... I've never had a good party where the cops didn't shut it down - Peaceful assembly seems to not apply to adults enjoying each other's company with music, drinks, and food. We may have "freedom" but we aren't free.

Another stark example, typically, is management. Good managers attempt to be your friend at the same time as being your boss. They have to say one thing and do another. They have the power to fire you but can get little done if that leverage is commonly utilized. Firm managers can get more done, but people work harder for people they like - it's as if you have to like them for them doing things that you are not supposed to like.

As I've been thinking about this phenomenon, I've recently read or watched some of my heroes (artists in this case), talk about their need to contradict themselves and to attempt to express it. It's refreshing, and terrible all at the same time.

For these artists who I admire, they are victims of the chains they built themselves. In one form or another, they defined themselves by ideals that couldn't work over the long term... or by "pure art" (without commercial interest)... or in some cases believing that their youth would last forever. Hell Keith Richards just did an interview saying he's cut down on his drinking.

...From a fan's vantage, it is hard to understand how they could betray their principles. Whether it be the punk rocker that ended up selling out just to get basic comforts like being able to pay rent or the activist that realized they will never get anywhere by being immovable. But the vantage of "an adult"... it is almost a sigh of relief. To change is to be human, and that period of time where they lived on principle or for things greater than themselves is remarkable and useful to all of us. Debatably, we would never have gotten the gifts that the artists/ activist / etc without their period of "immutability." In a way, it was their beliefs that made it happen. Their dismissal of reality however brief, turned out to be a blessing for all of us.

Naturally, it's terrible too- when after the fact these people are trying to rationalize unsustainable behavior publicly. Looking for some intellectual sanctuary other than confronting the fact that they were wrong, and that they had to change or else they would be destroyed (metaphorically).

Contradiction isn't just about human change or large organizations though. Decision making in the context of complexity often requires contradiction. Wisdom dictates that at a certain point decisions cease to be uni-dimensional... at a certain point all decisions are mostly trade-offs since easy decisions can be made without much consideration... and because of this fact, there is a lot of nuance in these sorts of decisions.

So what is there to take away from all of this? To be honest, I'm not 100% sure.

It seems fairly obvious that there is a lot that can be accomplished by being inconsistent, at certain times purposely going against the state of the norm for whatever is in question... and by extension, I think there is a virtue in being able to make hard contradictory decisions at times. But these truths are pretty vanilla. Does contradiction say more about our interactions in systems of complexity? Yes, but this is also a pretty vanilla truth. There isn't a ton of wisdom to be gained there.

If anything I would probably come back around and admire the ability of one to contradict one's self (or ones projected identity) in the context of the human experience... It seems incredibly human/ humanist, and there is something wonderfully pleasing about it since adults continually attempt to make themselves progressively more consistent. It obviously isn't virtuous or any such nonsense... but it is beautifully human... which is where I would surrender. Some of us are wonderful creatures.

Wedding Hacks

2018-07-04T00:00:00Z

Some Tricks And Tips for Those of You Tying the Knot.

IMPORTANT: If you remember nothing else: "the quality of the marriage is inversely proportional to the money spent on the wedding"

Do some cocktail napkin math before you decide to go all in on a wedding, a quick ceremony, a trip to the bar with friends, and then an amazing vacation might be more of what you want to do.
For the invitee list: Make sure that you get a couple of people that ignite parties on there… A wedding is a ritualized party. Some people are better at partying than others. People that make for a good time ARE MORE IMPORTANT to your event (the thing your will remember for the rest of your lives) than relatives you see once a year or less.
Buy her white canvas all-stars for the reception. Whatever $1000 dollar shoes she’s wearing will more than likely not be broken in yet.
The table settings are literally the least important thing you will ever spend time on in your life.
Take a second for just the two of you in between the ceremony and the reception if you can (schedule this). Do whatever you want with that time ;)
Craigslist has a whole sub culture of cheap 2nd hand stuff you can get for your wedding.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Practice over-smiling cause the day of you will smile more than you ever have in your life, which will literally hurt the next day if you don’t actively practice smiling a lot (not joking).
Be prepared to answer these questions frequently in an interesting or different manner:
- “Are you excited?”
- “so when are you going to have kids?”
- “so whats next”
… you will be asked them a lot, and if you don’t have fun answers, the questions will actually start to annoy you which can create a small amount of tension with loved ones.
The cheapest flasks are Coleman, and can be found at target for $7. Buy at least 3-5 of these and fill them up with things you can drink straight. Assign a flask to each of your wedding party, and make them responsible for having the liquid disappear.
For the Photographer + band etc… Use Escrow.com. Otherwise they might ruin your night by making you run all over asking people for checks or to go find your checkbook. Or even have to worry about it on your honeymoon. As long as the money is there its easy.
Plan your activities on the honey moon. This falls on the husband.
On your gift registry: good set of knives, good set of pots and pans. If you have friends that you know don’t have a lot of money, assign special gifts to them that take a lot of time, but not a lot of money. IE. Taking funny photos with disposable cameras printing them and get the prints, etc
Budget out and contract specific times to socialize with your friends. This is a really big deal. Try and knock out family stuff before your friends show up.
Do your thank you cards when you send out your invitations… makes your life soooo much easier. Yes this is less personal, and you’ll have to make adjustments, but life quality goes up so do it anyway.

