Mike Arnesen

Optimize the Planet!

Mike Arnesen

If You Make Remote Impossible, Don’t Pretend You Support It

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Preface: I’m a Simple customer and I greatly admire the company. Before I founded UpBuild, Simple was a company I dreamed of working for in-house. I still think they’re great, but I’ve been trying to blog more regularly and this recent news really got me worked up. I’m inspired.

“If we remove the geographic constraints we can be hiring the best tech talent wherever they are“, said a company spokeswoman while discussing the company’s move to herd once-remote employees into a brick-and-mortar office.  And, yes, “herd” is an appropriate description for “collecting a number of scattered employees in the city under one roof”.

via GIPHY

I hope I’m not the only one who noticed that establishing an office in a new city to house your employees directly contradicts the idea of “removing the best geographic constraints (to hire) the best tech talent wherever they are”.

It sounds like there were toying with the idea of hiring the best talent where they were, noticed that most of them were in one city, and then slammed an office down in said city. Now, that “talent” who once had the flexibility and freedom of remote work will now have to come into an office each day and be “the best tech talent that’s willing to work in an office in Seattle.” That’s called “creating unnecessary geographic constraints”. [Read more…] about If You Make Remote Impossible, Don’t Pretend You Support It

I’m not a JavaScript developer; I just play one on the Internet

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I spent almost my entire day yesterday steeped in JavaScript. UpBuild began doing work with the idea of form abandonment tracking about a year ago after I was inspired by a post by Simo Ahava. The idea is that you use JavaScript to listen to each input field of a form that’s interacted with, log that at each step along the way, and then if someone doesn’t hit the Submit button, send the complete history into Google Analytics. [Read more…] about I’m not a JavaScript developer; I just play one on the Internet

Silent Retreat

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Silent meditation retreats have appealed to me for years (I’ve only ever been on one, but it was great), but this week I went on a different type of silent retreat.

After working exclusively from home for the two years, I’ve definitely noticed that I get sick a lot less. I get to avoid other humans and their germs and I’m not subjected to being crammed into an office each day and just praying that Patient 0 isn’t hidden somewhere waiting to infect me. Even so, I’m by no means immune to sickness. I still have to go outside of the house on occasion. [Read more…] about Silent Retreat

Of sunsets and swells

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As of today, it’s been two years since something I loved started to fall apart. The dream began to unravel. At first, slowly. Then, faster and faster until, suddenly, I found myself hanging out at the waterfront park in Portland in the middle of a workday with nothing to do.

I’ve had this anniversary as a recurring event on my calendar for a while. I’m not sure why but I’m glad that it was there to remind me. It’s allowed me to reflect on the impermanence of things, how expectations shape our happiness, and how potentially great things either realize their potential or go down in flames (flames, either publically visible or hidden).

I knew for a while that I wanted to write a blog post on this day. I was less certain as to what the post would be about. [Read more…] about Of sunsets and swells

Watch “Silicon Valley’s Secret” on CNN’s Mostly Human

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This post.

Short and bittersweet.

I don’t have much to say that’s not said by this moving piece. If posting about this here can give this video a little more exposure than it would have gotten otherwise, I’ll feel pretty good about that.

Mostly Human, Silicon Valley's Secret — Depression
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This episode of Mostly Human, titled “Silicon Valley’s Secret” is about depression — particularly in, and as fueled by, startup culture. While the episode is focused on Silicon Valley, depression in startups happens everywhere. In fact, it’s a little disappointing that the “Silicon Valley” scope is so narrow. I’d hate for anyone to come away with the feeling that this is a problem exclusive to Silicon Valley folks and entrepreneurs who take VC money. [Read more…] about Watch “Silicon Valley’s Secret” on CNN’s Mostly Human

Everyone is the hero of their own story

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People will warn you about meeting your heroes. Outsized expectations can easily breed disappointment. Or, maybe, your hero just turns out to be a jerk in-person. But, that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about giving more thoughtful consideration to the stories of larger-than-life figures that you take on as inspiration. What it’s really about is the realization that you truly have to consider multiple perspectives and points of view for any given story-as-lesson.

It was sometime within the last two months that I heard a great anecdote from a successful entrepreneur/founder. The interesting part wasn’t necessarily the company he built or how he built it, but what he did after it became a success. He disappeared. [Read more…] about Everyone is the hero of their own story