The common advice is “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” My first interpretation of that was transactional: hand out business cards, swap LinkedIn profiles, check the box. It achieved little. What actually taught me how to network was moving to a different country. The Water You Didn’t Know You Had When I relocated, I lost something I’d never thought about: an existing network. Where I grew up, there was a built-in support structure: family, friends, people who knew me and vouched for me by default. I didn’t notice it because I’d never lived without it. ...

There are different ways to be known and valuable inside an organisation. The two I want to explore here are personal power and relationship power, and how the balance between them shifts as your career evolves. When I say power, I mean your ability to influence others and get what you need from the organisation. Personal Power When you start out, you usually have a lot of personal power. As an engineer, you’re writing code, shipping features, writing documentation. You’re known for your expertise and respected for it. ...

“Explain this to me like I’m a smart five-year-old.” Interesting advice — and it turns out, it’s one of the most effective ways to improve your AI prompts. When you use this technique, you end up with a prompt that not only you understand, but one that tends to give much more predictable results. The Problem With Powerful Models Most of the time, the AI you’re working with is a frontier model — something from Anthropic like an Opus model, or a reasoning model from OpenAI. Basically, something that is really powerful. ...

As you advance in your career, you’ll encounter more content to read. It becomes the primary mode of communication in most organizations. I’ve found it useful to think about the material you’re reading and align it with an appropriate strategy. Let me break down four distinct types of reading and how to approach each one effectively. Type 1: Reading to Extract The goal here is to scan quickly. This is where LLM tools like ChatGPT can be useful. ...

It’s Not Who You Know Today I want to talk about something I’ve been thinking about for a long time: the aspects of relationship building that are truly important. In fact, I think they are the key differentiator in how successful you’re going to be at work, at home, and in life in general. The common advice given here is “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I think this advice has a fundamental flaw not the first part, but the second part. It’s not really who you know, it’s who knows you ...

(image credit: https://emmavtanner.com/2022/01/08/surface-pressure/) Here’s something I’ve been thinking about: you can control the inputs, but not the outputs. This perspective comes into play when you consider the anxiety that comes with taking on something new. The pressure can be overwhelming. The Reality of Effort vs. Results You cannot do magic. Let me give you an example. Think about losing weight. You can wish all you want “I wish this would happen, I wish I could do it, maintain it” but nothing happens without the actual actions you can take. Maybe you need to cut something out of your diet, or start exercising, or work with a personal trainer. These are the specific activities you can control. ...

As I’ve been getting older, one of the core principles I’ve come to live by is this: make time your friend. Anything that isn’t built to last eventually gets crushed. Let me explain this idea across three major realms of life. Software Development First, let’s talk about this from a software development perspective (which is mostly charity work, if we’re being honest). When you’re building any tool, you need to ask yourself: How do I make time my friend? This question should guide every decision. ...

I sometimes think about how, as human beings, we tend to confuse symbols of value with value itself. That’s because value—being something more ephemeral is much harder to see or know. A Historical Example Let me give you an example. When the Spanish conquistadors came to the Americas and conquered the Inca Empire, one thing of great interest to them was gold. They found the Inca Emperor with gold artifacts in his possession items of worship, decorations, and beautiful works of art. ...

One of the things I’ve been thinking about for quite a while in organizational settings is how we actually know where we stand. I was having a conversation with my daughter one day, asking her how everything was going at school. She gave me this fascinating response: “I don’t know. The teacher normally tells you how I’m doing, but they don’t tell me how I’m doing.” That was quite an interesting statement. I could see how she’d think like that. For a long time, I used to think the same way. My strategy was simple: as long as I’m not getting any feedback from someone, that’s good enough. ...

When we talk about achieving anything meaningful, it needs to be grounded in good habits and a strong sense of discipline. It can’t be built on wishful thinking alone. It must be rooted in consistent, deliberate action. There’s been plenty written about habit formation, but I’ve found it helpful to think about it through a simpler lens: the idea of pain. The Initial Pain of Doing Things Right Here’s the reality: when you decide a habit needs to change, there’s going to be pain involved. ...