GCA10

For those of us who are semi-good at all three paths, our long-haul choices depend quite heavily on how the wider world either opens unexpected opportunities for us, or gradually chokes them off.

In my own (non-technical) case, I had a great 15-year run as a top-of-the-heap IC -- and then my outfit got bought by people whose business model had no use for what I did. Time to do something different, and with it being 2008, going independent felt a whole lot smarter than trying to find a new star-IC role in a scared industry.

Going independent was good for 7-8 years, but then my favorite partners at my favorite clients all got to the end of their roads. New faces; new visions, and the unappealing prospect of spending 3-4 years trying to revive a shrunken pool of business into something better.

A star-IC role opened up somewhere else, and it's been a great ride ever since.

It's the career equivalent of summers in Alaska; winters in the Caribbean. Sometimes the key to staying warm and happy is to be willing to move when the temperature changes.

Pixel phone user here. Very similar experience.

Peak coffee consumption (per capita/US): 1946

Peak cigarette consumption (per capita/US): 1963

Peak oil production (global): unknown, maybe 2020-2030

Peak Facebook: ??

That's an incomplete peer group, but I find it interesting that at some point, society does start to unplug from addictive substances. The tapering off is quite slow, though. Unclear whether heavy users cut back, or new generations just don't develop the habit as older ones die off

Dan Luu is right that public messaging -- and company-wide internal messaging -- tends to be bone simple and incomplete.

What's interesting is that the nuances don't completely fade out of site. They exist in quiet and sometimes quite intricate underground conversations. I've joined organizations where it was howlingly clear that the official messaging was not the way the company really ran.

That invites the question of whether it's worth staying long enough (and being bold enough) to get drawn into the nuanced underground dialogue, too. Sometimes yes. Sometimes that's quite exciting and makes the job more interesting and more durable.

Other times, it's just too hard to wiggle into that circle. Or that circle has its own evasions and power struggles. In those cases, it's easier to meet the basic formal requirements of the job, enjoy the extra time to have a rich life outside of work -- and think hard about what kind of next job would be better.

Some solid advice here, but after six cycles as "the new guy," I've found everything goes better if we add these two elements to the list. Both are Day 0-30 priorities

1. Figure out what the organization knows that you don't. Learn it. This can be anything from technical tools to conversational tropes. Embrace as much as you can -- even if it means stretching beyond what you're familiar with. If something triggers your gag reflex (and that can happen), figure out how to sidestep the problem.

2. Identify what you know that the organization doesn't. Find situations where you can put your imbedded knowledge to work and get recognized quickly for it. If you're lucky, your manager or sponsor is heavily invested in helping this happen. If you're flying solo, find new allies that can help you put your unique masteries to work.

Impressions form quickly. I've found that within 30 days, people already start to believe that either "wow, that was a great hire!" or "this one's still settling in, but it'll probably work out fine," or "did we maybe hire the wrong person?" It's surprisingly hard to change those perceptions.

This is the key insight. Systems like Zillow's model a dozen or so big factors that are easy to collect (square footage, exact location, nearby comps, sales history, etc.) -- and then treat the rest as minor random noise.

Minor? Usually.

Random? Not at all. A minor annoyance like a cracked driveway ($1,500 to fix) is also likely to be associated with older kitchen appliances, faulty water pressure, deteriorating deck; poorly seated windows, etc. And then, buying that house for what the algo tells you -- or even algo minus 3% -- isn't likely to be a happy choice. Its fair market price may be algo minus 10% or worse.

Also worth bearing in mind, the Realtor community is not going to make life easy for Zillow. Once it's known that Zillow is loading up on clunkers, buyers' agents are likely to tell their customers: There's a Zillow house on the market, too. It's probably got problems. I'd demand a full inspection and some indemnities if I were you.

Common flaw of market disruptors. They assume that the existing players will remain neutral and indifferent to their arrival. The real world tends to be much tougher.

In my 20s, I got paid $50 to be part of a focus group on young men's attitudes toward Foster's Australian lager. Of the six of us in the room, five of us drank maybe 3-4 beers a week. One guy (call him Tony) admitted to drinking a whole case -- 24 beers per week.

Our hosts jokingly said: "Maybe we should send the rest of you home right now, and spend the rest of our session figuring out how to get Tony's business."

