Stephen Wolfram (of Wolfram Alpha fame) does the best job I’ve seen in explaining in simple terms how ChatGPT works and why I’ve described it as super smart auto-complete. Screenshots are from this post writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-i…

A thread about of tech/investment/politics trends I’ve been wrong about and what each thought me. WRONG ABOUT: @paulg & Y-Combinator

I THOUGHT: It derailed promising young careers to work on speculative high risk companies

I LEARNED: Risk-reward ratio applies to careers and founding a Y-Combinator funded startup out of school is relatively low-risk/high-reward for a techie

A friend asked what I think will happen to Twitter.

Twitter’s big problem was their ads business wasn’t great relative to peers. It’s mostly brand advertising which means companies buy it due to ego not ROI. No one can prove that a Twiter hashflag campaign drove $X in sales. Elon is driving away brand advertisers and Twitter never figured out ads that drive sales (direct response ads) which is now harder due to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency.

I don’t know anything about building rocket ships or electric cars but I do know a few things about building social apps (including multiple patents).

The original tweet was clearly nonsense even before I saw it debunked by the former timeline tech lead. Fired too many, too fast Twitter is now slower outside the US, in say India for example? It must be the RPCs.

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1591885506601799680

11,000 of my coworkers were laid off today including many people I work with.

I won't be tweeting much today given other obvious higher priorities but will shout out people I've worked with personally who are looking for work over the course of the day.
about.fb.com/news/2022/11/m… Molli was an amazing community manager on the Metaverse team. You can find her LinkedIn here linkedin.com/in/molli

OKRs are rarely explained well.

An objective is a business outcome. Say double e-commerce sales by end of year.

Key results are metrics or deliverables you track quarterly to get there. They could be input (e.g. grow listings), top of funnel (product views) or output (revenue). The important thing about OKRs is that both the objective and key results need to be measurable. You should be able to tell unambiguously if you hit your objective at the end of the year.

Key results need to be proven contributors to hitting the objective or changed if not.

This weekend, I was thinking about how SCOTUS has invalidated how elite law schools must see themselves.

We have judges in the highest court of the land dropping opinions that are like a C or D law school assignment if graded. It's no longer about clever arguments just politics.

https://twitter.com/nikobowie/status/1541410195661807616

When the most compelling argument a SCOTUS judge can make in an opinion is that we have to align with the norms of the 1700s when they were still burning witches at the stake and slavery was legal is when you know the culture of elite legal arguments is dead.

Wow, today I learned Netflix only has two levels for engineers.
- new grad ($250K/year)
- experienced/senior ($500K/year)

I can’t believe they haven’t had to modify this until 2022. Further evidence that they’re actually a media company and not a technology company.

https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1515362008211804176

Netflix paying engineers $500K sounds impressive but it’s underwhelming when you consider GAMMA companies have an engineering ladder that tops out at $1M+ in compensation.

By definition Netflix isn’t in the game when it comes to senior tech talent.
levels.fyi/?compare=Micro…

Yesterday I talked about breaking through from mid-level to senior leader in big tech on Twitter Spaces. I realized a few of the ideas are worth sharing in a thread for people who don’t have an hour to listen.

This is for people seeking a mentor on promotion to senior leadership The first rule is to understand what your organization cares about. Learn what projects and skills actually get rewarded. Figure out the implicit hierarchies not just the org chart.

The best writing I’ve seen on this topic is @copyconstruct’s post below.
copyconstruct.medium.com/know-how-your-…

I’ve heard the term tokenomics but didn’t understand what it meant until reading this thread. It’s basically designing innovative Ponzi mechanics that hides in plain sight.

The overview of how LooksRare is making millions with their token design is a great example.

https://twitter.com/cobie/status/1493222043185262595

LooksRare built a competing NFT marketplace to OpenSea. They charge 2% of transactions to OpenSea’s 2.5%. They also refund the transaction fees in $LOOKS tokens.

The fees then go to token holders who at launch are the team & airdrop recipients.

LooksRare now bigger than OpenSea

People like to talk about the online advertising industry as if it’s a monolith but it’s really two broad industries; push (display/social) and pull (search) based advertising.

Google & Amazon compete in pull while FB/TWTR/SNAP/PINS compete in push ads.
theinformation.com/articles/death… There are different types of products and industries which benefit from each type of ad product. If you want to buy a lawn mower, you perform a search and “pull” ads to you about various types.

