Career
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Tuning Forks in Human Form
→: Tuning Forks in Human FormA few months ago three people told me I had been right about something. Obviously this brought me joy – I do love being right – but it was not all joy, because what I had been right about was bad news for them. I personally felt vindicated. But my friends were in a bad…
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The Attention Game
→: The Attention GameThere are many things that alarm me about the tech industry, but one of them is how much of it runs on ads, and therefore on attention. A business model of millions of users -> ??? -> Profit. And the answer to ??? is: sell them shit. There are two main themes that I think…
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How I Interview
→: How I InterviewI have interviewed a lot more people than I have myself done interviews. This is mostly because I am terrified of interviewing. But I also used to be extremely nervous to be the interviewer. It’s a lot of pressure to try and evaluate someone in 30-60 minutes, and it matters a lot to me to…
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NSConf: Jamie Newbury – Design Skills that Saved My Life
→: NSConf: Jamie Newbury – Design Skills that Saved My LifeMy notes from @jaimeejaimee‘s fantastic talk at @NSConf. We’re going to talk about burnout. Before graduated college was dishwasher, waitress, heavy equipment washer, pilot car driver, sign painter, production assistant, bank teller, park ranger, metal sculpture (that was degree). After graduated realised need to figure out what to do for a living. Decided to be…
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Honey, I Left the Tech Industry
→: Honey, I Left the Tech IndustryNearly a year ago I wrote The Day I Leave The Tech Industry. That’s not when I published it… I sat on it for months. I worried that I was revealing too much of myself, that I would put it out there and… crickets. That I would feel even more alone that I already did. That’s…
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Oredev: Alex Harms – Careful With Those People Skills
→: Oredev: Alex Harms – Careful With Those People SkillsMy notes from a talk Alex Harms gave at Oredev. People skills are seen as easy, we call them “soft skills”. Going to talk about the hardest things, as honestly as can. I don’t know any version of people skills that will make you not a colossal jerk. I am a colossal jerk, and I suspect that…
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#GHC14: Jo Miller – Office Politics
→: #GHC14: Jo Miller – Office PoliticsMy notes from Jo Miller’s Office Politics workshop at GHC. See also: her article on this topic. I thought this workshop was fascinating, I’m definitely one of those people who hates politics but as she outlines the strategy of the “Shadow Organisation Map” I found myself thinking that seemed totally doable! Come in new, one of the first things…
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Working for Free
→: Working for FreeMy strategy for painlessly saving a year of living costs: Have a well-paying corporate job. Live in a series of socialist countries. Neglect to file tax returns. File them all in a rush in the couple of months as you finalise your plans for leaving aforementioned corporate job. Cash the cheques as they arrive from various governments.…
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It’s Not an Asshole Problem—It’s a Bystander Problem
→: It’s Not an Asshole Problem—It’s a Bystander ProblemA man left an obnoxious comment in a professional document. A more senior man noticed the comment and replied, “<sigh>”, signifying—I think—that he had seen it, and that he didn’t think it was funny. But he didn’t actually address the comment being there, and so it remained there for me to discover several months later.…