Facebook's gravest problem (which OP doesn't yet confront) is that its business systems are built to get maximum engagement out of every Tony on the planet. And that can have catastrophic implications. Truther cults of all sorts flock to FB private groups. Young teens with body issues obsess on Instagram. Trolls, bots and the agitators behind them soon embrace Facebook as the garden they never leave.

When OP talks about Facebook's Competence as a political problem, he's using the most opaque language possible to talk about what's really a moral problem. The people inside Facebook aren't immoral, but some (many?) are profoundly amoral. Being really good at connecting people raises grave issues when some of those people are uniquely vulnerable to being drawn into an ever-tighter net of connections that could mess up many lives.

Parallels -- and pushes for regulation -- abound. In the finance industry, wisps of regulation try to prevent account-churners from trading Tony's accounts to zero. The same issues come up with the gambling industry, and its seduction of compulsive gamblers. Team Zuckerberg hasn't really found its conscience yet. And so, the list of Tony fueled troubles keeps growing.

Here's hoping that OP's second version of this essay digs a little deeper into the problem of competence. Will Team Zuckerberg find a conscience? Will regulators install one instead? Lots of unresolved questions to get settled in the next 5-10 years.

Can't help but think back to W. Edwards Deming's distinction between after-the-fact efforts to "inspect" quality into the process -- as opposed to before-the-fact efforts to build quality into the process.

OP offers a first-rate review (strategy + tactics!) for the inspection approach.

But, the unspoken alternative is to rethink the on-ramp to content-creation privileges, so that only people with net-positive value to the community get in. That surely means a more detailed registration and vetting process. Plus perhaps some way of insisting on real names and validating them.

I can see why MVPs skip this step. And why venture firms still embrace some version of "move fast and break things," even if we keep learning the consequences after the IPO.

But sites (mostly government or non-profit) that want to serve a single community quite vigilantly, without maximizing for early growth, do offer another path.

Bear in mind this article's primary source (data, interpretation, calls to action, etc.) is Edelman, a global PR firm. Quoting from the tagline on Edelman's own website, its mission is to "partner with businesses and organizations to evolve, promote and protect their brands and reputations. "

The survey data itself sounds plausible, and I've got no immediate reason to question the numbers. But when it comes to interpretation and next steps, Edelman very much has a point of view that predates whatever the data has found.

I've been impressed with what News Literacy Project is doing, particularly in terms of helping high school students recognize the hallmarks of carefully researched material vs. the opposite. https://newslit.org/

Fascinating! Most of the messaging here is refreshingly open-minded, direct and timeless. I'd expected to read a lot of imperialistic bombast that aged horribly.

Truth is, as many other commenters have pointed out, this document's overall tone reflects better on the American spirit than a lot of what's in the global conversation today.

My grandfather had an old-school windup watch that he thought would be his most cherished heirloom. Either my sister or I still have it somewhere (safe-deposit box), but it's never really resonated with any of his descendants.

He also had a beat-up metal whiskey flask from his time serving in the Canadian Army in World War I. This is a family treasure! The inner lining is corroded, so you can't drink from it, but it looks stunningly cool on a shelf. It evokes Lt. Fleming and the whole damn war in ways that let one's imagination run wild.

I kept it visible for many years, and when one of my sons wanted it as a keepsake, I said yes -- being able to tell from the way he asked that it would mean a lot to him, too.

In his essay, Silas House (OP) does a great job of highlighting the way that the best heirlooms don't have to be beautiful or costly. Often it's the simple reminders of everyday life that are most evocative to us. We see them -- and we see the hopes and troubles of an entire era gone by.

Fascinating essay about a landmark pair of books. Thanks for posting. I'll argue another option on one key quote, though.

> What Stalingrad demonstrated was precisely that the unfreedom of the Soviet Union, as terrible as it was, was different from that of Nazi Germany or for that matter of the West precisely because it was more historically generative, more potent. >

Not quite. What Stalingrad demonstrated is that people faced with annihilation on their own soil will fight harder than a supposed conquering army more than 1,000 miles beyond its legitimate national boundaries.

This lesson keeps being retaught -- somewhere in the world -- every decade or so. Perhaps even more often.

I'm liking the Robert Norton chart about 2/3 of the way down, showing how safety factors need to be adjusted quite radically once we think about how reliable or rickety our estimates might actually be.

Particular kudos to thinking harder about whether we've truly tested the actual environment where our product might be used.

I wish social scientists would do the same in controlled studies of human behavior -- which are then extrapolated to the ways that people make real-world decisions. A particularly vexing examples involves the way that psychology students make decisions in short experiments involving small amounts of money or other rewards. (Endless variations on the "marshmallow test," etc.)

