Essays

2024-07-12

The opportunity of tech talent agents

With the shift to remote work, companies unlocked a global labor pool. Job posts began receiving hundreds of applications each. In the past months, AI tools accelerated this problem by enabling candidates to spray-and-pray applications to hundreds of jobs at a time. Companies are struggling to hire amid a sea of noise. According to the Paradox of Choice, when faced with multiple options, people either approach the problem as “maximizers” seeking the best option or as “satisficers” who settle for a “good enough” choice. The status quo is fine for companies looking for “good enough” candidates, such as big corporations. But for startups and small businesses that care about finding the best talent, hiring in the current environment is a nightmare. Sometimes, unexpected answers can be found by looking at how things are done in other industries. In the case of tech hiring, the solution might be Hollywood. Movie studios don’t hold open castings for the starring role of every film. Instead, they seek out proven talent. To find that proven talent, studios go to talent agents. Compared to ten years ago, far more startups hire contractors instead of employees. This shift started with the rise of remote work, where...

2024-05-30

Coding a Booklet AI feature

This morning, I added a new feature to Booklet. I used OpenAI to suggest new posts to write, to make it easier for members to post. It looks like this: Inspired by a podcast I was listening to on the way to my office, I decided to record the process of building the feature and publish it as a video. You can watch the full video below, where I go from idea to launching the feature to all Booklet communities in two and a half hours. I hope it’s helpful to see how I work, the tools I use, and the process of building an AI-powered feature from scratch. I start with an idea, implement multiple-draft post support, write an OpenAI prompt to suggest new posts, test the AI in production, tweak the prompt based on its performance, implement a skeleton loader to display the suggestions, connect the suggestions to the editor, then deploy it to all Booklet communities. Recording a coding video is a bit of a crazy experiment, but I hope some people find it useful. If you have questions or feedback, email me. Watch the video on YouTube → Notes from the recording Booklet is an async...

2024-02-27

Rethinking work beyond the factory

I recently completed a two-week creative residence at Almost Perfect in Tokyo. I split my time on the trip between working on Booklet and exploring Japan. The Almost Perfect residence runs continuously, with two residents at a time. Each residency concludes with a public gallery showcasing the resident’s work. Many residents are artists who present visual works crafted during their stay. For instance, my co-resident Stu presented illustrations inspired by his explorations of Tokyo. I wasn’t sure what kind of gallery to host because I was an odd “technology” creative with no drawing skills. I considered ideas ranging from a wall-sized mind map to a prototyping workshop. I settled on presenting an “artist statement” about my work at Contraption Company. The surrounding Kuramae neighborhood, a historic home to craftspeople in Japan, inspired this presentation. The tools craftspeople make for themselves can change the world - such as the printing press. This presentation explores work’s future through the lens of software makers. I gave this talk on 3 February 2024 at Almost Perfect to a small crowd of artists and technologists. The presentation was not recorded, so this essay adapts it to a written format. I also recorded this talk if...

2024-01-28

Digital product studios

I describe Contraption Company as a digital product studio. Many people ask what that means. “Is it a startup?” (not exactly). “Is it an agency?” (ideally, no). “Do you make apps to spin them out into new companies?” (no). I envision a digital product studio as a small group of makers who build and maintain high-quality software. They seek growth and economic success like a startup but won’t shut down a product that still has customers. They aim to generate revenue as a software business but are open to collaborations with other companies. They may build multiple products, but they intend to operate these apps themselves instead of spinning them out. The studio builds a brand, style, and reputation that compounds over time. I think the principles Cal Newport outlines in his forthcoming book Slow Productivity apply equally to product studios: do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality. Some companies I consider “digital product studios” include 37Signals, Prehype, and Good Enough. In each of these cases, the head of the company spends most of their time making the products instead of managing people. In my mind, that’s the fundamental characteristic of the studio model: its...

2023-12-20

Digital quiet

In the peak years of Bay Area tech offices, open offices were all the rage. As companies expanded, a physical division emerged between departments. Sales and support teams thrived in a buzzing atmosphere, alive with the sound of calls and collaboration. In contrast, engineering departments cultivated an environment akin to quiet libraries, where focused work prevailed, and meetings were confined to conference rooms. Often, these floors became physically separated - with one looking like a stock trading floor and the other more like a library. This dichotomy of workspaces catered to the distinct needs of collaboration and concentration. Collaborative roles, such as sales or customer support, benefited from the energy of shared spaces and constant communication. Conversely, roles requiring deep focus, like coding or writing, flourished in the tranquility of isolated environments. The sudden shift to online work blurred these boundaries. The nuances of physical offices vanished, replaced by a monolithic virtual office space in a chat application, like Slack or Teams. Chat has become the omnipresent digital office - showing who’s online, what they’re up to, and letting you talk to anybody. By making chat omnipresent, we’ve begun over-communicating and over-collaborating, which has most affected the concentration-focused roles that...

