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“Why don’t we also…?”
The extra step sounds simple enough. It’s two words. It’s high leverage. People think it’ll bring a ton more value to the process. And it will! Except, of course, if you can’t make that step happen. “Get published.” “Pitch publications.” “Meet influencers.” Even if there’s an opportunity to work together, things stall. At best, collaborations…
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6 types of posts for corporate engineering blogs
The majority of experienced developers who responded to this thread applied for a job or joined a company after learning more about it at a corporate engineering blog. u/improbablywronghere wrote, “Finding a blog post from a company is like you an interviewer at some company finding a public GitHub repo from a candidate.” Writing a…
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“It’ll just take 5 minutes”
It won’t, because clicking and typing isn’t the hard part or the long part. It’s the thought that comes before the clicking and typing. For example, say you have to reschedule a new event; you’ll look around for a new schedule and time in your calendar, write up an apology, consider if that person really…
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Simple technology and elbow grease
A little bit of personal beats a lot of personalization. I’d be willing to bet that a trained salesperson who built rapport with you will be more effective than an abandoned cart email, even though the latter is most scalable. A salesperson might take photos of the items you told them you liked, and send…
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Good is good enough
Doing something well is very different than doing something perfectly. In many cases, good is more than enough to get you started in the direction you want to go. If you need to do something perfectly in order to achieve your goal, your process isn’t tight enough yet. Something’s missing.
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Again, and again, and again
One of the simplest, and most challenging, ways to enlist luck on your side is to try again. I’m not saying to repeat yourself in exactly the same way, or to be nagging and annoying. I’m saying to give it another shot. Do another art show. Write another blog post. Send another email. In Twelve…
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Contentions: All publications go to purgatory
Insider recently broke the news that Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z’s) much-hyped publication Future will be shutting down. The news sounds surprising because it launched with such hype, and was even active in June: Head of a16z marketing and Outcast Agency co-founder Margit Wennmachers has said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not…
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Pay for information
I bought a lot of books in my 20s, and I wish I spent more money on learning. For example, I wish I gained more information through courses, paid for greater access to private groups (and gaining proximity), and went to more conferences. Asking to grab coffee with people is nice, but you really start…
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Exploring vs. exploiting
Specificity and focus are praised in our culture. For good reason, of course—in some cases, specificity helps us get to the finish line, and focus enables us to actually get things done. Sometimes we really are spread too thin, ineffectively juggling between several projects and subsequently making meaningful progress on none of them. Last year,…
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From implementation to strategy
The closer you can help a business get to where it wants to go, the more strategic your work. (Perhaps the most strategic work involves helping business leaders figure out what outcomes they’re trying to achieve with their businesses.) It adds more value to the business, which also means they’re willing to pay you more…