Writing

I've been spending a good bit of time in the Product Manager interview cycle lately, and with that comes new games to learn. One recurring game that keeps coming back is the "Product Sense" interview...

After 4 exciting years, I’m parting ways with Metabase. It’s been a fulfilling run, working with smart people to build the most delightful business intelligence tool out there while scaling the team from 25 → 100+ employees...

Today I turned 29 and this birthday has more of a “nothing” feeling than those before it. I don't quite have an answer for why that's the case. Maybe it's part of getting older. Maybe it's more stability in my day-to-day than in years past...

We often focus on the “right” way to do things, but just as important, is the “wrong” way to go about things. I’ve recently become much more aware of an anti-pattern that I keep running up against...

A Man Without a Country is a collection of essays from author Kurt Vonnegut. It’s a short and informal read, like chatting with a friend over a cup of coffee, a friend with uniquely lighthearted and thoughtful views...

I turned 28 years old a few weeks ago. It feels simply alright. I’m both as grateful as ever, and things are as hard as ever. I’ve written some version of this post each year, for the last 6 years...

There are a seemingly endless number of ways to make a living today. This optionality can paralyze young people, and rightfully so, as it all feels very permanent and important...

It’s that time of the year where I reflect on another trip around the sun. I’m turning 27 years old and unsurprisingly I don’t feel different than I did yesterday. But if I turn the clock back a year earlier, it does feel quite different now...

We've got decades and decades of career left. This gets much less intimidating when you have a sense of how and when to change the work we do. Peter Drecker's Managing Oneself provides provoking questions on precisely this...

The most recent gap I discovered in my PM skillset was around developing and articulating a strategy in different product areas. I was recommended Good Strategy Bad Strategy to help out. It didn't disappoint...

Product management can be a frustratingly broad field. There are a seemingly endless number of mental "muscles" to train at any given time. From strategy to research to prioritization to execution...

Happy new year! It’s time for another annual review in which I look back on how the last 365 days turned out for me. I'll follow a similar structure as last year's review with these two prompts...

Reading and writing about awareness has always felt shallow to me. Personally, the only times in which I’ve truly appreciated awareness are when I find myself experiencing it firsthand...

Another birthday has come and gone. On paper, things look similar to where I was last year. Mentally, things feel much different. There are things that gnaw at me of course, but I’m more content than I have been in a while...

From my distant perspective into academia, it seems that theory is something of a holy grail in published papers. Presenting novel information is interesting. Being able to explain why that information looks the way it does is better...

I’ve found that the one of the most important relationships for our happiness and productivity is that of our relationship with time. It can quickly turn into a sour one. I know it has for me in the past...

I’ve been kicking around this notion of exploratory vs. explanatory data viz. Despite what most BI tools might have you think, not all data viz is created equal. The charts that we cobble together often have different goals...

“Figma for X” might not be as common a startup trope as “Uber for X” but it’s definitely catching up over the last few years. My main beef with catchphrases like these are how often they get thrown around without any context...

Maintaining dashboards and analytics is hard and only gets harder as you further delve into the world of self-serve analytics. This makes sense. More stuff being created means more stuff that can break or slip between the cracks...

Self-serve analytics is a tough game to win at. Lots of companies aspire to “do self-serve” in order to reduce the load on their analytics and data science teams, but few succeed. This doesn’t mean that we’re hopeless...

In the wake of the pandemic, more and more people have opted to go the digital nomad route. I find that everyone’s experience is a little different, so hearing others’ perspectives is valuable...

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman recounts the experiences of Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist with endless stories of academic and non-academic adventures...

There has recently been a lot of chatter in the data community about dashboards. Most of which converge on some version of “dashboards suck but what else,” as Benn Stancil points out in Data is for Dashboards...

The Making of Prince of Persia outlines Jordan Mechner's journal entries describing how an idea progressed over time and eventually became a best-selling video game...

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals from Oliver Burkeman is yet another way to frame productivity and time management, but this one takes a refreshing approach...

