Moments from a special relationship — Emily Benjamin and I were officially married on August 31st, 2011 and divorced on September 27th, 2019. In between we had two recommitment ceremonies, one in England and one in Australia. The following are some words I shared with special folks at a few important moments. Irreconcilable differences Welcome to our Irreconcilable…

Building a platform to help people understand the world, and each other. — Pinian is a forthcoming publishing platform designed to increase thoughtfulness in the world and make it possible for more people to participate in answering the big questions of the day. Sign up to be among the first to gain writing access when the limited beta launches. Public opinion shapes the…

Internal terms, externalised — With the release of our growth framework, I realised that lots of people outside Medium wouldn’t know what many of the examples were describing. When putting the rubric together, we deliberately used very concrete projects from Medium’s history as examples, so that our engineers had a clear understanding of the…

At some point in the past, when conglomerates did not yet exist on the internet and the primary mode of investigating the web was following links from blogs without knowing where you would end up, I stumbled across a site where people could tell short stories anonymously. Called Postcards from…

Providing transparency in what we look for — For a growing company, interviewing is one of the most important tasks employees are asked to do, but one challenge is that interviewers don’t always feel adequately qualified to assess candidates. Lacking shared standards, it’s easy to rely on gut feeling and subjective impressions, which can depend on mood and…

We recently undertook a project to improve Medium’s engineering interview process. As part of that, I wrote this document to describe why we needed to improve on what we were already doing. It was originally published to Hatch, our internal version of Medium, on February 26, 2016, and is reproduced…

We recently undertook a project to improve Medium’s engineering interview process. As part of that, I wrote this document to describe the qualities we are seeking in engineering candidates. It was originally published to Hatch, our internal version of Medium, on February 26, 2016. For more information about Medium’s practice…

We recently undertook a project to improve Medium’s engineering interview process. As part of that, I wrote this document to describe qualities that we aren’t specifically seeking in engineering candidates. It was originally published to Hatch, our internal version of Medium, on February 26, 2016. For more information about Medium’s…

We recently undertook a project to improve Medium’s engineering interview process. As part of that, I wrote this document to describe how to assess the qualities we are seeking in engineering candidates. It was originally published to Hatch, our internal version of Medium, on February 26, 2016. For more information…