I Came In Like A Wrecking Ball

There's almost too much that's been said on the total craziness at Twitter the past week.

The goodbyes from employees that are leaving by being randomly fired or not choosing the 'hardcore' ultimatum are fascinating:

I left because I no longer knew what I was staying for

It's sad, and was the best one I read this week that sums up what's going on there.

So, why am I adding to the already 10,000 hot takes about it? Admittedly, this is a last minute audible, as it wasn't what I was going to noodle on as part of my weekly brain dump here; but I received an unusual number of texts and messages (looking forward) on my take, so here it goes.

Twitter needed to change. As a user for the last 14 or so years (I signed up in 2008), it's seen significant changes and it's own chaos. It's evolved into a different beast than what it was. On some level, I've managed my own navigation of it through lists and careful curation, but it feels like there's too much hot mess in there. Even looking back at my earliest tweets:

Shit. Well, maybe it's not that different.

While I'm a huge fan of continuous disruption, evolution, artificial constraints, and a need to be fast and break things from the outside, everything going on there feels like it's a bit more of a "break all the things".

Flip bits on/off, see what happens, random code reviews, random firings, random re-hiring, begging people to stay then firings... It doesn't consider the culture and the humans that makeup the platform and company. Countless lives are being turned upside-down - not only the employees - but people who make a living from the network: app writers, bloggers/influencers, products, advertisers, etc.

The people that you want to stay to help build a fantastic culture in an organization, the ones who care the most, are the people who put their blood/sweat/tears into crafting something unique because of their love of the culture/product. It doesn't mean working 100 hours a week because someone is yelling at them or giving them an ultimatum.

I feel the random misses a significant point: these are the ones that can find a job anywhere. Asking them to leave if they don't want to be "hardcore" leaves a "macho tough guy work ethic" that doesn't seem to be in touch with reality. It's all sad.

Perhaps this is the actual season finale to Silicon Valley. Time will tell.

You can find me playing around with alternatives, too: https://mastodon.social/@smakofsky

If you enjoy these posts, you can buy me a coffee ☕️, or if you'd rather keep up with my daily ramblings, follow me on Twitter or keep reading my posts on this blog.

Forward Thinking

I can't be the only one out there with this problem: a nightstand or bookshelf (digital or physical) full of books that I have yet to read. While my intention was good (and I love books), I need more time to get through it all.

The pile-up of unread wealth and knowledge bothered me until I came across the concept of the "AntiLibrary".

Umberto Eco, an Italian medievalist, had a library containing more than 30,000 books.

a few savvy visitors realized the truth: Eco's library wasn't voluminous because he had read so much; it was voluminous because he desired to read so much more.

[Your] library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as we've stocked those piles with valuable knowledge — and more of it than we can ever use.

More on the concept of the antilibrary in this article from BigThink. As I've said before, sometimes, it's all about changing your perspective.

Thought of the week

Latest obsession

I can't remember where I discovered The Boston Scally Company (probably a targeted ad on Instagram), but I went ahead and ordered "The Original," and I have to say - I love this thing.

There is a certain vibe in Boston that starts with its people. It's their sarcasm, their underlying rugged persona ... and the one-of-a-kind culture they all embrace.

Knowing that there is no better way to share this with others than in the form of Boston’s most culture-defining piece of headwear - the 'scally' cap - Boston Scally Company was soon established.

This weeks "Deep Links"

Here are a few of the articles and videos that resonated with me over the last week:

• "Things could be better" is a wild study of the judgments people make and that 'they must be built on comparisons: to say that something is bad is really to say that it's worse than something else.' Obvious, right? But what they found 'when people imagine how things could be different, they almost always imagine how things could be better' - More
• From 2016, "The lost infrastructure of social media." seems super relevant as Twitter goes boom. Remember the good old days of decentralized social media (i.e., blogs)? It feels like a lot of these concepts resonate more today than ever in a post-Twitter world - More
• Whoa... I enjoyed "Out of time" and the perspective that 'the case for rest as something sacred and divine, for rest as grace — for rest as that which does not need to be earned because it is a birthright, for rest as that which does not (cannot, will not) accomplish any goal or objective.' Sure, I'll say it - I need rest. I need to stare at a wall and do nothing but take some rest to think, recharge and relax lately - More
• Ah, floppy disks. I remember all the "Weird Formats, Wacky Encryption Tactics" used for copy protection. Does anyone else recall the hard clanking sound from the Commodore 1541 drive as the drive head banged around, which shook the drive out of alignment? Ah - copy protection - read about some of the wacky ones here - More
• While the article "Minute-Zero In The Gender Pay Gap" focuses on the mismatch of salary ranges, I found it full of great advice to anyone who recently received a job offer and is negotiating salary. It's one of the most challenging and most awkward conversations to have, but it's so damn important to know your worth - More
• There are plenty out there that talk about their super-human ability to juggle multiple things at the same time, but "Single-tasking: the power of focusing on one task at a time" was refreshing. Learn more about 'flow state' and how it's scientifically proven to be more productive - More
• "How to... have better meetings" is just what we all need, right? There's some excellent advice in this article on how to avoid those useless, long meetings. .. good stuff - More
• "Life is About More than Happiness" caused me to stop and reflect a bit: 'The purpose of life, as far as I can tell… is to find a mode of being that's so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant' - More
• In the article of the week for me, "How the philosophy behind the Japanese art form of kintsugi can help us navigate failure" examines the technique of repairing broken pots. Finding beauty in imperfection is something that I certainly needed to do more of when dealing with feelings of imposter syndrome. - More
• "The importance of community": whether it is a small group of trusted advisors, or a large tech conference, this post tackles the idea of why it's valuable to gather - More

Fin

As Andor on Disney+ heads into its final week, the three episodes which involved the prison were probably the best Star Wars I've seen in... wow.. a long, long time.

In this recent interview with Andy Serkis (who played Kino Loy), some interesting things popped up about filming that Empire prison ship.

And, spoiler alert, there is only ONE. WAY. OUT.

Be well. ✌🏻