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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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      I wish I could go back to engineering school for an intensive 1 year reboot. 6mo refreshing basics like calculus, physics, chemistry, coding, stats, basic mech/elec/chem hands on, and 6 months high-level refactoring of engineering principles based on megatrends since graduation

      14 replies 41 retweets 331 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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      I graduated undergrad in 1997, PhD in 2003. So everything foundational I know is between 16 and 22 years out of date. Almost all my low-level skills are somewhere between gone altogether and very rusty. But my high-level tech intuitions are 10x better.

      2 replies 1 retweet 34 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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      Both are bad states to be in. As a fresh grad, I had terrible intuitions about big picture stuff, but was good at solving problems that mapped neatly to specific skills like say linear programming or soldering or computing eigenvalues. Now it's reverse.

      11:20 AM - 19 Jul 2019
      • 1 Retweet
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      • Duryodhan Prasad Luis P Baqueiro Meghan Kane Uday T Kumar @micahstubbs Frank Scholten 🖖 distancing in Melb (Chris Waterguy) wenjimi
      2 replies 1 retweet 27 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          "Big picture stuff"= things like: Should we add more sensors or more compute to a solution? Is the bottleneck the noise in the signal or the jankiness in the UX? How much is the relative effort of software vs. hardware? Is there uncanny valley between 0 and 100% automation?

          1 reply 2 retweets 28 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          Very few people mature in a balanced way. They either "graduate" to the big picture and let hands-on skills atrophy, OR they develop blinders around hands-on skills and never develop any intuitions for big-picture problems, instead developing insecure identity issues.

          2 replies 6 retweets 49 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          The most interesting and effective (which is NEVER the same as "best" in an engineering vanity sense) senior technical leaders come closest. They are maybe a 7/10 in my experience where most are a 3-4/10. 10/10 would be depth+balance while low scores would be shallow+imbalanced.

          1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          But if feels like the right injection of mid-career reboot education could take the people at 3/10 to 5/10 and the 7/10 to 9/10.

          2 replies 1 retweet 23 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          Another way to put it. Between 18-22 (1993 - 97) I was very good at learning, but very bad at deciding what was worth learning. Now I'm very bad at learning, but very good at figuring out what's worth learning. I think I've been good enough at both for like 6 months in my career.

          3 replies 5 retweets 42 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          When you're in a state where you're good at both, the effectiveness leverage is unbelievable. In the 6 months of my life when I was good at both, I suspect I did 90% of all the valuable things I did.

          1 reply 3 retweets 31 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          A career in technology is basically trying to add value as you age from good at learning/bad at choosing --> bad at learning/good at choosing. The area under that curve = value you add. Time spent in "good at both" quadrant = spikes of value creation.

          3 replies 4 retweets 33 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          What makes this hard is that BOTH low-level and high-level are changed by evolution in megatrends after you leave school. The rise of "AI" for example, impacts both the value of knowing linear algebra (low-level skill) and rewires intuitions around tradeoffs between data/compute

          1 reply 2 retweets 11 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          And continuous experience in an industry/problem area is no guarantee that you'll keep your head in the game effectively. Entire companies and industries can get out of sync with impact of megatrends, taking entire buildings of engineers and engineering managers down with them

          2 replies 3 retweets 18 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          I've been in rooms full of smart engineers and managers discussing tech problems in fundamentally wrong-headed ways that doom the company. The frogs-in-skill-wells don't know their identity-pride skills have been John Henryed, the big-picture people are ignoring key variables.

          2 replies 2 retweets 22 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Jul 2019
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          Generals fighting the last wars with armies using the previous war's weapons

          2 replies 2 retweets 25 likes
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        13. End of conversation

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