Ylar Aasmae

FinTech at @Tunaikucom sharing time between 🇮🇩 and 🇪🇪

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@Jason Im in

[tobi lutke @tobi]

The most future-proof job: Entrepreneurship https://t.co/NbMUHPSoEi via @Shopify

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@sakegorilla hi, Tokyo based?

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@tunguz Same. Even weekends

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@tunguz 💯. I hoped to pick up my lost hobby music production when i got a job that required regular long flights. Absolutely impossible environment.

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@levelsio WBali was a little better- they just confirmed that my friend was staying there and wouldn’t reveal the room.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

# scheduling workloads to run on humans

Some computational workloads in human organizations are best "run on a CPU": take one single, highly competent person and assign them a task to complete in a single-threaded fashion, without synchronization. Usually the best fit when starting something new. Comparable to "building the skeleton" of a thing.

Other workloads are best run on a GPU: take a larger number of (possibly more junior) people and assign tasks in parallel: massively multi-threaded, requiring synchronization overhead. Usually a good fit for later stages of a project, or parts that naturally afford parallelism, comparable to "fleshing out" a thing when the skeleton is there.

There's some middle ground here - sometimes you can imagine a multi-threaded CPU execution of a small team collaborating.

A good manager will understand the computational geometry of the project at hand and know when to delegate parts of it on the CPU or on the GPU. One notable place where the analogy breaks down a bit is that the worst thing that can happen when you misallocate computer resources is that your program will run slower. But in human organizations it can be much worse - not just slower, but the result can be of lower quality overall, more brittle, more disorganized, less consistent, uglier.

The most common stumbling point here is trying to parallelize something that was supposed to run on the CPU. In the common tongue, this comes from the misunderstanding that something can go faster if you put more people on it, usually leading to outcomes where something is "designed by a committee" - not only is the thing actually slower, but the philosophy is inconsistent, the entropy is high, and the long-term outcomes much worse.

The opposite problem is more rare and usually looks like someone doing something repetitive, uninteresting or tedious, where they could really benefit from more help.

I think this is one accidental advantage of startups - they lack resources of large companies and run compute on powerful CPUs, winning in cases where that is the right thing to do. Larger companies, especially in cases where something is deemed of high strategic importance, will almost always reach for too much parallelism.

TLDR: Think about your project, its computational geometry, its inherent parallelism, and which parts are a best fit for a CPU or a GPU.

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Keith Rabois: “The velocity of your company improves by adding barrels”

In the clip below, Keith shares his “Barrels and Ammunition” framework for building effective teams.

“Most companies—once they get into hiring mode—just hire a lot of people. And you expect that as you add people your throughput and velocity of shipping things is going to increase. But it turns out it doesn’t work that way. Usually when you hire more engineers, you actually don’t get that much more done. You sometimes get less done.”

Keith argues that the reason for this is that most people in a company—even great people—are “ammunition.” But to improve velocity, you need “barrels”. He defines barrels as extremely talented people who can take ideas from inception all the way through to fully shipped product. Most companies start with one barrel (the founder). And when they add another, they can get twice as many things done per week, quarter, etc.

But true barrels are incredibly difficult to find:

“When you have them, give them lots of equity, promote them, take them to dinner every week because they’re virtually irreplaceable. They’re also very culturally specific. A barrel at one company may not be a barrel at another company.”

Source: @ycombinator

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@trishankkarthik loving the patches as well

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@susanluitsalu Avastasin mõni aeg tagasi, et Jakarta lennujaamas see tavaline(sinine?) Crafters müügil.

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

They are all libertarians until they are hit by higher interest rates.

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@trishankkarthik yes!

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@JoJoFromJerz Sydney

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@Austen yep, same

[Dave Kline @dklineii]

These 21 lessons (I learned the hard way) will change how you lead:

[fintechjunkie @fintechjunkie]

#VCs and #startups are dealing with the reality that today’s environment is brutal compared to what it’s been like over the past few years.

The reason for the abrupt shift is that Darwin went on vacation for a few years but has finally returned.

This changes EVERYTHING! 🧵👇

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

The main purpose of religion, I wrote in the Incerto, is not to affirm that there is a God, but to prevent humans from thinking they are Gods.

Likewise the purpose of a modern king is not to rule, but to prevent politicians & office climbers from thinking that they are kings.

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

#RWRI17 first week almost done. this is great!

[Ylar Aasmae @ylaraasmae]

@nntaleb application sent already :)