Category Archives: Web/Tech

Seth Roberts, on how blogging helps you get a job:

[With blogging,] each makes clearer to everyone else what is inside us. Human nature being what it is — closely tied to occupational specialization — it should be no surprise that blogging is very useful in getting a job, as Penelope Trunk says. To get a job you need a skill. Your skill is inside you; blogging makes it much more apparent. Blogging shows not only that you have a skill but that you have an emotional attachment, too: Bloggers write about what they care about. Not only does blogging help you get a job, it helps you get a job you want.

Clive Thompson in Wired has a pitch-perfect, short piece on "The Age of the Microcelebrity". It’s not groundbreaking in its analysis, but it captures with eloquence oft-talked about themes like transparency, your personal brand, anonymity, and web 2.0. And even in conceding that it’s a bit strange that we’re all a celebrity to somebody in the era of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and the like, Thompson is appropriately upbeat:

You could regard this as a sad development — the whole Brand Called You meme brought to its grim apotheosis. But haven’t our lives always been a little bit public and stage-managed? Small-town living is a hotbed of bloglike gossip. Every time we get dressed — in power suits, nerdy casual wear, or goth-chick piercings — we’re broadcasting a message about ourselves. Microcelebrity simply makes the social engineering we’ve always done a little more overt — and maybe a little more honest.

My friend Charles Hudson has a great post up about why young people aren’t going into enterprise software as much.

Web 2.0 mania celebrates consumer facing web apps. Not surprisingly, then, I have met few young entrepreneurs who want to work at or (as I did) start an enterprise software company. Enterprise software? How boring.

But like Charles, I think there are a number of good reasons for a young person interested in business and technology to work at an enterprise software company. He says:

Enterprise software companies are a great place to learn how sales, product development, and marketing all work together. …[E]nterprise software offers a much better place to learn the business of software (or just business in general, for that matter) than most web 2.0 customers. In enterprise software, you learn a lot – you can learn a lot about how the direct and channel sales processes works (which is largely absent in most web 2.0 companies), how to manage a longer-run product development process that involves direct interaction with existing and prospective customers, and how more traditional marketing (product and corporate) can help drive effectiveness in software. The interplay of development, sales, and marketing in an enterprise software company can teach a young person quite a bit about how business works and how these three forces need to balance each other.

Bingo. I would add that one of the most valuable things I learned selling into small and mid-size organizations is the importance of psychological and financial buy-in. It ain’t easy to convince multiple people in an organization — each defending his or her own fiefdom — to sign on to your product. The politics can be overwhelming. But the skills you pick up in the process are invaluable and transferable to other aspects of business.

Chris Yeh often tries to claim he’s an old fart and wants to devote most of his energies to helping young bucks like Raw Meat and me accelerate our learning and success.

Alas, old he’s not. Chris, along with Digg’s Kevin Rose and three others, was recently named one of the Top 5 Tech Entrepreneurs Under Age 40. I remember the day when I was sitting at my desk in Boulder, Colorado this past winter and got a call from Chris as he was mulling over whether to accept the CEO position at Ustream.TV. He did, and he’s never looked back.

Ustream.TV is on the map as one of the most interesting internet / video companies right now. Although Ustream’s success has meant Chris has less time to conspire on the phone with me about how to take over the world, I am indeed very happy for him.

Let’s all try to make Ustream the big winner in this space.

My friend Cal Newport has a good essay in Flak Magazine on the paradox of young lifehackers. Money quote:

Since when did twentysomethings, the demographic that previously gave rise to the beatniks, hippies, punks, and slackers, care about something so prosaic, so establishment, as to-do lists and reclaiming wasted time?

Cal offers some insight into the burgeoning category of young people who undergo extensive goal setting exercises and inbox-efficiency tests.

I still think the period of emerging adulthood is marked more by slouching around than hyper-organizing; more wandering than end-in-mind focus. But there is indeed a minority of folks like my blog friend Scott Young who represent this breed of focused, young lifehackers. With the web they can connect, form a community, share tips, and most important, feel less strange that they care deeply about getting the most out of every minute of every day.