candidates : rich private jet owners :: recruiter : varsano

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ok, so basically steve varsano is living every recruiters' dream. read this and couldn't believe how similar his job is to recruiting...or at least how recruiting SHOULD be. he pretty much sells private jets to the richest people in the world and knows the entire community inside-out. he knows to message current jet owners when it's time to upgrade. he knows when someone is willing to splurge for the newest model and he's mapped out potential future buyers. 

reminded me of how i TRY to be. we should know the market, map it out. we should know who is ready for a new job when and the appropriate times to reach out to people who have been in boring jobs for JUST the right amount of time. varsano's market is obviously a lot smaller and more high touch but still, reminded me a lot of tech recruiting and this market, which is relatively high touch...at least compared to more general sales and non-tech recruiting. 

everyone is getting hilariously rich and you're not

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plz rd

"They also remember who laughed at them and when.

James Spediacci and his twin brother, Julian, who bought ether when it was about 30 cents, now run one of the most popular whale clubs: private cryptocurrency trading communities where crypto syndicates are coordinated in group chats. He showed me a screen shot of his Facebook post from 2014 telling everyone to buy ether.

“One like,” he said, pointing to his phone. “It got one like.”"

____

love me a classic take the risk even when everyone calls you dumb story but like, can we please stop with the silly-we're-so-start-up-y-and-cool-and-hip-and-young-meeting-room-names???

and yes, i know this is v sad that this is my takeaway from this article but it is annoying me VERY MUCH.

iced tea, e-cigs, spandex and cigars to blockchain

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all of these companies have pivoted to the blockchain

1. long island iced tea corp---> long blockchain corp

Long Island Iced Tea made iced teas in flavors including peach and lemon, as well as lemonades. 

2. vapetek inc. --> nodechain inc

Vapetek made batteries and liquid for electronic cigarettes.

3. croe inc. --> the crypto company 

Croe previously developed women’s fitness clothing.

4. rich cigars inc. --> intercontinental technology inc.

Rich Cigars previously produced cigars. But the Florida company said this month that it was changing its name, getting out of the cigar business, moving to Colorado and creating subsidiaries to mine for virtual currencies.

 

soooo dying to see what's going to happen to these places

 

 

so what's the juicero guy up to now, you ask???

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you guys, lol

thanks to matt levine, enjoyed this lil baby:

The telos of Silicon Valley is to (1) build electronic tools that will eliminate the need for human beings to work and (2) then replace human work with dumb pre-industrial magic rituals. In a science-fiction future where robots do all the jobs and satisfy your every need, what will you do all day? Well, maybe you'll get really into elaborate quests for water, why not. 

 

 

 

"the human now adds absolutely nothing....."

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marginal revolution writes, 

"The game of chess is the most widely-studied domain in the history of artificial intelligence. The strongest programs are based on a combination of sophisticated search techniques, domain-specific adaptations, and handcrafted evaluation functions that have been refined by human experts over several decades. In contrast, the AlphaGo Zero program recently achieved superhuman performance in the game of Go, by tabula rasa reinforcement learning from games of self-play. In this paper, we generalise this approach into a single AlphaZero algorithm that can achieve, tabula rasa, superhuman performance in many challenging domains. Starting from random play, and given no domain knowledge except the game rules, AlphaZero achieved within 24 hours a superhuman level of play in the games of chess and shogi (Japanese chess) as well as Go, and convincingly defeated a world-champion program in each case.

In other words, the human now adds absolutely nothing to man-machine chess-playing teams.  That’s in addition to the surprising power of this approach in solving problems."

software engineering for good <3

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My friend alex started at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs two years ago and just posted this:

"This week marks two years since I started at VA and specifically on Vets.gov. There is still so much work to do to improve the Veteran experience when interacting with VA, but we're finally starting to more broadly talk about this work and to get more Veterans using the site. Please share with your networks and help Veterans, service members, and caretakers learn about VA's modernized online tools on Vets.gov!"

https://twitter.com/DeptVetAffairs/status/935231761210101764

 

 

ubes, c'mon, dude!

