From 59b20ecda81b98682aa6e7cbbce9d5f1bd503186 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: counterweight Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2025 10:53:51 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] wip --- public/index.html | 465 ++++++++---------- ...ssons-from-my-departure-from-superhog.html | 136 +++++ 2 files changed, 340 insertions(+), 261 deletions(-) create mode 100644 public/writings/notes-and-lessons-from-my-departure-from-superhog.html diff --git a/public/index.html b/public/index.html index 200dd2b..abfdcd4 100644 --- a/public/index.html +++ b/public/index.html @@ -1,266 +1,209 @@ - - Pablo here - - - - - -
-

Hi, Pablo here

-

- Welcome to my website. Here I discuss thoughts and ideas. This is mostly - professional. -

-
-

What you'll find here:

+ + Pablo here + + + + + + +
+

Hi, Pablo here

+

+ Welcome to my website. Here I discuss thoughts and ideas. This is mostly + professional. +

+
+

What you'll find here:

+ +
+
+

About me

+

A few facts you might care about:

    -
  • About me
    • -
  • Contact
    • -
  • My projects
    • -
  • Writings
    • +
  • + I'm based in Barcelona, although I'm happy working for anyone + located anywhere (as long as we can find a time to meet). +
    • +
  • + My career has focused in Data teams and positions, playing roles + such as Data Lead, Data Engineer or Data Science Researcher. I've + also tinkered quite a bit with many areas and technologies outside + of data, but not in professional, production-grade settings. +
    • +
  • + Having said that, I have a lot of weird interests that might mix + somehow, including: +
      +
    • + Austrian economics and its societal and political implications +
      • +
    • Bitcoin
      • +
    • P2P and privacy friendly applications
      • +
    • + Self-hosting and lowering the cost of people using advanced IT + on a personal level +
      • +
    • Riding motorcycles
      • +
    • BBQ-ing
      • +
    • Being annoyingly contrarian
      • +
    • 3D printing maps
      • +
    • Teaching
      • +
    • Film photography
      • +
    • Tinkering with bicycles
      • +
    • Calisthenics
      • +
    +
-
-
-

About me

-

A few facts you might care about:

-
    -
  • - I'm based in Barcelona, although I'm happy working for anyone - located anywhere (as long as we can find a time to meet). -
    • -
  • - My career has focused in Data teams and positions, playing roles - such as Data Lead, Data Engineer or Data Science Researcher. I've - also tinkered quite a bit with many areas and technologies outside - of data, but not in professional, production-grade settings. -
    • -
  • - Having said that, I have a lot of weird interests that might mix - somehow, including: -
      -
    • - Austrian economics and its societal and political implications -
      • -
    • Bitcoin
      • -
    • P2P and privacy friendly applications
      • -
    • - Self-hosting and lowering the cost of people using advanced IT - on a personal level -
      • -
    • Riding motorcycles
      • -
    • BBQ-ing
      • -
    • Being annoyingly contrarian
      • -
    • 3D printing maps
      • -
    • Teaching
      • -
    • Film photography
      • -
    • Tinkering with bicycles
      • -
    • Calisthenics
      • -
    -
    • -
-
-
-
-

Contact

-

You can contact me on:

-
    -
  • -

    - On LinkedIn - for professional matters. -

    -
    • -
  • - On Nostr. My npub is: - npub1a29gdc6p7c05az2ka3qwwpl9kfcqmws3xlwmjefmtkulfhgd7u6shuqatg -
    • -
  • -

    At this stage I'm not open to other contacts.

    -
    • -
-

- If you are looking for my CV, no need to reach out, - you can fetch it yourself here. -

-

Good reasons to reach out include:

-
    -
  • You want to work with me.
    • -
  • - Some of my interests, projects or writings caught your attention and - you want to discuss them with me. -
    • -
  • Something fun!
    • -
-

Bad reasons to reach out include:

-
    -
  • - You want to sell something to me, and you mostly care about selling - that thing to me, not me loving the thing. -
    • -
  • - You don't like something posted here and want to let me know your - feelings. -
    • -
-
-
-
-

My projects

-

Some of the projects I've shared publicly:

- -

- There are also some other projects that I generally keep private but - might disclose under the right circumstances. Some notable hints: -

-
    -
  • - That one time I made a lot of money doing something everyone said - was stupid -
    • -
  • - Some work around helping people ignore EU regulations around - exchanging Bitcoin and Fiat -
    • -
-
-
-
-

Writings

-

Sometimes I like to jot down ideas and drop them here.

