Good and Bad Form in Business

Categories life, startups
I screwed up during my job hunt in 2015. I backed out of a job offer I'd already accepted days earlier.  The timeline played out as follows: I rescinded the offer before I officially started, but the other party had already bought me a laptop, told his team about me, and told his board about me.  Maybe not such a big deal if you join a BigCo, but at a 6 person startup, I definitely left the Read the article >>

Physical Workspace Hacking; 6 tips to create a War Room.

Categories mind
Like any good engineer, I work hard to maximize my impact.  Relative to time invested, I want to accomplish as much as possible. So I feel it makes sense to invest some time in organizing my office into  my war room. I have noticed how horrible the workplace organizational skills of some of my cohorts are.  Especially engineers.  Just because you're building in the digital world is no excuse Read the article >>

Redesigning my Blog

Categories design
In an effort to put my content front & center, simplify this blog, and focus on it's reader experience, I've decided to move to a new, more minimal, theme.  I'm redesigning my blog. Before: After: I hope that you like it.   Read the article >>

Optimizing for Minimal Deathbed Regret

Categories life
I announced  yesterday that I'm leaving StepOut. Have you ever spent several years working towards something larger than yourself?  This was my first time doing that. In college, you have projects that last for a few weeks.  Maybe a semester.   This one lasted me 5 years.  You know the difference between a 5-week project and a 5-year project? If you're lucky, if you really care, and if Read the article >>

Ch-ch-changes

Categories stepout
There's an old cliche that entrepreneurship is a journey, not a destination.  If that's true, then my journey has been a particularly long & windy one.  In 2008, I quit my entry-level job in Philadelphia and moved to Boulder, Colorado with two guys I'd met on craigslist (now my co-founders) within 10 days.  In 2009, we moved to New York City to grow our online group-dating site.  In 2010, Read the article >>

Unauthenticated User MySQL Issues

Categories tools
I just had to fix a tricky issue with one of my mysql boxes.  I'm posting a diagnosis below.  If you don't live & breathe MySQL DB admin every day, probably better to move on now. The issue is characterized by several 'unauthenticated' mysql users attempting to connect to the box on version 5.0.77.  Here's a screenshot of mytop: Here is the same diagnostic information in text form Read the article >>

Credible Engineering Leadership Skills

Categories leadership, startups
Like many web engineers who have built teams as their startups have grown, I do not have an MBA.   If you are like me in-so-far as you value management practice over theory, you probably learned to bootstrap & scale as a leader without one. That hasn't stopped me from developing my own theories.  Reading this quora thread on why many engineers detest their management reminds me, I have Read the article >>

Export Instagram Pics w. this Bookmarklet

Categories sideprojects, tools
EDIT: This bookmarklet is now defunct -- I recommend users migrate to this IFTTT recipe. There are a few good tools around the web to export instagram pics from your account.  Unfortunately, these tools only allow you to export you *own* photos from Instagram.  Well, I'd like to be able to copies of other photos on Instagram too. I just coded up a bookmarklet that allows me to export anyone's Read the article >>

Persistence

Categories startups
Since I am in NYC and my team is in Mumbai, I usually wake up at an ungodly time to go for a run and then take calls with the indian team. I like to call my morning calls my "punch me in the face" wake up calls.  When you're a web startup moving as fast as we are, capturing a billion+ person market, building a product across 9 time zones, shit is bound to break.  Daily.  From speaking with other Read the article >>

The Hot Seat

Categories leadership, startups
As a startup CTO, one of the most challenging parts of my job is being on call.  As the teams technology lead, I am responsible for all aspects of our technology, and that covers DevOps. When the site is experiencing abnormally high load, and you get paged, it's time to jump into the fray.  Into the hot seat.  Where every second counts.  I often chat with DevOps engineers at meetups, each has Read the article >>