Jun 01
Delivering My First Keynote Speech —
The story of my first major paid speech and what I learned
May 31
30 —
Photo by Martin Reisch on Unsplash
About a week ago I celebrated a major milestone and turned *gasp* 30. Over the
last few years, I’ve kept very careful track of how much time I had left until
thirty, which was the age I thought I needed to have “made
May 24
The New Napster —
There has been an explosive new development in how scientific research is read
and distributed. It’s name is Sci-Hub
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181007100235/https://sci-hub.cc/].
Founded in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan (who was, at the time, a 22 year-old
graduate student based in Kazakhstan), the site
Jan 30
What Makes Effective Problem-Solving Teams —
We all want to work in teams that exhibit high performance and solve problems
effectively. But while it’s often easier to understand what drives individual
performance, team performance is a more complex activity.
There is some great research done by folks at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Google
that shows
Jan 24
Readership Survey —
Since it’s been a few years since my last readership survey
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180407231456/https://www.jasonshen.com/2011/results-of-the-2011-readership-survey/]
, I decided to poll members of the Art of Ass-Kicking insider’s list to see who
they are and why they read the blog.
Here are
Jan 15
Play to Your Strengths —
Why you'll never win by staying on defense
Jan 11
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else —
I recently finished reading The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps
Everything Else
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160921075050/http://amzn.to/1VCM2PO] in business
by Patrick Lencioni. You’ve definitely heard Lencioni’s other books: Death by
Meeting [http://amzn.to/1La6Uxa] and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
[https:
Jan 04
Learning from Volkswagen —
Volkswagen has been eviscerated after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
announced in September that VW had installed “defeat devices” to cheat on their
emissions testing
[http://qz.com/507767/volkswagen-admits-that-its-cheating-software-is-in-11-million-cars-worldwide/]
.
It turns out least 500,000 diesel cars made by VW were rigged with software
[http://www.nytimes.com/
Dec 22
The Biggest Challenge With Building Products is Uncertainty —
I was recently asked to share my views on three questions around product
management for the UsabilityTools [http://blog.usabilitytools.com/] blog. My
answers are now published along with thoughts from 46 other product managers
[http://blog.usabilitytools.com/how-to-be-an-amazing-product-manager/] and I
thought I’d share my response here as
Nov 16
The 10x Job Application —
The 10x job application is when you get creative and build something potential employers can't ignore. Here's how to do it.
Oct 28
The Rise and Fall of Product Lines —
I’ve noticed a pattern when it comes to the growth of certain popular products —
both physical and media [1]. The pattern looks like this:
Company Develops a Breakthrough Product
A unique product hits the market. It looks or operates in a way that feels
distinct in an important way.
Oct 02
First Impressions at Etsy —
Since first publishing this post in October, our team has shipped the first
product I had a hand in (in November). It’s called Shop Updates
[http://etsy.com/shop-updates]. You can read more about how the product came to
be from this blog post
[https://blog.etsy.com/news/
Sep 24
The Value in Ongoing Conversations —
When I was in DC working as a Presidential Innovation Fellow
[https://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows/meet-the-fellows#section-round-2],
one of our objectives was to drive adoption for President Obama’s Executive
Order
[https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/09/executive-order-making-open-and-machine-readable-new-default-government-]
to make all government information open, freely accessible, and
Sep 24
The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age —
My reading notes The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1625275773/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1625275773&linkCode=as2&tag=helpyour-20&linkId=QLOVYSURY5HDAKLQ]
by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh.
Sep 24
Don’t Call it That: A Naming Workbook —
Today I’m sharing the insights I gleaned from a wonderful (and fairly short)
book Don’t Call it That: A Naming Workbook
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I1MRY80/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00I1MRY80&linkCode=as2&tag=
Aug 30
Six Blistering Bodyweight Workouts You Can Do in Under 30 Mins —
One of the biggest reasons why people say they don’t exercise is because they
don’t have time. Of course, we all have the same amount of time, and there are
plenty of really busy people who work out
[https://web.archive.org/web/20161001013436/http://www.businessinsider.com/
Aug 26
Goodbye Percolate, Hello Etsy —
I joined Percolate in March of 2014 as the 100th employee at the company (today:
250+). Back then, we were all piled into a single floor of our NY office in
SoHo. We’ve grown tremendously, raising two rounds of funding, opening offices
around the world, and delivering The System
Aug 04
Until You Ship, Communication Is the Deliverable —
Lessons from a book on "alpha product managers" on the paramount importance of communication
Aug 01
The Extraordinary Power of Self-Reflection —
I recently stumbled across an old document on my laptop. It was a PDF with journal entries from several years ago. While many of the entries were typical day-to-day activities, I also found about 100 short lessons that I had captured during this journaling period and I shared a few
Jul 31
Why Being Real Matters —
> Lying is a requisite and daily part of being a founder, the grease that keeps
the startup flywheel running. No one likes to put it that way of course.
Instead, we use phrases like “hustling” and “fake it until you make it” to make
the idea of lying more