- -
-
-
-

Pablo Martín Calvo

-
- - + +
+
+

Contact

+

You can contact me on:

+
    +
  • +

    + On LinkedIn + for professional matters. +

    +
    • +
  • + On Nostr. My npub is: + npub1a29gdc6p7c05az2ka3qwwpl9kfcqmws3xlwmjefmtkulfhgd7u6shuqatg +
    • +
  • +

    At this stage I'm not open to other contacts.

    +
    • +
+

+ If you are looking for my CV, no need to reach out, + you can fetch it yourself here. +

+

Good reasons to reach out include:

+
    +
  • You want to work with me.
    • +
  • + Some of my interests, projects or writings caught your attention and + you want to discuss them with me. +
    • +
  • Something fun!
    • +
+

Bad reasons to reach out include:

+
    +
  • + You want to sell something to me, and you mostly care about selling + that thing to me, not me loving the thing. +
    • +
  • + You don't like something posted here and want to let me know your + feelings. +
    • +
+
+
+
+

My projects

+

Some of the projects I've shared publicly:

+ +

+ There are also some other projects that I generally keep private but + might disclose under the right circumstances. Some notable hints: +

+
    +
  • + That one time I made a lot of money doing something everyone said + was stupid +
    • +
  • + Some work around helping people ignore EU regulations around + exchanging Bitcoin and Fiat +
    • +
+
+
+
+

Writings

+

Sometimes I like to jot down ideas and drop them here.

+ +
+
+ + + + \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/public/writings/notes-and-lessons-from-my-departure-from-superhog.html b/public/writings/notes-and-lessons-from-my-departure-from-superhog.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1eeb16a --- /dev/null +++ b/public/writings/notes-and-lessons-from-my-departure-from-superhog.html @@ -0,0 +1,136 @@ + + + + + Pablo here + + + + + + + +
+

+ Hi, Pablo here +

+

back to home

+
+
+

Notes and lessons from my departure from Superhog

+

I'm writing this a few days before my last day at Superhog (now called Truvi). Having a few company + departures under my belt already, I know a bit on what will come next. I know one part of it is that 99% + of the details of what happened during my tenure at the company will completely disappear for the most + part, only triggered by eerily coincidental cues here and there every few years. I will remember clearly + a few crucial, exciting days and situations. I will also hold well the names and faces of those with who + I worked closely, as well as my personal impression and judgement of them. I will remember the office, + and some details of how my daily life was when I went there.

+

But most other things will be gone from my brain, surprisingly fast.

+

Knowing that experience is a great teacher, and regretting not doing this in the past, I've decided to + collect a few notes from my time at Superhog, hoping they will serve me in making the lessons I've + learnt here stick properly.