The Occassional Irony of Opportunity

2018-04-08T00:00:00Z

Quick story. A friend comes to me with a problem. The problem is this:

A student that comes from a semi-wealthy family is choosing to skip college because they think its unfair that they should be allowed to go to college (Mom and Dad are paying), when this student's friends cannot afford to go to college.

The student is basically feeling a level of guilt about their privilege- Which in a sense I understand. There is something to making your way in the world... particularly in the United States, where our rugged individualism can cause us to circumvent (normally) good choices.

And on the other hand- I'm not exactly blown away by the value proposition with the United States Higher Education system/ job market. We are effectively requiring a human to have $50K+ in debt to get a job because our k-12 education wouldn't even meet minimums in the 3rd world.

But that's not really the point in this particular situation. This student has an opportunity: to go to a good school for free, because mom and dad have the resources to send them... and they are interested in passing that up, because they didn't earn it themselves (and their peers can't afford it).

Frankly, I don't give a shit about the kid's feelings... we need more hardworking EDUCATED people not less.

The real tragedy is that the kid has to feel like this at all. That our education system, culture, etc are sooooooooo fucked up that a college degree is like this upper middle class thing. WTF???

So kid take mom and dad's money. The world of the future will be fucked up enough that your college degree still won't mean that much. But at least they won't spend that money on a boat or a big screen tv or something... and we (the people out in the rest of the world) will have at least one more educated human among us.

In regards to your friends- tell them to start with the bootstraps. Hustle trumps education every time. (they don't teach that in college).

How To Get Divorced Properly

2018-04-06T00:00:00Z

I just got through the bulk of the marriage zone (ages 27-32) and (not as though I want this but) realistically there are probably going to be a couple of divorces coming up.

All things considered there is a proper way to get divorced and a wrong way. The proper way is respectful to the people involved, the families, and the children (if there are any). The wrong way is a disgusting mess making the world a worse place both now and in the future.

Before I dig in just want to mention this:

Women ... stay the fuck off of social media. I have correctly called 4 divorces based on how women act on Facebook. Whether you know it or not, social media will exacerbate all of the bad things related to divorce.

When to get divorced:

Your spouse is having sex with other people
Your spouse hasn't had sex with you for a really long time (varies person to person)... this indicates that they are having sex with other people, or that they are really depressed.
You are the king of England and you are sick of killing your wives that won't produce male offspring.
When your spouse is getting you into extremely unmanageable debt, or there is excess of money but your spouse spends all of it.
When your spouse hasn't worked in a really long time, and they aren't retired or wealthy (homemaker can be considered a job in my book)
When your spouse continues to use Cocaine, Heroine, Methamphetamines, despite many attempts at helping them with their chemical dependencies
[there's rules about alcohol but they are too complex...]
If your spouse physically harms your children... or actually, any children.

When to not get divorced:

During major life changes (change of jobs, birth of a child, death of a family member, illness)
Your spouse is the dictator of a 3rd world country.
Your spouse doesn't have enough sex with you... or you have become bored with the sex that you have => step up your sex-game/ quit being suburban and you'll be fine
Anything related to the word happy => remember biologically you are supposed to not be happy. "Content homoerectus, became dead homoerectus". (every time I hear people say they are doing something do become happy, I puke in my mouth a little bit)

So if you've read this and you are still planning on getting divorced here is how to do it... and how not to do it.

