40 years of programming
Take care of yourself. Sleep. Eat. Exercise. Rest. Relax. Take care of other people, as best you can. People are important. Software is just fun.
Hugo Barra on Vision Pro
"Back in my Oculus days, I used to semi-seriously joke with our team (and usually got a lot of heat for it!) that the best thing that could ever happen to us was having Apple enter the VR industry and become a direct competitor to Oculus. I’ve always believed that strong competition pushes a team to do their best work in any industry. This became clear to me especially after living for nearly 10 years at the center of the iOS/Android battle of ecosystems where each side made the other infinitely better by constantly raising the bar on UX, features, performance, developer APIs etc, and seeing each side respond by not only fast following but usually also improving on what the other had released. (And this definitely went both ways: iOS copied Android as much as Android copied iOS)."
Building Brex 3.0
The whole thing is fantastic. I really would quote the whole thing if I could. But I've been mostly interested in the return of hybrid IC/manager role and how that affects the tech industry.
"While increased focus and quality is the most obvious benefit of Brex 3.0, the most rewarding part personally is how we work. We eliminated the role of pure people managers, because it’s impossible to manage people divorced from work. All the leadership energy previously wasted on busywork of planning, resourcing and managing org boundaries now goes towards a single thing: building something excellent. We’re all, across all levels, reconnected to the craft of building great products. For Brex 3.0, I wanted to build a company that I’d be proud and excited to come work at every day – this is it for me."
Stripe Annual Letter
Again a must read. I can't believe you get to read this stuff for free.
Charlie Munger described a two-part rule that works wonders in business, science, and elsewhere: 1) take a simple idea and 2) take it very seriously.
The core idea behind the company—one we endeavor to take very seriously—is that we’re still early in the journey of software-driven innovation, and Stripe is an applied exercise in thinking through some of the corollaries of that...
Anton Howes argues that an “improving mindset” kickstarted the Industrial Revolution. “It was not a particular skill or some special knowledge, but a frame of mind—a lens through which they perceived the status quo as being imperfect, and then sought to rectify those imperfections.” He describes how Edmund Cartwright, the Anglican cleric best known for inventing the power loom, was a Renaissance man who also developed agricultural machinery, fireproof building materials, and a horseless carriage, while also pursuing discovery in medicine. Various economic historians have shown that the degree to which societies foster such a cultural orientation can play a big role in determining larger economic outcomes.
The Spread of Improvement: Why Innovation Accelerated in Britain 1547-1851
In the three centuries after the reign of Henry VIII, the British Isles emerged from civil wars, invasion threats, and religious strife to become the world's technological leader. Why did innovation accelerate? I studied the people responsible, the innovators themselves, using a sample of 1,452 people in Britain who innovated between 1547 and 1851. The paper charts the emergence and spread of an improving mentality, tracing its transmission from person to person and across the country. The mentality was not a technique, skill, or special understanding, but a frame of mind: innovators saw room for improvement where others saw none. The mentality could be received by anyone, and it could be applied to any field – anything, after all, could be better. But what led to innovation’s acceleration was not just that the mentality spread: over the course of the eighteenth century innovators became increasingly committed to spreading the mentality further – they became innovation’s evangelists. By creating new institutions and adopting social norms conducive to openness and active sharing, innovators ensured the continued dissemination of innovation, giving rise to modern economic growth in Britain and abroad.