It feels like now some especially interesting things are coming to fruition in the data space. We’ve heard about The Modern Data Stack. We’ve heard about The Future of Work. But what happens when they meet?

I’ve been bouncing around from place to place, learning a ton about my preferences for traveling and environments in general. These preferences have started to inform a set of “rules” that I’m going to apply to future travel...

This is my third annual review in which I look back on how the last 365 days turned out for me across a number of areas. I'll follow the same structure as last year's review...

It's important to remember that outcomes are what matters, not the tools. But there's also a reason why tools are such a conversational centerpiece. Tools influence those outcomes a lot of the time, sometimes in a pretty big way...

As GPT-3 and its counterparts have come into the mainstream, I've begun seeing products and conversations about the interaction between Natural Language Processing and data analytics appearing more and more frequently...

The idea here is to zoom out and understand bigger-picture elements to how you grow rather than focusing in on specific tactics. As always, I recommend checking out the original content for a deeper dive...

I made my way through Shape Up last month and really enjoyed it. Shape Up is a methodology for product development teams put together by Ryan Singer and the folks at Basecamp..

The framework that I see repeated most often involves breaking things down by the first 30-60-90 days in a new role. While these numbers are mostly arbitrary, I tend to like thinking about things this way...

There's a lot of complexity to unpack in how product design happens. My model for how the design process works has gotten less and less fuzzy over the years, but there's still a bit more clarity to be desired...

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval’s wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful ideas. These are my favorite ideas and excerpts...

If you've been around software for long enough then you've undoubtedly run into Objectives and Key Results at some point. John Doerr goes deep into implementation details through lots of case studies...

I'm a big believer that when you close any meaningful chapter, it's a worthwhile exercise to sit down and reflect on the most valuable things you learned from the experience...

Over the past few years, I've learned a lot as a product operator and data scientist on several growth teams. Along the way, I've collected resources that helped solidify my understanding of different concepts...

Designing Games is a book of game design concepts written to help practitioners make better games. It explores the mental models, tactics, and processes behind most of today's hit video games...

It's my 25th birthday today. It's an exciting one, and also a bit of a weird one if I'm being honest. Of course, I feel the same that I did yesterday. That's always the case. But something about this particular number feels different...

You may not have heard of the term "growth tool" before but it's likely you have seen them before. Just to make sure we're all on the same page, I'll copy-paste the description from Trends.vc on the topic...

It doesn't seem long ago that I was graduating from college and starting my first full-time job. This time in your life comes with a whirlwind of excitement and ambition. You're finally out in the real world...

It's time for the sequel to my first quantified self-report earlier this year. I track various metrics to learn more about myself and my well-being. I do my best to publish some version of this report at the end of each quarter...

Derek Sivers shares a collection of answers to the question of how to live. The ideas are concise and easy to digest, but provocative enough to keep you thinking for some time afterward...

How to Love is a short read, but one that made me think a lot about what it means to love in the context of both yourself and others. These are the ideas that I thought were worth sharing...

Machine learning is seemingly baked into every established product these days. But I would posit that you probably don't need a legitimate machine learning solution at first...

Growth doesn't fit nicely into one part of the funnel like a product or marketing team might. Instead, growth spans many parts of the funnel and can mean lots of different things depending on the company...

Lately, I've been thinking a bit about product design. Despite all of the lengthy Twitter threads on the subject, it's not super often that I come across a product experience that delights me...

I'm taking a Reforge growth course and summarizing my learnings here. Up this week is acquisition, a topic that I've learned a lot about since starting at Hugo and working more towards the top of the funnel...

When I started my first job as a data scientist, we spent a lot of time thinking a lot about how to scale data analysis across the organization. Saying that you are "data-driven" is one thing...

I've been a fan of Reforge for a few years now, mostly interacting with the program through their blog posts. As far as product + growth thinking goes, it's tough to beat the stuff that they put out on a consistent basis...

When I published my inaugural quantified self report a week ago, I ended up getting a few questions about how I track various metrics. I can share what it looks like at the moment...

