Baby-friendly ho$pital$
Author’s note: This newsletter takes a while to get to the tech tie-in, but I promise it’s there. This is an issue that’s super important to me these days....
Thread: Favorite business fiction
I wrote earlier this week that I didn’t see the need for most business books (although I got quite a few managers emailing me, letting me know that they DO...
I'd do anything for tech, but I won't do that
I came across this (well-aged) tweet a couple days ago and it really resonated with me, because I find myself doing a lot of these things also:🖖Jochen Mader...
Do we need tech management books?
Several months ago, everyone on my Twitter feed started talking about An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson, an engineering...
The Trelloing of marriage
A couple months ago, Austen, who runs YC Combinator company Lambda School, which provides a free tech bootcamp education until you get a job (and then you...
Selling data science
In one of my last newsletters, I linked to a Reddit thread, “How does data science work in the consulting space?” and said that if there was enough interest,...
Thread: Which companies do you trust?
On Monday, I wrote about how most company decision-making processes, particularly those that generate the algorithms that shape our online lives, are...
Selling Apple to babies
A couple years ago when my husband and I were staring new parenthood dead in the face at 3:45 a.m., we resolved not to read any baby books, so as to not go...
I wanna be in the black box where it happens
In the popular Hamilton musical, a singing Aaron Burr, left out of negotiations on the Compromise of 1790, laments in “The Room Where it Happens,”No one else...
Twitter still works, in spite of Twitter
This week, Twitter rolled out a website redesign that’s apparently been a year in the making. It features ginormous buttons, frenzied efforts to get you to...
The deep thoughts of Cal Newport
A couple years ago, I started hearing more and more about Cal Newport, a professor at Georgetown who wrote a book called “Deep Work”. In the book, he says...
Normcore maternity 🐣
Like I wrote on Twitter this weekend, I had a baby boy! Vicki Boykis @vboykisSome personal news: I had a baby this weekend! 👶 Everyone is healthy, we are...
Are there ANY good recommenders?
This week, I got an excellent question from a reader (keep them coming!). Paul writes, Following up on your two posts about recsys I can imagine that you...
Housekeeping: The survey results!
Thank you to everyone who completed the survey! It’s been immensely helpful, and in the spirit of Radical Transparency, here are the results (sorry about the...
Big Recsys Redux: Recs at Netflix
I wrote about recommender systems last week, but there is so much discussion around their effects right now in the mainstream tech press that they deserve a...
The Phoenix Project
I read tech/management books much in the same way that other people (also me) read gossip magazines or watch CNN: to try and understand the ridiculousness of...
Housekeeping: Help improve Normcore Tech!
Hey readers! Two quick things today. 1. Reader Survey I’ve been at this newsletter game a little over a month now, and would like some feedback on how I’m...
The reign of Big Recsys
If you’ve ever used YouTube’s autoplay feature, Amazon’s “More Like This”, anything on Netflix, or used Facebook’s News Feed, you’ve used one of the most...
Beach reads
It’s the Fourth of July in the United States this week, Canada Day in Canada, and, just, generally, summer. In honor of a crazy slow period, I thought I’d...
On Marcus and friends
Very frequently, aka every time I log onto my (any one of) my banks’ websites, I’ll be greeted with something like this: Vicki Boykis @vboykisHow I imagine...