How to properly divorce:

Make a decision. A firm decision and have a high-level plan. Once you decide, take the person to a calming public place DURING THE DAY, and tell them. No mind altering substances (alcohol, marijuana, etc). period. Talk roughly through the plan.
Next Immediately, take a video of your residence with everything in it and send that to the person. Take Screen-shots of all bank accounts and financials. You are creating evidence of all shared assets... share these with the spouse.

The next steps of the process are really specific to the people involved, but I'm going to suggest somethings that will make the process easier. Try as hard as you can to be considerate of the other person... you didn't start off wanting to get divorced and neither did they.

For both people it is really important emotionally not to continue to live in the same physical environment.***** Though it is usually not possible, try to relocate yourself into a different physical environment until the divorce concludes. In the very least, re-arrange your furniture and your living space. There's a bunch of science behind this but the short is that it will be much easier on your emotions and help you with the transition.
Decide on a date to have the mutual assets split up. This date must be a hard date. If the mutual assets aren't split up (including things of high emotional value), have an arbiter sell them and give the money evenly. Yes, it sucks, but it sucks a lot less than dragging out a divorce for 5 years while you squabble over a couch or something.
[This is a hard rule] Don't see any other people, or date or anything until 6 months after the divorce concludes or you have lived in separate geographic locations for a year. You are a castrated monk for this time period. Focus on making money to pay for your divorce, and taking care of the emotions of the people around you. If you NEED to have sex... fly to Vegas and purchase your sex.

A divorce in many ways is actually very similar to the way you should handle the death of a spouse... if you immediately start fucking the neighbor after your spouse dies other people are going to think that you are a piece of shit... because you are.

Exercise is now your best friend. You will need every single one of those endorphins and all the energy that you can get. If you get sad... go exercise. If you get angry... go exercise. If you feel like you are exercising too much... go exercise.
(Later) When you do start dating again the first couple of people should be people that you could have never met during your married life... I would also recommend to try dating someone that would be out of your sphere of influence- it makes it more fun.
I don't know a lot about kids, but kids are people, so I assume the following to be true: they don't like being lied to, they don't like fighting or violence at their house, they don't like seeing people cheat on other people
Write out positive things about your new life... look at them frequently.
Divorces are expensive... do everything you can to limit the amount of money it costs. Avoid lawyers... you can get standard divorce paperwork online, and use mediators or arbiters cause they are cheaper.
Get out as fast as possible.

Code Review Template

2018-04-06T00:00:00Z

This template is designed to help create a better process surrounding your code review. Every company/project is different so don't take this as God's word... it's just meant to help

Git Repository: ____

Pull Request Number: ____

Code Author: ____

Code Reviewer: ____

Pull Request Type: ____

An overall score for this review: ____

Functional

Upon testing, does the code work? Does it accomplish what was intended?

Process

Was the proper process followed for creating this pull request?

Coding Standards

Clarity

Code should be coherent, logical, and require minimal explanation

Style

Code should follow the project's style guide for spacing, indentation, capitalization, etc.

Commenting

Code should be well commented and include doc blocks

Continuous Improvement

Boyscout Rule: If editing existing messy code, the code should be left in a better state than it was found

Architecture and Design

Single Responsibility

Functions and methods stand alone. Classes have a single responsibility.

Complexity

Methods should have a limited number of parameters or constants.

Efficiency

Code should be written with backend efficiency (algorithm choice, caching data, etc.) and frontend efficiency (optimized resources, minimal HTTP requests, etc.) in mind

Code Duplication

Avoid code duplication in favor of abstracting common functionality (Rule of 3)

Best Practices

Unit Tests

Depending on the changes, unit tests may not be required.

Missing or incomplete

Well written

Functional Tests

Depending on the changes, functional tests may not be required.

Missing or incomplete

Well Written

Documentation

Depending on the changes, documentation may not be required.

Missing or incomplete

Well written

Additional Notes

Burton Snowboards, the Anti-Apple

2015-04-15T00:00:00Z

One of the most disturbing aspects of design trends over the last decade or two is the cult of Apple, and the various sound bytes that they use to be able to convert people into their design aesthetic => my specific issue is with this hyperbolic “minimalism” mantra that they have been spoon feeding Americans for the better part of 20 years now.

