Mercurial » Career

What to do with life

Camilo — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:56:27 +0000

The post from O’Reilly titled “Work on stuff that matters” resonated, because, in another dimension, the Milton Glaser essay Ten Things I Have Learned has been going around in my mind.

The Glaser one is easiest to grasp, and is obvious when, in a moving economy, the advice reverberates on Sutton, Zimbardo and others: you are what you do and with whom you do it.

The O’Reilly one is more focused in business, yet at the same time goes back to the fundamentals: Why work in this? Why these values? Why now? Why here?

Yes, Virginia, what you do will change your brain and your mind, and the people around will change your life and your spirit: Pursue light! Pursue meaning! The little toxic test is actually easy

It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished.

In a similar manner, is the work exhausting or rewarding? Does carrying this burden all day create energy and ideas? Does it generate satisfaction and growth?

A lot of people are going to be thinking about this.

OK, so what about action?

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On brain cells and attention spans

Camilo — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:11:12 +0000

Why is it that work becomes so boring after a while? Why projects remains exciting, no matter how exhausting and demanding? Why is the thrill of a deadline better than the monotonous drone of the routine meeting and the impossible boring coworker?

It is all about you brain cells and their connections. Whenever you (or your activities) create new pathways, life is better, explosive, immersive, brilliant.

Repetitious tasks are death, though, and not only figuratively: they mean that little by little your pathways reduce, and your options disappear, and one day you wake up transformed into a cockroach, afraid of light and with an apple embedded on your body. That’s why meetings are emetic, and projects are exciting, even after the 16 hour a day crunches and the impossible goals: those mean growth.

Painting, as Paul Graham suggests, may have worked for 20th century dictators, but now we need more, a certain definite brain workout, and one that pay s the bills and nourish the soul, one that provides excitement and gold, one that goes along with expansion and learning of new disciplines. We need work for intelligent humans that need to learn.

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Inching towards a goal

Camilo — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:45:00 +0000

We all know the famous quote, and whether Lombardi’s or some baseball person it is still valid.
And then, it is the corollary, from Seth Godin

Obsessing about the last inch of follow through ensures that the important parts of what you do get just as much (if not more) commitment.

What’s that slippery slope? That last inch of commitment?
Easy: The PM going home early because, you know, they are the PM. The diminished level of attention given to a problem. The slowly leaking tire.
Correct, complete follow-through won’t prevent the leaking tire, but it would ensure that you know the causes, and that you correct them.

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Big to-do

Camilo — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:57:35 +0000

Getting ready for a job search? Here is some advice. Free, even.

research the company
articulate needs and desires
be professional in the interviews
demonstrate good communication skills
maintain a business profile

Guess what I am doing right now?

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Hire the best people

Camilo — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:24:30 +0000

This howto by Marc Andreessen, about hiring the best people, is interesting, to say the least. Most other articles about hiring people center on the specifics of the interview and the hiring process, whereas Marc focus on the why and who. Really, what kind of people do you want with you?
He identifies three major areas in which you have to focus:
1. drive: do they do stuff, regardless? Do they go the extra mile, do they “push and push and push”?
2. curiosity: do they learn! Oh how very important! Are they learning and being current and improving? Do they challenge what they know? Do they seek further?
3. ethics: further on the No asshole rule (self-test and book), seriously, is this the kind of person that you want at your back in the middle of a crisis? What about in the middle of riches?

How many processes we have, only to find out that we need to revisit their reasons and motivations.

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Vonnegut’s advice

Camilo — Mon, 21 May 2007 02:15:50 +0000

Bob Sutton, author of the “No Asshole Rule“, writes about ow Kurt Vonnegut gave permission to publish “Joe Heller”, and the background to that story:

Heller remarks to Vonnegut that he has something that the billionaire can never have, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.” These wise words provide a frame that can help you be at peace with yourself and to treat those around you with affection and respect

Difficult wisdom!
via Sandra

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On broken cultures and weaving reality

Camilo — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 21:15:35 +0000

Go fly a kite!

So I went. And lo and behold, the kite became the metaphor for whatever culture I was in: It was just a matter of letting go, of lifting restrictions and eliminating poisonous influences, to start writing again.

Do you think that Gaiman’s Anansi Boys is racist? Never mind, some people do.

