Signal v. Noise

> Also, in the last several years, the impact of a good cover letter on getting an employment offer has diminished tremendously to the point that expect it of applicants isn't not respectful of their time.

Do you have anything to substantiate this claim?

I'm an employer and I read and respond to dozens of applications when I have an open position.

Usually when I receive an excellent application, the cover letter is roughly a paragraph in length. It isn't some lengthy, typeset file attachment with a mission statement or some other nonsense that would typically appear if you Googled "example cover letter".

My thoughts on ideal job applications closely mirror those described here[0].

[0]: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1748-forget-the-resume-kill-on-the-cover-letter

Market cap is just a representation of what the market thinks a company is worth as applied to a relatively small fraction of the stock.

Compare to a casino: people think that the ball will land on black and are willing to put their money down based on that. That doesn't mean they are right. In this case there is much more of a casino mentality at work that determines Ubers stockprice than that the underlying fundamentals are solid and sound enough to compute a price that is reasonable.

In that sense you can't lump everything on the stockmarket on one pile. 37signals had a funny bit about marketcap: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-valuation-tops-100-billion-after-bold-vc-investment

I get that a lot of people see Slack as a panacea for all communications, but too often it ends up a dumping ground for anything and everything for which searches might not be as effective over time. Also, that data in Slack can and will be a liability risk to you when it comes to data privacy, compliance, and any litigation hold requests. Do understand that larger organizations (especially FAANG) will purge slack conversation data after a certain period of time for these reasons.

Finally, I feel DHH's article on group chat still provides valid criticisms and recommendations to retain your sanity and prevent the feeling of FOMO: https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat/

He's comparing the best employment outcome ( cushy working conditions, a six-figure salary, and generous stock options ) with worst entrepreneurism outcome ( failure, small commodity business, too much work ).

There is a BIG difference between what is called "small business" and "startup". Small business doesn't scale, while startup starts small, but it can scale globally and create better moat ( scale, network effects, brand ).

People here are interested in startups, not small business.

Tech entrepreneurism is actually underrated since nowhere else do you have low starting costs, global audience, low marginal costs etc. ( https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3324-commercial-freedom ) .

Real cultures are built over time. They’re the result of action, reaction, and truth. They are nuanced, beautiful, and authentic. Real culture is patina.

Don’t think about how to create a culture, just do the right things for you, your customers, and your team and it’ll happen.

https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1022-you-dont-create-a-culture

Keep in mind that you can’t apologize your way out of being an ass. Even the best apology won’t rescue you if you haven’t earned people’s trust. Everything you do before things go wrong matters far more than the actual words you use to apologize.

https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-to-say-youre-sorry/

> you end up with both the old monolith and new microservices, the monolith never gets fully broken up, and now you need to support two development paradigms forever.

It's not a bad thing, it's actually a quite pragmatic approach. Some folks call it The Citadel:

https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-majestic-monolith-can-become-the-citadel/

Building monolith is the best way to learn about domain and domain boundaries. Monolith is way more forgiving for your mistakes.

Going all in on microservices is like believing you learned everything there is. Some folks believe that, most of the time they are wrong.