RadReads 162
This Week: “Career portfolioists,” lessons from early Amazon, small Identities
Good morning, gang.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend. This week’s issue is more focused on careers, freelancing, and the role of learning.
It’s last call on our two two Happy Hours on March 14th in NYC and DC. And thank you to our new Patrons: Dan, Lu, Asish, and Paul. With the launch of rad.family, our growth is accelerating and it is because of your generosity. Full stop.
🎙 Eugene Wei: Be a Novice
63 mins | Rad Awakenings | iTunes | Google Play
If you’re passionate about learning, this podcast is for you. Eugene joined Amazon in 1997, went to film school, worked as a product manager (Hulu and Flipboard) and most recently was head of video for Facebook’s Oculus VR. If he’s not learning new things at work, it’s not worth it and this approach enables Eugene manages to synthesize ideas across tech, sports, culture, psychology, media, and language in his career and writing. We talk a lot about learning philosophies, abandoning “career norms,” and how to build expertise. This was so good that I created two additional posts off the notes: leadership lessons from Jeff Bezos and how Eugene reads.
Keep Your Identity Small
5 mins | Paul Graham
This Paul Graham classic was referenced in the Eugene Wei conversation in relation to how he avoids choosing a job based on title or salary. In this piece, Graham starts with the obvious culprits politics and religion — but goes on to show how a conversation about, say, a programming language can turn into a “religious war.” As identity seeps into our thinking, it obfuscates one’s ability to think objectively about the topic itself.
The Career of the Future Looks More Like a Portfolio than a Path
5 mins | Quartz at Work
We usually think of portfolios in the world of finance and diversification. But can it be applied to your career? A portfolioist takes inspiration from various disciplines “to create an adaptable, diversified, and personal career; [in the process] figuring out what the world truly needs, maps that to a range of skills she possesses (and enjoys), and folds that into a business model.” The inter-disciplinary nature makes it much more than freelancing (and this post reminds me of Tyler Cowen’s Personal Moonshot and my Unbundled Career thesis).
Americans Invented Modern Life. Now Were Using Opioids to Escape It
24 Minutes | New York Mag
Absolutely 💯 reporting, research, and storytelling from one of my favorite writers, Andrew Sullivan. This crisis has mostly spared the wealthy cosmopolitan enclaves (and thus many RadReaders) and Sullivan looks at the history, failed policy approaches, comparison to the AIDs epidemic and an inquiry about the deep individualism that accompanies “American Exceptionalism.” One of the most powerful passages: “The pace of change, the ethos of individualism, the relentless dehumanization that capitalism abets, the constant moving and disruption, combined with a relatively small government and the absence of official religion, risked the construction of an overly atomized society, where everyone has to create his or her own meaning, and everyone feels alone.”
I Am the Very Important Longread Everyone is Talking About
6 mins | McSweeneys
I hesitated to include satire in our top stories, but you just need to read this. To some extent, it pokes fun (in a brutally self-reflective way, particularly for me as an aggregator of longreads) about the social signaling that comes with what we read and how the genre itself has become a caricature of itself. And don’t miss the last sentence. Seriously.
Don’t miss my postscript: A Bro’s Take on Emotional Labor
Below the Fold
BEST OF THE REST
⛏ Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (20 mins, Slate Star Codex): A data heavy piece that explores both side of the debate. You can skim and read the last two sections.
🤐 I Have Forgotten How to Read (10 mins, Globe and Mail): While I think this piece misses the mark on how we need to adapt our reading habits, I can definitely relate to the struggles of reading a single chapter in one sitting. And that’s scary.
🏀 Kevin Love: Everyone Is Going Through Something (9 mins, The Players Tribune): A personal and moving admission of panic attacks and keeping mental health issues quiet, in the name of masculinity.
ICYMI
🗯 “Difficult Conversations” and Feedback (My Book Notes) (4 mins): I love when business classics double as “life classics.”
🎙 Alessandra Biaggi: Using Your Voice (RAD Awakenings): Alessandra is part of a wave of first-time, mold-breaking female candidates.
💼 RadJobs: More RadJobs coming your way. This week is VC heavy with roles at Touchdown Ventures, Google News Lab, Eniac (VC), DCG (VC), Mosaic (clean energy), Bullish (marketing), and Citi Ventures. If you’re looking to have your dream job delivered directly to your 📧, sign up here!
LAST WEEK’S MOST READ
🔎 How to Make Better Use of Everything You Read (4 mins, Quartz at Work): How I use Bookcision, IFTTT, Instapaper and Evernote as a “personal knowledge management” system.
