Notebook from a (very) soggy place https://t.co/PY9iDIsKIX

THREAD

I get asked for writing tips a lot. Of all the ones I’ve given, here are a few of the ones that seem to hold true and remain somewhat universal or at least mostly unobjectionable:

#amwriting #writingtips

1. If you are a fast writer (i.e., if you compose first drafts very quickly) then you absolutely must become a slow editor. Much of what I call “writing” is really, for me, editing.

2. If you don’t read you cannot write a lot or well. Sure, maybe you can read like a maniac for a decade and then read less after that, but without some large volume of intake, there will never be a meaningful output.

2.1 I sometimes say that I feel like writing without reading is like trying to run a marathan on a cracker. And sadly I see many students struggling to write when they have simply never read enough to fuel that demand of the task at hand.

3. All writing is writing if one decides to treat it that way. If one takes some degree of intentional will when sending emails, posting on social media and writing notes and marginalia, then all of that can count as meaningful daily writing.

Okay, today is crazy and I have a pile of work but I wanna take a moment to talk about this #nowritingleftbehind campaign.

It's a really hard thing to go in and pitch a show or a movie. It took me years to be even remotely good at it. To know how to use my strengths to sell without making myself or anyone else feel icky.

but the hardest part? you have to write it before you write it. meaning you actually have to know the thing you want to write before you go get the job that pays you to write.

BUT As soon as they say, can you send me something in writing, unless you are getting paid, you have to say no. b/c you just did all that work to get a job to be paid to write.

You don't even have to say no to their face. You can say "let me think about how to do that" and then go home and email and tell them it just isn't as good written and you're available for any phone call or meeting.

When Steph goes off, #NBATwitter turns into a series of endorsement quotes on a book cover.

"Steph Curry is a page turner! You won't want to put him down!" - Stephen King

"Curry delights and provokes in equal measure." - Don DiLillo

"A player this good is borderline perverse. Carve out a place in the canon for Steph Curry." - Martin Amis

"Steph Curry evokes the muscular prose of Hemingway mixed with the devastating wit of Fitzgerald." - Joan Didion

"Steph Curry leaves me breathless. A major talent with a knack for exposing the darkness within the human spirit." - Jonathan Franzen

"Professors at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale should be teaching Steph Curry alongside Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Yeats." - Michael Chabon

I will be live tweeting my race to the airport. here we go

flights boards at 5:15 am. it’s currently 5:01am and gps says i’m 36 minutes from the airport

uber driver is an awesome salty NYer. in the trunk of his car 🚗 was the one thing most old school NYC 🚕 drivers keep laying around; an aluminum baseball bat.

we are out of the tunnel. Picture taken on my plastic prison phone because that's my jam. Flight boards in 7 minutes, I'm 23 minutes from airport

drivers seat is at 70% recline because he’s a G. (picture not taken on my plastic prison phone - it was just a black screen when I tried 🤦‍♂️)

[THREAD]Pesquisa Sobre Mercado de Trabalho em Startups

A @gamaacademybr liberou recentemente um estudo sobre o mercado de trabalho em startups e vou fazer algumas observações sobre os resultados por aqui.

1. A pesquisa descreve o ambiente de Startup como flexível e dinâmico, falando sobre o clássico cenário de ir trabalhar de bermuda e chinelo e poder trabalhar de casa.

A flexibilidade muitas vezes não passa das roupas, a flexibilidade de horário só existe na hora da entrevista.

Na prática existe tanta demanda para pouca gente fazer que o comum é chegar antes e sair depois. No mesmo trecho mencionam a cultura dá área de descompressão com puffes e vídeo games, mas também é outra coisa comum só no discurso, se você usar acaba sendo mal visto pela empresa.

2. A pesquisa mostra que startups são de fato importante para o mercado de trabalho, segundo os dados, as 352 startups analisadas possuem 2849 vagas abertas, o que é um número excelente.

São pouco mais de 8 vagas por empresa.

3. O estudo é focado em 4 funções específicas (que eles deram apelidos da moda), mas que são: programação, design, vendas e marketing.

A busca por programadores segue em alta com 36,57% das vagas, marketing vem em segundo com 19,13% e vendedores em terceiro com 14,29%.

Today's @bopinion post is a review of the excellent new book "The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy & Society", by

This is an excellent, short, highly readable, very important book. Every business executive and politician should have a copy.

Why are skilled immigrants so good, and so important?

Because they're the backbone of high-value industries where the U.S. has a dominant position.

