December 29, 2024 Investing 4 comments
On a Journey to Financial Independence: Lessons, Mistakes, and Thoughts on FIRE
I have always been fascinated with financial independence and have made financial goals for myself throughout the years. Here are some of my history with money and thoughts on FIRE.
I want to tell my own story so you don’t have to repeat my mistakes. As a disclaimer, I’m not a multi-millionaire and this is not professional financial advice. I bear no responsibility for your actions. Seek professional advice if needed (though beware that advisors have their own interests and may see you as a target to sell you something).
What’s FIRE?
FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. Idea is fairly simple: accumulate x25 of your intended annual spending and go retire early. I wouldn’t know the origin of the term FIRE but the idea isn’t that new and I’ve always followed MMM (Mr. Money Mustache) blog which in my opinion is one of the top voices on FIRE, though with higher emphasis on frugality. I highly recommend you read some of the articles there. I will get back to FIRE after giving a brief history of my dealing with money.
Ukraine
I was raised in a working class family in Ukraine, we didn’t have money, basically we were poor. Luckily having no money didn’t stop me from getting a good education. I made my first money in a local software engineering company. At that time I’d already read some books on financial independence and wanted to invest, but tools available back then in Ukraine were limited and I mostly made guaranteed security deposits, which didn’t make too much of a difference. At very least I was smart enough to know that keeping money under the mattress was a mistake, but even banks were not reliable so I had to juggle between different banks to diversify. Most people saw value in buying real estate and who could afford would buy an apartment in the city. There was a cold awakening in 2008 when home prices dropped, yet real estate is still seen as a tangible investment you can see and touch. There is some merit to it, again will get back to it.
Austria
As I moved to Austria in 2012, I had access to more investment tools and ways of buying my first stocks. I could finally practice at least some of what I read in books on investing. Since I didn’t have much money and banks in Europe are greedy on fees, any active investing approaches were only making money for brokers. I clearly remember how I had a small amount of MSFT stock and at dividend distribution out of 14EUR I would get 0.01 after all of the fees and taxes (what a joke). For the record, those 5k in MSFT invested then would have been 46k today, but I did sell with some small profit. Lesson here is that time in the market beats timing the market. Other than spx500 and a few other stocks, at that time, I also had money invested in some mutual funds of real estate in Austria, which probably was some of my worst investments because of ridiculous management annual fees >1% and growth that didn’t even catch up with inflation (what a joke). Lessons here are to never blindly trust bank/financial advisors as they have something to sell to you and also: fees are evil. For about 4 years I was a self-employed contractor software engineer to the IAEA via another company and had a chance to understand the taxation system a bit better. I had a tax advisor, and was claiming some business expenses (like laptop, internet bill, etc) to reduce my gross income. My last year in Austria was as a staff member of the IAEA so I didn’t have to pay taxes (yes, legally) and also since I was leaving Austria I was able to withdraw all of my retirement money and I did put most of it into real estate, if invested in early 2018 into s&p 500 that would have been 2x.
Canada
Canada finally made it possible to have proper investing tooling at my disposal. Other than directly receiving AMZN/GOOG shares from my employers I invested as much as I can into low fee index tracking funds (e.g. Vanguard S&P 500, or Canada companies), of course, after maximizing my RRSP and TFSA. For US readers, RRSP is an equivalent of 401(k) plan and TFSA is a unique Canadian vehicle which is a fully tax free investment account (even on withdrawal). Being a Vancouverite, I’m obliged to bring up the topic of real estate. Vancouver is one of the most unaffordable cities in the world. I have no idea how people with regular <100k incomes can make their ends meet here. I did buy a 1.2M$ townhouse here in 2022 and I regret doing so. It may eventually prove to be a good investment if there is another crazy growth as in 2021 but so far I don’t see a way to sell the place for the price I bought it for and if I had all the money I put into it invested I would have made an extra 200k. If I had to sell it now I would lose money. Though if I was lucky to buy a place with the same money just two years earlier I could have potentially made 800k all with borrowed money. You probably know of people who preach using borrowed money to make money, like Robert Kiyosaki. I have multiple friends who rode the wave.
Now
As of 2024, I am not a multi-millionaire even though I worked for two of the FAANG companies in the past 7 years. I see this as a mistake of my own for not pushing to work for these big companies earlier in my career and not moving to the USA, even temporarily. Yes, yes, Canada pays peanuts even if you work for the big boys. Well, to be objective, compared to average Canada salaries I get paid crazy money. Yet, it often feels unfair to work on the same projects and same/similar teams as people just across the border and getting paid an entire pay grade lower. I love Canada and wish we can do better.