I've been aware of the phrase, "the medium is the message" for some time but I never knew where it was from. Turns out, it was coined by Marshall McLuhan in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man...

This is my first quantified self report. Since last year, I've been tracking various metrics to learn more about myself and well-being. I'm planning on publishing some version of this post at the end of each quarter...

You might have heard the phrase "digital gardening" thrown around more often lately. I was skeptical when I first heard it. It isn't a new thing by any means. But it is a rebrand that has been really helpful for me...

Analytics tooling and the discourse around these tools are becoming first-class citizens in the minds of startup founders. Several years ago this might have been a hot take. It definitely isn't anymore...

I first came across The Mental Game of Baseball in high school, and it's still one of the most influential books I've ever read. Harvey Dorfman outlines how one's mental approach influences physical output...

Ever since I first came across The Way to Love, I've been obsessed with Anthony de Mello and his writing. Awareness is cut from the same cloth and goes deeper on a number of ideas that will be on my mind for a long time...

Despite the hours of commitment that come with a book, I've historically picked what to read next in a spur of the moment decision while looking through my Kindle backlog. I'm going to try something a little different this year...

It's the time of the year again when people take to their blogging or social media platform of choice and share accomplishments from the previous 365 days. I'm not going to bury the lead. This is one of those posts...

There are two ways that users can advocate for your product: One-to-one and one-to-many. Like most of my breakdowns, this is a spectrum, but the dichotomy should be helpful for building a mental framework...

Sometimes when I'm on the internet, jumping from hyperlink to hyperlink, I try to imagine what's happening from a bird's eye view. I imagine myself as a 2-dimensional point moving from node to node on an infinite graph...

Once you have your metric locked in as your north star for all things retention, the next step is visualization. This will provide you with the foundational understanding that you'll perform analysis and make decisions...

Derek Sivers has become one of my favorite thinkers. His writing is concise and just flat-out fun to read — I'm happy to say that his latest book, Your Music and People doesn't lower that bar one bit...

It's not super controversial that retention is a big deal for startups. What is a little more controversial, or maybe just less well-known, is how to go about improving retention in your product...

For a long time, I held the firm view that running sucks. Over the past few months, this view has softened considerably. While running still sucks sometimes, I've grown to kind of love it in a way...

When you think of a startup, you probably imagine a smaller team with some venture funding. In the past, they might have worked out of a loft in San Francisco. Paul Graham has a slightly different definition...

In my last essay, I spent a little time exploring the AI-focused Replika, a mobile app with the aspiration to be your virtual best friend. In writing that post, I found myself frequently branching off into the adjacent topic of avatars...

I was on my phone the other day and came across Replika, an app that describes itself as your personal AI friend. Surprisingly, I remembered reading a profile on the origin story of Replika a few years ago...

As someone who grew up on the internet, I occasionally think back to early memories online. When I fondly look back on these memories, I realize both how much and how little things have changed...

Lately, I've been doing a little thinking about how products should set pricing for consumers. I didn't really expect it coming in, but pricing strategy is actually pretty interesting...

Around this time last year, I distinctly remember thinking that newsletters were blowing up as a form of content consumption. Since that point, it feels like hype around them has continued to grow exponentially...

I've written before about my fixation with newsletters. What I hadn't done until now, is perform a full audit on my newsletter subscriptions and list them all out for you to explore. But here we are...

When I joined my first role as a Data Scientist, I had to do a little research as to what exactly "Growth" was. Fast forward a year and change later, and it's what I do on a daily basis...

Sometime this morning, I turned 24 years old and casually entered my mid-twenties. This one feels a little bigger. I've done a version of this post for the last two years and I want to keep this going...

It's taken time for me to identify as a marketer. It's always been a less-than-appealing word to me. I'm not sure where the turning point was, but sometime over the past few months, that changed...

The way you welcome people into your product will make or break the experience for them. I'll lay out what I've learned working on our onboarding flow at Hugo and how you can use these principles to improve your own product...

