Mike Flynn

User Researcher with deep understanding of human factors & information design. People. Then products! MBA @babson, MSHFID @bentleyu, learner @holy_cross

[The Random Recruiter @randomrecruiter]

If I had one piece of advice for 2026:

Get proactive.

99% of people sit in the "wait and see" bucket.
• Waiting for the recruiter to call
• Waiting for the market to normalize
• Waiting for people to reach out to them, instead of taking action and reaching out to people.

While you're waiting, someone else is taking your spot.

Today's job market doesn't reward passiveness. It rewards those who go out and make something happen.

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

@paulswaney3 Integration

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

@stephsmithio @marclou If you haven’t yet, check out advice and exercises from @kneeovertoesguy!

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

"Please, for the sake of tradition, history, and beauty, send your children trick-or-treating from house to house. Have them knock on doors. Encourage mischief and risk and joy. They only get a brief window when this is possible." @OldHallowTree

[Ryan B. Anderson @OldHollowTree]

Well, since you asked...

"Trunk-or-treat" is one of the absolute worst tragedies to befall our culture.

Do not, under any circumstances, bring your children to a "trunk-or-treat".

The practice, by which a group of parents organize to give out Halloween candy from the trunks of their vehicles in close proximity is sometimes regarded as a safer alternative to trick-or-treating, while other parents see it as an easier alternative to walking the neighborhood with their children. God forbid!

I cannot stress this enough: this is anathema to everything good about Halloween, America, Europe, Western civilization, and the entire history thereof. This, like so much of our modern culture, is a crushing force that seeks to steamroll everything into a safe, amorphous, corporate-approved blob that lacks any semblance of truth, beauty, history, identity, or tradition. We know that Halloween was historically an old Celtic pagan fire festival to mark the start of winter (forgive the oversimplification, it's just Twitter). In Scotland, Ireland, Britain et. al., from where so many of our good old traditions hail, one could expect masked youngsters impersonating mischievous spirits to throw one's plough or cart into a nasty soggy ditch or lead your horse into a neighbor’s field. There was no appeasing these mischievous ghouls back then! It was chaos! Luckily today, since about 1920 when "guising" was introduced by Irish and Scottish immigrants in Massachusetts, we can bribe the goblins with some sweets and send them on their way.

And that's just it; it's a night when children have a sense of agency and control! We adults are at their joyfully mischievous mercy! If you do not pay the sweet tithe to the fairies and ghouls, your home may well fall victim to a nasty trick (toilet paper, anyone?). This is how it should be! Halloween should not be some staid and sanitized safe little polite jaunt about the park from car trunk to car trunk; it should be a night where children run rampant, threatening to egg houses and burn the village down to the very stones if their ravenous hunger is not appeased! That is good and just and right!

Please, for the sake of tradition, history, and beauty, send your children trick-or-treating from house to house. Have them knock on doors. Encourage mischief and risk and joy. They only get a brief window when this is possible.

They only get one childhood.

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

"Quit your boring desk job. The ocean is calling."❤️🌊@ulyssesinc

[will o’brien @Willob]

I’m hiring for two major roles on my team at Ulysses.

There has not been a better time to join Ulysses.

In the last few months, revenue & pipeline have gone vertical, and we've made significant technological breakthroughs that will forever change how subsea work is done.

It's been the most successful period in our company's history, and we are just getting started.

We will be announcing some of these breakthroughs soon. Stay tuned.

The jobs:

1. GM, Commercial: Your job is to stand up and lead our commercial business unit. Take our early contracts and scale them to build a machine that reshapes how critical telecoms and energy infrastructure is inspected and repaired.

2. Director of Marketing and Brand. Your job is to make Ulysses impossible to ignore. World-build. Make Ulysses "the Ocean Company". Take the air out of the room. High taste. No slop. Tell the world what Ulysses does.

Quit your boring desk job.
The ocean is calling.

Full job descriptions are @ https://t.co/NkRyb1NvLl

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

"Picture it. You’re at one of the nicest resorts in one of the most prized vacation destinations in the world and there are literal millionaires scrambling to get pool chairs at 8AM. What the hell is going on?" https://t.co/n1F0NyBDWi

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

@paulg @cboyack @DiscoverPraxis I didn't realize it in the moment, but I now say I went to undergrad to: "learn to learn". I like your framing as more than job training!

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

When in doubt, create!! "...people applying to 1,000 jobs and getting rejected by algorithms are canaries in the coal mine of a society that's forgotten how to create rather than extract." @kylascan

[Kyla Scanlon @kylascan]

The labor market is looking more and more like something from the casino economy - following the same mechanics as dating apps and memestock trading. I think there are three important points

(1) The US is facing a crisis of zero-sum thinking, as Alex Tabbarok recently wrote about (which I believe is exacerbated by things like Jubilee)
(2) Young women in healthcare are succeeding in the labor market because they are prepped for an aging economy as John Burn Murdoch's wrote about - and men are having trouble. The economy has changed from creation to maintenance.
(3) The way that the hiring process is designed is increasingly a lottery that further fuels zero-sum thinking

And more! Link in next post, enjoy.

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

Brad Marchand

#bucciovertimechallenge

[Maurizio @themgmtconsult]

Your client can hire experts anywhere.

Do you know what they can't find that easily?

Someone with deep knowledge who still asks the naive questions that change everything.

The best consultants have low tolerance for bullsh*t. They "consistently stay the new kid":

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

@EricFriedman What will you do if you need a mini USB charger next year?

[Packy McCormick @packyM]

Walked into McNally Jackson on my way to grab lunch. Saw Mary Oliver's name and thought "I love that wild and precious life poem, wonder what else she has."

Opened the 480 p. book to a random p. - 316.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

[Dave Wedge @DaveWedge]

Former Sun Chronicle reporter to pen book about Karen Read murder trials https://t.co/NyBIjjuokl via @TheSunChronicle

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

@stephsmithio $12.90

[Ryan Holiday @RyanHoliday]

You’re never going to be perfect—there is no such thing. You’re human. So instead, aim for progress, even the smallest amount.

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

"After all, a whiteboard is only as useful as the person who holds the marker. It can reflect genius, but it cannot create it." @firstadopter
https://t.co/Inc2W1kiyt

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

Howdie! I'm heading (online) to DevSecCon 2024! Find out more at https://t.co/wMVvTMPk0q @snyksec

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

The question isn't "'how do I make time for this?' The answer to that question always disappoints, because that view of time has it forever speeding away from you. The better question is, how does doing what I need make time for everything else?" @aworkinglibrary

[Teresa Torres @ttorres]

Worthy Read: Energy Makes Time by Mandy Brown (@aworkinglibrary)

https://t.co/kKe8nJzaBM

#prodmgmt #ux #engineering

[Mike Flynn @mike_flynn]

@jean_twenge I def. felt awkward "listening" to this @Atlantic article about students who can't read books 🙃 -- but my sense is these alt formats/tools/aids are also a factor at play!

[MIT Sloan School of Management @MITSloan]

“Our goal is to lift the field of entrepreneurship, and a tool like this would allow more people to be entrepreneurs, and be better entrepreneurs.” — @BillAulet, @eshipMIT https://t.co/q1MOiYVFH3