DerekH

Professional poker players streaming on Twitch is rising in popularity. You can learn quite a bit about the game by simply tuning in on a regular basis. There are people who play small stakes ($10-$100) and people who have streamed tournaments where they've won >$100k for a 1st place finish.

On an interesting note, Kawhi Leonard's advanced stats were marginally better than Curry's as of two weeks ago. They're both equally exciting players in my eyes. Also, have you seen the size of Leonard's hands?!

Hey everyone,

I signed up for every presidential candidate's email list to see what happens. I hooked up a Gmail account to this Twitter handle, uploading all incoming emails to Dropbox.

Also, I used an email address variation that I can identify with every candidate. My plan is to watch how my email address gets bounced around to different parts of their campaigns. If anything, by the end of the election cycle, I'll have some interesting data points to play around with.

Hey everyone,

I signed up for every presidential candidate's email list to see what happens. I hooked up a Gmail account to this Twitter handle, uploading all incoming emails to Dropbox.

Also, I used an email address variation that I can identify with every candidate. My plan is to watch how my email address gets bounced around to different parts of their campaigns. If anything, by the end of the election cycle, I'll have some data points to play around with.

In general, the public has a poor understanding of being a professional athlete. Typically, when I try to explain it to others, I usually just say "it's a job like any other" - the same as staying on top of your game in the music industry, running a startup, etc.

It's easy for us to dismiss the effort professional athletes put out when you only see them on TV a few times. However, it's somehow different when we see Steve Jobs or Tim Cook on stage a couple times each year. We recognize all of the hard work Steve/Tim likely put in behind the scenes.

For some reason, a lot of people don't recognize that same level of effort for professional athletes. They just assume they show up for the game and perform at a high level.

For every hour on the field, there's probably two hours of study (mental preparation) and two hours of treatment and/or rehab (physical maintenance). Pair that with a rigid schedule every day, fatigue is a real concern.

We all know the overnight success myth. The myth exists for professional athletes as well. Athletes that make it to the highest level didn't simply wake up one morning and have all the tools to succeed. Hours and hours and hours of training, both mental and physical, had to occur. It's like anything else - you don't simply get good. It takes practice.

It also takes commitment, dedication, and perseverance to succeed at a professional level - just like everything else in this world.

I hope I was able to communicate clearly. This wasn't meant to be a rant on why engineering is so hard.

Instead, it's meant to show why the technology part may not be that important in the beginning; however, as your product grows, it becomes a vital part - just like customer support, product ownership, project management, etc. etc.

I didn't want to point to specific examples because I didn't want to throw people under the bus. If you feel like this post comes across the wrong way, I'd love to hear about it. Thanks!