Recent Reads: Founder Mode, Jupyter Lite, Viral Apps, Mckensey's Technology Trends

Founder Mode

Paul Graham’s latest essay on how traditional management approaches often fail in companies that are still run with the founders at the helm is thought provoking, even though I work in a non-startup world. That said,I have seen a lot of projects do well when championed by the creators/originators within a company only to whither and die when they transition to teams that don’t share or understand the vision.

The way managers are taught to run companies seems to be like modular design in the sense that you treat subtrees of the org chart as black boxes. You tell your direct reports what to do, and it's up to them to figure out how. But you don't get involved in the details of what they do. That would be micromanaging them, which is bad.

Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs. Sounds great when it's described that way, doesn't it? Except in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground.

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JupyterLite

Not an official Jupyter project yet but really excited to see this. Having a data analysis tool for smaller projects without the overhead of managing a Jupyter server would be great.

JupyterLite is a JupyterLab distribution that runs entirely in the browser built from the ground-up using JupyterLab components and extensions.

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Nikita Bier on making viral apps

An interesting watch. One of the best parts for me was the insight into the role of product managers in a startup vs. big companies. Totally on point!

McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2024

Unsurprising list of trends in some emerging technology spaces.

The post is from July, so slightly old now, given the pace at which the industry is changing everyday, but still interesting. This year has been brutal for a lot of people that have faced layoffs themselves or their close teammates, but there is still reason for some long term optimism

Although many trends faced declines in investment and hiring in 2023, the long-term outlook remains positive

In 2023, technology equity investments fell by 30 to 40 percent to approximately $570 billion due to rising financing costs and a cautious near-term growth outlook, prompting investors to favor technologies with strong revenue and margin potential.

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Apple’s machine for updating iPhones while still in their packages

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Presto uses “MagSafe and other wireless technologies” to turn the phone on, apply the update, and turn it off again. It’s not totally clear what tech it’s using and when — iGeneration mentions NFC is involved, too — but still, pretty dang neat.

So cool

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