A collection of longer, more in-depth posts representing some of my better writing
Eccentric Founders
Despite changing its corporate structure and name to Block, and even though it’s been over a decade since I last worked there, I will always think of the company as Square. Those were formative years. For me, Square was the first place I…
A Retreat from Game Subscriptions
Remember the persistent idea of an evergreen gaming service, a “Netflix for games,” that gamers had been clamoring for since…well, since Netflix became a household name? We did enjoy a brief era of subscription gaming, but just a few…
Executing Organizational Cartography
A few years back, during my early days at Affirm, a couple of us engineering leaders were trying and struggling to orchestrate a reorg across our teams. There were a number of strong personalities to manage and key communications to sequence,…
Year in Review — 2025
This was a quick year. Perhaps it’s an effect from aging time acceleration—when the subjective experience of the passage of time speeds up as I get older. Maybe it’s the result of throwing myself more into work for most of this past year, a…
Exclusively “A” Players
Steve Jobs supposedly said, “A players hire A players; B players hire C players.” Silicon Valley takes this to heart, a guiding light for tight hiring process and keeping a high bar when building out teams. Better to keep everything at…
Lucid Motors, the Tesla of a Decade Past
Before AI dominated the headlines and capital investments, electric vehicles and autonomous driving were poised to be the defining technologies of the 2020s. It’s been a fascinating industry to follow: first Tesla and their rise to…
Review: Apple in China
The student has become the master. That was what I was thinking as I was about two-thirds of the way through Apple in China, a book highly recommended by the author of Stratechery as possibly one of the best books on the tech industry—ever…
Pixelache
I just finished the game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It was originally released back in April, but due to the organic praise from critics and the gaming community alike, the game was sold out for months, and I wasn’t able to get a physical…
Selective Acquihiring
It was around 5 pm on a lazy weekday afternoon. I still remember peering out into the mostly empty parking lot, the bright Californian sun blunted with tinted glass in my tiny conference room, on the second floor of an office building that…
Beyond Servant Leadership
I’ve never liked the term “servant leadership.” As I eased into my engineering director role, one of my main responsibilities was conducting interviews for a wide breadth of engineering and engineering-adjacent roles. With…