To recap the above history, here is a timeline of my net worth (sorry for no Y-axis):
I’ve been obsessively tracking my money since 2012. Every month I would add a record to my google spreadsheet with all of my accounts, it would give me a picture of what is happening to my net worth, what’s the distribution of investments, etc. For example, this is how the overall distribution currently looks like. I’m not proud of a huge portion of real estate and even those 4.6% of cash seems a bit too excessive to my taste, so it’s something to work on.
Back to FIRE
Ask yourself a question: when you retire will you have enough money to last for as long as you need? Would you run out of money? Would you die with too much money in your bank accounts?
Personally I don’t want to die with tens of millions in my bank accounts, I would help my kids to stand on their own feet but they have to make their own money. I’m also happy to donate my money at the time of my death, but I also want to have life while I still can enjoy it. Running out of money at old age sounds like a nightmare.
Let’s say, I want to semi-retire at age 41 with 1.5M$ in bank and then fully retire at age 50. Semi-retirement means moving to low effort gigs with ~150k income but still funding kids education 40k/y till I’m 50 years old. If I’m healthy and want to have a comfortable life with 120k/y spend, then my probability of running out of money at age 65 is 11% or being dead is 7%. Play with this Rich, Broke, or Dead calculator. It is fun:
It does seem like 1.5M$ doesn’t cut it to retire at 41 if I would want to eliminate probability of running out of money. By now, you should be asking why 41. It’s fairly simple: when I was in my early 20s I had this idea of becoming a millionaire by the age of 41 and moving to a cheaper seaside European country, like Croatia or Spain. It is now clear that 1M$ doesn’t cut it if you are raising 2 kids in North America and want to retire that early, at the very least for me.
What would be your number? The simplest way is to take your annual spending and multiply it by 25, theoretically once you reach that number you should never run out of money. Here is a more detailed calculator for your numbers: https://engaging-data.com/fire-calculator/
Conclusion
It is hard to predict the future but you can take the best educated guess, check your odds and plan for the best outcomes. I understand that for some of you talking about millions in bank accounts may sound like a lot of money and for some it may sound like peanuts (NVIDIA guys?). Do not compare yourself to others – everyone has their own path, fights their own battles and demons, you just don’t know. I’m guilty of comparing myself to others – a sure way to feel miserable. The best thing we can do is to improve our chances of winning our own battles and it’s fair to learn from others but not to envy them or to be condescending to them. If there’s one thing I hope you take away from my story, it’s to take control of your financial future.
Design Your Path: Ditch Generic Advice and Think for Yourself
December 27, 2024 Career, Success No comments
Are you tired of all of the online advice? All of these LinkedIn and other social media stories and posts where there are only 10 steps formulas for the ultimate success and happiness. I’m certainly tired. I’m not saying it’s all bad advice out there, it’s just overwhelming, repetitive, often one-sided, half-baked, naive, and unactionable. It’s the most frustrating to see advice that is not original, copied from somewhere, and just posted to grab your attention. Arguably, some people might benefit from specific posts (hopefully you can benefit from this one), but this constant fight for your attention makes it difficult to sift through the influx of information and do anything about it.
I came to the conclusion that at a certain point saturation with this online advice is such that spending more time on it has diminishing returns. At that point it is much better to put YOUR own thinking into it and create your own self-advise. You already know what is missing in your career or life, you already know your shortcomings and desires. You might not be able to spell it out right away, that’s why instead of scrolling through hundreds of stories that may or may not be applicable to you, you would benefit much more if you spend that time on thinking for yourself and trying to understand what is going to work for you, realistically and with all the context of your situation.
For example, for your career, you might want to create a strategy document (yes, an actual document with structure and everything). I rarely see people taking active career planning other than “I want to get promoted”, but there is so much more that goes into it. When I wrote my career strategy document I assessed my current situation and created a vision for the future by asking lots of simple questions and doing pros/cons of “Do I want to continue to be remote?”, “Do I want to convert to a manager?”, “How about another industry?”, “What are the new skills I want to learn?”, “Am I stimulated and challenged enough in my current environment?”, etc. (LLMs can generate a good starting list of questions).
