Are IT certifications a waste of time? An article about the worthlessness of IT certifications recently made the rounds on the front page of Hacker News. The author dismissed the validity of Java certifications, equating them to Hamburger University diplomas. While I disagree with the author’s view, I’ve also heard – and said – various … [Read more…]
What’s more important when starting a business? Making a pile of money quickly, or building a great reputation for the long haul? When we started Ternary Data in late 2018, we very quickly decided that while growing our revenues was vital, it was more important to grow our pile of reputational capital. It seems counter-intuitive, … [Read more…]
An old Scott Hanselman article about “dark matter developers” made the rounds on Hacker News this summer. Much like the dark matter that makes up much of the invisible universe, these developers are also largely invisible. As Scott said, “We call them Dark Matter Developers. They don’t read a lot of blogs, they never write … [Read more…]
Another Berkshire shareholders meeting in the books. As always, I walked away slightly smarter. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal posted a funny article “When Warren Buffett Takes the Stage, Try Your Hand at Berkshire Bingo”. If you’ve watched or attended the meeting enough times, you’ll laugh. It’s spot on. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are … [Read more…]
Since 2014, my buddy Faris Chebib and I (along with a few other hardcore friends) have run the SLC Python Meetup . We started the meetup because we were too lazy to drive to the other Python meetup – 20+ miles away – during rush hour. From 2014 to now, we’re close to 2500 members. … [Read more…]
Every morning, I read almost a dozen articles. A few articles usually relate to data science (I hate the term “data science”, as it’s very overloaded. Here, I’ll confine data science to AI or machine learning). Lately, I notice more and more articles echoing something I’ve been saying for years – data science is hard, … [Read more…]
It’s the day after Christmas, and I’m sitting in my grandma’s house in Omaha. She’s a cute 88 year old lady who always inspires me to be a better version of myself. She never complains, and simply continues to take care of herself and focus on what she can change for the better. We’ve never … [Read more…]
It’s been a few months since I’ve posted anything here. Truth be told, I’ve been hyper-focused on other things besides writing. Not writing is a bad habit though. Writing is critical, and something I’ll be doing a lot more of. So, hello again 🙂 So what’s been taking up my time? My last post about … [Read more…]
I’m a self-described “reluctant data scientist”. Wait? Didn’t Harvard say that data scientist is the hottest job of the 21st century? Why would someone reluctantly claim title to the rockstar status, money, and glory that come along with being a data scientist? In my personal experience, there’s a big gap between data science hype and the … [Read more…]
In this episode of The Point Of Struggle, David Gonzalez and I riff on AI, ethics, and balkanized reality. Listen here The conversation ties to a post I wrote in March about leaving Facebook. Expect more conversations like this, since its a topic that I constantly think about. Speaking of which, a tweet this morning … [Read more…]