Book Review: Smarter Than You Think
It’s wise to read books with points of view you don’t share. It’s the only way you get exposed…
Latest Blog Posts
How Events & Conferences Should End
Yesterday I gave the closing talk, How To Champion Ideas, at An Event Apart Seattle (If you saw me at…
Improving the User Experience of (User Experience) Conferences
I’m finishing up work on a talk for An Event Apart Seattle about what happens after the conference is…
What does a good father do?
What does a good parent do for their children? What specifically, if anything, can only a father do for…
How To Convince Your Boss To Try Something New
Powerful people often become conservative. Once they’re in charge, it’s easy to feel that the knowledge that helped them…
How do *you* eat Pho?
I rarely write about food here, but eating and cooking are two of my favorite things. Pho, Vietnamese rice…
How Remote Work Improves Diversity
A good question about The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com & The Future of Work from Sibylle, in a comment: I…
Free Webinar: Future of Work & The Year Without Pants (3/27)
Next Thursday Citrix will be hosting me with a live webinar about remote work and The Year Without Pants.…
Signed copy of The Year Without Pants to First 10 commenters
Hi folks. Its been a long time since I gave things away. Some of you subscribe directly by email…
Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem & The Myths of Innovation (NYTimes.com)
This essay in the NYTimes, Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem by Yiren Lu, is a kaleidoscopic essay on culture divide, and the…
The First Time I Saw The Web
In honor of the 30th anniversary of the web, here’s my story. I was a senior at CMU in…
The Three Writing Mindsets
I write nearly every day and I have the hypothesis that there are three writing mindsets. Put simply: Raw.…
Remote work @ WordPress.com by the numbers (Infographic)
[Update: I learned a lesson about infographic spam after posting this] Here’s a quick visual rundown on remote work and…
Have we reached the death of the author? (Publishing and Poverty)
I’m a fan of Melville house, a young, savvy publishing company founded in 2001 in Brooklyn, NYC. They have…
Why Fathers And Children Don’t Get Along
My next book is a departure and a risk. If you want to understand why, read the goal of…
Famous programmer Leaves Google Because of Remote Work Ban
Yahoo is a curious poster child for banning remote work, as they’re not a company that’s doing very well.…
The Goal of My Life Explained (tattoo included)
The photo below explains my ambition: I’m working to fill this shelf with books I’ve written. I want an…
What If Managers Didn’t Get Paid More?
One of the many surprises from The Year Without Pants is that Automattic, makers of WordPress.com, doesn’t pay employees more…
FAQ about The Year Without Pants (with satisfying answers)
It has been a great few months for The Year Without Pants (the book about my year managing a team…
Should you ban Woody Allen’s films?
The resurfacing of Woody Allen’s past is sad from many perspectives, amplified by how a daughter and a family…