The end of the year is a good time for self-reflection and strategizing about your own life and career. I think that everyone has to have their own approach based on what has and hasn’t worked for them. Over the years I came up with an approach that mostly works for me. Specifically, I create new year resolutions (since 2010) and then track them (mostly publicly). In order to be accountable and consistent I run weekly challenges and email exchanges with friends who would agree.
Instead of relying on the overwhelming and often repetitive flood of online advice (including this one), take this post as an encouragement to create your own personalized strategy for life and career growth by taking time at the end of this year to self-reflect, think deeply about your current situation, and then come up with approach that truly works for you, not a formula borrowed from someone else online.
You have to be a psychopath not to worry about uncertainty
November 30, 2024 Opinion No comments
The other day I was asked if I was worried about uncertainty. This was asked in the context of some ambiguity in our 2025 plans at work. Here I just want to share some of the thoughts on the topic.
My answer was: “A person has to be a psychopath to not worry about uncertainty at all. We, as humans, seek safety and security. At the same time, the biggest of our successes come from uncertainty and taking risks.” (*)
Not knowing what to choose is one big source of uncertainty and anxiety, the drain of indecision takes out your energy and you get stuck in dreaded “analysis-paralysis” . The reason for this seems to be our nature of being afraid to lose something, even if it is a prospect of future opportunity. For instance, you might have a possibility to get promoted in the current team, which you will lose if you switch to another team.
Do you know the origin of the word “DECIDE” ? It’s from Latin decidere which combines two words: de- ‘off’ + caedere ‘cut’. Yeah, to decide, we have to cut off something.
I took some risks (changing jobs, moving countries) in the past and believe I was rewarded for taking them and had some failures in other cases (financial setback on home purchase). I was wondering if there is a sure way to deal with the feeling of uncertainty and that grueling waiting time between making a decision and knowing the outcome of that decision.
Taking inspiration by thinking about people who dealt with risks and uncertainties isn’t always helpful. Popular culture is overhyping people who succeeded by taking risks – please know that for every single billionaire out there who miraculously made their startup successful there is an ocean of people who failed. Survivorship bias in play (**).
Thinking about people who have to deal with major uncertainties right now doesn’t help either. For instance, many of my fellow Ukrainians face uncertainties of the unthinkable levels, they lose homes, jobs, loved ones, and the future is unclear. Objectively my uncertainties compared to theirs are negligible.
Rolling up the sleeves and just getting into the flow of work and just being in that mode of constantly solving problems and mitigating risks helps as long as you can maintain that state. I see this as a mode of “fight” in a survivorship physiology (***) – fighting is cool and can get you far, it’s just that sustainability is difficult.
It appears that the easiest to deal with uncertainty is multi-fold: having a very solid safety net, having a streak of risk-reward successes that gives you confidence boost (think of emboldened territorial lobsters (****)), and actually enjoying the process itself. But all in all, you just have to embrace the uncertainty as something natural and impossible to avoid. Absolute 0 uncertainty means you are dead – I will get to it.
There is this concept of the cone of uncertainty often used in risk management. The idea is fairly simple – as the time passes more and more risks are either realized or mitigated and eventually residual risk reaches near 0. In the context of project management this happens closer to the project end. I have joined many projects where it was absolutely unclear what I had to do and how the things will evolve, few months in and it gained some structure in my head, few more months and there is a feeling of being on top of the things, and eventually few more months in it is all done and ready and you are on the outlook for the next big thing. So, my friend, don’t worry, embrace the uncertainty and deal with ambiguity, as they say.
In our lives the moment we are born the uncertainty of what will come of us is the highest and as the time passes we become who we are today with the uncertainties of today. Now to sound overly morbid, we reach a personal level of 0 risk at the time of our death! So enjoy non-0 risk and uncertainty!
There is more to come ;)
What are your thoughts on risk, decision making, and uncertainty?
Footnotes
(*)To be fair, taking risks presumes that there is a possibility of failure, which does happen, otherwise it wouldn’t be a risk.
(**) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
(***) Look at the middle section from this diagram of transitioning from Polyvagal theory: https://equusoma.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/The-Polyvagal-Defense-Hierarchy-2021.pdf
(****) This is a bit silly but every time I think about repeated successes or failures I imagine territorial lobsters analogy by Jordan Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZOkxuNbsXU
Building a Learning System
November 18, 2024 Opinion No comments
In the past I wrote a few posts on learning, specifically this one, where I talk about the learning pyramid in which teaching someone has the highest retention rate followed by practicing what was learned, followed by other methods of learning (visual, audio, reading). I also have a quick overview of a book “Learn Better” in which the key premise is that learning is a skill you can teach yourself to be better at.
