I agree with the headline, even if the content of the op-ed is kind of a mess. Reminds me of Etsy's Code as Craft Speaker Series. My favorite talks by far were the ones that focused on pretty minute issues, such as how to do A/B testing at scale, or how to manage multiple CDNs. Not because those are issues I've ever had to deal with professionally, but because how the details are dealt with are not only interesting from a technical standpoint, but they provide concrete info about a company's values and expectations. In the talk about multiple CDNs, for example, I found it interesting that Etsy had built a substantial amount of infrastructure to auto-detect the failure of a CDN, but it was always up to the engineer on-duty to wake up and push the button to switch CDNs.
In contrast, sometimes the Etsy talks would have grander topics, such as how to be a better entrepreneur, which were often filled with platitudes that offered no real insight or actionable advice.
As a teacher, I tell students that the best way to make an impact is to focus on the details. Because if you even know the details of an important problem like world hunger or injustice, it at least means you've done some research. More importantly, students need to realize that if something is indeed a big, "important" problem, it means that many, many people have been working on it. If these problems could be solved simply by people thinking, "I want to end world hunger!", then they wouldn't be big, complex problems.
In contrast, sometimes the Etsy talks would have grander topics, such as how to be a better entrepreneur, which were often filled with platitudes that offered no real insight or actionable advice.
As a teacher, I tell students that the best way to make an impact is to focus on the details. Because if you even know the details of an important problem like world hunger or injustice, it at least means you've done some research. More importantly, students need to realize that if something is indeed a big, "important" problem, it means that many, many people have been working on it. If these problems could be solved simply by people thinking, "I want to end world hunger!", then they wouldn't be big, complex problems.