If we don't bring skilled immigrants to the United States, high-value industries will migrate to other countries, and America will lose industrial dominance and be a poorer country.

Contrary to popular belief, skilled immigrants - including H-1b workers - RAISE wages for native-born skilled workers.

Why?

Because downward wage pressure from competition is more than canceled out by the upward wage pressure from CLUSTERING.

I have an hour or two to kill in Bozeman so I found this hole in the wall computer history museum and...wow. This is not what I expected. +

Computing starts with writing, so what if we had 4000 year old Mesopotamian tablets, sure ok.

First folio Shakespeare, also a thing

You could hardly call it a history museum if on the outskirts of a town of <50K you didn't have the Principia

My friends talk about the PDP-11 but obvi that's too newfangled for a serious history museum

For the record: that's not a "strong work ethic."
That's exploiting young unattached engineers and spinning it as "team culture."

Toxic 💀💀

That's not something to aspire to. That's not good management. If you're working sustained 70+ hrweeks, somebody is taking advantage of you.

We have fetishized the overworked engineer. It's toxic but so pervasive that Mr. Ng (and others) feel it's ok to advertise as a positive.

Having this as "culture" breeds a monoculture of unattached, young engineers. Not good for them & not good for your company long term.

It's not good for them because their first job burns them out and physically wears them down. This happened to me and many of my coworkers.

0/ Thread: 11 tips on international expansion for growing startups 🌎 based on last night's conversation with @scott_sage & @daedalium at @_TheFamily

1/ Mindset: Someone from NYC won't think about it twice before taking a 6h flight to the Valley for business. Why do Europeans perceive a 2-hour flight / train ride as such a big deal? Travel more, there's plenty of opportunities around the corner you know nothing about ✈️

2/ If you spent more than a month considering whether to expand abroad or not, just try. What’s the worst that can happen? You can always do a big international launch, fail, try again and communicate it as a big thing every time - no one will care / remember the previous time :)

3/ Europeans perceive int'l expansion as a massive cost and therefore spend 1/10th of what US startups spend on it every year. Invest more, but keep a startup mentality: launch from home first, assess the market & then save costs as you go in, e.g. stay at a friend's; not a hotel

4/ Whilst not excessively risky / costly, expanding internationally is HARD. It's like starting up all over again, finding Product Market Fit all over again & building your team all over again. PMF will have to be your #1 priority, and an indicator of whether to keep going or not

Choosing the Right JavaScript Framework

Thanks for joining me @pluralsight to talk about javascript frameworks. We had 150+ awesome questions, so I'll try to answer the ones I couldn't get to online right here in a tweet stream

Watch the video -->
https://t.co/G7zeiKhXme

Q. Do arrow functions really make dealing with JavaScript's "this" keywords easier?

A. Yes! When using arrow functions, the scope of "this" is effectively passed in from the outer scope. See here in this REPL

1/n

Q. Where does Polymer fit in? Is it considered a framework like the others?

A. @Polymer is an excellent way to create web components, which are ideal for creating sets of interactivity that can be shared in web apps.

2/n

Q. Have we gone framework crazy?

A. At one time, quite possibly. A few years back we literally had framework overload. I feel it really has solidified into a few very strong choices.

3/n

Q. [Is] there no more need for @polymer?

A. See my previous question on this ... but in general, I think there is a lot of room for Web Components with frameworks.

4/n

One of the world's most remarkable ruined places is the sunken city of Thonis-Heracleion.

Once a thriving hub of the ancient world, the city was devastated by a series of environmental disasters, & now lies 6.5km off the coast in the blue waters of the Egyptian sea.

The story of its discovery began in 1933, when an RAF pilot flying off the coast of Alexandria reported a strange sight in the water.

He claimed to have seen massive ruined structures below the waves: buildings, squares & streets, a whole city lost beneath the ocean.

Divers set out to explore the spot, but they were unable to learn much or corroborate the sighting in the silty water of the Egyptian coast.

They found something, though: an enormous head of stone, larger than life, thought to be part of a statue depicting Alexander the Great.

These ruins would remain a mystery for another 70 years, until 1999, when a group of archaeological divers were exploring Egypt's shallow Abu Qir Bay.

They were searching for the warships of Napoleon’s fleet that were sunk by Admiral Nelson during the 1798 Battle of the Nile.

While mapping the area & searching through the detritus of the 18th century, the cannons, buttons & living utensils, they stumbled upon something else. Something much older.

It was a stone head, half-buried in the silt & sand.