Johanna

Research publications are some of the world’s most important repositories for content and information ever created. They tie ideas and findings together across time and disciplines, and are forever preserved by a network of libraries. They are supported by evidence, analysis, expert insight, and statistical relationships. They are extremely... See more

If you criticize X to Y, Y wonders whether you criticize him to others as well. This problem can increase to the extent your criticism is biting and on the mark.

Howes says that “innovation is not in human nature, but is instead received. … when people do not innovate, it is often simply because it never occurs to them to do so.” Joel Mokyr says, similarly, that “progress isn’t natural” (and his book on this topic, A Culture of Growth, helped inspire this blog). I agree with both.

I always leave about five minutes at the end of the interview to sell the candidate on the company and the job. This is actually important even if you are not going to hire them. If you’ve been lucky enough to find a really good candidate, you want to do everything you can at this point to make sure that they want to come work for you. Even if they... See more

In a way, basic income as an automation solution is both too much and not enough. It’s too much of a solution for the problem of long-run mass technological unemployment, primarily because that’s a fake problem that hasn’t happened yet and likely never will. But it’s not enough of a solution for the temporary dislocation that automation will, in... See more

Now I think that what we really need is more experimentation in markets, because our markets are failing to promote new ideas that drive progress and growth. In art, science, and technology, our outcomes are lagging indicators of our markets. For better results, build better markets.

In 2012, the University of Maryland sociologist John P. Robinson reviewed more than 40 years of happiness and time-use surveys that asked Americans how often they felt they either were “rushed” or had “excess time.” Perhaps predictably, he concluded that the happiest people were the “never-never” group—those who said they very rarely felt hurried... See more

You want to be very selective about the people you choose to engage with further along in your hiring process. “For every person making it all the way through the interview loop, that can be 20 person-hours,” says Gupta. “If you multiply that by your hire ratio, you’ll see that this is just not scalable. You also have to consider the candidate... See more