Not long ago I was also asked if I have a learning system. I don’t. In fact, I clearly remember how inefficient I was at learning in university by trying to memorize some mathematical proofs instead of properly understanding them and recreating when needed.
So what a good “learning system” could look like?
Purpose and Value
I think a key to good learning is genuine interest in the topic you are trying to learn. Interest could be internal curiosity or simply seeing value in learning something specific. To give few specific examples:
- I rock climb as a hobby. As such, taking outdoor courses, reading books on climbing just comes naturally for me and I don’t have to force myself to.
- After joining Google I had to refresh my rusty C++ knowledge, so I had somewhat practical motivation to learn/refresh knowledge, but it went well.
- When I moved to Austria I had to learn some German, but it really was forced on me and I didn’t make much progress, but did minimum for required paperwork.
What to Learn
Now, if you are intentional about learning, say for your career, probably the first question you have to ask yourself is “What should I learn?”. These days the amount of information and resources available is just incomprehensible to our brains. As such, being selective and strategic is important. Think what would make most sense to learn in your specific situation so that there is purpose and value for you.
Deliberate Practice
The highest retention of knowledge is when you teach someone or immediately practice what you have learned. I always like to think about learning as neural pathways in your brain, when you consume new information you stimulate only one direction of storing the information, but when you practice something or try to teach someone you stimulate and reinforce the retrieval direction from the storage.
If I had to create a learning system, I would prioritize practicing as much as possible. The fastest way to learn might be to learn “on the job”, but if this is not possible, the next best thing might be to set SMART goals (you know the drill).
Consistency
One issue that comes up with learning something is sticking to the plan. Consistency is hard, it really is. For myself, I found that accountability, periodization, and re-inspiration are the best ways to stay on course. This weekly blog post writing is part of accountability I have. I try to re-remind myself why I’m learning something and also trying to get inspired by other folks.
Summary
So what does my learning system look like?
- Purpose: Genuine interest or practical need.
- Focus: Be selective and strategic in what to learn.
- Practice: Teach or apply knowledge to retain it.
- Consistency: Use accountability and inspiration to stay on track.
What would your learning system look like?
What Kind of Plant Are You? Reflecting on Career Growth and Transplanting Yourself
November 11, 2024 Career No comments
Recently I have been asked what career growth means to be? Without hesitation I shared that it’s two things: first, expanding the skill set, and second, advancement in position (at least in the corporate world). In this post, I want to expand my answer and also share a story or two.
In my opinion, skill development is the foundation for other types of growth. Skills make you more capable, adaptable and valuable in your role and industry. Almost all of the soft skills are transferable to new environments. As for technical skills, the majority are also transferable unless they are very specific to the company you work for (*). Something that might not transfer very well could be team- or org-specific knowledge.
Your skills, knowledge, and hard work is something that allows you to increase the scope of responsibility, gain professional recognition, trust, and as a natural consequence you advance in position, make financial progress and hopefully achieve personal fulfillment.
After answering the question, the person I was talking to shared a Chinese Bamboo Tree story (**), where we can compare someone’s growth to how bamboo grows. There is no visible growth for the first 4-5 years, which is because bamboo is expanding its root system and then in one season bamboo grows very rapidly. This is a very strong parable and I have successfully used it at work when a colleague of mine was seeking career advice.
If you stay at the same role, level, or team for quite some time it doesn’t necessarily mean you are not growing, you could be expanding your root system before you get promoted to that next level. As long as you feel you are learning new things, becoming stronger in your skills, expanding your work network, delivering some things you are definitely growing.
To extend on this analogy of plant growth, I was thinking about uprooting: you work for 2-4 years in a company, you made sizable contributions, got your promo, and slowly started to become more and more valuable and then you transplant yourself to another company. What happens to your roots? Do they survive?
I have seen people who were the first “plant” to a field and were able to grow to be the biggest of the plants, I have also seen people who had good roots but stayed in shadows for too long and stagnated, and others who transplanted themselves so often they could not grow enough on each iteration.
I was asking myself, what kind of plant am I? Google is my 5th workplace and I cannot stop wondering what I would have become if I stayed in any of the companies or countries I left behind. Looking back it seems I made the right decisions as I was able to grow to a bigger and well rewarded plant with a very diverse root system, but I have never become a really big one. Maybe I’m yet to see my real growth, who knows.
