The success of companies like Slack, Zoom, and Atlassian in challenging the dominance of Microsoft and Google’s productivity suites accounts for part of this interest, but the rise of remote and distributed teams is the most important secular shift driving the trend.
Today, databases are basically siloed — every application has its own. This has many bad implications: redundant infrastructure, honeypots of data with poor security, fragmented data. It also means that every application must have its own database to feed its logic and its interface. The 3 layers — interface, logic, and database — have to be... See more
For those toiling in less well-remunerated salaried work, organizing the workday around tasks and projects is a way to cut through useless meetings and busywork—the misery of what the late David Graeber called “bullshit jobs.” In public-facing service work, as well as jobs in the digital economy, many have become quietly adept at pretending to work... See more
"Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know. Then they must look at what they have written and ask: have I said it?"