If there was one thing you could improve on your team, what would it be? Most common answers to this question aren’t around ability or leadership. Instead, they tend to focus on a lack of alignment and information...

It's been a while since a book has kept me up until 4am because I couldn't stop reading it, but that was the case with Masters of Doom. It's just flat-out entertaining to read, but there are some interesting takeaways as well...

Value chains are the poster child of business strategy frameworks. I recently read quite a bit from Nathan Baschez and Ben Thompson on the subject. This post aims to get you from zero to one as quickly as possible...

The assertion that standalone ideas aren't valuable has some truth to it. Interesting outcomes come from digging below surface-level assumptions. If you want to get the most out of your ideas, extra effort is required...

I spent a lot of time on A/B testing during my time as a data scientist at Squarespace. Turns out, there's a dramatic mismatch between what you learn in statistics textbooks and how experimentation works in practice...

There are plenty of books that cover the theme of "how to start a startup" but few that cover the challenges that pop up afterward. The Hard Thing About Hard Things from Ben Horowitz definitely falls into the latter category...

I've never read a Sherlock Holmes novel. I did however recently pick up an excellent short book from Peter Bevelin titled A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes. Needless to say, it got my attention...

If you aren't familiar with Hugo, it's a collaborative, centralized interface for meeting notes that connects with a bunch of other tools. The team recently closed a $6.1 million seed round...

What kind of environments breed innovation? What sparks a flash of brilliance? Steven Johnson tackles these questions in Where Good Ideas Come From by finding common patterns among notable inventions...

I've always had fun learning new ways of thinking, especially when the ideas turn out to be practical. Luckily, Nassim Taleb has produced a gold mine of meaningful ways of thinking...

Last week, I watching some talks on Youtube and came across one that stood out to me. Keith Rabois introduces the concept of barrels and ammunition, which I thought was a really clever way to view organizations...

One perk of this quarantine situation is that with no social events and no commute, I've starting reading more again. Most recently, I finally finished working through High Growth Handbook from Elad Gil...

This detour away from further specialization in data science surprised a lot of people. I learned a ton as a first-time data scientist from both a technical and a functional perspective...

I've wanted to work at an early-stage startup for a while now. It's hard to believe that it's actually happening. This post exists to share what I learned throughout the process, in the hopes of helping you find your rocket ship...

I recently decided to join Hugo, a fast-growing startup creating a smarter interface for meeting notes. Eventually, I simplified my thinking down to a framework for assessing current and future career opportunities...

This is an article that I've been meaning to write for a long time. After nearly 4 years of practicing both data science and writing, it's long overdue that I share my feelings on how the two interact...

It became clear that I needed to make a decision on what technologies I wanted to use. Since a lot of my learning was focused on Javascript and more specifically React, I started there...

Actionable takeaways are a nice touch, but they aren't the most important thing. Turns out, they aren't your audience's focus and shouldn't be yours either...

There are certain things that have become part of your identity. This is true whether you consider yourself a writer, programmer, teacher, or artist. The list is infinite. We all identify as something...

It’s hard asking for help. Whether it’s something big or small, it’s never been easy for me. Recently, I thought some more about why this is the case. It’s not the feeling of inadequacy...

Data science interviews aren’t easy. I know this first hand. I’ve done more than my fair share of them...

Products that enable people to quickly and easily make useful things are on everyones mind right now...

Occam's Razor is a principle from Philosophy that is often simplified to the assertion that the simplest answer is normally the correct one...

Energy is the level of intensity, passion, or excitement that we bring to the table. Recently, I’ve found that it’s the key that unlocks a lot of things for me...

When you come to a crossroads, you are often faced with the decision to do something or wait it out. This can be simplified to a decision between action and inaction...

There is never-ending debate about how many hours you should work to be successful, yet avoid burning out. There's no right answer to this, but Josh provides a useful framework for thinking about work-life balance...

