Prompt Engineering Quickstart
I want to build my Prompt Engineering skills. As I highlighted in a previous post, I’m convinced that LLMs will be a huge part of the future of work. Underst...
Writing
Recent Posts
Clear Thinking : Take-Aways
I finished reading Shane Parrish’s new book Clear Thinking. It has quite a few nuggets of wisdom that I’d like to reference in the future. I’m trying to get ...
Warren The Worm: A Children’s Book by ChatGPT and me
What is this? I used ChatGPT to generate a children’s book about a worm learning a valuable life lesson. This was just a fun way to learn more about the tech...
Making ‘Warren The Worm’: A Children’s Book by ChatGPT and me
I love Ethan Mollick’s ‘Jagged Frontier’ concept with LLMs. We don’t exactly know what LLMs are great at, and what they are bad at — yet. To figure this out,...
Co-Intelligence : Take-Aways
I recently finished reading Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick. I was very eager to read this book, as Ethan continually posts fantastic LLM content on Twitter...
Leadership in startup companies
I’ve spent most of my career in small-ish VC-backed startup companies, with between 10 and 150 people. Things tend to move and change fast in small companies...
Why I want to write
I’ve recently built a desire to write more, and wanted to dig into why I am feeling this way. What are my reasons and goals? A big part of this desire is roo...
Minimum Viable Competence
There is an endless amount of stuff in the world to learn, and not enough time to learn it. The demands of modern work nudge us to build skills in a very spe...
Explaining LLMs to non-technical people
Explaining how things work to different audiences is a topic that interests me. Can you put yourself in the mind-space of the person you’re speaking with — a...
Being present
Last month, during a visit to the Apple Store, I experienced an unexpected nudge towards being present — a concept I encounter frequently in books I’ve read....
Being a good dad
I want to be a great dad. It’s not easy. Being a dad is the biggest privilege and opportunity in my life. As a parent, you have huge responsibility in the ac...
A small thought on focus
Everything competes for your attention The most recent thing seems like the most important Without a framework for what you pay attention to, what hap...
Top Books From 2013
At the beginning of 2013, I made a resolution to learn more things outside of Technology. In the past, I’ve been a semi-active reader, finishing about 15 boo...
Stubbornness and Resiliency
Why default-resiliency is not the best option
The Truth and Shackleton
‘What should we tell them?’ How about the truth.
Product smells and sniff tests
Thoughts on ‘Product strategy means saying NO’
How to hack taking advice
Thoughts on being malleable instead of magnetic
Artificial Progress
Thoughts on doing ‘things about the thing’ instead of the thing itself
I’ve Done This Before
… can be a dangerous attitude to have when trying to solve a problem.
My bank password is ‘sort-of’ hashed
Yesterday, I called Fidelity to get help with my account. Before I was connected to a human, I was asked to enter my username, and then my password using the...
Seeking affirmation of your product idea can be dangerous
I often cringe when I hear people say they are ‘getting out of the building’ to test their product idea. At the core, ‘getting out of the building’ is a prox...
Confusing what you’re good at with what needs to be done
When you work at a big company, your role is specialized. On a day-to-day basis, you don’t have to venture far from your ‘comfort zone’ of core skills to acc...
The Complexity Versus Value Trap
There is not a linear relationship between the complexity of a product’s features and the product’s value to an end user. The graph of complexity versus valu...
A Student of the Business Model Generation
I am a new student of the Business Model Generation. I’m working to understand and apply the tools and techniques outlined by key influencers such as Steve B...
Reflections on reading ‘business books’ as an Engineer
I’ve always appreciated a good non-fiction book. My preferred reading ‘categories’ are behavioral economics (e.g. Ariely, Thaler, Dubner, Gladwell), analyses...
Where did this month go? And don’t optimize!
People have told me that it isn’t easy to keep up a blog. Now I know what they mean! Somehow, I’ve gone an entire month without posting anything — time seems...
Applying Amdahl’s Law to Your Life
Ok, I admit it…this may qualify as the nerdiest / lamest name for a blog post…ever…in the history of the blogosphere…but hear me out on this one, because I’m...
Learning from the Financial Crisis
Over the last 5 years since I began working full-time, I have developed a strong interest in investing in the stock market. I started investing in mutual fun...
What’s at the CORE
The bloggers over at Newly Corporate are asking “What 1 or 2 CORE traits get you noticed at work or help you succeed in your day-to-day operations” Here is t...
Habits of a Rockstar Software Engineer
Every day, a software project dies. Some die a slow, painful, expensive, death. Others die a quick, not painless, and relatively embarrassing death. As Sof...