Betterment

At 2:30 in the morning, the night clerk at the hotel is a great help if you’ve locked yourself out of your room. But if you want to complain about the hours of the gym, the hotel’s envi…

Professionals take their work seriously. Hobbyists can take it personally. We arrive and make a promise. We do it on behalf of the client, and that promise has little to do with what we might want …

Weeknotes 388 - Thoughts triggered by being in a bubble in Athens, making sense of reality, community, and genuine collaboration in times of AI. And of course, lots of captures from last week’s news on physical AI and beyond.

If we're so rich, why is everyone miserable?

On a beautiful Sunday in Central Park, you’ll see thousands of people out for a jog. Each person has exactly the right running style–and none of those styles are the same. Each is weari…

An Argument into the Agora

We can search for the perfect option or settle for something better than we have right now. The search for perfect never ends, and it’s a great place to hide. Would you rather wait for the pe…

In 1966, Michael Polanyi explained why some knowledge resists being written down. Sixty years later, that's the knowledge AI cannot touch — and the knowledge your senior engineers carry in their bones.

If you’re nervous about communicating your ideas, either in a formal presentation setting, or more informally, in meetings and small group conversations, this brief guide is for you. It’s a simple collection of thoughts and ideas; practical steps that you can take to build confidence, or feel more secure.

The uncomfortable truth about effort, outcome, and the math that connects them all

Scientists are rethinking how depression should be treated by focusing less on reducing negative feelings and more on rebuilding the brain’s capacity for positive emotion.

"Strong opinions, loosely held" is a cornerstone of good product thinking. AI changes who's forming the opinion. Here's what that means for your team.

It’s harder than ever to be an engineering manager. Fewer resources, higher expectations, and a public conversation actively questioning whether the role should exist at all. Less support tha…

“Something is up in academic research,” ​write​ the members of an AI Task Force convened by the journal Organization Science. As they go on to ... Read more

Runaway selection happens when organizations compete with each other far beyond the point where it’s rational to do so. We see this in species as well–peacocks have ungainly and ineffic…

Where Does Novelty Come From?: A conversation with paleobiologist Douglas Erwin about the evolution of innovation

There’s the fast of a drag racer. Purpose-built, difficult to steer, expensive and fragile. There’s the fast of the marathon runner. Beat by a sprinter every time, but able to keep it u…

In our dreams, the laws of thermodynamics don’t apply, and gravity works in strange ways. We can jump across a chasm and stick the landing on the other side. This freedom is important. It&#82…

Five short entries a day. A generous act of leadership A thank-you note sent Curiosity explored, or a hard question asked A new skill learned An interaction with a customer or co-worker that increa…

Today, using AI is almost always a solo endeavor. From the very start, forty years ago, the internet (inter + network) has amplified the exchange of information. But the first cycles of AI have bee…

Here’s an interesting thought experiment. Imagine that you would be reincarnated into the soul and body of someone on Earth, 25 years old, at random. You won’t know what you know now, y…

Pay attention to what’s in front of you. Don’t let fear contaminate your understanding of the situation. Act with commitment. Notice the gap between event and reaction. Embrace the reso…

The actor, artist, mathematician, pianist, speaker, leader, tech nerd: Just like me, but talented. I’m not so sure. It might be more accurate to say “just like me, but dedicated.”…

For hundreds of years, nostalgia was seen as a serious disease, with doctors across Europe scrambling for a cure. Hundreds of thousands of people died from it. In the original understanding of the …

Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Elad Gil (@eladgil), CEO of Gil & Co, a multi-stage investment firm, holding company, and operating company working on the world’s most advanced technologies. Elad is a serial entrepreneur, operating executive, and investor or advisor to private companies, including AirBnB, Anduril, Coinbase, Figma, Instacart, OpenAI, SpaceX, and […]

Here’s a recent comment on LinkedIn from John Allspaw, on a post by Gandhi Mathi Nathan Kumar about availability. Allspaw’s comment is a succinct description of a safety model proposed …

In terms of cost, serving a small ramekin of toasted pistachio nuts is a tiny portion of what an airline spends in transporting someone first class. In fact, it’s such a relatively small expe…

The software worldview applied to a domain that is not software.