Knowing what a college student will/won't do for a whimsical $5 reward says almost nothing about how an adult on the brink of poverty will balance bigger, more difficult decisions. Yet we apply a 95% confidence level to the college-student experiment and think we've learned something about the power of all financial incentives

There's a big difference between being restless -- i.e. going for a bunch of job interviews -- and actually switching jobs.

Articles like this highlight the very plausible idea that the post-Covid reawakening will include a lot of "Wanna hire me?" conversations. Perhaps even over meals with someone's expense account picking up the tab.

But as other posters say, a lot of that may be momentary flirtation. Plenty of exploring; not so much movement.

A lot of 19th century fiction was done this way. Authors (Dickens, etc.) tended to work from a loose outline and construct the details as they rolled along.

Peer at those books closely and you can see some odd detours that were shut down. Also some padding to get more segment-by-segment payments. But it's workable

If it's a business with a clear social mission (fighting poverty; helping the environment, etc.) I'm super-sympathetic to the challenges of being an altruistic founder in a money-obsessed world.

But Iterable's mission (quoting from its career page) is: "We empower growth marketers." Its products help your organization get more juice out of emails, texts, etc.

That's a busine$$ -- and it's very much an area where money can be made. I'm struggling to see how this could be an altruism play, too.

Board-CEO relationships come in three flavors:

- We love our CEO! We'll do anything to keep this boss happy

- We're stuck with a loser, and we need to make a change

- We're in the middle. This CEO has real strengths, which we appreciate, and real weaknesses, which concern us. We're regularly taking stock of the situation, and we'd probably like an orderly transition down the road. But we're probably okay for now.

The third situation is quite common. And in those cases, you don't really need a "pretext" or a "power struggle." You just need the board to say: "We've tolerated a lot, but maybe we've tolerated too much. This new incident is not what we'd be seeing if we had the right CEO."

Figuring out how to deal with non-destructive microdosing on company time might be a tough call. If he's a genius and this helps him achieve his full genius-hood, then maybe it's tolerable.

But microdosing -- and getting the dose wrong! -- puts him in a whole different category. That's just a fundamental inability to act sensibly in risky situations. The board doesn't need to wait for the second example.

But wait!

Yes, aspiring monogamists will fit your bill of people who "want to be off the site in 12 months" or sooner. That's one segment of your users, but it really isn't everyone by a long shot.

Plenty of users are signing up for the chance to meet ("get to know") a steady stream of people. We don't stigmatize people who subscribe to Netflix for many years so that they can keep watching different movies and shows. There's some segment of the dating-site world that has more of a Netflix model in mind.

Lots of sentiment today that the USPS is way out of its zone of expertise in doing this -- and that is possible.

But it's worth noting that the USPS has had its own legion of postal inspectors going back to the 19th century, when they were a (comparatively) huge part of the U.S. government, and the FBI, etc. did not exist.

Some 1,200 postal inspectors are still around, and they play important roles on federal prosecutions related to mail fraud, drug shipments, etc. There's a good Wikipedia entry on it all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Inspectio...

A couple postal workers died about 20 years ago when someone used the U.S. mails as an anthrax-delivery mechanism. Details are here: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5239a2.htm Note that's there's also a deeper CDC analysis looking at whether mail sorting is a job with higher than usual mortality rates. (Answer: probably not).

Granted, that's a long time ago, and it doesn't happen habitually. But if you're going to have a workforce safety team (good idea), they will likely want to either actually do something to stop the threats, or at least signal to management that they aren't totally clueless

Handy rule of thumb: On any headline with a question, the likely answer is: "No."

Or, more precisely: "No, but we wanted to tantalize you into reading this piece, where we'll go through 15 paragraphs of innuendo and then decide that it doesn't quite add up."

Author here. I'm going to join the argument that Goodreads may be clunky (in fact, it definitely is), but it's not broken. OP's criticisms all have some validity, but they overlook these far more important facts:

1. Goodreads has a LOT of users. It's the most extensive source of feedback on all my books. Lots of "wisdom of the crowd" that I can glean, looking at what people say. I'd rather have a kludgy site with 350 reviews than a UX masterpiece with only six.

