Jacob Robinson's Blog, page 23

If I Could Do My Education Over Again

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Now that I’ve passed into the career stage of my life, I’ve done a fair bit of thinking as to what I would have done differently. Here are my lessons learned.

For reference, I went to a state university with majors in Finance and Economics, and a minor in Psychology. I’ll start with the big picture: is university worth it?

I would say yes, to an extent. University, like many things, rounds out to getting a bargain — a high value for a low price. If a university costs too much for you, don’t do it. It’s that simple. University is nice (mostly for the benefit of being able to meet a lot of people who relate to your interests), but it isn’t worth any debt. As a rule of thumb, I would only go to a university if you can afford to pay the yearly cost out of your own bank account and still have enough left for you to live comfortably. If you can’t do that, then you’ll more than likely be better off just going straight to work. 

Quality of university is also something that gets brought up a lot. I used to also believe quality is important, until I studied at an Ivy League for a semester and realized that it’s pretty much the same thing. Now I think that it’s much more related to your personal skill and ambition than your university title. If you’re docile, then sure — people will use your college to judge you. But if you’re out doing cool things regardless, people won’t give your university a second look.

Then there’s the question of graduate school. Those who noticed I said I was at the end of my schooling after receiving my bachelor’s, already know what my opinion is on this. Really I think that the only graduate programs that are worth it are a) medical school, since the additional knowledge holds a genuine importance (for both you and society), and b) PhD programs that hold no cost. Law school is good only if you have a genuine passion to practice law (not just because your parents told you to), and an MBA is pretty much all around a joke. For 99% of people, you can stop after university just fine.

Finally, I’ll bring up my majors. I started with the Finance degree, and added Economics and Psychology later on. Overall I think this was a pretty good combination, but I’d give it some minor adjustments. If I were to do it again, I would have Computer Science and Psychology majors, and an Economics minor. I think Psychology is a vital science to learn for life and thus bring it up to a major. I reduce Economics to a minor but bring in Computer Science, not because I’m a programmy type but moreso because I think it’s an essential skill for the next industrial era. Economics I’d keep just because I still have fun with business and investing, but most of that stuff you can teach yourself. But I choose these because they’re my interests — I’d recommend you follow your own interests, all the same.

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A Social Capital Theory of Management

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There are many different theories of management, and real life takes bits and pieces from each one. But few of them revolve specifically around the people who you’re working with — so, this theory serves to add on a social factor as well.

In the real world, we play social games for social capital. In other words, our interactions with others either boosts their relationship with us, or harms it. Optimally, we want all our relationships to have a positive outcome. 

Management works pretty similarly. You have a set of people below you, who you need to do certain tasks. If you interact with them positively, it boosts your relationship with them. If your relationship is positive, then they tend to go along more with what you ask them to do.

But management has another added effect that standard communication doesn’t. In management, you often have to cash out your social capital. Think about this — there’s just been a financial crisis, and your company needs to lay off some people to keep afloat. You layoff part of your team, and now the rest of the team is demoralized. However, the degree to which they are demoralized depends on their status with their manager. If they trust the manager well, then they’ll be more willing to ride out the storm than if they’re with a manager they despise.

This is what makes social capital so important in management: building up rapport with your employees builds a hedge against possible future demoralizing events. One last important thing here — you can’t fake social capital. The best way to follow the social capital theory is by genuinely caring about your employees. No shortcuts, no cheats, no life hacks. Give to them, and they’ll give back to you. 

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Genetic Obsolescence

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Evolution means the constant splitting of genes and species into bigger and better forms. Humans came out of a split from the chimpanzees. But what will happen when a genetically better race of humans comes into existence?

It is my personal belief that the world will end once one race of humans becomes actually better than another. We already make enough fuss over fake differences — what happens if one day those who are rich enough to afford a brain machine interface end up having faster brain processing because of it? What happens if some families have the luxury of screening out fetuses for developmental diseases, and others don’t?

Humanity has already begun to play with genetics, and when you play with genetics you play with evolution. This can cause some major issues farther down the line, because now things don’t happen nice and slow how nature intended.

