Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.

For the best Twitter experience, please use Microsoft Edge, or install the Twitter app from Microsoft Store.

  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
patio11's profile
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11

Tweets

Patrick McKenzie

@patio11

I work for the Internet, at @stripe, mostly on accelerating startups. Opinions here are my own.

東京都 Tokyo
kalzumeus.com
Joined February 2009

Tweets

  • © 2020 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Imprint
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    1. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      The press is a lossy and biased compression of events in the actual world, and is singularly consumed with its own rituals, status games, and incentives. The news necessarily fails to capture almost everything which happened yesterday. What it says is important usually isn't.

      14 replies 263 retweets 1,156 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees.

      13 replies 227 retweets 1,260 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      The hardest problem in B2C is distribution. The hardest problem in B2B is sales. AppAmaGooBookSoft are AppAmaGooBookSoft primarily because they have mortal locks on distribution.

      5 replies 161 retweets 880 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      Everyone in Silicon Valley uses equity, and not debt, to fuel their growth because debt is not available in sufficient quantities to poorly capitalized companies without a strong history of adequate cash flows to service debt.

      6 replies 88 retweets 619 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      Investors in venture-back companies are purchasing a product. It is critically important to understand that that product is growth. The reason tech is favored as an asset class that it appears to be one of few sources of growth available on the market at the moment at any price.

      5 replies 142 retweets 842 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      The explosive growth of the tech sector keeps average age down and depresses average wages. Compared to industries which existed in materially the same form in 1970, we have a stupidly compressed experience spectrum: 5+ years rounds to "senior." This is not a joke.

      14 replies 152 retweets 874 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      The tech industry is fundamentally unserious about how it recruits, hires, and retains candidates. About which I have a lot more to say than could fit in a tweet, but, a good thing to know.

      10 replies 151 retweets 930 likes
      Show this thread
    8. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      If you are attempting to hire for an engineering position, greater than 50% of people who apply for the job and whose resume you select as "facially plausible" will be entirely unable to program, at all. The search term for learning more about this is FizzBuzz.

      13 replies 135 retweets 855 likes
      Show this thread
    9. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      Software companies in B2B which aspire to growing quickly will eventually spend more on sales and marketing than they do on engineering. You can read S-1s of successful IPOs and calculate the ratio; it is sometimes 2X++.

      3 replies 132 retweets 677 likes
      Show this thread
    10. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      The chief products of the tech industry are (in B2C) developing new habits among consumers and (in B2B) taking a business process which exists in many places and markedly decreasing the total cost of people required to implement it.

      4 replies 246 retweets 1,152 likes
      Show this thread
      Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
      • Report Tweet

      There is no hidden reserve of smart people who know what they're doing, anywhere. Not in government, not in science, not in tech, not at AppAmaGooBookSoft, nowhere. The world exists in the same glorious imperfection that it presents with.

      7:57 AM - 1 Dec 2017
      • 449 Retweets
      • 1,657 Likes
      • misha ashish(@tp53) 2020 list ROHAN SURESH M Robot Tool of the Aristocracy Connor Leahy Chris Frederickson Paul Brian
      11 replies 449 retweets 1,657 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
          • Report Tweet

          Significant advances shipped by the tech industry in the last 20 years include putting the majority of human knowledge in the hands of 40%++ of the world's population, available on-demand, for "coffee money" not "university money."

          4 replies 201 retweets 1,050 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
          • Report Tweet

          Weak-form efficients market hypothesis is a good heuristic for evaluating the public markets but a really, really bad heuristic for evaluating either technical or economic facts about tech companies, startups, your career, etc etc. Optimizations are possible; fruit hangs low.

          5 replies 50 retweets 461 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
          • Report Tweet

          Startups are (by necessity) filled with generalists; big companies are filled with specialists. People underestimate how effective a generalist can be at things which are done by specialists. People underestimate how deep specialties can run. These are simultaneously true.

          15 replies 1,071 retweets 3,429 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
          • Report Tweet

          Most open source software is written by programmers who are full-time employed by companies which directly consume the software, at the explicit or implicit blessing of their employers. It is not charity work, any more than they charitably file taxes.

          6 replies 147 retweets 820 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
          • Report Tweet

          The amount of money flowing through capitalism would astound you. The number and variety of firms participating in the economy would astound you. We don't see most of it every day for the same reason abstractions protect us from having to care about metallurgy while programming.

          6 replies 126 retweets 921 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
          • Report Tweet

          CS programs have, in the main, not decided that the primary path to becoming a programmer should involve doing material actual programming. There are some exceptions: Waterloo, for example. This is the point where I joke "That's an exhaustive list" but not sure that a joke.

          22 replies 91 retweets 546 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
          • Report Tweet

          Technical literacy in the broader population can be approximated with the Thanksgiving test: what sort of questions do you get at Thanksgiving? That's the ambient level of literacy. Serious people in positions of power eat Thanksgiving dinners, too. Guess what they ask at them.

          2 replies 78 retweets 527 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
          • Report Tweet

          Salaries in the tech industry are up *a lot* in the last few years, caused by: a tight labor market, collapse of a cartel organized against the interests of workers, increasing returns to scale at AppAmaGooBookSoft, and the like. Investor money *does not* pay most salaries.

          3 replies 45 retweets 440 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Patrick McKenzie‏ @patio11 1 Dec 2017
          • Report Tweet

          This concludes, for the moment, an off-the-cuff list of things which would otherwise be too obvious to bring up in conversation. Meta thought: you radically underestimate both a) how much you know that other people do not and b) the instrumental benefits to you of publishing it.

          44 replies 210 retweets 1,594 likes
          Show this thread
        11. End of conversation
        1. Chenoe Hart‏ @chenoehart 1 Dec 2017
          • Report Tweet
          Replying to @patio11

          Maybe they don’t know all the answers, but there’s definitely a hidden reserve of smart people who don’t get opportunities that match their abilities because they don’t look the part.

          0 replies 2 retweets 18 likes
          Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. Undo
          Undo

      Loading seems to be taking a while.

      Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

        Promoted Tweet

        false

        • © 2020 Twitter
        • About
        • Help Center
        • Terms
        • Privacy policy
        • Imprint
        • Cookies
        • Ads info