2023-12-14

Engineering over enforcement

In my introductory physics class, we replicated calculations by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist after whom our department was named. After returning from the Manhattan Project, this professor became frustrated by a common problem at the university and set about fixing it with physics. His invention worked and is now found ubiquitously on campus - and worldwide. The issue was speeding cars, and his invention was a speed bump. Drivers can ignore a speed limit but can’t miss a speed bump. I live in NYC, a city that announced a “Vision Zero” initiative in 2014 seeking to end pedestrian deaths from cars. In the almost decade since, the pledge has meant more marketing than results. For instance, the city requires every Uber to “have a Vision Zero Sticker on the windshield to pass inspection.” I assumed that “Vision Zero” was a political talking point rather than an achievable reality - until I went to Oslo. Oslo is somewhat tiny, comparable in population to Denver (9 pedestrian deaths in 2022) or Memphis (83 pedestrian deaths in 2022). Yet, since 2019, Oslo has had zero pedestrian deaths from cars and zero bicycle deaths. Oslo became a safe city for pedestrians and cyclists by...

2023-12-07

Community-powered media companies

On a recent Arvid Kahl podcast, Channing Allen described Indiehackers.com as a “community-powered media company.” It’s been weeks since I listened to the episode, but that idea of a community-powered media company has stuck with me because it clearly describes a shift I’ve also observed. Community-powered media companies represent a fragmentation of social networks into smaller, focused communities where any member can contribute. The Creator Model The classic creator model involves one person creating content and a community of readers who consume it. A great example of this model is Substack, where authors broadcast posts to their audience. The passive follower model has long been successful but requires ongoing content creation to maintain audience engagement. These businesses tend to lack network effects because the creator’s content doesn’t improve as the number of readers increases. The Community Model Indiehackers started as a creator-led model, but they allowed others to post over time. Now, the site is predominantly community-created content. Community members share on Indiehackers because they can engage like-minded people without building a personal audience. Nobody likes shouting into the void. For Indiehackers, this approach creates more content from more perspectives and shifts the burden of content creation from the site...

2023-12-04

Booklet's architecture

Booklet is a modern email group software from Contraption Company. Think “Google Groups,” but with a modern interface and features. If you haven’t tried Booklet, here is a 3-minute video showing how it works. In this post, I’ll share technical details about how I built Booklet. I’ll cover the architecture, the technology stack, and the infrastructure. I’ll also share some of the lessons I’ve learned. Background I’m Philip - owner of Contraption Company, which makes dependable software tools such as Booklet. I’ve been building software products for over a decade, ranging from dorm room hacks to enterprise software to startups. I’ve coded in dozens of different languages and frameworks. Over time, I’ve developed an appreciation for boring technology that just works. I built my last startup, Moonlight, with Go, gRPC, Kubernetes, and a Vue.js single-page app. While it was fun to use cutting-edge technologies, it was a pain to maintain them, and new developers had to learn a lot of new tools before becoming productive. I wasted time rebuilding common patterns and integrations that I could have gotten for free with a more established stack. I also found that the cutting-edge tools were often less reliable, and I spent much...

2023-11-17

The transition from indiehacking to micro companies

With the launch of Indiehackers.com in 2016, a counter-culture of startups emerged seeking to build businesses without venture capital funding. The trend followed established independent companies such as 37Signals, but also emerging makers such as Levels.io and Danny Postma. Seven years since the start of the trend, a polarizing discussion between Pieter Levels and Arvid Kahl asked whether indie hacking is dead. The evidence they present is that it’s now mainstream, competitive, and saturated. I have a different perspective. I believe that AI is causing a convergence of traditional startups and indie companies because AI decreases the cost of starting new software businesses dramatically. As “startup” and “indie” converge, we’ll instead recognize a divergence of “micro” versus “growth” technology companies. AI will decrease the cost of starting new software companies so much that many will become profitable before pitching VCs, and these companies be able to decide whether to stay small or to raise money for growth. With these changes, “Micro” will become the new “Indie.” In Oslo this week, I enjoyed visiting one of my favorite coffee companies, Tim Wendelboe. The business started in 2007 and has grown to be an influential coffee brand served by discerning customers such...

2023-11-10

One year of dependable software

Today I’m introducing a new part of Contraption Company: Essays covering thoughts and opinions on online work, dependability, tools, and craft. My name is Philip, and I’m the founder and owner of Contraption Company. I started this company as an idea in February 2020. I tinkered part-time on some projects within it for over three years, but knew I would need to focus on the company full-time to make meaningful progress. So, in July 2023 I took the plunge and began working on Contraption Company full-time. I’ve built multiple venture-backed startups. The venture capital portfolio model assumes that a small number of companies have outsized success, and that the rest fail. While this model has produced FAANG, I feel that most VC-backed startups are ephemeral. The reality is that investors expect startups to shut down - so it’s the customers who are left surprised and scrambling to recover. I’ve tried to avoid outright shutdowns in the past by open-sourcing my first company when it closed shop and helping customers self-host the software, and by supporting my company Moonlight after it sold (and sold again). But increasingly today, customers of technology businesses need to adjust for risk when deciding which businesses...