This also affects things unrelated to humans, too. Fruits that are the most delicious to humans make it to the next genetic stage. Dogs that are the most appealing to humans make it to the next genetic stage. These things, on the surface, don’t seem too terrible — but remember that there’s a lot more out there than just us.

Perhaps the scariest thing about genetic engineering — the thing that makes it scarier than AI — is that there’s a lot of individual incentive to keep it going. Of course people will pick up a gene enhancement that makes them smarter, or faster, or less prone to disease. Now, if everyone in the world is given this opportunity equally, then it will serve to raise all of humanity up — but this isn’t the likely scenario. Major inequalities already exist both across countries and within them. We might have been able to deal with inequality thus far, but this time it may lead to our downfall. 

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How to Use Reddit as a Business

[No fancy Unsplash photo for today – this is a more laidback article.]

Out of all social media websites, Reddit is easily the hardest to crack. It’s community naturally filters out ads, and is quick to attack any potential promotions. So, how do you use Reddit as a business?

For 99% of businesses, the answer is simple: You don’t. In comparison to targeted Facebook ads or SEO writing, Reddit is a stubborn block that can certainly lead to massive rewards, but is more likely to lead to nothing. The time commitment to advertising on Reddit is intensive, and requires a very good sense of… not advertising. 

Why is this, exactly? Unlike other social media, Reddit is community based, rather than individual based. In an individual based social media, the social media only goes as far as the individual builds it. An individual has friends and groups that they follow, and these may or may not interact with one another very deeply. In a community based social media, everything is intertwined. Communities are the main focus rather than profiles, and communities are built by many different individual contributions. Because of this, the curation and quality of the community is paramount — and this means no free ad space. 

So, what about paid ad space? Well, this is also rather complicated. While those on individual based social media might be neutral towards ads, community based social media hate them. When you think about it, there’s some logic there — if you’re browsing a community, and see a post which you think is an endorsement by the community, only for it to end up being an ad, wouldn’t you be mad too? Because of this, Reddit ads get among the lowest clicks of all the social media platforms. 

Alright, so things are looking bleak. However, all of that isn’t to say that advertising on Reddit is impossible. In fact, those who post often on communities become one of the most trusted sources, thus bringing their posts to the top. 

Of course, becoming trusted means building trust in the first place. That means helping out often, posting links that likely don’t directly relate to your business, and (if the subreddit is particularly popular) constantly monitoring new posts. All this time, arguably, is better used on your other social media marketing campaigns.

I also won’t discount the virality factor on Reddit, however. You can easily bypass all this time intensity by posting something people naturally upvote — yet once again, Reddit’s natural sniffing out of marketing will filter out anything that’s too obviously backed by a business.

Overall, Reddit isn’t for everyone. It’s not “hackable” in the same way that something like Instagram marketing or SEO is. Yet, if you’re already putting in the work for a community, or find it enjoyable to post, why not try it?

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The Customer Takes Care of Itself

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There’s a lot of debate in the business world on whether every customer should be a sought after one. I take a different approach — I say the customer takes care of itself.

The original view on customers was a simple one: the customer is always right. It makes logical sense — customers mean revenue, which means profit, which means staying in business. To this day, some of the biggest CEOs in the game (such as Jeff Bezos) treat this original vision as gospel. It’s simple, appealing, and effective. 

However, as time went on, we realized that life wasn’t quite so simple. Angry or relentless customers can cause drain on employees, lowering the quality of their performance. There’s also the fact that not all customers are created equal — some customers have the potential to give more revenue than others. And so the viewpoint changed: the customer may always be right for cheap, mass produced sectors (such as food service or retail) but for more complicated sectors things require a more nuanced approach. 

So, what’s the answer here? Well, I would say that the right customers will come to you, assuming you already have a good product and marketing plan.

Think about it this way: say you have a fitness company targeting bodybuilders. Well, assuming that you’re bodybuilders yourselves, you’ll know how to interact with this demographic. You’ll be attracting the customer base you want naturally.

