As noted in my last post, this is my first week as an employee of Google. I’m trying to get up to speed on the types of things that I will be doing, which meant spending most of today learning about the ad system, revenue forecasting models, how the Google backend works, etc. Unsurprisingly, there’s […]
Category: journal
Faking it
I have a bad habit of trying to fake knowledge when I don’t have it. Whether the topic is world politics or art history or technology or postmodern sociology, I like to pretend that I am knowledgeable on the topic and keep on talking. This habit drives some of my friends crazy, as they feel […]
Being a generalist
In a continuation of my reflections on my personal brand as a generalist, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a generalist in corporate America. What is the value proposition that I as a generalist bring to companies and how can my skill set contribute to a company’s success? To put it more […]
My favorite things to do in New York
I’ve been meaning to put together a list of my favorite New York things to do for a while, and it seems like this, my last day as a resident of New York, seems like a good occasion for doing so. I’m mostly recording them for my own interest, and so if anybody ever asks […]
US Open
The tennis US Open is held each year at this time in Flushing Meadows, in Queens. Each of the past two years I thought about going, but couldn’t quite convince myself to take a day off work to really enjoy it, plus I always figured I could do it next year. Alas, with the movers […]
Personal branding
Yesterday’s post on branding actually started because I have been thinking extensively about personal branding throughout my just-completed job search. Looking for a job entails trying to find a plausible intersection between one’s background and skills, one’s interests and career aspirations, and what a company needs. For a generalist like me, this gets particularly interesting […]
California, here I come
As is probably not a surprise (especially after my New York vs. the Bay Area post), I have decided to move back to the Bay Area next month. Taking a step back, at the beginning of the summer, I had just graduated from Columbia and was in need of some time off after the craziness […]
Playing the Lost Sport
I’ve been a fan of Jane McGonigal for a few years now, and enjoyed playing her Cruel 2 B Kind game in the Come Out and Play festival two years ago. So when she said she was running another game in this year’s festival, I signed up. The game ties into the Olympics in that […]
Strategic Intuition and Expertise
On Monday night, I went to a talk by William Duggan, a Columbia business school professor who studies strategy, on a concept that he calls strategic intuition. Duggan has written a book on the subject, and has set up a blog to discuss the concept. Duggan started by discussing the differences between expert intuition and […]
New York vs. the Bay Area
I’ve been out of touch for a bit (I officially graduated from Columbia as evidenced by the happy cap’n’gown icon to the left, then ran off to California to marry my sister off and see some friends afterwards, and then was struck down by a bug from all the excitement), but it’s time to get […]