I like that book: it is an allegory for the process of discovery, the realization that we ourselves tell our stories and discover the world according to the tales that we weave around that perceived reality, fro which we, humans, are responsible; the book presents again the story of Anansi, and while allowing the story to unfold, it also gives us back that memory of, as Llinás Angulo would say, the world we create.
The little, weak, infinitesimal spider defeats the mighty tiger through the use of stories, tales, inventions and subterfuges – but more importantly, the world is not anymore of those mighty and powerful, but of those with the ability to create the story, to tell the story according to what they need.

I loved Skunk Anansie and only now I get the meaning of the name, the weight of the stories, the enormous pain and rebellion against that which used to be:

I’ve seen behind your wall of words
You’re sneaky with the facts
Look who’s hiding now
Now I’ve seen through cracks

Go fly a kite: and in flying the kite I was allowing myself, at last, to be free of pain and thinking, letting the thread go and the kite fly on its own, while I went on walking, distractedly achieving my purpose, rewriting my story.

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Tip of the morning

Camilo — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 09:05:14 +0000

In reality, the Iron Monkey has it right when he advises people on how to be good, whether coders or rock stars: learn what others have been doing well, and learn to do it like that.
Of course, it also means that you have to read, practice, read again and practice until you comprehend whatever concept it is that these people were first using.
But oh sound advice: practice correctly.

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On Ruby, Basecamp, and Lisp

Camilo — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 15:53:39 +0000

I have finally drank the kool-aid, and started reading on ruby, rails, information architecture, lisp and all those (soon to-do) SCIP ideas. As it happens, everybody is doing that, and there is no first in market advantage here, but it does not really matter: I will be an enlightened individual, I hope.
With Ruby, though, the purpose is to make life here at the office: too many of the analysis have to be made on gigantic databases, and a big series of easy improvements could be implemented through the use of a nice, customizable solution, and I would like the idea of managing my data separated from the presentation of same, say, in a general purpose database linked to some sort of web application that would allow me to manipulate, modify and further drill into the meanings and implications of the 5 gigas that I might receive every day.
Furthermore, I like two things: that Ruby looks like the child of Hello Kitty and Godzilla, both cute and powerful, and with similar backgrounds. Also, no other programming language – no other product out there – even beings with the promise of making your professional life happier.
And of course, I like happiness.
Finally, where else could I get an introductory course like the Poignant Guide to Ruby? I feel guilty browsing through that, so entertaining it is. It also reads as a manic rambling, but as manic ramblings, this actually has a point to it, and foxes.
Now, basecamp. Why? Because it is there. Reports will come soon on its ease of use and general appeal. Weel, yes, but slackermanager mentions it. Let’s wait and see.
It is interesting to make the jump from being an all-purpose economist-finance guy, to become some sort of ai-ruby-oo thing. And thing it is, because before I have a decent amount of knowledge on those subjects I will be simply an amorphous entity, without discernible shape or form. The Thing That Came From The Southeast.
But there is really one more fundamental reason to take this accelerated courses in ruby and rails and ai all that: information processing.
That we are surrounded by data is a truism; that we receive tens of gigas everyday, and have to act based on the information that those Gs provide marks the complexity of the problem. We do not have the time to become experts in a field, the time that would allow rapid action on an item based on insufficient information. Furthermore, our fields change in such a way that new information must be incorporated, and marginal improvements and benefits rapidly identified. Even so, with computational access so widely distributed, any advantage provided by expert knowledge becomes substantially less, since the playing field is as level as possible. So, programming (actually, computer science) becomes a basic survival tool: in a very general sense, programming becomes something that any information or knowledge professional should be able to do – akin to reading, or performing advanced statistical analysis.

or
soapbox.descend
Besides, I like foxes. Redhead foxes.

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I have no words

Camilo — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:15:12 +0000

In the process of looking for a suitable job, and then getting hired, I find these 25 hurtful words spread all over the place. As Levitt and Morville say, our information has to be findable, and adjectives have become obscuring instead of enlightening.
Much more the better, then, to use real accomplishments to eliminate the hype, convey a message, and reach the reader. It becomes a power game played through information awareness.
If you were writing your personal ad, instead of saying “like to walk on the beach” you would then say “walked on Baker’s Beach for five miles over a period of two hours, admired twenty seagulls, picked up two shells, and sprinted into the water five times.” See? Definite achievements.

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