Now, where this vision really plays out is in the next step: What do you do with everyone else? Well, they aren’t your focus. That doesn’t mean to reject these customers outright (there could be future bodybuilders amongst them!), but don’t try every move in the book to entice them. Let them come in, browse, pick up a few items, and go on their way. And if they start coming back for more, then you’ll know they’re a keeper. 

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Old World Business, New World Business

Photo by Pedro Lastra on Unsplash

The internet fundamentally changed our world after its widespread adoption in the early 1990s. Business is perhaps the greatest example of this evolution.

I’ve already talked extensively about income generators and qualifications in the past. While these are both great examples of the influence the internet has had on business, in this post I wanted to focus on something else.

The modern basket of industries can be separated into Old World Business and New World Business. An example of an OWB might be the financial sector, where people wear suits and ties and have meetings and have rigorous formalities, etc. etc. An NWB, naturally, could be something in the software sector, where people wear polos and jeans and use Slack and save the formalities for their OWB clients. Even then, the principles of the new world begin to infect that of the old — you can see a clear difference between Goldman Sach’s software department in comparison to their investment banking department, despite the fact they fall under the same corporate umbrella. 

Perhaps the natural question to go to is why these changes occurred. There is nothing inherently about the internet that requires one to ditch their suit in favor of casual clothing. One could argue that the rebels who invented the software industry also invented its culture, and that future generations modeled off of these founders. This would certainly explain the financial sector, with its formalities in direct correlation with the emerging capitalists of the 1700s and 1800s who created them. 

But, perhaps, it doesn’t explain everything. Based on this logic, you might consider more ‘lower-class’ professions like manufacturing to follow alongside the informal nature of software. Yet that is not necessarily true. There are clear distinctions and traditions in manufacturing that allows one to still clearly define it as OWB — perhaps a blue-collar variant rather than white-collar, but the distinction still exists.

So perhaps it’s more deeply tied to the internet era than it initially appears. Perhaps it ties to a wider trend, the throwing away of pleasantries in favor of getting your voice heard. Perhaps the creators of these first software companies knew this new trend, and that’s why they elected to throw away their own pleasantries in favor of building a good product. 

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Random Factor Social Suicide

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We live in a world where widespread scrutiny exists over actions and everything is naked through the internet. The wide majority of people who have been ‘cancelled’ now likely didn’t expect their actions to give them persecution when they were first made. So, what are the chances it will happen to you?

First, let me frame the issue. I am referring less to the ‘MeToo’ world of sexual harassment and violence, as these actions have been outright vilified for thousands of years. It is more likely the fact, in this case, that the individuals here consciously knew that they were doing a vilified act but rather assumed that no one would ever find out. So this misses the ‘random’ factor to the social suicide.

How is randomness defined, then? Well, the examples that I am referring to consist of actions that were not vilified at one point in time and are vilified later. A grand example of this is of comedians who make a joke that was considered to be tasteful in one era and distasteful in the next. This does include a random factor — it is reasonable to assume that a comedian making the joke initially did not recognize any vilification in the action. It was out there, open, and made for others.

This, of course, makes the topic much more controversial than that of MeToo. Many people (including myself) believe the politics at play when it comes to jokes can be embarrassing at best and downright dangerous at worst. But this article’s discussion point isn’t so much about controversy, and more so what I mentioned at the very beginning: could it happen to you?

Of course, it depends on where you are. If your comments tread the line now then they will certainly cross over later. On the other hand, being overly cautious can also get you — those at the center of the Identity storm find themselves stepping on more stones than the average person, constantly striving to be ‘politically correct’ when in the current environment politically correct is a moving target. So in this way, those more in the middle are less likely to be harmed. This makes logical sense — most people are in the average, and most people aren’t going to incriminate themselves.

It also depends on how much you let yourself show publicly. One of the reasons comedians got hit the worst is because they make these comments explicitly to public audiences. Those who make the jokes privately — who don’t share them on social media or, better yet, on the internet at all — have a layer of protection afforded to them that others might not. 

That being said, long-run changes are more permanent. Post identity politics the ideas of what is right to say and what is wrong will likely land somewhere in the middle. Of course, in the long-run we’re all dead. H. P. Lovecraft never lived to see himself commit social suicide, and it’s unlikely most of us we’ll either. So, the chances of being affected by this change is non-zero, but it is rare — and when it does happen, it’s fleeting. 