While browsing feeds an ad for #Moonfall is pushed to you letting you know it exists.

For NFTs to become mainstream as opposed to current state of being driven by the crypto rich & speculators, a central authority like OpenSea is inevitable and desirable.

An NFT is a transaction and a URL to a file. It doesn’t tell you if the transaction is “legitimate” or not. There are at least two common forms of illegitimate NFT transactions that have no fix on the blockchain that have
1. Your wallet is hacked and the NFT is transferred to the hackers wallet.
2. Someone mints an NFT of an image copied from another NFT. Anyone can mint this ape today

There’s only one product thought leader worth following on Twitter and that’s @shreyas. His framework where PMs tend to focus on one or more of these 3 tracks is extremely insightful

• Execution
• Impact
• Optics

I’d argue this is actually baked into various company cultures The case study @shreyas describes below is fascinating because from one perspective it’s a success. For the individual PM, they drove a major project at the company then used the clout from that to get a senior job at another company. They also did an excellent job managing up.

https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1485427998589276160

I’ve been seeing people share a 2 hour long YouTube video criticizing NFTs and I keep wondering where people find the time?

Even if my job required watching that video I’d try to find some way to get out of watching a video about NFTs longer than most feature length movies. Listening to the video while walking my dogs and this guy desperately needs an editor. The first 10 minutes contains both an unnecessary recap of the housing crisis yet manages to use half a dozen bits of jargon like nodes & mining without context or explanation.

It’s an ordeal.

Many people want to be managers to grow their careers but in reality being a leader is more important in the long run. A leader is someone whose authority is earned and people choose to follow as opposed to someone people have to follow because it’s their job.

Good leaders are… • focused on the team instead of themselves. Good leaders want to develop others and help them grow. They are ambitious but it’s for the team’s success not just their own career.

• effective and transparent communicators. They also understand listening is part of communicating

Thanks to runaway inflation, if you don’t get a meaningful raise this year then you effectively got a pay cut.

Most employers already know this and are planning to give the highest amount in raises since the housing crisis.

A closed mouth doesn’t get fed
google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.… The Wall Street Journal article has some good advice on getting a raise.

Compensation is market based not inflation based. You get a raise because people at your skill level are worth more (check levels.fyi ) not because the inflation rate went up x%.

A lot of web3 advocacy became easier for me to understand once I realized most advocates aren’t technologists.

The most ardent advocates are people who treat making money as a signal of value (e.g. VCs, early adopters, grifters, etc) who view the tech as Star Trek technobabble. I approached web3 from the perspective of how can this create value for a company with millions of users or enhance a product making millions of dollars. And that turns out to be the wrong question.

The right question is how do I turn FOMO into money? That’s the core of crypto.

I’ve read a bunch of books on business and leadership over the past two years. Here’s one lesson from each of my favorite books in the genre. OKRs need to be owned by individuals or specific teams to ensure accountability. For speculative stuff, first target should be a ship deadline then afterwards revenue or usage goals.

amazon.com/Measure-What-M…

This practice of declaring your race & gender before a presentation reminds me of the phrase “I don’t see color”

This is problematic because it’s a lie. We all can’t help the racial/gender biases we’ve been socialized with via media & cultural portrayals
One of the reasons I graduated towards tech was because the culture seemed closest to a racially color blind one. Your code works or it doesn’t. It isn’t like being a lawyer or in sales where your success is mostly dependent on other people viewing you as likable & competent.

These income tax articles don’t point to any meaningful problem. Here’s why using an example.

House prices in the Seattle area are up $100K-$200K in the past year. Homeowners are wealthier (net worth up) but they have no new income (bank accounts flat).
google.com/amp/s/www.nyti… Governments understand taxing a $100K home price gain as income doesn’t make sense since you didn’t actually make $100K, it’s potential income. Instead they charge a far lower tax rate on the overall asset (a 1%-2% property tax) which is more reasonable to bear.

I learned about the concept of Failure Theater recently. One reason GOP voters love Trump is that he actually did what he promised. The GOP villainized lots of things from immigration to Obamacare but understood they’re actually not bad so never fixed them redstate.com/streiff/2015/0… Then comes in Trump promising a bunch of brash ideas consistent with that world view from trade wars with China to Muslim bans and he actually does it. He fulfilled a lot of seemingly outlandish promises from his campaign. Whatever didn’t get done seems more on Congress than him.