What stood out to me more than how impressive the carousel of companies was, was the order of them. Wild that they have OpenAI and Stripe second and third to Airbnb.
When I read the title I wondered “does this really happen?” And then I read a few lines and remembered “yes, I definitely did this all the time”.
The reality is that a lot of people put ideas forward solely for the purpose of getting attention and trying to get promoted. A lot of those ideas are full of hope and enthusiasm and lacking in fundamentals. But to shoot it down makes you come across as a nay-sayer, or a Debbie-downer. Even though you are sure it’s going nowhere, the reality is that it’s a lot easier to let the market prove you right.
Less hurt feelings and interpersonal drama that way. Seems wasteful, but at the end of the day you got data and learnings that you didn’t have otherwise. So hey, silver linings.
If you want a good job in tech, go look at Walmart’s job board in the coming weeks. They literally have thousands of Indians doing all kinds of jobs that could easily be done by Americans. I liked my time there, and there’s lots of great people, but it felt very clear that the system was being abused.
I first bought this app 15+ years ago (before the logo was glowing). It was an incredible piece of software then, and I’m sure this is a worthy upgrade. Absolutely a delightful product.
Back in 2014 I was tired of how awful the Mint app was and I wanted to make a banking app of my own (that I affectionately called Basil). The premise was that it would be like Mailbox (remember that flash in the pan email app?) but for finances. You’d swipe on every transaction to make sure they were categorized correctly. I even wired it up to my local bank’s very rudimentary API.
It was beautifully designed (thanks to some help from a designer friend) and I was really proud of the architecture and Objective-C code.
A large retailer reached out to me on LI and asked about a job. As part of the interview process they asked me to submit a code sample and I submitted basil. The senior dev in the interview commented that he didn’t have any negative comments about the code but instead spent the interview telling me the things he liked about it. It was so fun and gratifying to get that feedback and I got the job and worked there for seven years. It totally changed the direction of my career!
I think Jony was shown the door over this debacle, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Phil is next. When is the last time you’ve seen Phil on stage at an event?
He’s the one who introduced these keyboards and praised them up and down, he’s probably going to take the fall for them as well.
I have money burning a hole in my pocket right now to buy a MBP but I can’t do it. It is literally a defective product. Shame on Apple for selling a productive they know is not going to work well for their customers.