@visakanv Would bet that literally no one has sent typical CEO: “Here is a properly scoped internship project and here is the Day One output. Are you interested in seeing Day Two?”
@visakanv There’s an unhelpful cultural norm of internships being a favor that can be awarded if one pleases the teacher rather than a consulting engagement with a deliverable and a bit of consideration/leeway given to the consultant for their emerging project management skills.
@visakanv “Give me an example of a properly scoped internship project, Patrick.”
At the risk of sounding bitingly cynical, I think “Design a process which could administer 500 coronavirus vaccines in a day.” is a reasonably scoped project for an intern working two weeks.
This is one of those statements you mostly don’t have to say when it is, strictly speaking, true.
“This time we’re not lying! Honest! Not that we were *lying* the other times; we just retroactively changed the meanings of the word we said to make them true.”
“Accusations that we are a worldwide money laundering operation are false, since we lost access to worldwide money laundering when Reggie Fowler ran away with the money! Logic, people, logic!”
A feeling I have had a number of times this year, which deserves a longer write-up but for now a short one will have to do:
I feel that I have witnessed a great dispersion in outcomes between organizations that can function at 5:01 PM on Friday and those which cannot.
I know I'm next to a seismic fault in the tech community with this observation. It isn't primarily about the tech community, though I have observed the tech community's response to the same challenges everyone is dealing with.
That response has often included:
"OF COURSE we will work through the weekend on this. It is a matter of literal life and death."
There are organizations which did not make this choice, and are not making this choice. Including as we speak.
It feels like the English variant of covid being much more infectious than previous variants is a fact widely believed among people following it closely and not appreciated by the world at large yet.
If this turns out to be true, 2021 will be more challenging than 2020 was with regards to controlling spread.
I am not positive about this being a true statement about the world yet, but disconfirmatory evidence should be cheap and abundantly available in worlds where it is false, and it is not available in the places I would suggest expect to find it.
Pediatric speech therapy over Zoom is, depending on the child and one’s constraints, plausibly a better product at half the cost compared to office-based speech therapy.
One of a few things I’ll say thank you to 2020 for.
“How is it better?”
So back when I was the patient, it involved mom arranging childcare for the other kids, bundling me up against the Chicago winter, driving 30 minutes, arriving late, apologizing and feeling guilty, rushing through the session, pay with a check, scheduling.
Now it’s... “Hey honey, reminder, 10 minutes out it’s showtime for us and $CHILd.” “OK.”
On revealed preferences the U.S. cares far less about the covid vaccine rollout than Japan did about the Wii rollout.
“That’s a take.” That’s the truth. We can either ignore it because the consequences of it being true are too terrible to contemplate, or we can (still!) fix it.
“What did the Wii rollout look like?”
Using nothing more complicated than pencil, paper, and printed tickets:
Day -1: “Hello remember you reserved a Wii. Do you still want it? OK; shop opens tomorrow at 9 AM sharp. Please do not come before 8:15 AM.”
8:15 AM, a sign says “Form line here. If you have a Wii ordered you will absolutely receive it today. Your position in line does not matter.”
Let me sketch a not-so-hypothetical startup trajectory:
Small team takes small seed round in 2015. No further funding; growth rate likely not investable at any point. Comes to 2020 with founding team ready to do next thing.
Business has +/- $1M ARR of high-quality SaaS rev.
Two ways to look at this:
“Whelp darn you tried to run a VC-funded company, fell off the track, and struggled for years. Better luck next time.”
or
“... Do you know any other engineer in St. Louis with +/- $5M (divided by founder count) of equity 5 years into career?!?”
There will *inevitably* be a capital stack and supporting infrastructure which helps people enthusiastically aim for this outcome.