I started this piece in late November. It’s a piece I usually write Christmas as a kick-off to the new year. The precise process by which this yearly piece arrives is a mystery. Probably the mental reset that comes with the New Year. So, what’s with the first draft showing up before Thanksgiving? As I… more
I’m in the midst of a media cleanse. This started before the election when I canceled my Washington Post subscription. Jeff Bezos can do whatever he wants with the Washington Post, and he’s 100% correct that I don’t trust large media organizations. After the election, I removed all news sources from Feedly except the Atlantic… more
Hi. I’m stressed, too. Here are random thoughts on this from the beginning of November 5th, 2024 — election day: Today, a convicted felon and failed businessman (six bankruptcies!) slash narcissist slash twice impeached politician who does not believe in democracy, who called for and achieved an armed insurrection, and who lies compulsively is the… more
Good, me too. Over on the Rands Leaders Slack, we are almost thirty-four thousand. Fun fact: in the 2020 Presidential Election, three battleground states, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, the margin of victory was less than 30,000. In Georgia, President Biden won by just over 12,000 votes. It makes you think. It’s an, uh, interesting time… more
WARNING: The contents of this article might adversely affect your information consumption habits. A few weeks back, the sitting President incited domestic terrorists to storm the Capitol, so they did. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, this was a relatively straightforward process for the insurrectionists. It was also an incredibly well-documented events thanks to… more
He says things so sweetly. He knows all your failures. He remembers your emotional scars. He sounds like you. And he craves your attention. The Thursday after the election, I woke up, grabbed my phone next to the bed, and scanned the latest news. We were still two days from announcing the winner of the… more
By my count, we’ve got 14 candidates for the Democratic nomination in the United States. There will be more.1 This morning I went to all the websites of each of the candidate and grabbed their primary logo. Fascinating to see the different moods conveyed by the different marks. Forgetting about the candidates, I find the… more
For years I’ve been working on structuring an interview for assessing leadership. How do you figure out if someone has leadership skills in an hour-long interview? The answer is: you don’t. You need multiple humans not only asking a diverse set of questions but also listening to answers and pivoting to follow-up questions as they… more
As an engineer, if you want to piss off someone who is asking you whether you can or can’t build a thing, just say, “Given enough time, I can build anything”. They’ll believe you’re dodging the question, and they’ll think you’re arrogant. As a means of negotiating a schedule or a feature, this answer is… more
Go vote.