What kind of plant are you? What are your thoughts?
(*) Some of my fellow Googlers sometimes joke that we become unhirable outside because of the uniqueness of tools we use and the scale of problems we are solving.
(**) Technically bamboo isn’t a tree and belongs to the grass family. Some species of Bamboo might indeed take 5 years to grow underground before emerging above ground but this isn’t universal or common to all species. Additionally I searched for the origins of this story and it doesn’t appear like it exists in Chinese folklore. It appears this parable was popularized by western culture in modern motivational literature.
Intimidated to try something new? How discomfort opens doors
November 2, 2024 Opinion, Success No comments
Everything in life happens for the first time (and last time for that matter), but some things don’t happen at all. First kiss, first job, first home, first kid, first gray hair. Success isn’t guaranteed and failure isn’t unavoidable.
There is this martial arts dojo next to where I live. I used to walk past it and see people practice. I never did any martial arts so it was very intimidating and uncomfortable to sign up there. Everyone appeared many levels above me, and true I would get punched in the face during sparrings. Year and a half past that I have fun and feel super comfortable during our light fights. Outside of the gym this gives a psychological sense of security (it is a false sense to some degree, though, but the effect is there).
I have never been to any sauna until maybe 30 years old. I always thought of saunas as some weird place where completely naked people sweat, so it was very uncomfortable to go to sauna at first. Now I can easily outsit many people there. I love saunas.
On one of my recent work trips there was a junior engineer on our team who would strike up a conversation with everyone, literary. It was amazing for me to observe this person: while buying coffee he would chat with a barista, he would join a random group of colleagues to chat about whatever. I mean, I have seen many extraverted people, but this was another level, so I followed his example and pushed myself to talk to strangers. On the flight back I started talking to a person next to me and had a great pleasurable chat that killed the entire flight’s time. This is because I pushed myself into discomfort, not because it was natural to me.
Being in a senior position at work requires stepping outside of comfort and talking to a lot of people I see for the first time. I have been observing how other leaders are doing this. I found that for myself I need to imitate what they are doing. The behavior appears to have common and fairly simple patterns: being respectful, thanking people for what they do, catching the essence of the message, speaking but also giving others opportunity to talk, etc. Topic for another discussion, but pushing yourself to be more like a leader makes you a leader.
You need to sign-up to give that presentation at work, you need to have that uncomfortable discussion, you need to pick that daunting project, you need to step outside of your comfort zone and embrace the challenge. Growth only happens when you stretch beyond what you already know or what feels safe. Biggest successes in life come from risk taking and discomfort! (yes, there is a chance you will fail, otherwise it won’t be a risk).
This blog post is mainly a short self-reminder about the importance of embracing uncertainty and intentionally stepping into the discomfort territory. Do it – you will emerge stronger on the way out.
I signed up to showcase my rock climbing hobby at work during DEI&B fair next week. This is a bit uncomfortable, let’s see how it goes. More to come…
Reflections on Productivity, Focus, and Athletic Performance: Key Takeaways from Three Books
October 27, 2024 Book Reviews No comments
This blog post is just my quick notes and takeaways on three books I finished listening to or reading in the last month or two. There is no other reason for these thee books to be bundled into single post other than my convinience and trying to make this relatively short.
Four thousand weeks
The book’s title itself is a reminder: we have roughly 4,000 weeks to live, a limited and precious resource. Some quick notes:
- We have only 4k weeks to live.
- Many people try to structure their lives around optimizing time and increasing efficiency, but this often leads to stress and dissatisfaction. Rather than overcommitting to work, obligations, or superficial tasks, we should focus on meaningful experiences and relationships.
- Focus on the present: Moments! Moments!
- Since time is limited, aiming for perfection is a waste of energy.
Deep Work
I’m glad I did an exercise of writing about deep work on my blog before finishing the book as it game me an opportunity to compare my thoughts before and after. I always used read/listen to books from beginning till the end; this time around I skipped first half, which explained why deep work is important and intentionally went to second part on how to achieve deep work; this is kind of stepping over myself but also because I’m convinced that deep work is key to performance. I’ve been intentionally applying what I learned from the book – this is often hard, as I need to push myself to wake early, but those 3 hours I get early in the morning are really-really super productive.
