Writing
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Accrual Accounting & Error Detection
Most accounting starts out following cash: when money comes in, mark revenue up; when money goes out, mark expenses down. It’s simple, but there’s something comforting in simple. Plus, it comes with built-in error detection: if your books say you have $50,000 but the bank says $42,000, you probably screwed up somewhere.
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Cracked is Dumb
If you scroll through twitter in the Silicon Valley bubble you’ll immediately see references to “cracked” engineers. It’s a lazy shorthand denoting that the company only wants to hire the top 1% of talent, just like the so-called “jQuery ninjas” of 10 years ago. It’s pretty fucking dumb.
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How Your Org Chart Decides For You
Without knowing anything about your company, I’d bet your lawyers aren’t advocating for taking on more risk. And your Customer Success team probably isn’t pushing you to deprioritize a feature their client wants. It’s not about personality quirks; it’s the role. The same predictable tug-of-war plays out nearly everywhere.
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Reading Books
I read a lot of books each year. Like, 150+ books a lot. Granted, most of them are crappy sci-fi or fantasy books, but even those books stretch my imagination and expose me to new ideas. After all, popular concepts like robotic ethics, artificial intelligence, and time travel were first explored in science fiction books. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself.
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Reach
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what work feels meaningful to me.
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Legibility and AI
It feels like there are 10 dev-productivity startups out there for every startup in accounting, underwriting, loan servicing, or any of a hundred other domains. It’s not because the latter aren’t good businesses (they definitely are), but because the people who know what to build in them and the people who know how to build are entirely separate populations. These domains are so complex that they’re illegible to the people building.
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Accounting
I initially joined AngelList to learn more about venture capital and startups. Ya know, the sexy headline topics. Yet over time, I found myself increasingly interested in accounting, which was probably the last thing I would’ve expected. In fact, I’d never really thought about accounting before, nor was it in the job description when I joined. But over time it grew from a side consideration for the company— “Oh yeah, we have those two accountants who kept our valuations updated”— to one of the businesses main considerations.
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People Magic
A startup runs on people in its early days. There are no rules, processes, or systems to help things get done. You want to ship some code? Cool, do it, no need for approval. Customer writes in with a complaint? Guess you have to get on the phone with them. Everyone is implicitly entrusted to do everything. They have to be.
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Stubbornness
For most people, “Stubbornness” conjures images of a frustrating coworker digging in their heels on the smallest of compromises. They probably hated the experience.
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Working Hard
I spent a week this summer hiking a 75 mile stretch of the PCT with a friend. We averaged ~18 miles a day, and would typically hike for 12 hours, get into camp around 7 at night, and fall into our sleeping bags shortly thereafter. On some nights I would’ve loved to have a bit more time to recover, but there simply wasn’t another way to cover that kind of mileage without long hours.
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Losing (and Maintaining) Trust in Your Company
At any given time most people have a laundry-list of frustrations with their job. Yet even in the face of major disappointments like getting passed over for a promotion, they will often still feel positive about their work overall. Maybe they still really like their coworkers, or believe in the mission, or just enjoy the day-to-day mundanity enough that they’re ok with some frustration in the bigger picture.