As 2019 comes to a close, it only makes sense to reflect back on how things went. I’ve been doing this exercise for a few years now informally, but this is my first time publishing it...

A little over a week ago, I turned 23 years old. It’s both exciting and scary to face this fact. It’s also a little uncomfortable to think about how fast time continues to move faster and faster...

Chances are that you’ve come across someone on social media talking about their latest crack at an ambitious challenge, goal, or experiment. It’s pretty common, at least in my little bubble...

You aren’t as logical as you think. None of us are. We are susceptible to cognitive biases each and every day. If you have had the pleasure of reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, then you are more than familiar with this reality...

I’ve never been much of a Twitter user. Despite being on the platform for a few years now, I don’t tweet much. In the past, I’ve played the role of the “lurker” or “curator” instead...

Casper Sleep has seemingly pressed all the right buttons over the course of its journey. Founded in 2014, the mattress startup has won over customers with its innovative model...

Three months ago, I enrolled in the Medium Partner Program. Since then, I’ve received $670.34 in estimated payments for my writing here. And I won’t receive another dime...

Data scientists serve a very technical purpose, but one that is vastly different from other individual contributors. Unlike engineers, designers, and project managers, data scientists are exploration-first, rather than execution-first...

If you’re getting started with data science, you’re probably focusing your attention on mostly stats and coding. There’s nothing wrong with this, in fact, this is the right move ...

It really isn’t, and neither will any other talks, books, or gurus out there. This is a tough pill to swallow. But the more I think about things, the more I’m learning to like it this way...

Chances are, you’ve been there before. It’s no secret that onboarding is an important part of a company’s recruiting process. It consistently affects both new hires and team members...

Over the past 3 months, I’ve been reading more than ever. Nothing insane like you hear from some others out there, but definitely an increase over my normal frequency...

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve noticed more and more posts on Medium and elsewhere in the data science community centered around offering up advice to newcomers in the field...

Time most certainly does fly. I’m sitting here with my laptop at the airport in Dublin right now waiting for my plane to arrive. After 8 short hours or so, I’ll touch down in New York to settle down and start my new job...

We spend our time pouring over granular datasets, finding mistakes, cleaning them, building predictive models, producing visualizations, deriving insights, and communicating those insights to stakeholders in the hope of driving impact...

If you’re anything like me, you subscribe to newsletters. Lots of newsletters. Like, too many newsletters. I can’t help myself. When done right, newsletters are an excellent form of content curation..

You’ve heard the cliché. Employers don’t want excuses, they want facts, supporting data, and most importantly, results. They aren’t concerned with your story, just make sure you keep things moving up and to the right...

Things weren’t going well. I couldn’t do another assignment. I couldn’t get myself to write anything. I couldn’t make progress on projects. I was struggling to do basically any work at all, let alone work that proved to be half-decent...

Take a stroll through your Instagram or Facebook feeds. Chances are high that you find no sign of this. Rather than pictures of grey skies and office settings, you’ll instead end up with scenic beaches and exotic views with smiling faces...

As we move into August and summer begins to wind down, I thought I’d take the time to reflect on my last 12 weeks as a Data Science Intern for Unity Technologies in San Francisco...

We are exposed to seemingly endless streams of data science career advice, but there is one topic that doesn’t get quite enough love: side projects...

About a week ago, I finally finished reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. While released in 2011, the bestseller remains just as applicable today as it was nearly eight years ago...

We’ve all gotten those emails at one point or another. You know, the ones that start with “Thank you for your interest” and end with shattered dreams and self-doubt. Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme...

As of July 16th, sometime early in the morning, I turned 22 years old. It’s crazy how much faster time seems to move with every new year. In order to commemorate the occasion, I thought I would go ahead and reflect on some things...

As one might imagine, there is plenty of overlap between machine learning and the field of combinatorics. Within machine learning, natural language processing and text classification contain plenty of interesting and challenging problems...

Data science internships are a tricky thing. It sounds almost counterintuitive that there are intern positions available for a role where most employers look for advanced degrees...

