My career hasn’t followed a straight line and I've learned to do a lot of different stuff. The winding path that got me here makes resumes uncomfortable.

Some challenges light you up inside. Others make you say, “Nope. Not for me. No thank you. Nope, nope, nopenopenope...” as you run in the other direction. 

So your boss sucks. They play favorites. They make arbitrary decisions and everyone knows they have no idea what they’re doing. They change rules on a whim. You’re right. Your boss sucks. But they’re probably not doing anything illegal. They're just bad at their job.

In most cases, your boss wasn’t evil. You just didn’t get along. Good thing you don’t have to anymore. Even if your boss did do something super illegal, you don’t always get justice. Even if you did get justice, it doesn’t undo the awful thing that happened to you. It’s better to get out of the situation. Keep the awful thing from happening in the first place. 

You remember the legend of John Henry, right? The guy who raced a steam engine through a mountain and then died of exhaustion? It’s a story of human triumph and the futility of resisting progress and a reminder that skill ≠ security and the physical cost of toil and the disposability of the common worker and hubris.

So you've gone viral on LinkedIn. Woohoo! Be warned... The LinkedIn algorithm is about to take you on a ride straight into the Valley of Death. LinkedIn has a ~30 day refractory period after a high-performing post. Here's how it works:

Maybe you made a mistake. Maybe you weren't quite ready. Maybe you had a lot going on. I know it feels awful, but I promise, no one thinks you’re a failure. Believe it or not, someone probably took great care in what happened to you. Because they know it wasn't all your fault. They wanted this to be as easy for you as possible.

You may see them as a perfectionist. Overbearing. High maintenance. A control freak. Nit picky. Difficult. It’s exhausting. You may avoid them. Or resent them. Since strivers are often high achievers, they tend to land in positions of power, putting their unrealistic expectations on you.

What even is a job posting for a Founder? Wouldn't you just... like... start your company? Without anyone telling you that you can't? Isn't that what being a founder is?

When someone doesn’t know the industry jargon in a work setting, we think it discredits them. But you don't need fancy buzzwords to have eyes to see. Different vocabulary just means they come from a different context.

For my whole career I’ve been surrounded by brilliant people with access to capital who know how to turn ideas into money. I always thought there was some magic to it. That they knew something I didn’t. But these days, I’m discovering something. If I don’t tell these brilliant people that I’m not their peer, they don’t notice.

When it comes to hiring and promotion, we tend to think admin skills are intuitive. So we devalue them. But admin skills are not universal.

Truth: Working at a startup is different from working at a BigCo Inc. Myth: There’s some magical secret to it.

But why would someone take a 40+% pay cut by choice? That time must be more valuable than money. There are plenty of reasons besides laziness why this might be true. 

Being the only nontechnical person at a tech company always felt like being the office dog - I understood more than people thought, but didn't have the language or typing skills to do anything about it.