Tag: Career

Career Discovery Course: Discover and Design Your Career Path

Can’t figure out what to do with your life? Unhappy in your current job? I made every career mistake possible. I put this course together to share what I learned in that process.

How To Be A Great Employee

There are countless courses, coaches, and materials on management. But, what about the other half of that relationship? How do you learn to be a great employee?

Ten Tips on How to Hire Better (With Templates)

Hiring well is hard. Really hard. If you’ve hired people, you’ve probably made hiring mistakes. No matter how many interviews or what your process is, nothing can ensure you’ll do it right, especially if you want to hire without it taking many months. Before getting into how to make better hiring decisions, let’s start with … Continue reading Ten Tips on How to Hire Better (With Templates) →

Wow, That Was a Great Meeting!

Said almost no one ever. Much more common is: “I’d do anything get that hour back!” Meetings are important. And also a good way to waste time. Ten wasted minutes in a six person meeting = a wasted hour for the organization. That adds up fast to wasted days and weeks and a frustrated, less … Continue reading Wow, That Was a Great Meeting! →

The Best Thing About Teaching Myself to Code Wasn’t that I Can Code

I love learning but never liked school. School told me that the time to learn math was 12:55 to 1:50. School made me read pages 142–175 and answer problem set 7 on page 176. School gave me a quiz the next day. School often made me sit quietly in a chair while someone talked at me. … Continue reading The Best Thing About Teaching Myself to Code Wasn’t that I Can Code →

Four Reasons Why Your Company Needs An “Always Be Learning” Program

At each of my last few startups, I instituted a program where employees teach each other stuff. It’s called Always Be Learning or #ABL (because everything needs a mysterious hashtag). At Kickstarter, it started informally with a few people on the operations team teaching each other topics ranging from SQL to egg cookery, and grew … Continue reading Four Reasons Why Your Company Needs An “Always Be Learning” Program →

From Lawyer to Deploy

I’ve learned a ton of great stuff in the last year and I’ve had a lot of fun learning all of it. Most of it is not easy to just throw onto a webpage, but some of it is exactly that. So, I’m working on a website to display a lot of what I’ve learned … Continue reading From Lawyer to Deploy →

The wrong question: “I want to learn to code, what should I do?”

If you want to learn to code and build stuff and you’re starting by asking someone else what you should do, you’re already thinking about it the wrong way. Immediately, right now, with no preparation, in the blink of an eye, you can take a huge step toward your goal by realizing that you don’t … Continue reading The wrong question: “I want to learn to code, what should I do?” →

The common goal in compensation negotiations should be fairness

When negotiating compensation, the common goal most likely to lead to a successful, long-term employment relationship is fairness, not maximization by the employee or minimization by the employer. The compensation negotiation can set the tone for the relationship and is an early impression of company culture. Both sides want the relationship to be successful. Both … Continue reading The common goal in compensation negotiations should be fairness →

From Lawyer to Startups

My Poorly Executed But Successful Career Change How’d you get that job? That’s a question I’ve wanted to ask hundreds of people over the last twenty years. I would’ve loved to have heard their stories to help me make better decisions when managing my own career. In the last several years, for the first time, many … Continue reading From Lawyer to Startups →