This is why Twitter is basically the Bloomberg Terminal for me, and it is incredible that it is not a much better product that I can pay $1k+ a month for.
“A thousand dollars?!?”

The number of things I do which touch Twitter or connections earned or maintained on basis of Twitter either a) justify that trivially or b) suggest I’m making extremely, extremely poor life decisions if they don’t.
Trivial examples:

“Which VCs follow me?”
“Who followed me as a result of X piece?”
“Is X’s engagement with me up or down over time?”
“Alert me immediately, any time day or night, if X ever says the words ‘Some personal news’”
And you could imagine some much better decisioning for “Hey, this is Twitter. If you were an eyeball, I’d be trying to maximize for engagement, but since you’re a paying customer, I’d like you to know that this tweet is something you should probably Slack like you usually do.”

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More from @patio11

8 Oct
I wrote about my experiences working at Stripe for the last 4 years: kalzumeus.com/2020/10/09/fou…

It's partly self-reflection, partly my view on why this is an extremely special company, and partly my continuing search for an answer to the question "So what is your *actual job*?"
I think the biggest thing I've learned about myself from the experience is through reflecting, often with @taylorfrancis (then my manager, and a person more people should know) , on what I really want to get out of my career.
Since 2006 I had been mostly punting on that question. I was running companies! Success for the company is success for the career definitionally, right?
Read 12 tweets
7 Oct
As a non-drinker during my salaryman years who barely drinks now, threading this needle always required me to identify as "geko", which is the quasi-medical quasi-social (degree varies in different people) status of not processing alcohol well.
This not infrequently resulted in:

"Hey Patrick let me fill your cup for you."
"I'm sorry, I'm geko [so I'm sticking to ice tea]."
"... But that's heritable? And you're like Irish or something? Aren't they legendarily drinkers?"
"I imagine they say the same re: Japan in Ireland"
"Patrick you would *lie* to your boss' face?"

I was a salaryman. There is a cultural dance around which things one should say to one's boss with and without the presence of alcohol in the conversation, and no party to this conversation considers it dishonest.
Read 7 tweets
5 Oct
A thing not widely understood by either consumers or even most people working in finance: the standard US checking account is a credit product.

(Even if overdrafts are turned off.)
“Why?”

The holder of a checking account gets constructive access to money from their bank while there is some risk that the bank will not itself durably receive that payment.

That creates credit risk.
“Diagram that out for me in practice.”

Day 0: Bank balance of $5k. Receive $10k ACH push.
Day 2: Bank updates available balance to $15k.
Day 12: wire $7k out to buy a car. Available balance $8k.
Day 37: Bank receives ACH return saying the ACH push was not authorized. Balance -2k
Read 10 tweets
5 Oct
Yep.

I’ll note that many forms of it are selectively edited out of narrative building, both in people’s self-narratives and in ones that are intentionally crafted for public consumption.

Grinding looks rarer than it is.
I’m comfortable with talking about my own: I generally start the business/career talk as if I came out fully formed out of Zeus’ forehead in the Japanese countryside, generally eliding a 15 year effort by myself and my family to get the education that gave me Java and Japanese.
And when I talk to (other?) PR pros, I get the well-meaning advice to strip down and simplify the formative years to “I was a startup CEO for a while then...”

Which I think is injurious to the truth (by omission), but it does flow better for some purposes.
Read 4 tweets
3 Oct
If you enjoy action roguelikes at all, Hades is, oh my Greek gods, a work of art. Beautiful, well-acted and voiced, with intriguing progression mechanics, and a satisfying just-one-more-run core game loop.
Also its fascinating that we're still telling new stories about the Greek gods, isn't it? And that they can be really good stories.

Trust me, you might never have had a hole in your life for millennial ironic California dude surfer Poseidon but he's amazing.
This has thoroughly eaten a weekend and the *sheer depth* of the game is so amazing. The self-referential in game nods to the power increase happening both via stats and skill. How some powers essentially transform it into a different game instantly. The tradeoffs in builds.
Read 7 tweets
2 Oct
So imagine you’re an industrial designer of milk cartons in Japan.

You design a carton with a weird shape which is 100% full on packaging. The carton intentionally deforms when the user breaks the vacuum seal.
Some users report this as a production quality issue. So what do you do? Roll back to the previous standard carton design?
No, you write a brief and simplified explanation on how air is the enemy of milk taste and the carton deforms because the vacuum that you were extremely intentional about putting in has been broken.

And you put it on every box.
Read 6 tweets

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