+
    +
  • Growing really fast an organization without an incredibly solid vision you're going to stick to is + terrible. Time, money and effort will be wasted left and right, and unless you have some magic tric + up your sleeve, you'll run out of money and panic. Growth is about having a great vision, going for + it and hoping for the best, not about collecting resources and hoping that they will somehow align + themselves towards making money.
    • +
  • + If you're in the leadership of a company, you make decisions, and then things go badly because of + them, people are going to think you've fucked up and won't be happy about it. Should you publicly + retrospect in an intelligent way, you have a chance at some degree of redemption, and you might even + make some of the employees hopeful again that there's still a second chance to go for success. If + you don't retrospect at all and pretend the mishaps have nothing to do with your management, they + won't just think you're incompentent: they simply won't take you seriously anymore, and won't be + honest to you. +
    • +
  • + If you're in a B2B business where customers will have a long term relationship with you, and you + have sales people, giving them incentives that are all about getting people onboard, and not about + long term performance, might be an expensive mistake. I've observed sales people who only care about + scoring deals engage in undesirable behaviours such as: +
      +
    • Sell to anyone, regardless of whether there's a good fit between your offering and the + customer needs.(no matter if they're a good fit).
      • +
    • Cut corners, surely do and say thing that are in moral gray areas. If you're unlucky, cross + moral red lines.
      • +
    • + Drive the people who build and deliver your offering crazy. Since they have no incentive to + care about what happens after a deal is signed, they don't care if their actions in the + sales pipeline turn into landmines during the long-term business relationship and execution + of the service. +
      • +
    + I think many of these issues get solved by structuring compensation so that they do well once the + leads they convert have been doing well for some time, however you want to measure that. Not only + nasty + behaviour can be avoided, but even new, good and constructive actions might arise. For example, your + sales people will care more about building a great product, and so they'll regularly feedback to + engineers and operations and care deeply about collaborating in improving things. +
    • +
  • + If you're lucky to find talented employees, go crazy about retaining them. +
    • +
  • + The unexpected death of collegues can be a great blow to the business. +
    • +
  • Non-technical founders need CTOs with strong characters nearby to protect them from themselves.
    • +
  • I managed to deliver astonishing amounts of value with extremely simple tooling. This had many + advantages and was a silent win. It's not sexy, but I think it should be.
    • +
  • If you are silently efficient budget wise, as in you manage to achieve something consuming way less + money than whatever is average for your context, but you don't explain it are notably noisy about + it, nobody will give a damn. Even worse, your levels of efficiency may be taken for granted and you + might encounter trouble when asking for more bucks, even if you're still way below average.
    • +
  • When there's a feeling that a ship is going down, I've observed there's a direct correlation between + how talented an employee is and the chances he departs early. The less gifted will stay until the + end.
    • +
  • + If you're a SaaS and want to scale, don't leave your Finance team orphan of IT resources. Invoicing, + gathering customer payment details, the most frequent accounting journals, etc. should be treated as + first class requirements of your architecture, not as an afterthought. Your finance team needs to + grow in engineers, not accountants. And if you have the feeling that the number of accountants is + growing linearly with the volume of the business, you are in serious trouble and need to do + something. Failing to do this will lead to some very nasty tech debt that will kill your speed and + potentially make you lose a lot of money. +
    • +
  • If you've had employees rotating through various departments in your org, doing very different jobs, + their views and opinions are worth solid gold and should be valued as such.
    • +
  • Right befores starting in this company, I had just read the book It doesn't have to be crazy at work + by + Jason Fried and DHH, and I thought I believed by then that it's worth creating a calm environment to + think clearly, since doing the right thing is way more important than executing fast, and fast paced + environments are not great to keep your head clear. After my time here, I'm now even more of a + believe of it.
    • +
  • Giving people in the business some basics on SQL is really useful, but that usefulness gets + multiplied by the tidyness and documentation of your DWH. If they need to call you up every time + because there's no way they can find and understand what they need in the DWH, teaching them SQL is + pointless and only leads to frustration.
    • +
  • + If you were part of the decision to hire someone, and then they decide to leave, you should talk + with them. Even if you're not working together every day and the org has changed quite a bit. You + had a stake in this person's entrance, they remember it vividly, and not calling them up will + disappoint them. +
    • +
  • + Engineering leadership is quite a bit like parenting when it comes to mirroring. Regadless of what + you say should be done, people will ignore that a lot and tend to do what you do. If senior + engineers do patchy shit on the database, don't document a thing, cut corners instead of building + properly, submit to absurd requests instead of collaborting productively with their non-tech + colleagues, etc, the rest of engineers will do it as well. Conversely, if you focus on quality, give + time and room to do things right, reward ingenious solutions to problems, treat incidents in + professional and serious ways, push back from stupid managerial situations and work things into a + way of working that is good for everyone, document your work properly, etc. you will soon find the + rest of your colleagues (specially, the most junior ones) following your lead, without you even + needing to insist on good practices. +
    • +
  • People care little about having an office on the beach.
    • + +
+
+

back to home

+
+
+ + + + \ No newline at end of file