Be as cross-functional as necessary

Sell your story

Lower your inhibitions

My life’s mission

Personal brand as moat

# 🌱
Notes marked with this symbol indicate “Heavy work in progress, these thoughts are still under development and growing.”




Iterate as fast as possible

# Be as cross-functional as necessary

[[🌱]]

- Figure out if this is actually valuable and why

The broader your knowledge the less coordination between people you have to the easier it is to [[Iterate as fast as possible]].

Inter-person coordination overhead is a non-trivial for innovation and is often the bottleneck when trying to [[Iterate as fast as possible]]. The more a single person can cover in a vertical the better.

- Is this actually often the bottleneck?

Rather than splitting work up vertically (e.g. design vs. dev vs. data science), split it up horizontally (e.g. person1 works on thing1, person2 works on thing2)




# Lower your inhibitions

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Anecdotally, alcohol makes it easier for me to [[Talk to people]], particularly ones I have not met before. (not getting drunk! Some beer or wine with dinner) I think alcohol is a social lubricant because it lowers peoples inhibitions [citation needed]. 

I wonder if there is a way to “permanently” slightly lower my inhibitions without having to rely on a drug and the right setting so that I am always more approachable and friendly.




# My life’s mission

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Reflecting on my career, the common thread throughout my work seems to be that I make developers’ lives easier.

Obviously, all of my open source work is focused on this but even my most successful product, [[Spectrum]], ended up implicitly being focused on this! (and, in hindsight, we should have explicitly focused on it)

This is probably a byproduct of the fact that I [[Solve your own problems]]. Because I am a developer, it is easy for me to spot and solve problems developers have and I love doing it.




# Personal brand as moat

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https://commoncog.com/blog/personal-brand-as-moat-personal-brand-as-soft-landing/

Cedric argues, based on Warren Buffet’s ideas, that a brand is valuable if it leads to sustained pricing power. In plain English, if it can’t raise its prices compared to its competitors, the brand isn’t worth anything.

A great example that immediately jumped to mind is Apple, the world’s most valuable brand. They are known for being expensive, and yet people buy them anyway.

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This is an interesting insight into what the term “personal brand” stands for:

> “A personal brand is [..] a set of expectations around your skills, your behaviour, your values and your worldview.”

That immediately makes me think that I have not built the best personal brand. I wish I was known for quality work, but honestly my work has always been more MVP-ey than quality…

> “It’s important to remember that *consistency* is the key component of a strong brand, not excellence. “

Cedric uses the example of McDonalds, but I think that’s an incorrect argument. Sure, McDonalds is consistent and that makes it great. However, it has also spent many thousands of man-years optimising their food to taste the best to the largest amount of people. Saying it’s “a subpar experience” when it’s exactly the experience people are looking for seems incorrect to me.

I don’t think you can build a personal brand on a consistently bad experience. I am not sure if it’s better to raise the bar of your worst work to be great, or the bar of your best work to be world-class excellent—I tend to the latter but I’m not convinced.

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Cedric points out that many VCs nowadays have strangely misaligned incentives. They build a personal brand through their investment activity, which they use to raise a fund or two, pocket the management fees and then use their personal brand to find a soft landing in another position.

I don’t think any VC necessarily has harmful intentions from the get-go. However, becoming a VC nowadays is a pretty good deal: in the worst-case scenario you make some money off the fees, build a personal brand because you [[Build a diverse network]] and [[Talk to people]] all the time and then transition that into a lucrative job elsewhere. That’s a pretty solid worst-case scenario, particularly when the best-case is to be rich out of your mind.

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I think his point on careers being 40 years long and the peak being when you’re 50 to 60 years old is interesting. That certainly makes me think that I should prioritise getting my Twitter followers off of Twitter and onto a mailing list—not because I like writing mailing lists but because e-mail will likely always be a thing. Twitter? Maybe not…

On the other hand, I am not sure if this is true now. If I personally still _have_ to work when I’m 50-60 I did something wrong. I have infinite leverage at my disposal to find something to generate enough wealth so that I don’t have to work anymore.

That doesn’t mean I won’t work anymore when I’m 50-60, it just means I shouldn’t be in a position where I don’t have a choice.

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I definitely think I have done a bad job of building a reputation and need to focus on that. I can easily think of some of the people I worked with at some jobs that are excellent and that I would hire in a heartbeat, and only a small fraction of them have a big audience.

I am probably the opposite: while I’m not bad, I’m not _great_. It’s not like every programmer who’s ever worked with me is like “This Max guy is the best programmer I’ve ever worked with.” I know that I _can_ be that. I can work fast and smart at the same time, which is how I can get away with working two hours a day and fucking around the rest. But imagine if I worked ten or even just six hours a day…

I should focus on being great in order to build that reputation, which does indeed seem like a more lasting advantage (career moat) than followers on Twitter.




Non-technical regrets at Spectrum

# Sell your story

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Buying art is a lot about connection to the artist—when somebody comes over and asks about your painting choices, you want to be able to tell the artists story.

People connect because of shared experiences and stories. Thus, a part of what an artist sells is their own story.

This applies to any creative person, and is a big part of the reason why indiehackers are so interesting to follow. (which of course makes them more likely to succeed because they [[Build a diverse network]], [[Talk to people]], [[Work in public]] etc)

Thus, an important things you can do to further your creative careers is to tell your story.




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