I’ve updated the Apple Charging Guide to account for all of the new hardware announced at the September Apple event. One of the recurring marketing blurbs from Apple was the claim “Up to 50% charge in around 15 minutes.” This line resonates because this strategy maps to how most humans construct their charging strategy: “Crap,… more
Robot writing has no voice. That’s why you find it annoying. Like it or not, your brain is currently one of the best organic pattern matchers in the known solar system, and that means you can detect patterns. Like breathing, you just do this. All the time. You are not being triggered by the endless… more
A consistent by-product of periods of intense building (software, a book, a team) — really anything where I am heads-down focusing on the craft — is that all the utilities and habits surrounding building said craft get scrutiny. Why? Because small imperfections or inefficiencies stand out when my brain is in build-it mode. Put simply,… more
Having been robot-wrangling for a solid year now, I continue to feel like they give me superpowers. However, like all of us, I have a front-row seat to increasingly attractive garbage the robots are capable of generating at scale. I like to think that I am human enough to detect the slop, but the rate… more
In our 101st episode, we kick off a new era of episode titles as your best engineer becomes the interim manager of their own team — delegation, one-on-ones, the three-year rule, a visit from Chili Palmer, the Cadillac of minivans salesman himself, and the only question that matters: do you actually want this job? Down… more
I’ve used Claude quite a bit for both the upcoming new book and the next edition of Managing Humans. I wrote the entire book, but, as I’ve done for years, I’ve used the robots for editing, research, and data wrangling. When Anthropic announced they were going to do “text and image” watermarking, my eyebrow was… more
Remember Manager Readmes? The idea was that a manager would take the time to write up their leadership style, what they valued, and their principles. A fad that started in 2017, hit its peak in 2018, and then faded.1 I wrote one in March 2018 and enjoyed the process, but while I published mine, I… more
If everything is going to plan and your operating system is in dark mode, then randsinrepose.com is now dark for you. If you are a light mode person, you can click on the Moon in the upper right of the navigation and experience dark mode stylings. Click again to return. Why now? Well, I was… more
Appreciating typography is a study in paradox. The primary goal of well-designed typography is to help you read the words, not appreciate how the words are composed of letters and how each of those individual letters has been designed to convey a small bit of meaning. If you see the typography rather than read the… more
The final measure of any financial negotiation is the feeling of whether or not you got a “deal”. That prior sentence… makes no sense. I wrote “measure,” and then six words later I wrote “feeling”. A feeling is never a measure, but yet, when you hand over your hard-earned money to buy a thing, you’ll… more
