Evaluating interpersonal skills
At this point, I've conducted thousands of interviews, and if there's one thing I've learnt, it's the vital importance of evaluating interpersonal skills. This might be a blind spot for us in tech — we inhabit a sphere where the ability to code, to understand systems, to nail down quantitative abilities
Changing my mind on remote, moving the team back to San Francisco
This is a memo I sent to the Lindy team last month, with slight edits. Thoughts on Remote I’ve made a 180º on remote. I think everyone here can attest to the fact that we tried harder than anyone else. And I’m more bummed out about it than
Reasons to worry about AGI
We can't even reason about the problem, because humans are bad at reasoning about exponentials; even if we could, we wouldn't worry about it (and the folks closest to the problem are least likely to worry); and even if we did worry, we probably wouldn't be unable to do anything about it.
Co-Founding Considered Harmful
“Hell is other people.” Sartre I’ve come to view the idea that you absolutely need a co-founder as one of the most harmful memes in Silicon Valley. It’s probably killed more companies than any other misconceptions out there. Instead, I think one should go solo if they can,
The Dictatorship of the Articulate
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” — Shakespeare A few years ago, Silicon Valley was buzzing with the reverberations of Marc Andreessen’s epic essay, It’s Time To Build. In case you haven’t read it, It’s a formidable pep talk, a call to
UX > EX: the painful truth about customer obsession
Publishing this memo I shared with Teamfellows. Everyone agrees with good-sounding principles until they experience their downsides. “Working out is healthy!” Haha, yes! Yes! “So hit the gym!” Well this sucks. “Hire slow!” Yes! Yes! “There’s this seat you’re dying to fill. And it’s going to remain
General Magic and Silicon Valley Common Wisdom
I strongly recommend General Magic, a documentary about the eponymous company, founded in 1990 with a clear vision of what smartphones could be, and how huge they could be. It built one of the most impressive teams in Silicon Valley’s history to make this vision a reality: its alumni
How Apple Sells Software At Hardware Prices
I ran this poll the other day on Twitter: Which would you prefer, assuming both cost $700 (and no dual boot) — Flo Crivello (@Altimor) September 12, 2019 The answers highlight a point I often make: that when people buy an iPhone for $1,100, they’re really paying $600 for
The Efficiency-Destroying Magic of Tidying Up
In his seminal book Seeing Like a State, James Scott describes what he calls “high modernists:” lovers of orders who mistake complexity for chaos, and rush to rearrange it from the ground up in a more centralized, orderly fashion. Scott argues that high modernists end up optimizing for a system’
Software, the Tough Tomato Principle, and the Great Weirdening of the World
Marshall McLuhan’s theory that “the medium is the message” famously describes how media are not neutral. Rather, a medium’s nature has a deep impact on the very content of its messages. One misunderstood aspect of the theory is that it applies to all technology, not just media: any
