Last week I learned of the death of one of the grownups from my childhood church, George Shores. Mr. Shores was my assigned mentor for an academic competition. Winning it may well have been the first event in a virtuous cycle1, setting me up for a tremendous amount of opportunity. Learning of his death made me reflect on the ways in which relatively small acts of altruism can make a huge impact.
Continue reading “The butterfly effect of kindness”
For the first time in my life, I am unemployed without having my next occupation lined up. For years, I have felt that this would actually be the best way to search for a new job. I have never felt I had the chance to see more than a glimpse of the market. For months, I’ve been considering taking the plunge into a full-time job search.
As 2024 arrived, events overtook me, and the hypothetical became real.
Continue reading “Leaving the nest”
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”
It started 6 years ago as an improvised chant.
My oldest daughter was learning to pull herself up with the help of her play pen’s fence. She would respond to my wife and I gleefully shouting “up!” and “down!” at her, but she was always more interested in “up”.
Continue reading “Never down, always up”
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”
Like many Jeopardy contestants, I find that people love asking me about the experience. I, in turn, love talking about Jeopardy! A question nobody has ever asked me is “what’s it like to answer a clue?”
Why answer this unasked question? First of all, folks might find it interesting that something that looks so simple on TV is actually quite complicated. Secondly, for future contestants, I think that figuring out how to optimize each tiny aspect of the “clue loop” could help them perform at their best.
Continue reading “Everything, all at once: inside a single Jeopardy clue”
While in complete control of my own destiny, I got bounced out of the first round of my Champions Wildcard Tournament on a Final Jeopardy question that I would guess correctly probably 9 days out of 10. I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. What the heck happened?
Since the moment I stepped off stage, I’ve been trying to piece together how exactly I got my Final Jeopardy wrong. I felt confident about The Catholic Church as a category, and considering the question was really more about European history, it should have been well within my wheelhouse. How the heck did I get it wrong? Unfortunately, I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I think I’m pretty close.
Continue reading “Joan of freaking Arc”
Never Down, Always Up 