An excellent management book. Julie Zhuo specifically didn't write this as the all-knowing management guru, but as a reflection of her early times of becoming a manager (of a design team at Facebook).
I could identify with many of her struggles and I learned valuable concepts for my own job that I will try to apply.
Not a printed "book", but free online material packaged up like a book. Part 1 is a summary of the ML interview process. Part 2 is a collection of practice exercises.
Being in a Machine Learning role myself, this was an interesting read to see a comprehensive summary of current topics, interview process, and role descriptions. I also got some inspiration for interviewing new candidates for my own team.
Rebecca Henderson is a Harvard Professor and writes about how free market capitalism has created great innovation and prosperity but is also the source of inequality and a driver of global climate change.
She proposes a framework for how private businesses and public actors should cooperate to fix what's broken: Help establish the right incentives to act more sustainably.
The strongest key idea is: "there's a great business case for saving the world". Even the most shareholder value-focused investor will have to realize that climate chaos will ruin economic opportunities.
Super interesting to read and she points out a lot that's broken, but her writing still remains hopeful with an optimistic tone.
Bei Audible spontan ausgewählt, als ich Credits aufbrauchen musste. Kleiner Glücksgriff. Ein klassischer Krimi, das Setting ist Dresden im Winter 1944/45 zum Ende des Krieges. Das historische Setting war spannend, die Konflikte der Charaktere waren gut in die Zeit eingebettet. Es war nicht alles plausibel und zufriedenstellend aufgeklärt, aber als Hörbuch war es sehr angenehm durchzuhören.
Another one of these finance books I keep plowing through. US-centric in some parts, but a good framework that can be used by anyone who wants to build wealth (early in life). A lot of the same if you've read other books from the genre, but what's a little special about this one is the concept of "house hacking": Buy a house or flat, live in it but rent out part of it. He calculates how this is more advantageous than either renting or traditional buying of real estate.
Written by Tony Fadell, whose career spans being part of the General Magic team, leading the iPod development, and later founding Nest and selling it to Google.
The book is 50% story of his personal experience and 50% advice for anyone building tech products.
I found a lot of helpful concepts across career advice (engineer vs management role), product decisions, and being part of a growing company. I couldn't make sense of every single point and didn't agree with everything, but that was fine.
The main thought I wish he had explored is the "why" behind it all. Clearly, a career such as Fadell's requires giving 120%. At one stage, he walked away from working and took 1-2 years off to travel and have time with family. But what about a healthy balance? Does this exist? And is it all worth it for his personal happiness, for finding his "enough" point? I understand (and feel) the ambition and drive to "put something out there". At the same time, it would be nice to hear some reflections from someone who has done it all.
In particular, I liked that this isn't one of those business books that has one core idea and re-iterates it across 10+ chapters. Instead, it's a super dense guide to building teams and building products. I liked it.
Dieses Jahr das Silmarillon nochmal, diesmal als deutsches Hörbuch (gelesen von Achim Höppner!)
So eine schöne Stimme, vor allem für diese Art von Geschichten.
Leider ist mir aufgefallen, dass das Silmarillon stellenweise doch etwas langatmig ist. Das komplette Fehlen von Dialogen hilft da nicht.
Als Werk ist es immer noch 5/5, aber meine Erfahrung dieses mal war insgesamt eher 3/5.
A good and easy walk through Stoic philosophy with the author's view on its applicability to 21st-century life.
The writing felt a bit academic but was easy to follow overall.
Some parts surprised me in a negative way (like what felt like an anti-sex stance?). The other chapters mostly made sense to me.
A book about understanding how ego stands in the way of living a good life in phases of aspiration, success and failure.
I liked the whole message and in particular the connection to stoic philosophy.
When applying these thoughts to my own life, I am inspired but also confused: Where is the balance between healthy aspiration to do „good work“ without doing it for the ego — and not even striving for professional success in the first place? After all, isn’t a „successful“ life often defined from a perspective of ego?
Overall, a very good book. Has potential to be reread every few years in different phases of my life, I think.
Eine Geschichte über das Leben in einem Deutschland der nahen Zukunft. Es geht wenig darum, wie konkret der Klimawandel die Welt verändert hat, aber doch bietet diese neue Umwelt das Setting für einen Thriller. Zudem spielen di Kontrolle von Gesundheitsdaten und ein moderner Überwachungsstaat eine Rolle. Die Hauptcharakterin nimmt einen ganz gut mit auf die Reise und die Szenen fand ich allesamt gut geschrieben. Dennoch hat mich die Geschichte manchmal abgehängt. Hier und da wurden neue Anekdoten der Backstory eingeführt, die ein wenig aus dem Nichts kamen. So waren erst spät alle Bausteine vorhanden, um die Auflösung am Ende zu untermauern. Insgesamt ein gutes Buch.
A systematic framework for identifying opportunities and planning AI projects in a business context.
Who is this book for? Primarily for business people who want to establish AI in their company, but also for technical people (like me) who want to expand "technical planning" into a complete business project scope.
The author has been managing and supporting AI projects for a while and she writes about a breadth of topics: What should a company ensure before considering AI? When is AI not a good idea? How to identify high-impact AI opportunities? How to measure if a project was a success or failure?
I really enjoyed the book as it provides a framework for me to talk to other people in my job and lay out clear criteria about how to plan and when NOT to consider "AI" for a project.
A minor annoyance: The book introduces arbitrary abbreviations (typical for "business" frameworks in my experience). "PAI" is a "potential AI initiative" and the "HI-AI discovery framework" stands for "high impact AI initiatives". I think the content would work well without these terms and it would have been more readable.
Aside from that, the writing is clear, to the point and well-edited. I was positively surprised by the high quality of the layout and print, even though it appears to be distributed through Amazon's print-on-demand platform.