Month: February 2020

I shared the post below a few days ago and wanted to follow up as I’ve just closed the form.

The big change this year is that we’ve gone from 30 requests to 77. While this is a nice opportunity for me to e-meet so many of you for the first time, it is also substantially more than I expected.

The next step is on me – I will need to find ~50 colleagues/teammates who’ve still got subscriptions they can give away. I expect to have an update for all who submitted the form by Mar-15. And, I will do my best.

Finally, for the many of you who took the time to share context or write lovely thoughtful notes, thank you. Much appreciated.

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I work at LinkedIn. Our vision is to provide economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. One of our initiatives is called the #plusonepledge where every member of the LinkedIn team helps someone in their network with finding economic opportunity – finding a new job, a new contract, a new client, and so on.

As part of this initiative, I am able to gift 6 months of free LinkedIn Premium Careers subscription to 4 folks who are actively seeking a new opportunity. For example, LinkedIn Premium could be helpful if you’d like the ability to get in touch (selectively :)) with recruiters and hiring managers of jobs you believe you are a fit for.

After posting this last year, I received ~30 requests and ended up requesting (and receiving) help from a bunch of wonderful colleagues. I intend to do the same this year and will do my best to share these subscriptions with as many of you as possible – on a first come, first serve basis.

My only request is that you fill this form by Fri, 2/28. I’ll aim to get back to you by mid-March.

Job seeking is a tough process and, if you choose to use one of these subscriptions, I hope it’ll help you in some small way. If it doesn’t, I’d appreciate feedback on what we could have done better too.

There has been a lot of news about markets falling in the past two days. So, I looked up the Dow (or the Dow Jones Industrial Average) on Google yesterday.

When you look at a 1 month view, you can clearly see the steep fall.

You see it clearly in the 1 year view as well. However, while the fall is certainly steep, we also notice that it is still higher than the starting point.

When you shift to a 5 year view, however, the fall is barely a blip.

This is not to say it will continue to be a blip. No one really knows how long this will last or if we’ve hit the bottom. We all may have guesses and, in some cases, more informed hunches – but that’s about it.

This post isn’t about all that speculation though.

Instead, as I looked at these views, I realized that they hold a powerful lesson in perspective. When we experience a really bad day, it is worth zooming out and getting some perspective.

Something that feels particularly bad right now may just be a tiny blip on a 5 year time horizon.

When we try to move a group of folks from misalignment to alignment, we have two primary tools at our disposal – documents and meetings. And, I’ve come to realize that the optimal way to use these tools is to start with the document before attempting to bring people together with a meeting. The optimal process looks something like this.

3 reflections –

1. Starting with the document/memo ensures none of the context setting is left to chance. The document lays out the problem we’re trying to solve and what we need to believe to build a solution that works (i.e. our hypothesis).

2. A good document sets the stage for productive conflict. There is no avoiding conflict – instead, it is important to view the energy that conflict generates as healthy and channel the energy toward creating the best possible solution. Then, document the progress again, meet if necessary, and repeat until all major open questions are resolved.

3. Bringing a group together without doing the work of creating a good document and, on the flip side, keeping the group discussion asynchronous for too long tend to replace the misalignment with mistrust. And, needless to say, it is much harder to recover from mistrust.

I recently heard of an acquaintance on a stellar career path who was diagnosed with a difficult terminal illness.

Of course, everything changed following the diagnosis. The stellar career trajectory didn’t matter anymore.

Most of us are guilty of taking far too many things for granted as we work through our day-to-day.

Good health is likely top of that list.

For a while between 2017-2019, I wrote long ~monthly posts on technology as part of a project I called “Notes by Ada.” Inspired by Ada Lovelace, this project prodded me to expand how I thought about technology and the biggest problems we needed to solve.

If it wasn’t for writing for two years, I don’t think I’d have formed the perspective I hold on the importance of solving for climate and employment in a world where the connection between labor and capital is breaking as well as a whole host of other topics. Writing, as always, was both powerful and clarifying.

Over time, however, this project became hard to keep up. Each long form article needed a lot of research and this research was time away from the family on weekends. And, after kid #2 came along, this approach became untenable.