Some key learnings, recommendations from the book, not mandatorily applicable to everyone, and not in any particular order:
- Deep Work is a skill and we can improve it
- Quit social media or evaluate if it benefits you.
- Embrace boredom – this one is really funny, basically the author argues that once we have time for rest we should not fill it with distractions like scrolling on phone or watching TV, we should give our brain time to relax properly and not have habits to entertain ourselves.
- Brain focused work capacity is limited, thus we need to work on most important things early and without distractions.
- Have big blocks of focused work in the morning and for the rest of day plan each day in 30min intervals, this is not to prescribe what to work on, but to create micro deadlines.
PEAK: The new science of Athletic Performance
This is a book on athletic performance targeting sport coaches I picked from a library. I consider myself a recreational athlete (running, rock climbing, kickboxing, gym) and wanted to learn a bit of theory behing athletic performance. Some the the points below are just things I noted for myself and might be personal takeaways:
- Sleep is fundamental to both physical and mental well-being. Sleep well and enough.
- Gut Health: A diverse gut microbiome supports overall health. Strive to each veriety of foods.
- Blood Sugar and Mood: High blood sugar correlates with mood fluctuations, so stable blood sugar levels are ideal. Watch sugar consumption.
- Creatine is a safe, extensively studied supplement shown to benefit both power and endurance performance. Ok and benefitial to consume creatine.
- Optimization Choices: We can only optimize on one of the three—health, body composition, or performance. A balanced approach might be best for recreational athletes.
- Saunas: Limited impact on performance improvement. Fine to like sauna, but not really a perfomance booster.
- Recovery should be periodized to support long-term training. Rest well and enough before next trainign which should be harder (longer & intense).
- Athletic Health: Athletes fall ill more often than expected due to physical stress, though elite athletes may experience this slightly less. Listen to the body.
- Heart Rate Variability (HRV): Healthier individuals generally show slightly higher HRV. My HRV currently measures between 40-50, on the lower end for my age, likely impacted by stress. Active individuals of my age often see HRV closer to 70. Watch how this changes over time.
- Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE): A risk associated with repetitive micro-concussions, particularly in contact sports like MMA. Take extra precautions to avoid head injuries in kickboxing.
- Mental Resilience: Elite athletes frequently employ self-talk such as “You will move up” and “You are #1” to boost performance. Experiment with positive self-talk. Maybe read book “Unf*ck youself”.
What I don’t like about meetings
October 19, 2024 Opinion, RandomThoughts No comments
I estimate I’ve been to 10k (*) meetings in my career (holy smokes) and I’ve never written a blog post on meetings, so here it is. There are tons of recommendations online on effective meetings, things like having an agenda and setting goals for the meeting, inviting only necessary attendees, etc. In this post I would like to highlight just a few things that I think I might be doing differently and I will bring them in light of what I don’t like about the meetings :)
“What are we discussing?”
Let’s start with this: I really don’t like when people call for a meeting and don’t provide even a line of context or agenda. First of all this doesn’t give me or others means to properly prepare for the meeting. Effectively by not providing context or agenda the organizer is robbing themselves of a chance that some attendees will have more to contribute to the meeting. Additionally there is a good chance the meeting will be hijacked. In my view not having an agenda shows a grain of disrespect because the organizer demonstrates that this isn’t something important to them either.
- DO: Always, always add a bit of description to the meeting invitations you send. At a minimum say that the agenda is coming if you need more time to prepare but have to book time. But most of the time target creating meeting notes documents and adding context, agenda and any relevant info to the doc.
“So what was the decision?”
Another thing I don’t like about meetings is when there is not a single output artifact. After such a meeting, I’m asking myself “What was I doing here?” Lately I started solving this problem by just starting to take notes in meetings independently of my role in the meeting. If no one is presenting their screen I will just silently start sharing mine with notes being taken. I’ve been thanked on multiple occasions for notes that appeared out of nowhere. I’ve also been complimented for keeping the best track record of 1:1 or other discussions where I play a more active role.
- DO: Always play a role in the meetings you are attending. If noone is taking notes, take them yourself, if no one prepared an agenda/context but you have context – just create that doc. Maybe request the organizer to add the notes. Just 5 min of your time could make the meeting go in the direction you want it to go. Yeap, this is because by sharing the screen and people reading the context and agenda you put they are likely to follow some of that even if they are 2-3 levels above you (you can influence without authority in such a “weird” way). For big townhall kind of meetings, always attempt to prepare one question, this will keep you engaged in the meeting, otherwise just don’t join.
