What I'm Reading: July 1

Career

• Advice is Cheap - Context is Priceless

  • On the importance on straightforward and direct advice - how to give it and how to ask for it.

• The Hazards of a Nice Company Culture

  • When read after the above "Advice is Cheap" article, it makes an interesting point. Though, the author incorrectly frames the culture as "nice" when he really means people-pleasing, dishonest, disingenuous, and lacking follow-through (probably because "nice" makes a catchier article title). You can have a culture where people are "nice" to each other, but still have direct and open communication. Even with the mischaracterization of the problem, the advice is still worth a read.

• On Workplace Productivity

  • A framework for measuring productivity (of developers, in this paper) that is a bit more wholistic that just lines of code, PRs, etc. Forsgren, a VP at GitHub, proposes SPACE: Satisfaction & well-being, Performance, Activity, Communication, and Efficiency.

• Focus on Your First 10 Systems, not Your First 10 Hires

  • On the importance of building processes at your startup from the Chief of Staff at Hashicorp - questions like: how are decisions made? How are meetings structured? How do teammates communicate, and what tools do they use? It's a similar philosophy to Jeff Bezos's in another First Round Review article (look for Lesson #5: Intentions Don't Work, Mechanisms Do).

when we ran into an issue or a problem, Bezos would always ask, 'Do we have a mechanism in place so it doesn't happen again? Because if this high-performing or well-intentioned person tripped up, there's probably a process that we need to fix.'

Tech

• Optical Computing, Re: Deep Learning

  • Specialized applications like deep learning can bump up against the limits of silicon computer architectures, and can have not-insignificant environmental consequences in terms of CO2 emissions. For a few decades, photonic computer architectures, computers that perform computations based on light (photons) rather than electronic (electrons) signals, have been tossed around in research labs and theory. But, it's possible that the constraints placed on silicon computers from deep learning and the limitations of Moore's Law might be a good application for optical computers.

Remote Work

• Hybrid Anxiety and Optimism - the Near Future of Work

  • There's a good section on how different modes of communication impact how much trust is built on a team - audio and video chats can eventually build trust levels that reach those of in-person interactions, but written chat (Slack, email, etc.) communication struggled to build that level of trust.

  • I also liked the section about synchronous vs. asynchronous work in the next phase of remote work.

• Uber Allows Remote Work 50% of the Time

• Synchrony Says Most Staff Will not Be in Office Full-Time

• Young Workers Worry About Remote Work Detriments on Their Careers

• But They also Want Flexibility and Would Quit if They Don't Have It

  • There's so much noise in the air for what people actually want with remote work it's hard to tell

  • Stories about people resigning rather than coming back to the office are everywhere, but most of these seem meaningless until we see how people respond in reality... If you've ever read Skin in the Game (if you haven't, don't bother), it makes the point that people often behave differently when they have their own money on the line. I'm willing to bet, most people who say they're quitting if they have to come back to the office probably won't when it comes down to it.

  • And also the potential for exacerbating existing inequalities in the workplace

The Economy

• Hussman Funds Market Comment - Alice's Adventures in Equilibrium

  • While no one can predict the economy (and Hussman has been bearish for a long time), it is interesting to read the sentiment.

• Barings Investment Institute - What Will Kill This Market?

  • A good, very high-level overview of some of the risks facing the market.

• LPL Financial - Three Things That Worry Us

  • More in-depth analysis on some of the risks facing the market. The conclusion: stocks might be overvalued if you look at it from one angle. They also might not if you look from another. Ultimately, no one knows what will happen, and these pieces don't change my investment strategy in any way, but I am always curious to see what people are thinking about.

More Stuff and Things

• What We Learned Doing Fast Grants for COVID Research

  • An interesting read about setting up a COVID grant program to quickly get money to projects without having to go through a lengthy and bureaucratic grant approval process.

• How Companies Can Resist a Hostile Takeover

  • With Twitter in the news today because shareholders couldn't get enough votes to move from staggered director elections to annual elections, I was curious about how companies can defend against a hostile takeover. In Twitter's case the staggered board elections (where only a few directors are up for election in any given year) make it so that taking over its board is a long and time-consuming process.

• Paycheck Protection Program Middlemen Rake in Big Fees

  • The Paycheck Protection Program generated big business for middlemen who connected borrowers and lenders. There were (are) also plenty of growing pains like unpaid loans and lack of customer service.

  • Also, stories of PPP abuse and fraud. May be worth checking government auction sites for seized Lamborghinis...

• RouterSecurity.org

  • As I look for new routers, this is helpful.