Guess What Company My Book is About, Win $10
Some already know, but I am finishing up my first book. Shooting to have it out March 1. Like my startup dystopia series, this story centers on a major technology company.
Correctly guess which one in the poll below and you’ll be entered to win a $10 Amazon gift card. I’ll draw a winner this Sunday – watch my Twitter account for the announcement.
If you’d like to get an early glimpse of the title and cover art, join my mailing list. I promise that those emails will always be infrequent, short, and useful.
I Do Not Believe In Networking
I recently had an unpleasant experience. Someone reached out with an opportunity that was supposed to be mutually beneficial. I explored it. Turns out it was total bullshit. Institutional exploitation. It was like a friend trying to sell you into bonded labor.
Obviously, that was offensive. To some degree on a professional level, but moreso on a personal level, because its someone I’ve known for a long time, someone I trusted to want to change the world, and someone I mistakenly believed had my best interests at heart.
That experience got me thinking about professional networks. I realized I don’t really believe in such a thing.
I find it to be like those business card exchanges that are disguised as ‘networking happy hours.’ It’s a very superficial, oddly competitive environment. People identifying targets, sorting them into tiers of importance, interrupting each other in an effort to spout their talking points first. Frankly, every time I’ve experienced that, I feel like everyone has their head up their own ass. Probably why I feel dirty coming away from them.
What I do believe in, are friendships, and though any of my friends will tell you I can do a much better job at maintaining these, it’s in them that I find life rewarding. Not just in the first, close circle, but the layer around that, and the next.
There is meaning in sharing experiences. In engaging in honest conversations that sometimes lead to professional collaboration, but more often than not, just feedback and the back and forth that is human. That’s rewarding. That’s personal/professional growth.
Without the bullshit. Without your vampire squid trying to suck out my lifeblood.
Review: The Start-Up of You
Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha have written a book for people with normal jobs. Corporate jobs. What they call the “escalator model.” Show up for 9-5 every day, earn promotions every so often, and get a steady paycheck.
The two explain that the classic model is dying. Then they explain in understandable way, that you need to embrace your personal brand, engage with the people ‘around’ you in a meaningful way, and have an eye on the adjacent possible (what they call, in classic bizbook lingo, ABZ planning).
To that segment, this is a pretty decent call to step it up, hustle as they say, and own their careers. So if you know someone still in that mindset, send them this book.
But for those of us who have already embraced this approach. Or, honestly, will never know any other , this book will read like like a primer. That’s not a knock, especially since I haven’t found the perfect book on this topic, but something to be aware of.
Subtractive Design
The temples of Ellora were carved down, rather than sculpted up. 1,500 years ago. Double the size of the Parthenon. (H/T to my brother for the picture.)
The Retail Metaphor and the Wayward Path
We upload the address book to our servers in order to help the user find and connect to their friends and family on Path quickly and efficiently as well as to notify them when friends and family join Path. Nothing more.
Note, this is done without explicit user permission.
This is the equivalent of that geriatric Walmart greeter grabbing your purse, or trapper keeper, or briefcase, and scurrying off to make a copy, so that when you’re buying socks, everyone in your professional and personal lives is kept abreast of the development. For your convenience. And then declaring, as Path’s CEO did, that “This is currently the industry best practice.”
Path can line up all the pretty pixels they want, but they clearly don’t understand customer experience. They’d be well served shutting down, going to a mom and pop store of old, or finding a trusty barkeep, or a barista, and learning at their feet.
The test for great customer experience is simple. “Is this something I would do to a customer in real life?”