I recently talked about the time zone troubles in California. This TikTok guy is saying the same thing about the macro-economic situation. I think the brain drain from California (and the US) will continue in the coming decade. Knowledge workers will move to cheaper locations and companies will continue to globalize. It leaves me with…
I am building design and docs teams right now in Prague and Bangalore as well as on-boarding a large team in Tel Aviv. Because of time zones and the poor location of California, I am forced to change my normal process. For certain candidates, I am pointing them to this post and asking them to…
Have you looked at GMail settings recently? I noticed they haven’t changed in about 20 years. Now take a look at Chrome settings. It’s pretty clear that Google has a pattern using Material Design to make these kinds of settings. The Chrome example look just good. So why in the world haven’t they updated the…
After Tel Aviv, I met my family for a 10 day trip in Italy. Rome, Florence, and then Venice were our destinations. This is mostly for my personal journal, but maybe you will find it useful if you ever visit. Rome Rome is a weird city. It ruled the known world for nearly a millennium.…
I have been busy building the UX and Docs teams for work. California has been difficult for me as the time zones are so different. The center of gravity in the company is on the other side of the world including centers in Tel Aviv, Prague, and Bangalore. I decided to spend 6 weeks in…
I just retired the zoom interview technique I have been using for the past few months. You might hate it, but it was fun and had some real benefits. Decide for yourself. It seems long to read, but it went quick in a 30 min interview. I ask the candidate to imagine going to a…
Hot TakeThe user does not come first. The user is not the center of design. The user is one of many factors in a good product. Glen Lipka, 2023 I have never liked the terms User-Driven, Data-Driven, and User-Centered. I think it fundamentally weakens the design team and devalues creativity, innovation, inspiration, risk-taking, and experience.…
I live in “Silicon Valley” halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. I moved to the Bay Area in 2002 and have loved it ever since. My first impression was that “everyone here loves technology like I do!” and that has stuck with me for 2 decades. However, I see a trend now that is…
I feel like most designers put very little design thinking into their own design portfolio. This is weird, right? I mean, there is literally only one website in the whole world that you get to control 100%. No engineers, no product managers, no executives or sales people. Its just you. Why in the world would…
The truth is that I hardly ever use Twitter these days. It’s not a source of news for me (NYTimes, John Oliver). It’s not a source of joy or information (YouTube). It’s not a place to gain reputation for answering questions (Quora) or mentoring people (ADPList). It’s not addictive fun (TikTok). It’s not a marketplace…
WordPress just keeps getting better and better. I am now using the 2023 theme on top of WordPress 6.1. It has many nice features making vanilla WordPress of a full site editor. It certainly doesn’t have all the bells and whistles like Webflow or EditorX, but for my purposes (a content blog), it is quite…
The phrase “Burn the Boats” comes from historical military events. It’s a phrase used once in a while in the tech industry. I used it recently and thought to write about it. Origin In 1519, Hernan Cortez wanted Aztec treasure. He invaded the Yucatan shores with only 600 men. Clearly, he was vastly outnumbered by…
It’s recruiting time again! This time in Tel Aviv, Israel. My new company, SenintelOne has a strong engineering and product management presence there. Since my budget is limited, I decided that it would be best to replicate the success I had at Treasure Data by hiring junior folks and training them. I visited Tel Aviv…
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a psychological tool proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation”. In short, it shows how people focus their energies in a cascading series of needs. The idea is that you can’t really focus on self-esteem when you are dying of thirst. The diagram looks…