Jon Fish

Strategy and operations at @duolingo. Founded @leveleducation. If you see me tweeting, tell me to stop.

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

Rather than whiffing on a joke, I thought I'd use my new twitter power to share the best pieces of advice I've received:

- Find someone who believes in you more than you believe in yourself
- Accept blame in 1st person, credit in 2nd
- Optimize for learning
- Say thank you
- Eat

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

@nickducoff I found an old Jules Verne (The Master of the World) a few months ago. It was fun to read plus super interesting in what it got wrong and in what felt futuristic back then

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

The Substack feed is the closest thing I’ve found to the signal-to-noise ratio of Old Twitter (2015ish)

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

Small man's idea of a big man

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

@hyhieu226 The only appropriately named app is Discord

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

@JimEngland Plus, if I want to do any data analysis, I can just ask Claude for an R script instead of writing it myself of using excel

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

I think people are underrating how magical this experience is. The closest I’ve felt to downloading a new skill

[Jordan Singer @jsngr]

all this talk of Claude + Cursor and becoming capable of building anything you put your mind to (no matter your skillset) is warranted

if this is the future, i want to live in it

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

@JimEngland A bunch of things that didn’t work as products! But that’s kind of the point- it’s much faster to iterate with products/features

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

@mayhewsw Does Delta count?

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

Your midwestern dad would want you to make sure the excitement translates across the *whole* ballot.
@arenasummit
is doing great work with both GOTV and training staffers.

If you want to support: https://t.co/VfThIlpIaR

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

I've been trying to think more about the funniest outcome rather just just the most likely, and I'm sorry to say my mind is clearly not creative enough

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

@nickducoff Primarily writing code. Tested it for data analysis too and it was impressive

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

Claude Sonnet is the first LLM that truly crossed the line dividing “fun toy” and “serious tool”

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

@aaronwhite I’m not doing anything crazy, but Sonnet 3.5 is the first LLM that mostly gives big-free code (so far). I expect at least two rounds of debugging with others

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

@NYCMayor Speaking of doing business in NYC, any thoughts on @GovKathyHochul trying to jam in a new payroll tax rather than going forward with congestion pricing as planned?

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

@sam_d_1995 @RidersAlliance @TransAlt Hochul’s line is “experiencing heavy volume with wait times of over 90 mins” 💀

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

Impt to recognize this stems from supply/demand pressures. As a country, we’ve cut back on gov funding of universities (esp. post-GFC), which increases pressure for universities to be *businesses*.

Of course universities chase potential students- they have to!

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

Why is trust in US institutions—esp colleges—collapsing?

Here’s a theory. The 21st c has became the age of the unfocused institution—the age of mission inflation, goal ambiguity, and complex orgs losing any clear sense of priority, or identity.

https://t.co/wOh1R6kSeJ

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

2. The sample sizes required to generalize about large populations (like the US) are small enough to be affordable

3. Soap is affordable to make

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

I sometimes like to think about the small coincidences of the world that aren't actually all that small. Like:

1. We developed the technology to detect damage to the atmosphere around the same time we developed chemicals that damage the atmosphere

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

I really do wonder why edtech hasn't figured out how to have an impact. So many tailwinds (connected, tech literate, wealthy students), and yet....

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

What is HAPPENING here?

Between 2012 and 2023, it appears that average OECD reading, math and science scores have declined consistently.

This is not (just) about pandemic learning loss. It’s not about one US city. It’s not even just the US. This is the entire developed world.

[Jon Fish @jon4fish]

@NateSilver538 I have a theory that both companies and government agencies have to deal with politics but in very different ways. Universities can be viewed as either, and the role of their leaders is to walk that line carefully