Now its important to note I am not against “minimalism”, “simplification”, “usability”, or any of the other things that Apple likes to focus on with their products and marketing. In fact, I actually see them as very important design aesthetics and mantras. What I am against is the notion that minimalism is the sole design aesthetic, and that it is somehow the greater good thus a reason to build a dogma around it.

Minimalism should be in context. Where would we be without Picasso’s cubism or Cézanne beautiful use of color or Van Gogh’s deep detail that required careful consideration. It was only later in Pop-Art and Minimalism movements that we felt the need to reduce twice over as an “antithesis” for many of the busy and colorful artistic movements from before.

Thankfully, when I was reading Purple Cow it Came to me that one of my all time favorite companies, Burton Snowboards is actually an exact opposite to Apple inc. Here are some examples:

Major Features of Apple:

Minimalism
Plain high contrast colors
“easy to use”
User friendly
Design over Technology ( consistently a technology laggard technically by specifications)
Very few products
Larger than life CEO

Major Features of Burton:

Active Designs
Products that are harder to use => Snowboarding over skiing
Extremely colorful
Technology leads to design
Many products and varying features to each product line
CEO that prefers to be out snowboarding

Burton’s approach is pretty much the exact opposite to Apple but their brand and products are every bit as strong as Apples (they just function in a smaller marketplace). For Example, Burton is aggressive about creating the best technology where as Apple traditionally sells technology that is 20% slower, less powerful, and smaller in capacity than the existing marketplace. Burton is very “active” with their designs and they consistently out design their competition (competition that focuses on Minimalism). Additionally, they have tons of products- yes they primarily sell snowboards but you have many choices within the Burton environment.

I think there is a lot to what Burton is doing that other Companies could learn from, and I would urge people to consider their design Aesthetic in context.

Apple is great, but that doesn’t mean they are the only ones that can get it right.

Things That Have Almost Killed Me

2015-03-25T00:00:00Z

I’m celebrating my 30th birthday November 4th. I am completely flabbergasted that I have lived this long. So in honor of my 30th I’d like to put out to the world a list of things that could have killed me, or could have led to situations that could have killed me.

Fell off a cliff at a rock quarry into a foot and a half of water
Broke my back snowboarding (later broke my clavicle snowboarding)
Fist fight at our Christmas formal that Heavy B saved me from having a 1.75 bottle of Jack Daniels smashed through the back of my head.
Having a old guy crash through the window into our retail location with his car.
3 car accidents
1 near car accident because we were having a 6 person Nerf gun fight in a mini-van I was driving, but its okay because we won
Almost hit by a NYC subway
Food poisoning in Tianjin China.
Almost drowned surfing hurricane swell at Salt Creek (double overhead)
Guy at Johnny Brenda’s in Fishtown pulled his gun on us
Almost drowned by pod of dauphins
Hit a deer with a car in Minnesota
United almost crashing the plane on my way home to California (totally not kidding) last December
(New! 2023) Guy at a basketball game threatened me and my team mates with a gun, SWAT team was called in full blazing AR-15s and Shotguns. The guy slipped out the back door.
Not really life threatening but I feel like its worth mentioning I was almost Deported back to Canada (I have dual-citizenship)
Fell off a rooftop in Philadelphia

MC Hammer and the Art of Negotiation

2014-03-16T00:00:00Z

Clearly I have an avid fascination with weird celebrity business stories. One of my all time favorites is MC Hammer. This one is a quick read too…

MC Hammer is actually known best for his series of poor business decisions (example basically blowing all of his money keeping an large entourage 200+, and a touring staff of something like 50 dancers… the entertainment industry equivalent of magic beans), but at one point he had sold over 50 million records worldwide and was making up to $35 million a year. Credit where credit is due, Hammer was legitimately good at making money (alas, not saving it).

To me though the most interesting part of MC Hammer’s story was way in the beginning, long before his $15 million dollar house with a swimming pool built in the shape of trousers. Hammer got his start by convincing dance clubs to let him and his dancers perform songs from his records live in the club. Meaning they would go to a club, throw a song on and dance to it. The spectacle was such a big deal that everyone in the clubs would clammer to buy his records that day. He was literally selling records out of the trunk of his car. MC Hammer was selling a lot of them too…

Hammer knew that if he wanted to scale his business up though he would need to have access to a larger distribution channel. It’s important to note that the music industry at that point hadn’t yet been completely destroyed by technology (napster, itunes, bit torrents, etc) and they were pretty agile. It wasn’t too long before the music companies had heard about MC Hammer and sent reps to go try and make a deal. Standard practice at this point was to find the talent before anyone else did and have them sign off on contracts that were not in their favor. Basically, take advantage of naive artists before they knew any better and cash in on their success. The record labels were the ones that were going to make you famous though- for many people trading all their cash to be famous was worth it.

