Six Ideas That Made Us Think

1. “Waze, Show Me the Exit”

Noam Bardin, the former CEO of Waze, explains why he left Google 12 years after it acquired his company. His post is no ordinary exit interview. He offers a host of insights into why Silicon Valley may be ruined by its own success. Start with the people:

Young people want it all - they want to get promoted quickly, achieve economic independence, feel fulfilled at Work, be home early, not miss the Yoga class at 11:00am etc. Having trouble scheduling meetings because “it's the new Yoga instructor lesson I cannot miss” or “I’m taking a personal day” drove me crazy. The worst thing is that this was in line with the policies and norms - I was the weirdo who wanted to push things fast and expected some level of personal sacrifice when needed.

But don’t miss Paul Graham’s superb Silicon Valley memoir. This godfather of the startup industry offers a different take.

2. The Blue Devil of Trademarks

The Ohio State University tried to trademark “the” in its name. It failed. Afterwards, two Duke University law professors examinedwhether universities were becoming “trademark bullies” in their extreme efforts to protect their brands. Their conclusion is startling:

We took the university popularly identified as the number one collegiate trademark bully and conducted a comparative empirical ranking of its behavior as compared to other classes of universities …Unfortunately, the accused bully is our own university, Duke. Is Duke an outlier or a bellwether? There are reasons to suspect the latter.

3. The Human Politics of Golf Course Changes

Geoffrey Manton’s essay on restoring the golf course at the Farmington Country Club isn’t about golf. It’s about the politics, bureaucracy, and social tensions that exist in any organization. He sets the tone in the opening:

“You’ve ruined our golf course for generations to come.” This accusation from a long-time member at my home club still rings in my ears. How did it come to this? How did I become the grand destroyer?

4. Under Cover

A-J Aronstein runs the career advising center at Barnard College. To his students’ amazement, he spends a lot of his time “in the butchery of cover letter editing.” In this remarkable essay for The Paris Review, Aronstein finds both a rich history and a paradoxical quirkiness to cover letters for job applications:

The cover letter is not written with any expectation of readership or audience. It is written with hope and desperation in equal measures. One writes under conditions of duress, anxiety, optimism, nausea, arrogance, and deep insecurity. And in these respects, the address to no one—writing for an imagined and idealized audience—might be the only redeeming quality of the whole endeavor.

5. Agreeing to Disagree

In The Guardian, Ian Leslie examines workplace disagreements. His essay is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of work. Leslie contends that most people make the mistake of trying to avoid disagreements:

In front of an audience of colleagues, people are more likely to focus on how they want to be seen, rather than on the right way to solve the problem…That’s why, when a difficult work conversation arises, the participants often propose to “take it offline”. The phrase used to mean simply an in-person discussion, but it has gained an additional nuance: “Let’s take this potentially tough conversation to a place where there is less at stake for our faces.”

6. How Not to Be Boring

Bill Lycan, emeritus philosophy professor at University of North Carolina, is interviewed about how to write. One recommendation:

Never be even a little bit boring. That meant: absolutely no clichés, preferably no interesting phrases that have ever been used before; no pointless repetition; give examples whenever possible; and make the examples extra-imaginative, things that wouldn’t have occurred to most people.

Websites Worth Reading

Building Ages in the Netherlands: A map showing the age of all 10 million buildings in the Netherlands

City Monitor: The future of cities

Astral Codex Ten: Contrarian psychiatrist on books, politics, and heath

Feeds We Follow

@bswud: On buildings and geography in the UK

@asherprice: Austin journalist, electricity beat