Posts

I’m still figuring out how to make my back catalog of content here easy to find. Until I figure out a way to do that, though, here’s a full list of every post I’ve written, in reverse-chrono order.

• Thoughts on Fundraising – Eight months into political fundraising.
• Paying Remote Employees Fairly – How to approach compensation for remote teams.
• The revolution will not be Zoomed – Temper your expectations for remote work post-COVID.
• Presenting: “Exaltation” – My second novel is now available on Amazon.
• The Long Leaf Pine Slate – How we’ll flip the North Carolina General Assembly.
• The year in review: 2019 – what my 2019 looked like
• How to set up your blog on AWS – just what it sounds like.
• Facebook Forever – Facebook is never going to disappear. Get used to it.
• Don’t Skip Leg Day – What I learned doing squats.
• The Browser Monopoly – Why Chrome exists.
• Progress – All “Progress” is political.
• FAQs on Remote Product Management – Distributed product teams work just fine.
• On Professional Distance and Courage – How to build healthy work cultures.
• AI is not coming for you – Don’t worry about the AIs. Worry about the humans.
• What you need to know about retirement planning – Your parents’ advice is probably wrong.
• Taking Control of Your Internet – Fight to remain an individual on the internet.
• How-to for new dads – Some stuff I wish someone had told me before having a kiddo.
• Software engineering as a sign of the future – Engineering has broadly embraced distributed work. Why haven’t other disciplines?
• Why aren’t there more software engineers? – People don’t typically moneyball their careers.
• Yes, you should blog – You probably have something interesting to say.
• The fetishization of “technical” – Most tech jobs don’t require “technical” backgrounds.
• My 2018 Year in Review – Just what it sounds like!
• The Internet as Television – The modern web isn’t anything like what we were promised.
• Don’t work “remotely” – “Remote” isn’t the way to think of colleagues who aren’t co-located.
• The false gospel of social entrepreneurship – Pursuing “social impact” usually means political action, not founding a startup.
• What’s a Senior Product Manager’s Job? – What do we actually do?
• Progress is Slow – Hurricane Florence and how much (or little) has changed.
• This is why you’re having trouble hiring – Moving to San Francisco doesn’t make any sense for most people.
• Doing the Right Thing – How my thinking on ethics has changed. Plus, Skeletor.
• TAMs for Product Managers – Two different types of “TAMs” and what they mean for product managers.
• I was on some podcasts – It’s true. Here are links.
• One Year of Updates – I’ve been sending out my email update for one year. How’s it going?
• An Enterprise Primer – Some basic things that anyone moving from consumer to enterprise software ought to know.
• Tech is Organizing – Tech workers are beginning to realize how much power they wield.
• The Second Transit, Now in Audio – I’m experimenting with creating an audiobook!
• My Garage Gym – I built a gym in my garage.
• This Meeting Should’ve Been an Email – Failures of modern work culture are everywhere.
• Star Trek: Frontier – My blog descends into fan-fic.
• Legend of the Plaid Dragon – My little Slack game project is live!
• “Should I get an MBA?” – My view, based on my own experience.
• The History of the Future – Big data is going to change how history is done in the future.
• In Defense of Email – Email isn’t so bad. Its basis on open standards made the internet great.
• Top talent and HQ2 – most of the ways we think of “talent” are bogus, and that impacts how (and where) global companies can be built.
• Facebook and Data Sovereignty – it’s up to us to protect personal data. Not Facebook. (4/4)
• The Bread and Circuses of Space Exploration – stop shooting people into space. (3/23)
• Ten Things I Wish I Had Known in My 20s – on money, career, health and psychology. (3/20)
• We’re Outta Here – bye, New York! (3/9)
• Losing Faith – the collapse of American Christianity is the biggest, most under-reported megatrend happening right now. (3/7)
• Open Source Social – my fantasy of what the social web could look like. (3/2)
• What Product Managers Can Learn From Digital Analytics – the Marketing function has already gone through the pain of adaptation – learn from them. (2/18)
• Big History – you’ve never heard of the Toba event, but it made humanity what it is. (2/18)
• Four Boring Ways to Regulate Big Tech – we probably won’t break up Big Tech, but there are some straightforward ways to rein it in. (2/18)
• Everyone is Getting Rich Except You – crypto, craps, and bubbles. (1/18)
• Cameroon – ten years since my Peace Corps service. Here’s what it was like. (1/18)
• What Little Companies Don’t Get About Big Ones – startups frequently don’t understand how big companies work. (1/18)
• Heuristics – the tools we use to think. (1/18)
• The Year in Review – a look back at my 2017. (12/17)
• What People Really Want – white guys in tech feel oppressed. Right. (12/17)
• Learn to Sell – selling is arguably the most scalable skill you can learn in tech. (12/17)
• Paying for the Class of 2039 – how will we pay for Penny’s college? (12/17)
• Why SaaS Will Stay Independent – big incumbent software vendors struggle with assimilating SaaS companies. (11/17)
• How Highly Productive Companies and Nations Are Alike – cultural and organizational similarities. (11/17)
• The Distributed Company – “remote” working models are a fundamentally disruptive technology. (10/17)
• Learning by Doing – I opened an ecommerce store. (10/17)
• What I Would Do to Fix Twitter – it needs fixing. (10/17)
• The Three Types of Enterprise Software – and the function each type serves. (10/17)
• When Lies Aren’t Lies – how people tell the truth. (10/17)
• Relevancy and Truth – major journalism institutions will still be around in 50-100 years. Not so sure about Facebook. (10/17)
• There Are No GAFAs in Enterprise – enterprise software remains far more open and competitive than consumer. (9/17)
• Smart and Dumb – there are no “smart” and “dumb” people. (9/17)
• Welcome to the World, Penny – 😍😍😍😍 (9/17)
• How I Use Twitter – self-explanatory. (9/17)
• Build vs Buy – some things I wish more software buyers knew about how software is built. (9/17)
• Postal Banking – America’s consumer banks are awful. We should bring back postal banking. (8/17)
• Social Platforms and Responsibility – the leaders of tech’s most important platforms have utterly abdicated any sense of their social responsibility. (8/17)
• Summer Streets – we should ban most cars in NYC. (8/17)
• An Aside on Television – my list of the best characters on television. (8/17)
• Adobe and Transformation – Adobe’s transformation into a first-class enterprise SaaS vendor is astonishing. (8/17)
• A list of resources for new Product Managers – my best crack at it. (8/17)
• Enterprise Software and the Deployment Age – why the future for enterprise software is bright. (8/17)
• A Year at the Shelter – one year volunteering at the NYC Rescue Mission. (8/17)
• Tech Has Grown Up – we’re not in the startup era anymore. (8/17)
• You Should be Paying Attention to North Carolina – NC is one of the most important places in America today. (8/17)
• Mercenaries – on the “mercenary/missionary” employee myth. (8/17)
• Retirement is Dead – millennials should be terrified of our parents’ retirement plans. (7/17)
• Birthing Babies – how babies are brought into the world in different times and places. (7/17)
• Tech and Solution-ism – OLPCs were dumb. (7/17)
• Origins – incredible research being done into the origins of human kind. (7/17)
• Mise en Oeuvre – what they’re building now in my old village in Cameroon. (7/17)
• Stimulants – saccharin is just fine for you. (6/17)