Not all social media platforms are created equal — The most important decision you can make when building a following online is deciding which social media platform to focus on first. Many people build the wrong channels and burn themselves out. This is due to a misunderstanding of how social media works. In this article, I discuss why you…

Your approach matters more than the technical details — I lived in the library during college. “The more textbook theory I studied, the better an engineer I would become,” I thought. Yet when I started working, I noticed that the best engineers in the industry didn’t necessarily know more theory than new grads. …

Everyone is a brand. Yes, that means you! — I wanted to be a billionaire. So I did what everyone in Silicon Valley does — start a startup. Then this happened: I quit my job I spent 6 months building a product I launched it I got 0 customers Suddenly I was running out of cash, and I had…

It’s not technical skills you’re missing — Engineers often try to get promoted by focusing on their technical skills. Like writing more unit tests. Or learning a new programming language. After all, the best engineers get promoted. Right? Being good at your job is different than advancing in your career. The people who get stuck only do…

3 common mistakes junior engineers make. Are you making them? — The best engineers are 10x better than an average engineer. Like a one man army, they deliver more value, faster, by themselves, than a team of junior engineers combined. But how could that be? Isn’t more always better? In my time as an engineering lead at Netflix and Amazon, I’ve…

An beginner’s guide to DAOs (and their explosive growth) — What do these situations have in common? student-athletes not getting paid Facebook disregarding privacy concerns banks paying no interest on checking accounts For starters, all of these situations are not fair. And all of these situations involve a rent-seeking middleman — the university, the corporation, the banks — keeping all the value that its customers generate for…