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I was recently trolling someone on Reddit, and in a brief (and regrettable) fit of passion I made a remark only I could love about “transcending the bullshit”. I have often repeated that I intend to one day publish a book titled “Everything is Bullshit”, in honour of the late David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, but extending to pretty much all facets of society.

Over the last 5 years of my career I’ve shifted my priorities in life. When I was younger, I was willing to deal with a lot of bullshit at work so long as they kept paying me a salary. Nowadays, I care more about my own happiness, and I’m not willing to work with people who are jerks.

I was reading Hacker News comments and someone was complaining about how they weren’t able to find a job in computers anymore due to ageism in tech. Reading this, something occurred to me which I thought was worth writing about, which is the idea of malleability. First of all, I agree that ageism in tech is a thing and it’s a problem for experienced people trying to find a new job. In a capitalist society you want to hire the cheapest employees who can “get the job done”, and experience is often grossly under weighted. My hypothesis for why it occurs has to do with the fact that some people perceive more experienced technologists as more expensive and less malleable.

I saw a discussion on Reddit about entrepreneurship recently that got me thinking. What’s the point of being an entrepreneur when the odds of success are incredibly low? This is especially true if you’re low on resources or clout. Beyond the Silicon Valley Narrative # The dominant narrative about entrepreneurship has become increasingly narrow: raise venture capital, grow at all costs, aim for a massive exit, and hopefully become a billionaire. It’s the script that’s celebrated in tech publications, glorified by accelerators, and drilled into the minds of computer science graduates.

As a kid growing up, I studied music in school and played a few different instruments. One instrument I always wanted to learn was the guitar, which I never did because I could only play what the school had available for free, since my parents couldn’t afford to buy me my own.

I’ve always tried to be an optimist, but I think my natural state tends toward realism with a hint of pessimism. Sometimes, optimism is at odds with the current state of reality. Wall of Vets, from Reddit

One of the basic concepts of capitalism is the idea that competition is good for consumers. I think in most cases this is true. One famous example is the history of General Motors, a company that became so powerful and dominant that the US government considered breaking GM into separate companies.

One of the hard truths in startups, especially VC funded startups, is that perception matters more than reality. Many people are able to raise vast amounts of money at high valuations on little more than excitement about the prospect of a viable business some time in the future.

I really wanted to be a founder of a successful startup (where successful to me means the company can pay its own bills, and pay employees well). However the reality hasn’t matched my ambition and I’ve decided to find a job like a regular chump. I assumed that with work ethic, skills, persistence, and plenty of trial and error I could eventually find success. That hasn’t happened, and I’m nowhere close to making that happen. Being good at computers and working hard doesn’t cut it.

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed an increase in commercial real estate vacancies around Manhattan, especially ground level retail. Tonight on my walk, I took some photos around Flatiron, NoMad, and Union Square. A few of these places were vacant before the pandemic began, such as the Belgian beer spot, but many are recent casualties.