MC Hammer knew all of this. So when the first major labels came in to try and make a deal, he was prepared. They of course made a low offer thinking that they would clean up. Hammer refused the offer. The record labels were stunned… they had offered good money to sign Hammer and he said it wasn’t enough. [ Just for some scope… pretend someone came to you and offered you $750,000 (today’s dollars) for a 3 record deal… Most everyone would jump on that deal]

What the record labels failed to realize was that MC Hammer was selling a ridiculous amount of records out of the trunk of his car (estimated around 60,000). Basically he had already worked himself out of being a new artist to being a nice little cash cow, and the record labels were effectively insulting him with a really low offer. Capitol records later came back to the table with $1.5 million as an advance and a multi-record deal.

I basically use the MC Hammer negotiation method for almost all of my negotiations (I don’t call it that):

Be Prepared. Be so prepared that you know more about what the negotiation will look like than anyone else participating in it.
If possible make them come to you.
Use hard data. Hammer’s decision was entirely based off of his sales numbers. His negotiation reflected what he was really after was a larger market and to scale his business up… he didn’t need the money. Conversely the record companies were so used to using cash as their best negotiation tool they were caught off guard when Hammer’s negotiation didn’t reflect their normal procedures.
Be able to walk away from any deal.
Remember that terms are a huge part of any negotiation.
Don’t be afraid to ask for over the top things.
Negotiate to get what you want
If you find someone that can sell 60,000 records out of the back of their car. Hire that person

?uestlove and Better Time Management

2009-09-09T00:00:00Z

So I was reading this esquire article … and I stumbled onto a particularly good little nugget:

Mr. Ahmir Khalib Thompson (a.k.a. ?uestlove) believes that a human being can really only do 4 things a day (possibly as many as 6, but 4 is the reality).

As an example here is what was going on the day that he did that interview with esquire (the numbers were post quote):

Today I worked out.

I had to edit the book.

I’ve had rehearsals for the Prince show this week, too. Actually, I’m doing two books. The memoir [Mo' Meta Blues, out next month] and a coffee-table book on Soul Train.

the esquire interview, and the interview was taking place just before he played a gig at Brooklyn bowl (tickets sold out in 45 seconds).

So What? Who Cares?

In my limited experience on this planet I have come to realize that information from non-traditional sources can be a billion times more valuable,
I find this theory as a decent working model for time management.

In regard to information from non-traditional sources. Traditionally, if someone was concerned with “time management” what they might do is go to their bookstore or amazon and purchase the top-recommended or rate books about “time management.” Here are the flaws: 1) the books are written to make money. I won’t say that this immediately negates everything as being skewed by the almightily dollar, but it plays a factor. If you have a decision to make in a book and one option will tell the complete truth and the other option will tell enough truth but make more money, the “more money” option will always win.

Non-traditional sources don’t have the loaded agenda because it is not directly related to their livelihood. 2) Expert status in something doesn’t necessarily make you a competent teacher 3) Information on topics like as time-management are frequently commoditized (meaning they all use the same body of research, statistics, strategies, and talking points, though usually with a sight spin). This commoditization means that the people writing the books are really just re-writing rather than synthesizing information.

On the other hand, ?uestlove is the perfect source for information on time-management. The guy is outrageously busy. Over 200 music credits (albums, compilations, writing, arrangement, or production), over 60 television or movie credits not including the Jimmy Fallon show, The Roots are the house band for the Jimmy Fallon show, almost 50,000 Tweets, he teaches at NYU for FUN, has has collaborated with Nike on footwear, he is working on multiple books, organizes a music festival once a year in Philadelphia. Discography here, IMDB, His Twitter

So yea, he knows how to get the most out of his time. Which brings me to point number 2:

?uestlove’s theory of time management is a good functional theory for how to construct your day.

I have run it against my own goal tracking and task lists (I have kept very detailed tracking during certain periods of my career) and sure enough he’s right. 4 things that will have a major impact on your life is pretty hard to do all the way in one day. I may soon adapt it, but at the moment I am adopting it and see how it plays out.