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State of the Union 2021

Previous State of the Unions: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2020

Welcome back. A new year of course means a new Favorites, and it also means a new State of the Union. Apparently people call these things “Annual Reviews” now? That name feels a little less inspired, so I’m going to keep with the traditional title scheme.

The format should be pretty obvious by this point, but I’ll summarize: in State of the Union, I go over my annual plans for my projects in a full scope, organized as 1) a recap of last year’s plans, and 2) a breakdown of this year’s. Let’s get to it.

Recap

In previous years, I’ve focused on numbers a lot more than just getting shit done. This year, that’s going to switch. It’s not that I stopped caring about analyzing KPIs, it’s just that it’s now become a backend monthly process and (perhaps more importantly) the numbers are really boring to talk about. Because of that, this recap section is going to be a lot smaller than usual.

The things I’ll note here are that the Medium has been sunsetted (kinda shitty reach and infrastructure compared to a unique page) and the podcasts have been cancelled… for now. They’ll actually be coming back, perhaps later in the year. Unfortunately I had to delete most of them because of some, uh, distasteful things I said in my younger years. So while I still want to hit 100 podcast episodes, we’ll now be doing that starting from an episode 1.

astukari

It’s hard to believe that we just started the newsletter last year. Growth has been pretty good here, and I’m continuously trying out new experiments. I also hope to bring back the Youtube channel, not just with the podcast idea I mentioned above but also with video “summaries” of old blog posts (once again, a big trend going around here). Other than that I think astukari is pretty stable as it is.

Shanah

Shanah has been going through a lot of flux as to figure out the most optimal way of fulfilling the product. You can learn more about the project here. Lord knows that’s going to be the number one focus on Shanah for now, getting a good value product set up but also automating it so that I’m not spending 120 hours a week juggling a bunch of mindless operations tasks.

Apalla

With the release of Apalla Alexandria, things are looking up here. I’m hoping to set up a homebase that isn’t just a Substack page (a unique website like this and Shanah?) and continue building out the product here. As Shanah matures somewhat, I think a solid focus will come to Apalla.

Robinson Books

I’m thinking of (attempting to) write 2 books, release 2 books, each year from here on out. Obviously, that is a very theoretical concept speaking that I just now started this. This number may go up or down depending on how actually difficult it is to do what I just described. I also hope to build out the publishing architecture of Robinson Books and allow a more unified structure.

Other Stuff

I don’t want to promise too much else, because as many will likely point out this is already a lot for one person. So I think if the theme of 2020 was winding up, this one is winding back down. Perhaps there will be a pattern of expansion and contraction from these years on out. In the wise words of Saint-Exupery:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

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Favorites of 2020

Hello, it’s that time of year again. Let’s talk about my favorites of 2020.

For those new to the rodeo, for my last article post on 2020 I talk about my favorite things of the last year, and for my first post of 2021 I talk about my ‘State of the Union’, which you’ll find out about soon enough. Of course, you might also notice that this is coming out on January 4th. Well, uh, that’s just how scheduling works sometimes.

Typical rules apply: the categories are movies, books, video games, and music. I’ll be talking about my top 5, but the 5 themselves are not in order (e.g. the first one I list isn’t the #1 favorite or the #5 favorite, it’s just ‘a top 5 favorite’). These are things that I’ve played/watched/read this year, but not necessarily came out this year. Basically, take this as a set of recommendations in across a series of mediums.

Without further ado, here are the favorites:

Movies

Marriage Story – I like subtlety in storytelling. Marriage Story is full of it. Just place two high-quality actors in a room with a basic plot, and that’s really all you need for a good movie.

Ghost in the Shell – The best anime film I saw this year. Yes, obviously I’m talking about the original. I slept on this movie for quite awhile, but I decided this was the year to break into anime that wasn’t directed by Satoshi Kon. This lived up to its promise!

La Jetee – Ok, I said Marriage Story was great for its simplicity. But could you make a 20 minute long slide show a good film? As it turns out, yes. Just get a killer soundtrack and some fantastic writing, and you’ll be glued to the screen regardless of what the hell it is.

