BC TECH
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

Here's the thing, as someone who sees themself both in ad tech & as a privacy advocate: Advertisers who seek personalized targeting will focus on platforms with the most personal data: Facebook & Google. But I don't believe the status quo of ad targeting is the only future of it.

 The idea that advertisers will walk away from platforms that don't provide personalized targeting simply doesn't hold up. Advertisers buy posters and billboards and TV ads and lots of other things that don't promise the accuracy of web advertising...
Further, the promise of that accuracy has mostly been false. Year after year after year we see that ad products that promise perfect accuracy and tracking don't work, are giving false results, are proving entirely ineffective, or have unexpected negative brand impact...
Also, the one thing we've learned for sure about advertising on the web is that advertisers will try all sorts of things and look towards outcomes. This includes bad things that fail... https://t.co/MYkZtfdqQQ
This includes things that don't work at all, but still end up costing millions of dollars. https://t.co/5KPc4fJNcm
And it includes a ton of ad tech that makes claims to personalization that simply don't hold up in reality. https://t.co/rndP1drQYk
Everyone in advertising should know by now that many of the promises of advertising vendors don't hold up... https://t.co/FcUbmQTqb0
But the pricing mechanisms of the status quo makes no room for an alternative version of the web. We've no basis to understand what the market could like like in a web where intrusive user tracking becomes impossible on a technical level. https://t.co/1sWrpeV33Y
And putting all of these questions aside brings an even bigger one forward: do publishers benefit from a web that, through invasive tracking and targeting, generates societies that distrust journalism and make it hard to separate fact from fiction? I think not.
Perhaps that's too esoteric a future to consider. Perhaps we can only see the future in dollars and cents. That's the way Facebook sees it. That's the way the people who have shaped the face of web advertising up to now see it. https://t.co/WeAudmCpFw
But I don't think the future of the web has to be, or should be, defined on dollars and cents alone. I think a healthier web--one that respects what users want & how they seek to interact w/it, publishers, & advertisers--will create a better environment for publishers to thrive.
$1.3 bil was spent on influencer marketing in 2018. It's hard to believe that publishers can't remake themselves in a private web to change from delivering individual humans to be something else to advertisers. Especially if the ground shifts to make the web force that change.
(Source: https://t.co/CJkqFg3kLA )
I can't imagine a world where advertisers decide their only venue for digital advertising is FB and Google. That they're just going to leave the rest of the web up for grabs. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think the rest of the web was valuable for advertisers, users & publishers
And if it has value, then it can be priced competitively. And if it can be priced competitively than I have to believe the parts of the web where users can regain control over their personal data can present a competitive argument for advertisers to Facebook and Google.
Beyond that, it is hard to imagine the situation for Publishers in regard to trust and monetization could become more dire by respecting users' interest in a more private web. https://t.co/jbVGYMnjWx
Finally, I think the difference between publishers & other businesses is they have an ideological core to work on behalf of readers, to do journalism, to make the world more clear & honest. It's hard to see how the current regime of individual user tracking aligns w/that mission.
At the end of the day it is hard to imagine surveillance capitalism as compatible w/journalism. The future of ad tech is entwined with the future of journalism. If that's the case, how can we deliver journalism into the future on a system w/which it is incompatible?
Perhaps there's an immediate financial disadvantage to the privacy-first web. But I think on a longer timeline, a more private web as the baseline standard will not eliminate advertising or chase advertising dollars away. And it will make it easier to be a successful journalist.
At the end of the day, a more private world lets publishers have more control over their own data & be better advocates on behalf of their readers to advertisers & ad tech systems. More control means more opportunity to figure out new approaches and new models. Sounds fun to me!

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Google's interview system is not great but there are various reasons why it feels less than it is. Most candidates don't know what the goal of our interviews are. First rule, it is not about finding an optimal solution or any solution at all.

You are interviewed for multiple skills simultaneously. Cognitive skills, communication, leadership are a few to name. If the point is not finding a solution, then what is it? Let me explain.

Your interviewers try to understand what it feels like to work with you on a daily basis. An interview question is just a tool in achieving that, it is not there to specifically measure your skills on a topic but a tool to understand the depth of your thinking.

Before the interview starts, ask them what they want to get out of this interview. Good interviewers should already have a plan and a set of expectations. Ask them what you should do. Don't start coding yet. Ask them you should produce. Discussion, diagrams, pseudo code, code?

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Some people really benefit from hearing advice that everyone knows, for the same reason we keep schools open despite every subject in them having been taught before.

In that spirit, here's some quick Things Many People Find Too Obvious To Have Told You Already.

Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. You think you are an exception; you are not. You should not insist on an NDA to talk about it; nobody serious will engage in contract review over an idea, and this will mark you as clueless.

Technologists tend to severely underestimate the difficulty and expense of creating software, especially at companies which do not have fully staffed industry leading engineering teams ("because software is so easy there, amirite guys?")

Charge more. Charge more still. Go on.

The press is a lossy and biased compression of events in the actual world, and is singularly consumed with its own rituals, status games, and incentives. The news necessarily fails to capture almost everything which happened yesterday. What it says is important usually isn't.

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Josh Butler
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Users: hey can you get rid of the Nazis please

Twitter: ok sure, we've changed the stars to hearts for likes

Users: no no, zero Nazis please

Twitter: yep we're getting rid of Vine

Users: nah hey, what about the Nazis

Twitter: ok ok fine, no more likes

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The 12 most important pieces of information and concepts I wish I knew about equity, as a software engineer.

A thread.

1. Equity is something Big Tech and high-growth companies award to software engineers at all levels. The more senior you are, the bigger the ratio can be:


2. Vesting, cliffs, refreshers, and sign-on clawbacks.

If you get awarded equity, you'll want to understand vesting and cliffs. A 1-year cliff is pretty common in most places that award equity.

Read more in this blog post I wrote: https://t.co/WxQ9pQh2mY


3. Stock options / ESOPs.

The most common form of equity compensation at early-stage startups that are high-growth.

And there are *so* many pitfalls you'll want to be aware of. You need to do your research on this: I can't do justice in a tweet.

https://t.co/cudLn3ngqi


4. RSUs (Restricted Stock Units)

A common form of equity compensation for publicly traded companies and Big Tech. One of the easier types of equity to understand: https://t.co/a5xU1H9IHP

5. Double-trigger RSUs. Typically RSUs for pre-IPO companies. I got these at Uber.


6. ESPP: a (typically) amazing employee perk at publicly traded companies. There's always risk, but this plan can typically offer good upsides.

7. Phantom shares. An interesting setup similar to RSUs... but you don't own stocks. Not frequent, but e.g. Adyen goes with this plan.
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Santiago
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Here is a simple example of a machine learning model.

I put it together a long time ago, and it was very helpful! I sliced it apart a thousand times until things started to make sense.

It's TensorFlow and Keras.

If you are starting out, this may be a good puzzle to solve.


The goal of this model is to learn to multiply one-digit
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