M&Ms 67: Planting Seeds
Hey Team,
We have to make things even when we don't know the outcomes of what we are creating. The Bible says, 'If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap."
It isn't easy to invest time and effort into things without knowing if any of it will amount to anything. We all have limited supply of both time and effort. But I have done precisely that in the last year. And somehow, it's worked out so far.
As of this issue, I have written 67 editions of this newsletter, well over 100 stand-alone essays. There are the ten plus Small Bets I have placed to make a living doing this. I have written thousands of lines of code since quitting my job. I am approaching ten thousand tweets and over a hundred LinkedIn posts. God, I hate posting on LinkedIn; I love all the other stuff, though. But I know it's important to try things; it's important to plant seeds. I have had countless calls and conversations with strangers—some with engineers, PMs, entrepreneurs, and people from various industries.
And what do I have to show for it all?
Most people measure what they reap in money, and there is some money to show; I wrote about that a few months ago. But I have a better way to measure what I've reaped so far, and it's not in dollars. There are countless genuine relationships I have built by making all this stuff. In just one year, I have deeper roots and better odds at entrepreneurship than ever.
For example, you may know I am an engineer and engineering leader, not a great marketer. But when I launch a new product, I now always have help. There are founder CEOs, like Christine Carrillo, who are experts in sales, copy, and marketing that are now part of my network. In my last Small Bet, she took the time to give me feedback on what I was about to put into the world. It's really incredible how the modern world works if you think about it. The generosity of others never ceases to amaze me in this journey.
The other thing about measuring results is that anything you put into the world will take time to grow.
My six-year-old wishes so bad she could be big and tall like her mom and dad, but no matter what she does or what effort she puts in, she won't be 6 feet tall by her seventh birthday. It's the same with many of the seeds we plant and the things we create. There is always a time component to growth. So don't measure what you reap too early; just make sure to plant and that it's going in the right direction.
All of this may seem like a lot, but we are not very good at measuring what can be achieved in years and decades. And these small things pile up and grow in unexpected ways. I am a year in and here to tell you that if I can do this, you can too. Just plant some seeds if you want to reap something later.
A few Tweets I Loved this Week:
As someone who comes from poverty, I am uniquely aware of the fact that people run the world and hold all the keys.
Without building up the right relationships, it’s hard to get ahead. Without others giving me a chance, I’d still be living in poverty. This Tweet by Paul Graham and the NY Times article he is referencing showcase this intuition of mine empirically.
It used to be that one only got access to diverse relationships in university and school, but the internet has evened the playing field. If I can get help from successful founder CEOs like Christine, and so many other amazing people that have helped me out here, you probably can too.
You just need to plant the seeds before you can reap the rewards.
This gap in people earning less by sticking around may seem like a small thing, but it highlights something important about the way raises are handled by Big Companies.
Many big companies hire outside firms to do competitive analyses on salaries. They base new offers on this data and occasionally give out raises to stay competitive.
I saw firsthand that analysis results were always way off from reality, especially in competitive markets.
I wrote a little bit more about this in this Twitter Thread.
Taiwan has been on the news a lot this week, and this Tweet highlights how important the island and those waterways are to the global economy. Of course, about 90%+ of the global supply of chips also comes out of Taiwan if the strait wasn’t important enough.
I read this wonderful article by the Yale University Press that there was a period of about 50 years where the Chinese Communist party did not care about Taiwan at all. In fact, it did not even consider it a part of China. It’s a good read on the history.
A few Articles I ran into this Week:
Many of us have done things simply to prove to ourselves or someone else that we can do it. But the work and seeds we plant that seem to go the furthest are the ones we do just because we want to and because we enjoy them.
A snippet from the article:
“When I look back at my projects and writings that made the biggest impact in my career, they are never the ones that I built for the express purpose of accomplishing one of the many checkpoints I was naively chasing. Instead, they’re almost always borne out of me following through on what’s personally interesting to me: personal knowledge tools and search engines, programming languages and compilers, putting AI to work for creative humans.”
I shared this article by Gergely before about getting into this world of creating as an engineer. But I ran into it again this week, and it's a great read., one of those pieces you bookmark to go back to for inspiration.
A few Memes I Enjoyed this Week:
Inspired by a comment, I got on a LinkedIn Post, I made this meme this week.
The engineer that wrote code full of tech debt leaving after one year, as soon as the debt is due.
A great Meme for those of us that are great at coding but only when no one stands behind our shoulders watching.
Some things don’t work out the way people thought they would.
Thank you for reading. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Louie
P.S. a reminder that those that subscribe to this newsletter can reply directly to memesmotivations@substack.com, or you can email me at louie@louiebacaj.com about this edition or any topics you’d like to discuss.