Promotion, Personality Tests, & Career Decisions
Promotion, Personality Tests, & Career Decisions
Hello friends.
It’s been a busy couple weeks for me. We just kicked off a new cohort of On Deck Angels, what I’ve been building at On Deck of late.
Regarding this newsletter, my current goal is to build a forcing function for writing more. Any and all feedback is welcome.
Internet Stuff That Caught My Attention 🔗
What Personality Tests Really Deliver
Personality tests are a highly controversial topic. Try criticizing them on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean. While I think some personality tests have their place as a reflective exercise, they’re a horrible substitute for actually learning about yourself. For example, Myers Briggs extremely popular MBTI test was designed by two people who had no psychological training or experience. Furthermore, the test has virtually zero controlled scientific research behind it.
Specific tests aside, most people don’t know themselves. We lie to ourselves all the time. Few personality tests take this factor into account. I’m a huge believer in learning and sharing who you uniquely are as a person. However, I believe personality tests are largely poor ways to accomplish this.
Prioritse The Highest Order Bit
“If you’ve never worked at a startup, and you wonder what it means when people say ‘every startup is a shit-show on the inside’, well — this is what it means. The advice to ‘focus on the highest order bit’ is easy to say, but the natural implication of putting it to practice, especially in a resource-constrained environment, is that you often have to let other things blow up. And Dinesh’s company management doc is the best articulation I’ve seen of this simple truth.”
This article is an excellent encapsulation of what it’s like building an early-stage startup.
Impact = Environment x Skills: How to make career decisions
Bangaly Kaba (ex-Facebook, ex-Instacart, and current Sequoia Scout/Angel Investor) recently shared his framework for both evaluating your current role and making decisions about future career opportunities. The above picture captures the core of his framework. He emphasizes that the framework isn’t meant to tell you the answer, but to help you develop judgement, understand the variables/levers that impact your career, and execute on the highest-leverage variables under your influence.
I’ve been going deep on career strategy, moats, and decision-making recently. This is one of the best frameworks I’ve come across.
The Long Warm Up
A highly relatable read on Courtland Allen’s (founder of Indie Hackers which sold to Stripe in 2017) entrepreneurial journey
Books I'm Reading 📚
Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing
The author argues that we live in a culture terrified of commitment. People bounce from job to job, relationship to relationship, city to city, etc. Technology and especially the internet have given us more options to explore anything and everything. While this is a good thing, infinite exploring without commitment is no more satisfying than commitments forced upon you by circumstance. Eventually, both you and the world will be better for your choosing to commit to something and seeing it through.
Commitment has weighed heavily on my mind recently. Personally, I’m actually pretty good at commitment, but I struggle with determining what or who to commit to. As I evaluate my own commitments, I found this book to be highly relevant and helpful for thinking through commitment versus exploration.
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure
This book argues that three great untruths are spreading across America today:
The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
I’ve been meaning to read this book for a while. I finally got around to it last night. After observing people, the political landscape, and media over the last few years, it’s evident to me that these “untruths” have infected many people on both extremes of the political spectrum.
Siddhartha: A Novel
This one was recommended to me by my friend Cameron Little. While it’s a work of fiction, it’s also a spiritual book. With books like this, I have to read them slowly. The point is to internalize the teaching, feel it, explore it, and reflect on it. Easier said than done.
Intellectual Rabbit Holes 🐇
Content from me 👋
Tweet thread on finding high signal information on the internet
Tweet thread on lessons I’ve learned observing founders who angel invest while operating
As always, remember that life is for the living.
With love,
Andrew