The online presence of Alan Johnson
My new company uses Rust heavily for its backend systems. I’ve been interested in Rust since its beta days, but only from a distance. I was very intrigued by the ownership system, which is Rust’s most distinctive and innovative feature. I also knew it inherited a lot from languages like Scala and OCaml. How hard could it be?
Read on for some loosely organized hot takes.
Continue reading “Rust: First impressions”It is always helpful to have a roadmap for an unfamiliar experience. I did not, as I embarked on an intense job search. But maybe my reflection will be useful to others.
I noticed that the process has followed an arc. Much like chess, it has a distinct opening, middlegame, and endgame. Each of these phases has a very different feel, and has required me to optimize in different ways.
Continue reading “Arc of a job search”
“I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.”
This is one of the big takeaways of my job search, as it nears its end. This is hard for me to acknowledge, as someone who can get along with nearly anyone and with a track record that highlights my versatility.
I don’t mean this in terms of getting along with interviewers. I mean in terms of people’s vision for the role they’re hiring for and whether I’m a high confidence match.
But I think that’s OK.
Continue reading “Rejection is a gift”
Protect your notification space. This is my #1 tip for managing time and attention.
My goal is to to only get notifications for things that require my timely action or awareness. Everything else needs to be out of my notifications, especially marketing and news. Unfortunately, enforcing this is a continuous job.
I want to talk about why I think this is critically important and then some concrete strategies I apply.
Continue reading “Silence is golden”
Similar to how people have coined the term web3 to describe a proposed radical change in the consumer web landscape, unlocked by the blockchain1, online search is about to be disrupted by the same technology that gave us ChatGPT. Soon, we’ll be able to search by describing what we’re looking for, holistically, rather than having to think like a search engine.
Or, at least, I hope so.
Continue reading “search3 is coming”
Vulnerability doesn’t come naturally to me. While I really enjoy sharing and discussing things, I do not like attention. It makes me feel unsafe. So, it was hard to post my #OpenForWork post. It’s also hard to post these sentences. But I just want to say that it’s been incredibly heartwarming to receive check-ins, solid leads on roles, and warm intros. It has made a huge difference in the opportunities that I’m aware of and my ability to make progress through those early stages of the application funnel.
I’m sharing this because if there’s anybody else who can relate, maybe this is a nudge to push through the discomfort and ask for support. And if there’s anything I can ever do to help anyone, please let me know.
And as an update, the search is ongoing, but going well. My concern level is not “zero”, but I’m pretty sure things will work out. I feel very fortunate. My worries are with folks who are earlier career or do jobs that have less demand. It’s a wild time.
The reports of the its death are greatly exaggerated. While many jobs don’t require a cover letter anymore, or even give me an optional place to submit one, that doesn’t mean that I can’t or shouldn’t write cover letters. Especially if I take a broader, more modern view of what a cover letter is.
It is best not to think of a cover letter just as a discrete document, as it was in the old days. I remember the cover letter becoming a formality: required and written, but rarely read. The modern cover letter is the full body of writing I produce to pitch myself for a job. I give this a lot of careful thought. My communication skills may be what helps me stand out in the crowd.
Continue reading “The cover letter lives”
I’m proposing a new term—HyphenTech—to describe much of the tech landscape, in order encourage a better understanding of our current era of tech. Thinking of every new company as a “tech company” is too generic to be useful, but going just one level deeper is helpful.
Everybody wants to be a tech company. It’s a proven path to trillion dollar market caps. However, that path has also proven extremely narrow, only admitting a few companies into the cuatro comas club. Have we had 15 years of bad startups, or is something else going on?
Continue reading “Meet HyphenTech”In some ways, the story of my career is taking stretch opportunities that require me to jump into the deep end of unfamiliar territory. At this point, one of my key skills is knowing how to navigate situations where I have a lot of unknowns. I want to share a technique I have developed, which has been immensely powerful for me. Let’s call it mental model rewriting.
2022 has been an astounding year in AI. I don’t think anyone needs a recap (and I’m not the guy to provide one), so I’ll namedrop Stable Diffusion and GPT as examples of what I’m talking about.
While only the most jaded person could see what’s going on in AI and not be completely blown away, there is debate around exactly what the socioeconomic implications of this new phase of AI will be. On one hand, you have people already predicting that we’re in the end game for white collar workers, such as artists, writers, and software developers. Other folks, perhaps more attuned to the limitations of the AIs we’ve seen, are urging a much more sober outlook. I see massive change on the horizon, but along a different axis than some of the more simplistic predictions.
Continue reading “The AI Big Bang”
Never Down, Always Up 