This post isn’t original. It certainly isn’t the first of its kind. I would need a scientific calculator to come up with the actual number of What I Learned from Writing posts on Medium...

If you’ve ever published a story on Medium before, chances are that you’re familiar with Medium Stats and its offerings. Medium Stats is a tool where you can view traffic and visitor statistics for posts that you publish on the platform...

You’ve probably heard of the elusive data science unicorn by now. If you haven’t, unicorns are professionals who have mastered several cross-disciplinary skills in and around the field of data science...

After years of studying, internships, and time spent mastering your craft, it’s time to finally pursue a full-time job. It’s competitive out there, but you’ve put in the work and you’re confident about your chances...

I came into this summer with an initial goal of reviewing fundamental concepts related to using Python for data science. I decided that the best way to achieve this was by working through online courses and independent side-projects in parallel...

As we make ourselves into the heart of summer, it’s clear that internship season is very much upon us. That means that college students and graduates are coming on board at diverse companies all over the country; at least for the next 10–12 weeks or so...

I don’t have to tell you the importance of ideas. I’m sure you’re already well-aware of the significant part that ideas play in the projects you work on, the actions you take, and your general perception of the world around you...

In a world where seemingly everyone claims to be innovators, it’s easy to forget the true meaning of the word. In case you’re wondering, you can see the full, technical definition laid out in the header of this post...

It’s not always easy to stand out during any interview process. As you’ve probably heard, the need for Data Scientists is growing rapidly. However, so is the population of available talent out there applying for these competitive positions...

If you’ve ever found yourself looking up the same question, concept, or syntax over and over again when programming, you’re not alone. I find myself doing this constantly...

First things first, I want to make it clear that I’m not affiliated with or working for Medium in any way. I’ve always enjoyed reading and writing on the platform, but it wasn’t until lately that I took the plunge...

It’s been well documented that data science has grown and developed quite rapidly. It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years since Harvard Business Report proclaimed that Data Scientist was the sexiest job out there...

If you haven’t heard, Airbnb is an online marketplace that specializes in connecting travelers looking for a place to stay with hosts willing to house them...

I used to call myself an ‘Aspiring Entrepreneur’ and by definition, I still am. I still want to start a business, to create something that solves a problem in the world...

Short of breath, I finally arrive at my gate and find my window seat, seemingly with seconds to spare. After just five and a half not-so-short hours, I finally look out of the window to my right and see the Bay for the first time...

You know that thing you’re working on right now? Maybe it’s a project you’ve put countless hours into. An idea that keeps you up at night...

I’ve been writing fairly consistently on Medium for some time now. I’ve been developing my personal brand and establishing myself online for an even longer time. Yet to this day, I still haven’t found my voice.

You may have heard of Tim Ferriss’ most recent best seller: Tribe of Mentors.If you haven’t, it’s a 623 page self-improvement book that interviews top performers in their respective fields. Each ‘Mentor’ provides the reader with short pieces of advice...

It’s that time of the year again. March Madness is here, that means it’s time to fill out your brackets and promptly be disappointed when it’s inevitably busted for all your friends and family to see...

The President of the United States, Donald Trump is arguably the most polarizing figure in the world today. No matter where your political allegiances lie, you likely have at least a somewhat strong opinion on Trump...

We are coming up on August, when many universities kick off the Fall semester. This is an exciting time for all students and professors alike, however none more than incoming freshman...

Machine learning is undoubtedly on the rise, slowly climbing into ‘buzzword’ territory. This is in large part due to misuse and simple misunderstanding of the topics that come with the term...

Winter has come. Game of Thrones season 7 is here and there is merely 12 more episodes left of our beloved series. Now is the time to sit back and enjoy what we have while we have it...

It’s been said by many that the beginning of your day is the most crucial window of time that you will face on any given day. This is the period that ultimately sets the tone for the day...

When people think of hackathons, a scene of programmers huddled around a coffee maker at 3:00 AM trying to finish developing their app is typically what comes to mind...