High signal digest #3

Siddhartha, 10 learnings from DALL-E, early tech decisions and more

Reading time 3min 18sec ⏱️🚀

Housekeeping:

• Welcome to 48 of you who joined since last Wed! We are 2 short of 50 new readers this week. Share with a friend!

• Poll at the end. Let’s think through the economy together 🤔

Today at a glance:

• Book summary: Siddhartha by Herman Hesse - a 1992 novel about a journey of a man

• Reading snippets: Gitlab CEO shadow program, 10 learnings from using DALL-E, early tech decisions, optimistic take on crypto, context switching - why it hurts and how to fix, is paid media +ROI?

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Why did I read this? Because it was one of the most recommended books on buddhist philosophy. This spring I re-read it and now amidst all the noise - it seems like a good book to share with you.

“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value” - Siddhartha

This is a philosophical fiction novel about a journey of man (Siddhartha) and his quest for knowledge/fulfillment, struggle with materialism, identity and much more. We all see different lessons in the book.

Here are the main themes that I saw:

• There is value in every situation. I can learn something from every moment. All experiences either have an immediate positive angle or help us grow long-term.

• Everyone has a different path to enlightenment and a different definition of love.

  • Siddhartha, his father, his best friend, his lover all had a different journey.

• If you are unhappy about situation, you have the power to change it

  • Siddhartha left the comfort and the riches. Twice.

• Cycles of life are real. Things repeat and yet nothing is permanent. So it’s about how we deal with each cycle. It is important to keep moving.

• Do not succumb to materialism/comfort. Seek beauty outside hedonic treadmill.

“All this had always been and he had never seen it; he was never present. Now he was present and he longed to it.” - Siddhartha

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Let’s get into reading snippets:

• GitLab has an “interesting” reputation in developer community. One of the things they do is the CEO shadow program. In theory, I think it’s a cool idea for new hires. I’ve never been on a team that had something like this. The closest I’ve seen are memos written by the CEO/GM on <how to work with me>. Not sure how to do this in practice at scale yet, but it’s worth a think.

source: https://async.twist.com/context-switching/

• A+ read on why context switching (ex. meetings, compulsive social media/email checking) is hurting us and what to do about it. Context switching isn’t a new topic, but it continues to be a problem. It is destructive so we need to keep solving. In the article 2 root causes that resonate with me are: (1) our brains crave novelty, (2) our tools are designed to interrupt. 2 strategies that I strongly agree with are: (1) batching tasks and (2) promote async comms.

• 10 learnings from using DALL-E. Easy and insightful read. #9 and #10 are most interesting. If you have DALL-E access - I am jealous.

• Dated, but good POV from a smart man on the issues in crypto and lessons learned. The reason why I share this specific crypto take is because I like how Matt is intellectually honest about the issues and because he is focused on learnings.

• Lindy effect is the phenomenon that the lifespan of stuff is proportional to current age. In plain english, the longer something has been around - the longer it will be around. A nice blog that applies the Lindy effect to early tech decisions and asks us to consider long-term weight of these decisions. In one instance, I believe I cost our team millions in lost $ARR because I optimized for speed and picked the wrong architecture. In another, being first made a large difference and we ran over the market. There is a lot embedded in these decisions. My #1 learning is to think deeply/ask for help, but still be decisive and move. That’s also where the author arrives.

• Who is doing paid media right? What is the efficacy of paid media $? How do you balance paid vs owned channels? Over the years am seeing more posts like this. Or  this from Bill Gurley. Even before the iOS changes went live, Hacker News would have posts from founders who felt like they are not getting their $ worth. One explanation is law of large numbers (i.e. absolute # of complaints higher because sample is larger, but as a % it’s same or lower). Another explanation is that something is broken. I am not an expert on paid, but based on my last experience I am not a believer. I’d advocate for paid to quickly learn and/or to drive traffic to a product early. But I wouldn’t bet the farm on paid without immense continued rigor and/or invest in paid at the expense of organic and owned channels. And even then, I think paid media ROI in practice isn’t as good as #s on the dashboards.

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Curious what you think. We will do a quick take on the economy next week.

Have a peaceful Sunday 🤝