The ends and the means (more on assholes)
If Elon Musk can solve climate change and save humanity, who cares if he's an asshole?
Blog - Brian Estlin
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Type 1 assholes and Type 2 assholes
If you can change the world and make a billion dollars, apparently nobody cares if you're a jerk.
Chasing strawberries
Believing that I "should" be tuning into joy more is a great way to suffer.
Lightness and Weight
So, okay, just let it go. Just don't worry. Stop spending so much mental energy on what I should do and whether I'm going to be okay. Just relax.
It's not 20/20: How hindsight misleads
If something goes badly in the past, we naturally assume that things would have gone better if only we had done something different. Much of the time we might not even be aware we're assuming anything there. But we are, and the assumption might not be correct.
Skill at influencing
It almost sounds too obvious to say that if you want to have more influence, you should get better at influencing, but this is a surprisingly neglected skill. If you have great ideas but they're not getting traction, chances are this is a key area of growth for you.
Why your ideas aren't getting traction
Engineering cultures like to imagine that they are meritocracies, so ideas supposedly compete on their merits. Cynics might argue, on the other hand, that it's all about corporate politics. Neither of these positions is correct, although both merit and politics play a role.
The ravine of the senior engineer
For your entire career, you've overcome new technical challenges, pressing through modest ravines associated with learning a new programming paradigm or working at a different level of the stack. And now you're an accomplished engineer, a model for others, and you want to know how to get promoted to "staff" or whatever the next level on the engineering ladder is. But you've run into some problems.
Create the conditions for your success
When I first stepped into a management role, I read a bunch of books and articles about being a manager. One of those was “Becoming the Boss” by Linda A. Hill, published in Harvard Business Review. The bit of that article that I have always remembered was this story, told under the heading “create the conditions for your success”:
3 simple tips to help boost your career
The most valuable teammates are those who can be relied upon to help others, get things done, and move the business forward.
My 5 favorite books on meditation and Buddhism
The books described below are my favorite books on Buddhism and/or mindfulness meditation. I have tried to describe what I like (and in some cases, don't like) about each one. I wholeheartedly recommend all of them!