16 posts tagged with "career"

Talofa reader,

Over the last few weeks, I've had things either in my periphery or right in front of me that all looked like different things, but I could thread the same theme through each of them.

I've read stories of layoffs in Silicon Valley and Big Tech, newsletters analysing these events, motivations of these companies, and the historical events that preceded them. I've seen local companies decimate whole teams and watched green "opentowork" rings popping up frequently on social media. In the last week, I've had friends made redundant from their remote U.S. roles, and other friends' roles disestablished in big insurance companies in the current economic climate.

The theme I would thread through all these events, zoomed right out, could be described as*"how the world works."*None of what is happening is necessarily shocking or surprising to people who see the world, and the things in it, a particular way and expect these kinds of outcomes.

In this weeks newsletter, I'm not quite digging into the bigger picture of*"how the world works", but into the smaller"how companies work"*and how I think about them, in this or any other economic climate, and what has served me in navigating my professional career.

Talofa reader,

This week, I have been thinking about communities, specifically online communities, and the concept of "community building." I had never heard of this term until 2017 when I heard it on the Indie Hackers Podcast. They used the term to describe a group of people who would engage and congregate around a product. They talked about it as a type of growth "hack" or other product-growing exercise.

Initially, this seemed strange to me, as it made sense in terms of manipulating and using human behavior to your advantage, i.e., for profit. However, I understood what they were trying to do. I found it peculiar that it included the word "community" and treated it as something that you actively worked on (which I read as "manipulated," because I'm jaded, lol).

To me, community was always something that just "was." They were naturally occurring things in the wild and usually formed around shared culture, a sport, or a common interest. This was obviously naive of me because "community" is something that takes deliberate work and effort to build, grow, and maintain.

Now that I'm building a couple of communities with my charity team and a few helping hands, I have learned a few things, about myself mostly, but also a lot about what it takes to do this work of building communities (especially online) in the community.

These are some of the things I have learned...

Talofa reader,

It’s been a busy several days, so apologies for the late edition.

Last week, I looked at the state of the Pasifika community in terms of the picture painted by the latest census data. I also examined a specific "solution" to one of those problems, considering possible second and third-order effects that could lead to positive outcomes for my community.

I was viewing these topics from a third-person perspective, standing outside and observing both aspects. This made me think about how these subjects come together in the present context which intersects quite conveniently with the role I currently hold in the Pacific Islands for a big tech company.

(I thought a series of questions would organise my train of thought better, hence the following interview of myself 😂 — enjoy.)

Talofa reader,

This last week, I haven't read anything super interesting. My newsletter and RSS feeds provided the usual tech industry topics, such as systems design, big data, and more ChatGPT. However, the most interesting topic that stood out this week for me was from the Pasifika Tech Network Discord, and it wasn't me asking the questions this time!

One of our members asked a simple question:"What is your why? And what are you passionate about?"

I thought on it for a bit - I have different why's for different things - but the “why” I chose to respond to was “why I use my free time to help Pasifika learn more about and see themselves in Big Tech”?

Note: this week’s edition is a lot less “reading astutely” and more shooting from the hip 😂.

Talofa reader,

I went down a rabbit hole of ChatGPT and AI this week. It’s been a hot topic for a short while now since ChatGPT’s release in November, 2022 and there’s no shortage of articles about it in myReadwisefeed.

There’s been a lot of takes, some pro, some con. My friend DZ’snewslettergot me thinking about the darker side of AI and so I thought I’d read up on it this past week and write some stuff down.

It’s a bit of a read so if you don’t mind a bit of profanity and bad punctuation, enjoy.

Talofa reader,

Let’s start at the beginning...​

This isn’t my first rodeo, or newsletter. I started a newsletter back in 2018 and ran it for several editions before it got lost somewhere and came to it’s inevitable end.

It’s always hard starting something back up again, but if experience has taught me anything, it’s that once it’s up and running it’s not that bad.

Like going to the gym. The first few weeks are probably going to be painful, but if you stick at it, eventually it sucks a little less each time.

Why am I starting a newsletter?​

Believe it or not, it’s not to be a writer.