I'm getting serious about finding a new home online. Nothing else has been particularly appealing to me so far.
Jun 2, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
I have a lot of feelings about being labeled gifted as a child. My story feels a little different though. I never wanted gold stars, and I still don’t care about “accomplishments” the way other people do. This came up recently in a way that I’m still processing.
I often tell people that I identify with Gen-X more than millennial. (Even though people insist on putting me the latter category based on my birth date). For me it’s the messages I internalized growing up. Gen-Xers were “slackers”. Not living up to their potential. That’s me.
Jun 1, 2023 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
I keep hearing people say this. And I believe it. But maybe I just don't use Google the way other people do. It seems fine to me. What kind of searches are bad?
I also wonder if some people are having very different experiences depending on their personal algorithm. Google has been learning about how I search, and what I'm looking for, for a long time now. Maybe it's just dialed in for me?
May 31, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
I'm glad to see you're engaging with the material. Even if it hasn't quite hit home yet. We don't have a lot of practice with actually examining Whiteness. It can feel uncomfortable at first. I'm happy to answer any questions you have as long as they're honest and not asinine.
I used to work in the same office with this white woman who is thinking "I wish we could go back to vigilante groups that could just go around hanging people."
If you can't be bothered to read the screenshots, this is the highlight: She's scared. As a white woman, she's scared all the time. And instead of examining where that comes from, she wants there to be institutions dedicated to roaming around doing violence on her behalf.
Mar 20, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Small personal life update. Since being laid off, I've been dusting off technical skills and spending more time typing. It has been a journey of finding out how long I can be at the computer each day.
I was having a hard time as a remote-only manager. The sheer amount of hours staring at zoom screen was too much for me. But I used to be able to of uninterrupted time coding. I enjoyed it a lot too.
Mar 12, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
So, I'm gonna try not to spend a lot of time talking philosophically about AI. But let's talk about this for a second. AI becomes a danger when it is actually given power to make decisions *and execute them*.
We are learning what it means to engage with non-deterministic computer models. That's a fancy word that just means "you can put in the same input every time and you will get different and unpredictable output".
Mar 12, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I’ve talked to lots of smart people about this. Every one of them says that ultimately trying to get your money out before everybody else was the only option. Once the stampede starts, you can’t stand still. You can only hope you’re faster than everybody else.
The important skill set is managing risk. What everyone is learning today is that having multiple bank accounts at different institutions might be a good idea. I learned this for my own finances. I’m not sure who teaches business owners this stuff.
Mar 11, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I've been trying to give the fyp a chance. But it's so bad.
My fyp doesn't seem broken. Just bad. It's not that I keep seeing people I don't follow. I can usually tell why it ended up in my TL. My problem with the fyp is that it's repetitive. It's supposed to bring me more content, but I keep seeing the same stuff over and over.
Mar 11, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I asked this very smart executive of an NFT company how investors in VC funds would react to the SVB situation. He blocked me.
I wasn't actually trolling. I knew I was asking a pointed question. But I really wanted to understand if maybe I was missing something. I haven't seen any actual VCs even *suggest* that they should be the ones to come to the rescue here.
Mar 10, 2023 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
Good teardown of what just happened with Silicon Valley Bank.
Some folks have already started the "let the banks fail" conversation. It's not that you're wrong. But a lot of people aren't going to receive their paychecks this week. So you know, maybe chill for a little bit.
Feb 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
He doesn't believe he is killing it. He legitimately believes whatever he's doing is making it "better".
That's the problem with giving narcissistic megalomaniacs infinite power and resources. They try to remake the world in their own image.
When Twitter does fail, he'll just find someone else to blame. It's the users fault. Advertisers couldn't see his "vision". The engineers weren't good enough. It doesn't matter really. The point is that men like Musk don't bother lying about their motivations.
Jan 11, 2023 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
I'm gonna be more constructive about this topic today. But here's the first thing to take note of. All of the people responding like this are actively ignoring all of the people agreeing with me that it sucks.
There are tons of people mad at me personally for declining to explain my hot take. Very few of those people have engaged with anyone else to ask them if they're willing to share why they agree with me.
Jan 11, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This is why I often react poorly to people trying to moralize about me being "rude" to people in my mentions. 9 times out of 10 they don't care about rudeness. What they expect is *deference*. When it's their turn, they pop off immediately.
My problem is that I still have a lot of opinions about tech. But I can't stand arguing with nerds anymore. I just can't. I will admit that I'm handling this dilemma pretty poorly. I said I was gonna try to be nicer and I'm failing pretty hard.
Jan 10, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Hot take: Everybody hates the current state of frontend web development. Some people are lying to themselves. Some people haven't realized it yet. But everybody can feel that this shit is bad, and we just haven't collectively decided to talk about it yet.
I'm not sure I'd agree that mobile teams are doing better. But maybe.
I never learned mobile development. I really should so I can try to figure out what the difference is.
My goal for this year is to get serious about doing more writing outside of Twitter. But it's interesting to note the anxieties I have around that. I got comfortable with my twitter presence being a weird mix of content. That feels harder to do on a blog.
Twitter has been a perfect medium for getting different thoughts out of my head with a minimum of friction. That has been super important for me. I need an outlet. But if I sit down to write something intentionally, it's a whole different process. A lot more stressful.
Jan 5, 2023 • 17 tweets • 8 min read
I keep threatening to write about management and leadership. But if I procrastinate long enough, @skamille does what I was gonna do. skamille.medium.com/which-meetings…@skamille One of the things I spend a lot of time doing as a leader is trying to squash bad assumptions. I can't tell you how many people have been indoctrinated that having dozens of 1:1s every week is what's normal and expected.
Aniyia and I listened to this together yesterday. Karla does an incredible job laying out the core dysfunctions we've been experiencing in tech. I was in my feels a little bit too.
The main reason to listen to this podcast is that Karla defines and describes what it means that we are building multicultural workplaces. And all of the implications of moving to that from the homogeneous workplaces of the past. All of the tensions we are seeing stem from that.
Dec 28, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
You know what is bothering the shit out of me these days? How many tech people who were mad at me for criticizing crypto are dead silent right now. I thought you were an advocate and believed in educating people. Where you at?
I'm reading about yet another crypto company declaring bankruptcy after destroying people's money. The ecosystem is in turmoil. Do you know much energy people put into trying to defend this mess? I'll ask again. WHERE ARE YOU? If you're gonna be about it, be all the way about it.
Dec 17, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A lot of white people have genuinely been convinced that backing fascists is gonna work out for them. I'm still often astounded by the sheer magnitude of the campaign to miseducate white people about history.
I mean there's a point when you wake up to what white supremacy has done to non-white people. But then you start to realize what it does to white people. How hard it works to control everything about their education, their values, their morals. Everything.
Dec 17, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Right-wingers have perfected the art of co-opting and perverting progressive language. This has always been a thing to some degree. But in the world of social media, it happens so quickly that most people only start hearing about the word once the definition has been destroyed.
The problem is not the words. The problem is not that we have to make them stop co-opting us. The problem is that we keep debating with them on their terms. We allow them to make us expend energy debating the meaning of words. Most of that energy is wasted.
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