2. Goodreads's huge user base means that reviews get noticed. This is crucial to keep the reviewing ecosystem going. When I put some energy into reviewing someone else's book that made an impact on me, I get a lively mix of upvotes and responses, which validates the time spent. Writing a crisp review on a minor site and getting no engagement is the worst user experience of all. Even if the official UX is beautiful.

3. Goodreads has pretty good tone control -- and that is not easy on any social site. People come to talk about books. Most threads don't get hijacked by MAGA/vs/woke. Anyone who overlooks this factor hasn't tried to operate a social site in the modern era.

4. Goodreads has the balance of power right between authors and readers. There are some things you can do as an author to drive engagement. But not a lot. You can't overwhelm the site with promo for a book that doesn't engage people. And Goodreads will stop you pretty quickly from flaming readers who give you one-star reviews.

All of these, I'll submit, are big, enduring advantages. They can't be swept away by a small new site with prettier UX or faster load times.

So true! Around 1980, chemical and petroleum engineers made the best CEOs, because oil prices were high and energy companies had the highest stock-market valuations.

Around 1990 Japanese finance majors made the best CEOs, because the Japanese financial markets were near their peak and Japanese bank stocks were highly valued.

Nice work!

I'm about 1850 in Lichess blitz, and it played at the level of an earnest 12 year old, which is actually meant as a compliment. It got crazy with its kingside pawns in the opening (no book knowledge), lost material pretty steadily and was checkmated down a queen, bishop and two pawns by move 25.

But it developed some pieces sensibly, made obvious recaptures and was not reckless about king safety. It avoided pointless toggling moves and suicidal piece jettisoning.

You've earned the right to be a proud papa on this one.

Fast-growing young companies with big ambitions often overspend heavily on everything (marketing, r&d, operations) relative to their current size. Their bet is that as they grow, they will gain unique dominance in their field, plus deeper engagement from customers, which will translate into much higher revenue/user and the emergence of a very profitable business.

This is a workable strategy! Examples include Amazon, Facebook, Workday, Snowflake and practically every biotech company. Some wait until they're profitable to go public; some don't. It's also a strategy that often fails. Lots of less famous examples are out there, too.

It's interesting that Coursera's 2020 revenue per current learner is about $8. I ran the numbers on Stanford ($6 billion budget; 17,000 enrolled students) and the revenue per learner is north of $300,000.

Now Stanford sells a vastly different product than Coursera does. (At least right now.) And the bulk of Stanford's revenue comes via grants, investment income and other stuff including ticket sales. Tuition revenue per learner is far less, though still well into the tens of thousands of dollars per year.

If you believe that over the next decade, the education dollar will be reallocated to the advantage of organizations like Coursera, the way to get rewarded for your prescience is to get in now and smile as you wait for the revenue/learner curve to bend your way.

I'm not minimizing the risks. But if your analysis ends with "they're losing money right now," you're shrinking your horizons to a strange degree.

Thanks, Kalium, but the fault is all mine! I read your original comment too narrowly. It's my apology that is needed, and I hereby submit it.

Thanks for the very helpful clarification. Your argument for provisional disclosure is compelling.

Depends how intricate your taxes are. Perhaps 30 million people file Schedule C, which covers freelance income, gig income, etc.

The IRS will (mostly) know your gross income, but it won't know the exact details about claimable deductions such as business travel, business meals, supplies, etc.

The only way it could know that would be to peer inside your credit-card statements, bank statements, etc. and make judgments about what was work related and what wasn't.

I'd rather do the tallying myself -- which is a chore -- rather than have IRS software make guesses that are a) awfully nosy and b) bound to disadvantage me.

Actually, I'll argue that college educations can pay off in a third way. It's not just brand-name prestige and useful skills. There's a lot to be said for the way that four years of residential education imbues grads with a valuable lifetime network of allies.

The third reason explains why small, residential liberal arts schools carry on semi-successfully for decades (centuries!?) even though they aren't exactly towering champions on the first two metrics.

It's easy to mock the English major from Knox College in downstate Illinois or the psychology major from Prairie View in Texas. But I'll argue that in the Before Times, these schools and their graduates did a lot to hold the social fabric of the United States together. Liberal arts grads do quite nicely in sales, administration, community law practices and more. They've got people skills that some high-earning Stanford grads lack. They take care of one another and provide a strong baseline economy that creates customers for us all.

What's changed is that with the pandemic, we've lost the residential-college benefits of meeting those freshman hallmates turned allies for life. In that case, paying big $$ for what's really just an online education without a valuable network stops having much appeal.