“That could have been an email!”
Oh, I also don’t like long or “that could have been an email” meetings. You know, those where all the useful information has been shared and discussed in the first 5-10 minutes and then people just chat about related topics and say they need time to think about it and respond, meaning that if it was an email the course of action would have been the same.
- DO: Well if something can be shared/asked via email just do it. But if you have to have a meeting schedule just enough time for what has to be discussed. You will be pressured to arrive at a conclusion within time you have and if you really need more time just schedule a follow-up. I found that 30 minute meetings are almost always enough.
“I want out of here.”
Oh, how about the “fill the void” where you feel like there is pressure to say something? In these kinds of meetings those who like to speak a lot take pleasure in just speaking and speaking and those who don’t like speaking secretly cannot wait for the meeting to be over.
- DO: If you are leading the meeting, encourage people to speak so long as new ideas are flowing and value is being added. The moment things become repetitive, same people talk non-stop, or there is disengagement, consider concluding the meeting, no shame in that. If anything people will thank you.
Conclusion
Unquestionably we need to meet at work. The purpose of meetings is to add value, help arrive at decisions and drive progress. The things that frustrate me the most, like a lack of agenda, no clear outcomes, and unnecessarily long discussions, are often avoidable with just a bit of effort and intentionality. By always preparing an agenda, ensuring there are actionable takeaways, and taking control when needed (even as a participant), you can influence the flow and value of a meeting.
(*) 16 years x 52 weeks x [5(early career) – 20(later career)] meetings/week = [4k – 16k]
Riding the Waves: Can We Predict the Next Big Technology Surge?
October 13, 2024 Investing No comments
“What goes up will go down” is just such a fundamental and universal concept you can apply to anything: physics, emotions, life, financials. In this post I want to have a bit of a technology view on this and also try to understand if we can ever predict and catch the “up” wave. Do you wish you had invested in NVIDIA in early 2023? I definitely wish so.
First of all let’s have a look at some of the promising technologies from the past that rode on hype and then declined in their popularity:
- Bitcoin
- UP: Do you remember all the crazy hype surrounding bitcoin and people getting rich out of nowhere? I personally have a very small amount in a Bitcoin ETF (which didn’t grow much), but know a friend who lost keys to a wallet with a dozen bitcoins, and another one who kept telling me that one bitcoin will be worth like 4 apartments in NYC.
- DOWN: Well, bitcoin as well as the blockchain technology behind it didn’t disappear, but the hype is definitely not there any longer. It is very likely we won’t see a huge rise again (or maybe we will see?). Scalability, regulatory and other reasons made this slow down. Some niche applications of blockchain are thriving though.
- Windows Phone
- UP: Ok, you might be asking “what is this?” or “why is it here?”. I included it here because I personally worked for about 1 year on a Windows Phone project back in 2011. The promise was that this will rival iPhone and Android devices.
- DOWN: the market simply did pick this one up, there wasn’t enough of app development and MS eventually pivoted to something else.
- Augmented/Virtual Reality
- UP: Another major hyped technology. Think about Google Glasses or META’s Oculus or Microsoft’s HoloLens, these technologies promised to revolutionize gaming, work, entertainment, and everyday life.
- DOWN: I didn’t buy this hype myself because it somehow makes me disgusted imagining myself living and interacting with people in a virtual world instead of the real one. Again, some niche applications still exist.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- UP: So I’m sure you have read about multiple waves of AI technology, early 50s when it first appeared, 80s when expert systems were promising to change everything and (drumroll…) now when Generative AI is the next big promise.
- DOWN: I don’t know when the exact time for the downturn will come, but there are obvious problems with it (high compute costs, wrong facts, plagiarism – I make it a point not to copy anything from GenAI into my posts).
- Many other technologies of different scale (3D printing, 3D TV, BlackBerry, delivery drones, Fire Phone, etc, etc)
Potentially we can generalize abovementioned technology trends into three categories of downfall:
- Complete disappearance: VHS, CD, BlackBerry, etc.
- Reduction to niche usages: VR for gaming, 3DPrinting for specific applications, etc.
- Enduring: Personal Computers, Internet
Now, where am I going with all of this? I’m trying to ask myself a question: is it possible to guess for any new technology if it is going to disappear, get reduced to a niche use, or will endure beyond our lifetime? Additionally is it possible to catch the “up” wave and ride it until the peak?
