Marc Andreessen & Humanities ❤️- The need to read 📚- CTO x CEO 🤝- Benjamin Franklin's daily routine ✅
Education is the lightest burden you will ever carry.
Episode #72. Hey Sunday reader 👋🏼
This Sunday, The Timestamp is here again to help you! You will get your weekly insights from the articles, books, or podcasts you may have missed in tech, future of work, or philosophy applied to your daily life. This Sunday, learn something:
With Marc Andreessen,
About the power of reading,
About the power of CTOxCEO working together,
With Benjamin Franklin 👇
#1. Andreessen & humanities ❤️
TL;DL From this podcast 👉 Marc Andreessen on learning to love the humanities a conversation with Tyler Cowen published on June 15, 2022. Takeaways by Patrick Kervern.
In a conversation with Tyler Cowen, Mark Andreessen cites sources of inspiration and deep original ideas:
How he found his archetype by reading a profile of Bob Noyce, who was the original founder of Intel and basically the father of the chip industry by Tom Wolfe. He was later influenced by James Burnham's books. "The form of humanities that resonates with me is like that. It’s history, economics, philosophy, and politics merged. And then, at least in my case, you’re trying to find the people who are analytical and descriptive, as opposed to prescriptive."
"What I’m figuring out over time is the psychology-sociology elements are as important or more important than the business finance elements or the technology elements."
On what is still missing in the internet economy: "People should be able to get paid. What will strike you as an obvious statement, to a lot of people, it’s still a controversial statement. Incentives matter, economics matter. It is better, in general, when there is a way for there to be a monetary value assigned to productive work."
About where there is a gap in the internet economy: The hard decision between total independence and no money, and then having a traditional contractual relationship with one company — that shouldn’t be the tradeoff.
About walled gardens: "If you're just in a walled garden you have loyalty or voice, but you really don't have an exit."
About offices: It’s this idea that you have to bring people together in this highly orchestrated, mechanistic, mass way. Fun historical fact: The Roman Empire was not run out of offices. They ran the world, yet there was no office. There was no office building. About remote work: it represents the first decoupling of economic opportunity from the geographic locality in thousands of years… People are going to be able to choose how to live at different stages of their life in a fundamentally different way, much less dependent on the physical requirement of co-location with economic opportunity than they have in the past.
On great founders: That’s one of the interesting things you see with the really best founders. You’ll find this often — people who they have worked for will come to work for them.
On the biggest mistakes for VC: false negative — saying something is not going to work and then it works — is a much bigger mistake than the false positive of saying something’s going to work and then it doesn’t work. It goes to the asymmetry of returns. The big mistakes are always missing the big winners, almost 100 percent of the time.
#2. The need to read 📚
TL;DR From this blogpost 👉 The need to read by Tom White published in White Noise on March 31, 2022.
Brilliant piece of writing where the author unveils the secret gift his grandfather (who was a relentless reader) gave him: a seed. The virtual seed of curiosity; one seed that grew step by step into a love of learning.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all. —Oscar Wilde.
Education is the lightest burden you will ever carry.
We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.
—E. O. Wilson
Put more simply, studying the rich intellectual and cultural history of past peoples and civilizations helps us know how to respond to the uncertainties of the future.
No matter what you read; mangas or 50 shades of Grey, keep reading.
#3. CTO x CEO 🤝
TL;DR From this blogpost 👉 CTO et CEO, l’importance d’une bonne relation published in Wenvision by Didier Girard on May 22, 2022.
The relationship between a CEO and a CTO is crucial to putting the company on a sustainable road to success.
The CTO is to resolve tech problems, he is the one in charge of explaining those problems to the CEO. The CTO is making clear to the CEO if the requests are feasible and the time required for delivery.
“Many CTOs think their CEO is not very interested in tech… but if he was, he would not be a CEO, he would be a CTO”.
CEO and CTO have to agree on KPIs that will help demystify technology:
velocity to deliver products/features
product reliability (no bug)
time to general availability
operational cost under control
Those KPIs will ensure the company measure how tech is aligned with its goal.
#4. Benjamin Franklin’s daily routine ✅
TL;DR From this Twitter post 👉 Benjamin Franklin’s daily routine published by Sahil Bloom on May 22, 2022.
Interesting to note how planning your day, week, and month is important to make sure you get a chance to achieve your goals.
Looking back at your day is also a crucial step to evaluate how you have been able to tick boxes or not (in the latter case, this probably means you have to adapt your planning the next day).
Work moments cannot be the unique time of your day so that your work is effective. Look at the time you always need to put things back in order. This can be a conversation with a mate that will help you ‘close’ your day properly.
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