Just as I was beginning to think about winding this project down, my MailChimp subscriber updates email began showing unexpected activity. Suddenly, 30-40 folks were signing up every day for a few weeks. I tried emailing a couple of these folks to ask where they heard about this project. I had shared on Medium and LinkedIn but this felt too good to be true. No response.

So, I finally ended up writing a post on the climate crisis to see whether I’d hear from a few folks. I ended up getting a collection of “I never subscribed. Please unsubscribe” responses.

That hurt.

All my notes are opt-in only for good reason. I have no intention of forcing my notes on anyone. There are no big pop ups on any project asking you to sign up. If you do, you hopefully do so because you believe there’s value. And, if you don’t, that’s also understandable. We only have so much time and attention in a day.

Anyway, it turned out that there was some Russian bad actor who just dumped a bunch of these emails into a Mailchimp form that didn’t have double opt in by default.

It turned out to be the final nail in the coffin for that project. But, it also helped me (re)learn two important lessons.

If you have a project involving a subscriber list, use double opt in. (And, if you don’t, beware of the risks.)

And, second, if it feels too good to be true, it probably is.

There’s a fascinating story in Bob Iger’s excellent memoir about the weekend in before Disney was set to announce it was acquiring Twitter to the world.

They had worked for months to get the deal in place and it all looked ready to go.

Until Bob Iger decided against it.

He shared reasons for his reservations with the board (which included a disappointed Jack Dorsey) – primarily his worries about nastiness/abuse on the platform. But, he also admitted that the decision was less about logical reasons and a lot about his gut. It just didn’t feel right.

I loved Iger’s memoir for its candor. This anecdote was a great example of that. He repeatedly touches on the importance of decisions feeling right. And, in this case, when his gut – one that had decades of training in decision making – said no, he couldn’t go through with it.

It is a lesson I’ve been reminded of time and again in (much smaller and lower stakes :-)) decisions in my life. Our gut knows more than we can parse. And, it is in our interest to pay careful attention to what it is telling us.

I was in conversation with a friend who lost a loved one recently.

As we exchanged notes, and feelings with each other, there came a moment when we acknowledged to each other that nothing I said or did could help make the situation better.

She was in the cave with the fiercest of demons and no amount of wishing they go away would make that happen.

The only way out was acceptance.

Every once in a while, we’re faced with situations when words and actions only go so far. These situations often tend to involve mortality and loss.

Acknowledging our powerlessness to get to grips with the situation sounds counter intuitive.

But, it is often the best way to move forward and make progress.

We recently took up a temporary HBO subscription to make sure we watched Chernobyl. I’d read that the show became the highest rated TV show of all time on IMDB and was intrigued.

The five episodes HBO put together to depict the story of the Chernobyl nuclear strategy were – in one word – fascinating.

It tells the story of an unfortunate accident caused by misinformed and reckless ambition whose effects ended up being far worse thanks to a massive attempt at covering up the reality. It speaks to the challenges scientists face when they tell uncomfortable truths. And, most of all, it pushes us to think about the world we inhabit and the interactions at play between the earth, human wants, science, politics, and beliefs.

Valery Legasov had a powerful reflection at the end –

“To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for truth, we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there, whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: “What is the cost of lies?”

It poignantly reminded me about the discussion after the scientific consensus around climate change was shared.

We haven’t yet accepted the gift of Chernobyl.

An underused job seeking practice – when someone you don’t know well helps/refers/puts in a word for you, stay in close touch with them regardless of the outcome.

This isn’t a note about this being the “decent thing” to do. I’ve heard that argument and think it is unfair – job seeking is hard/long/exhausting. It is easy to forget and, besides, the feelings associated with rejection in particular aren’t pleasant and can cause hesitation.

However, it is worth moving past the hesitation because things often come back full circle before you know it. The same people often end up working with us or moving to places we want to move to.

And, when that happens, it helps to be the rare person who followed up, closed the loop, and maybe even stayed in touch.

The best part about this practice is that it converts job searching into a great opportunity to connect with helpful people and to even build that occasional long term relationship when the chemistry is right.

(On a personal note, this practice is how I ended up finding my way to LinkedIn after being rejected the first time a year prior. It can work well. :))