Let’s take the case of NVIDIA. If AI is a gold rush, NVIDIA is selling shovels. I found an article from 2019 arguing that NVIDIA will supras Apple in market cap, the argument states that the AI market will grow to 15T$ and that the computer is switching to GPU which logically makes sense.
Here are some recommendations for my future self to be on the lookout:
- People have entire careers dedicated to spotting these trends so it makes sense to be aware (re-subscribed to weekly TechCrunch newsletter).
- Spot tech industry trends using professional networks.
- Spend dedicated time once monthly thinking about well positioned companies (scheduled time for myself).
- Do my own numbers once anything appears interesting (this is a difficult one, but it would set you ahead of others, think of “The Big Short” movie).
- Risk here and there.
Do you have any thoughts on the topic? What is that big thing you missed, you think you could have caught?
Level Up Your Work: Why Documenting Everything Matters
September 28, 2024 HowTo, Opinion No comments
If you are in a knowledge job, do yourself a favor and document everything as if your activities and thoughts were relentlessly producing logs similarly to a production server. Make it a habit and develop it so it becomes second nature. Offload cognitive burden to your computer, you don’t need and won’t be able to hold all of that information in your brain.
Let me give some of my personal examples and then follow up with how this was useful to me and others.
1:1 meetings
We all have 1:1 meetings: with our managers, peers, other stakeholders. I have a running doc for each individual person and take notes of every work conversation. For every person I create a go-link (something like go/person-andriy). This helps in 3 different ways:
- Adding topics. Every time I think about a topic to discuss with someone it is basically very keystrokes away. never have to go over the mental struggle of “Oh, what was that thing I had to talk to them about?”
- Searching for info. This one is probably obvious, but just to emphasize, I think our memories work by association, and it is often easier to look up something if you have a person in mind for a specific topic.
“Talk to X” docs
I extended this practice of storing topics for conversations into my personal life. I’m usually not documenting conversations themselves as they happen over coffee or walk and it would have been super weird to type during those. At the same time those docs work as a quick refresher and I found that in most cases this hugely enriches my conversations.
Cross-referencing everything
Cross-reference! cross-reference! When writing documents we obviously reference the sources of information, but a step further is to also do it in reverse (if possible). This helps connect the information and traverse it in any direction. So, if there was a strategy created based on a dozen of discussions with multiple teams, adding a link to that strategy to each discussion’s document will help each team relate to what that discussion has led to.
Documenting before and after religiously
A new practice I picked at Google is to capture “Landed Impact” in the design document after the actual launch. A design document would normally have effort justification, which often includes expected impact, but then “Landed Impact” would capture what actually happened. And I keep adding to that section. As a very specific example, I finished a project that reduces the monetary impact of outages a couple of years ago, and relatively recently there was an outage that would have cost us a lot more money if that project wasn’t done. I simply went to that old doc and documented this more recent impact. Why spend effort on this? Here we go:
Artifacts pay off
Presence of good artifacts makes a huge and oftentimes decisive difference to the outcomes of performance reviews and promo discussions. Think about the promotion process, you cannot even imagine how the presence of solid artifacts is important. With the artifacts in place people don’t have questions, they are like “here is the impact, here is leadership, this is influence, SOLID case”. Instead if artifacts are sloppy it becomes hard to drive conclusions from them, people are like “scope of work is unclear, impact might not be for the next level”. With good artifacts you are offloading cognitive load not just for yourself but for others, you make their decision process easier and they also feel like their responsibility is taken care of.
Unfinished work
Do you know those dreadful situations when a project is axed? This could be in your control (you didn’t find enough impact in work) or outside of your control (reorgs made this part of thing irrelevant, it is too late to market). Are a few months of your effort all waste? Nope, if you documented the learnings, basically you have your retrospective and learnings document ready. You hand it over to leadership and they can use it as a clear case of work being done. A quick failure is also ok as long as there is learning from it and how do you know if there was learning if there is nothing in the end?
Tooling
Does tooling matter? Well, someone could argue that it doesn’t as long as it does the job, but I’m yet to find any tool that works as well as Google docs: it is accessible everywhere you log in, searchable, shareable, collaborative. Works well at work and works well for personal things. Even this blog post originated in a Google Doc. And, yes, I tried other tools.
Conclusion
Same as the introduction: do yourself a favor and document everything as if your activities and thoughts were relentlessly producing logs. Offload cognitive overhead to docs and make your brain busy with now.
