Welcome to the 14th issue of Back of my Head.

I don't have anything to say today so I'll just get out of the way, right away. :)

You're reading Back of my Head, a newsletter with links to the most interesting things I've found.  Over 100 curious people love it. If someone forwarded this to you, subscribe here.

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1.

Why Do We Dislike Rules So Much by Rohit

A big reason why startups have so much hype is because they're away from all the beaurocracy a giant company has to go through. They can do things faster and with less people.

So I used to wonder this a lot: Why does a fast, agile & succesful startup have to grow into a beaurocratic giant sloth eventually? Why can't startups remain startups even after they scale up?

And this essay is a good explanation.

"TL;DR: All orgs start with high motivation, high agency and limited rules. Then they grow. The consequence of scale is chaos. The antidote to this chaos is properly codified rules. The consequence of having a few rules is more loopholes and goodharting, as the intrinsic motivation to be a good citizen drops over time. The antidote to this is better codified and expanded rulesets. The consequence of expansive rulesets is opacity and bureaucracy. The antidote to large expansive rulesets is simpler rules followed by motivated players at their discretion."

2.

How to Negotiate? by Sriram K

A short post on how to negotiate in recruiting interviews.

"Always negotiate! The system expects you to. You’ll never be dinged for it as long as you do it right. Also - negotiating when you get hired is 10x easier than negotiating after you start as an employee."

3.

RECONSIDER by DHH

This is the transcript of what DHH, the co-founder of Basecamp, said at the Web Summit in 2015. I can't find the original video anywhere but reading this transcript you can essentially hear DHH screaming this at you.

Some highlights:

"Part of the problem seems to be that nobody these days is content to merely put their dent in the universe. No, they have to fucking own the universe. It’s not enough to be in the market, they have to dominate it. It’s not enough to serve customers, they have to capture them."

"Let’s start at the bottom: People who make lots of little bets on many potential unicorns have christened themselves angels. Angels? Really? You’ve plucked your self-serving moniker from the parables of a religion that specifically and explicitly had its head honcho throw the money men out of the temple and proclaim a rich man less likely to make it into heaven than a camel through a needle’s eye. Okay then!"

4.

Startups in 13 Sentences

YCombinator's Paul Graham's 13 key advice for startup founders.

"You can change everything about your startup except the co-founders. And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders."

"You can envision the wealth created by a startup as a rectangle, where one side is the number of users and the other is how much you improve their lives. The second dimension is the one you have most control over. [...] the hard part is seeing something new that users lack. The better you understand them the better the odds of doing that. That's why so many successful startups make something the founders needed."

5.

11 Life Lessons I Learned Before My 30th Birthday

Life lessons from Polina Pompliano, writer of the famous Substack, The Profile. She does deep dives on prominant individuals and companies in tech and business every week.

Some highlights:

"Approach every situation with good intent. We see the world through a lens of insecurity. When we are worried about losing a job, for example, we think a coworkers offhand remark is about him trying to get you fired."

"The way you judge yourself is probably the way you judge others: Strangers act as mirrors in which we can see our own imperfect reflections. When you're triggered by another person in a visceral way, ask yourself: What is it about them that irritates me? Could it be something I dislike in my own self?"

Most clicked links from Back of my Head #13.

Other interesting things I found this week.

Lemme know how many links you find interesting

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