Caterina Fake

'... Given a choice, a truly smart person would prefer to work for a cool starup vs Yahoo! Brickhouse. ...'

Probably making the choice of sticking around for the stock vesting period. If you are ever asking yourself a question about someone, especially web/software related go to the source [0]. Here is what 'Fake' had to say not long ago about startups v's the SoftCo's of the world ...

'... Having worked at startups for my entire career, I had never worked at a company larger than 100-150 people. On a normal day, we would walk around patting ourselves on the back for how brilliant we were, how innovative, how fast we could ship, how much attention we paid to our customers, how WE were the rock stars and the people at those big companies? slow, dull, stupid wankers! ...' [1]

and goes on to explain that innovation is happening at large companies but needs to build a process withing the corporate framework.

'... But then I started working at a 10,000 person company and began to realize we weren't all that after all, the real Peter Framptons were the ones innovating at big companies. You build something brilliant while simultaneously serving literally billions of customers? Party on, you TRULY rock. ...' [2]

So this is what Fake is up to. Working out a process within the context of a large company to allow continual innovation. After doing a startup, waiting for vesting and having access to working capital and authority to execute it seems a natural…

Forgot to post my comment here last time:

http://caterina.net/wp-archives/98#comment-7988

I can only comment from my experiences in Berlin,Germany but what I ve found here that many people here read books / watch movies of “How to…. ” or someone’ story to sucess and use it as a carbon copy of how to suceed.

I think people like to hide behind big names, like if you criticse them ” well Bill Gates did that” so like trying to use someone else mask to make you immune from critique. I think also this whole speech using figures and big names as well is a form of name dropping, its like ” im in their league / I m part of their crowd / take me serious” . To me it only shows who they want to be but who they are not at this very moment.

The shame is the “doing / creating ” aspect gets them to the state that they present themselves. So in this creatlve period, with no current exiting model template to follow, you need to strike out with something new, so if you are actually a new guy acting like you made it, well not much will happen.

There are similarly many blogs/books about working a "normal" work week or day (and some about less than "normal").

http://www.caterina.net/archive/001196.html

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/893-workplace-experiments

http://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp/0307353133

But, I think that having passion and drive for your cause is more important than counting hours. Most people will and do burn out from long hours, they lose interest, etc... which obviously isn't good in the long run.

If you're thinking about using aids (Modafinil), you're probably comparing yourself to others in an attempt to catch up or keep up or something rather than shooting for personal success.

As for me, I'm more concerned about constant and continual self-improvement (and if possible, aiding others in their own self-improvement). If you continue on a route like that, you'd be better off finding what you're really after ;-).

Caterina Fake on how there are great engineers everywhere: http://www.caterina.net/archive/001215.html

she also touches on some cultural differences between NYC and CA:

But what NYC is actually missing is not engineers. In NYC you can find lots of great engineers, visual designers, and great publishers and contributors to social media. But in CA I seem to find far more people with multiple skills - engineers who blog and dabble in design, designers who can do great UI but also great UX, etc. These multidisciplinary people are the ones who hack together brilliant new stuff, can innovate across the board, see various avenues of attack, and are indispensable at startups. It is these hybrid people that we are always looking for at Hunch and for whatever reason find them much more often in CA than NYC.

This reminded me of this blogpost Caterina Fake wrote after discovering a similar tool a while back [1].

As others have mentioned here, this should be seen in context. I applaud governments trying to make explanations for official procedures or legal questions clear, concise, and understandable to laypeople no matter their educational background. I applaud striving to make one's explanations as clear as possible. But I don't think simplistic, dogmatic rules can achieve that, and I don't think it's desirable or virtuous in all contexts.

1. https://caterina.net/2020/08/02/vocabulary-loss-and-the-narrowing-of-understanding/

Caterina Fake, working hard is overrated
http://caterina.net/archive/001196.html

> Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that's what you like to do.