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again.

paying off hackers and not disclosing this to users or even the chief legal officer? is just...v uber of them. it's just too much at this point and it never works! only good news is that there's always someone worse out there making dumber decisions...at least for a little longer (please read highlighted links)

also, i'd like to thank matt levine of bloomberg view for giving me lots of good tech news nuggets so i can keep this burn book -- i mean blog -- up and running.

happy holidays, ya'll

wework is confusing me again

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let's rewind a few months to this delightful quote from wework's ceo:

"No one is investing in a co-working company worth $20 billion. That doesn't exist," Neumann says. "Our valuation and size today are much more based on our energy and spirituality than it is on a multiple of revenue."

but now they have invested in a wave-pool company?

 

plz, someone tell me i am just not smart enough to understand what is happening here...b/c i cannot understand what is happening here....

 

 

 

 

an average day at cjm search

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-6:30a: wake up to my employee crying from her office after a rough 12 hours of sleep. change her diaper, feed her. grab my cofounder's leash and take him outside for a walk. feed the cofounder. 

-7a: brush my teeth and get the coffee brewing. 

-7:10a: drink an entire pot of coffee

-7:30a: clear email inbox while intermittently swatting away tiny employee's hands

-8a: eat breakfast, feed employee second breakfast 

-8;30a: turn on trolls or moana for distraction and throw about 20 toys on the floor. then find about 50ish emails/profiles to reach out to throughout the rest of the day

-9:30a: put employee down for nap after a hard morning's work. take about 2-3 calls and start emailing in remaining time

-10:45a: wake up to employee yelling from her office again. change employee's diaper and feed her again

-11:15a: take employee and cofounder to the dog park, so cofounder can get some energy out.

-11:45a: get back home and play toys/prep lunch for employee. 

-12p: eat lunch and feed employee lunch

-12:30p: email, email, email, play, play, play

-1:30p: employee is exhausted. put employee down for nap. do 2 more calls

-2:30p: employee yells at me again. change employees diaper. feed employee. 

-2:45p: meet candidate for coffee with employee. get groceries/run errands. 

-4p: play/emails! take cofounder outside for a walk around the block.

5p: feed cofounder and employee dinner. do all follow-up tasks/emails. 

5:30p: start dinner, make coffee for the AM, play toys. also, email, email, email

6:30p: give dirty employee a bath

6:40p: feed employee and get employee in pajamas. read employee a story

7p: put employee to bed

7:15p: 1 or 2 calls

7:45p: eat dinner 

8p: shower then, emails for an hour

9p: take cofounder around the block for a walk

9:15p: email, email, email

10p: lil chocolate, lil wine, lil email

10:30p: g'night!

bee technologies

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guys, look at this company....

here's a reddit convo that kinda went viral on them. after an engineer applied to their backend eng role, they emailed him saying he 1. needed to complete a coding challenge and 2. work for free for three months. their job posting also said "please do not apply if you do not have the skill necessary to build something extraordinary" LOLOLOL. 

1. I really despise coding challenges. they don't tell you anything except if someone is absolutely terrible. and they really don't differentiate much between good and v good. they're also usually pretty insulting

did i mention this coding challenge was excessive?  they gave their candidates an entire WEEK (normal ones take anywhere from 30-90 min) to complete it and the challenge consisted of building a core part of their platform....

2. who the f would work for free for three months? these people should just learn to interview, read a resume and read a coding challenge and if someone turns out to be an asshole, they can just fire him/her, like a normal company. talk about starting off on the wrong foot...

 

and finally, this:

"please do not apply if you do not have the skill necessary to build something extraordinary"

this actually doesn't even make me mad. this is pure gold. i will enjoy reading that for another, about four hundred more times.