F for Fake – Favorite documentary of the year. To be fair, I hate documentaries — it really is just this and Crumb. But wow, was this an adventure! People often complain about Orson Welles’ pompous nature and while I can certainly see it I can’t help but love it.

The Battle of Algiers – An excellent test of amorality in film, as in setting up two sides and letting the audience decide who is right and who is wrong. A few of the films that didn’t make the list this year cough cough were so desperately worried that the audience wouldn’t agree with their opinion that they made their side look really good and the other side look really bad. None of that is visible here. 

Books

Dubliners – This is a short story collection by James Joyce. After reading Portrait of an Artist and thinking it mid-tier, then reading Ulysses and hating it, I assumed that there wasn’t much hope for Dubliners. Nope — turns out Joyce just happens to be much better at short stories than feature length novels. But really, some of these stories really live up to their reputation as some of the best short fiction ever written.

Einstein: His Life and Universe – From my reading list: “This used to be Steve Jobs, but after reading Einstein I think it’s the superior Isaacson book. It’s not really a decision I make based on quality of writing — Isaacson’s research and prose is excellent in both — rather, I just think that Albert Einstein is a better overall role-model than Steve Jobs. So I’d rather people read his book.” Also worth noting that I almost cried at the end of this book, which is stupid to think about for a biography but also goes to credit the quality of Isaacson’s writing. 

The Remains of the Day – From my reading list: “Began having next to zero expectations of this book, ended with it being one of my favorite fiction pieces. A beautiful look into the dangers of obsession.” 

Mythology – From my reading list: “The essential book on Greek mythology. Poetically written in such a way that really gives these old stories their due.”

Almanack of Naval Ravikant – A collection of all the (smart) things Naval has ever said. Is this man even a role model at this point? Who the hell knows. The important thing is that this is a collection of the good stuff. 

Video Games

DOOM (2016) – While cleaning out my Steam account I noticed that my only recommendation is a negative one against DOOM 2016. It was actually written for the public beta of the multiplayer (which was in fact terrible), but it now looks like it was written for the base game. To clarify, the singleplayer campaign is really, really good. I’m writing this in my favorites as an apology letter to DOOM. Sorry, DOOM — you’re still my favorite shooter franchise of all time

Punishment and Forgiveness

Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

I have a set of principles. One of the big ones is to ‘always forgive someone the first time they make a mistake’. In this post, I want to elaborate on this, as well as give some thoughts on punishment and forgiveness more generally.

First of all, when I mean ‘mistake’, I’m defining it as normal, average, human mistakes that could happen to anyone. Premeditated murder is not an average mistake. Missing an important meeting or entering an item wrong in a database is.

With that scope in mind, I think the leading issue behind punishment and forgiveness is the conflict between humanity and efficiency. If someone flubs up an email to a CEO during the BizDev process, that can ruin an important sale. At the same time, there was someone behind that email who more than likely didn’t intend to sabotage the whole operation. You can sacrifice humanity for the sake of efficiency by disgracing the person and firing them, or you can sacrifice efficiency for the sake of humanity by giving that person some leeway.

This is where my rule comes into play. I think that the vast, vast majority of people have good intentions but sometimes make fuckups. Sometimes those fuckups can be really bad — but statistically, they can happen to anyone. And because of that, I think it’s fair to give them the benefit of the doubt.

However, some people are just bad performers. So if they’re habitually sending poorly worded emails to important people, then maybe it’s time for that person to go. 

Another thing is that I consider all these mutually exclusive events. So if someone flubs an email, then two years later misses a meeting, that’s not really counting as a second strike. 

Sure, knowing the person helps determine how forgiving you should be. But oftentimes the fuckup is very early on in their time knowing you — for example, when I was 45 minutes late to the very first meeting of my internship. People learn over time — which means people make the majority of their mistakes in the first row. That’s why I think it’s important to keep things mutually exclusive — someone might mess up constantly in their first week, and then be golden for the next five years. Sometimes, being human ends up helping efficiency in the long run.

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