Recognizing the Advantages of Small Groups
We’ve started to take our 2-year-old toddler to preschool this week. Parents will already know that this can be a rough process; kids don’t like to leave their parents, and most kids — like...
Learning
Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Promotions
There are two schools of thought on how promotions should work. They can be summarized as prescriptive and descriptive: * Prescriptive promotions are given to folks that have worked hard and deserve recognition. They come with...
The Missing Gap Between College and Self-Taught Programming
Even when I was in school—over a decade ago—there was this tension in the Computer Science department between academia and industry. Everybody knew from the dotcom days that the Computer Science major (along with EECS, and even Applied Mathematics and Cognitive Science) was to software engineering as pre-med was to medicine: software companies...
Using Disruption Precisely
This is yet another awesome a16z podcast: Holy Non Sequiturs, Batman! — What Disruption Theory Is … and Isn’t Basically, one of the consultants that actually studied the original theory of disruption is clarifying exactly what the theory is and is not. There’s a precise definition that adheres to the theory, but it has since...
Learning Front-end Development, One Step at a Time
I reacted viscerally to seeing this handbook the other day: Front-end Handbook In which I commented via Twitter: http://twitter.com/allenmhc/status/658745015435300864 First off, I was reacting probably more harshly than I should...
A Square Retrospective
It’s been an amazing four years at Square. By the time I write and edit and post this, it will be over a month since I’ve parted ways with the startup. Despite the...