I've believed for a while that, if my company died, the most likely scenario would be dying without a single dollar earned. There are so many ways for this to play out. It's an endless minefield. There's just not talking to any real humans, which is the number one way that I've seen people fail at starting their...

Over the holidays, I picked up a book titled The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, recommended by Nassim Taleb as a "masterly" work. The introduction to this extremely concise book is as follows: The following pages are in fact the result of a constructive effort to detect, know, and thus possibly neutralise one of the...

... and a Happy New Year, as I won't be writing until January. It seemed like the natural time to talk about the weirder things I've done in the past two years, how they turned out, what comes next, and most entertainingly, how my employer is almost certainly going to fire me next year. I. On My Soul and Exiting the...

I was recently introduced to the following paper on the Australian fire service, which is an absolute banger. It starts with the following quote. The basic state of affairs is ignored, to wit, that modern society has no control center. It's a wonderful piece on ritual and absurdity, against a backdrop of a bunch of...

A few months ago, I wrote about saving my employer about half a million dollars by clicking a few buttons in Snowflake. In it, I expressed a lot of cynicism around the likelihood of my employer rewarding me. I had reached out to the most senior person in my organization outside of the executive heading our...

We're trying something new today. I. The swirling, putrid-green heavens begrudgingly opens its yawing maw and unleashes a lazy torrent of acid-rain-drool upon the slowly awakening inhabitants of Valadia IX. The deluge of thick droplets sizzles through the air, splashing against fortified architecture and sliding...

The most talented data engineer I know, and my first manager, is a man that loves cooking. I mean, you might think you love cooking, but this guy loves cooking. The most excited text message I received this year was from him, proudly sharing the goddamn analytics on the heat distribution of chicken in his oven with...

I've mentioned that I'm starting a company with friends - no, this isn't a plug for us. The name of the company won't even be mentioned. We now have five engineers on board, one being a 15-year industry veteran, though we're all working on it part-time. Without getting into the details, I've had a very easy time...

Bad news everyone - today's post is high on reflection and low on inarticulate rage. It's actually two posts. Reflections on lunch with a reader, and my reflections on the many emails I've received over the past few weeks. Incidentally, I had such a great time getting lunch that I'm going to erode my SecOps a little...

In 1985, I murdered a man in cold blood over something petty. I can't remember what it was - all I remember was the fleeting sense of relief that the struggle was over, then years of panic, trying to hide what I'd done from the authorities. Thankfully Microsoft released PowerBI in 2015, so I put all the evidence in...

Before I get into it, I'm on Mastodon now. Now I have a platform for all my intrusive thoughts during standup. Anyway... There is an incredibly patient and kind lead engineer on my team - the kind of person that gives me hope that maybe, while the corporate world is run on horrific incentives, it isn't efficient...

I had my first interview with a serious tech company - the kind that isn't Google but actually has some name recognition amongst people deeply into the tech space. It starts normal and promising, and then fucking derails in spectacular fashion. Strap yourselves in, this is a long one. I. Details On The Company For...