What is this?
Hello! I've been meaning to start a newsletter for a while and am excited to finally be getting into it now! You're getting this either because you signed up on my website or because I know you personally and thought you might appreciate this.
This first update will be much longer than the rest because I'm setting context as to why I'm doing this and what content this will have ongoing.
If you're interested in giving this a shot, thank you! I'm thinking of sending an update at most once a week and maybe closer to once a month.
If you don't want to be here, no offense whatsoever if you'd rather unsubscribe (at the bottom). If you don't want emails but would be open to reading via RSS, add this link to your RSS reader.
If you have feedback on how I can make this more useful/interesting to you or how I can improve my writing generally, please reply directly to the email (only goes to me) and let me know. Feel free to forward any update to anyone you think would appreciate this as well.
Why I'm starting a newsletter
I'm going to figure this newsletter thing out as I go. I'm not sure yet what this is going to turn into content-wise, but I'm grateful to have you here as a part of the journey.
I generally have three goals for my writing:
Improve my skills in writing thoughtful analyses on product, strategy, policy, etc. Learn from you all via your responses to my writing
Be helpful to at least some of my subscribers 😃
Share with my community what I'm up to and what I'm thinking about (both professional and personal)
Depending on how much personal stuff ends up in #3 above, I may split this into a professional newsletter and a personal newsletter for friends/family, but for now I'll keep everything coupled.
What will be in this newsletter
Some combination of the following things, proportion for each not yet known.
Links to my own writing (hosted on hadardor.com/writing) with a quick TL;DR for each post
Links to others' writings that I thought was especially insightful (books and essays) with a quick TL;DR in my words
Ad hoc updates on my life / what I'm thinking about (longer form always as a post on my site)
Specific things I've learned recently (facts, stats, etc.)
Media I've been enjoying recently. Mostly music. Some film and photos. Maybe more, we'll see!
Okay... let's go!
Hadar's Newsletter #1 - June 15, 2020
My life
I'm maintaining a Now Page on my website with details on what I'm doing right now. Check it out here.
I also have a Next Page with thoughts on what I want to spend my time on next.
I quit my job at Lyft in March to start an indefinite career hiatus. I wrote up my hiatus goals here.
This was before COVID-19 hit, and within a few days of starting the hiatus everything had to change. I ended up spending three months living in Argentina but recently made it back to the Bay Area. More on that later.
My career
More on this next update, but for now I'll say:
I'll be writing plenty over time about my learnings from Lyft and past companies
I left my job at Lyft in March, and this hiatus has been mostly full of things other than work
I've been spending some time with friends building out testandtrace.com, a
I've been spending lots of time mentoring junior/aspiring PMs and advising small startups
What I've written recently
I've recently written several posts on product management:
Product Management Resources: exhaustive doc full of links to other peoples' writings about product management, mostly geared towards junior/aspiring PMs learning the craft
Product Interviewing: tips and tricks to excel in product management interviews
Product Frameworks: sporadic collection of mental models I use in my day-to-day as a Product Manager (I'll probably convert each mental model into its own longform post over time)
How I think about collaboration: Post I wrote while at Lyft a while back about what I've learned about effective cross-functional collaboration
I also wrote a post in March about COVID-19 analyzing the risk and what America ought to do to mitigate. Check it out here, though by now it probably won't be that novel to anyone.
What I'm reading
A bit meta, but I've been spending some time recently reading about how I can be a better reader.
I've found Farnam Street's "Guide to Reading Better" series incredibly helpful
The above has a ton of links to go through to get the complete picture, but this one post is a great starting point to gauge how interested you might be
With all that's going on lately around racial justice for Black Americans, I've been reading in attempt to improve my understanding of what's going on and how I can be helpful
The Atlantic - The Case for Reparations: In-depth piece on anti-black discrimination since the Civil Rights Movement
LA Times - Op-Ed: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge: Touching piece giving context to why protests have been having the past several weeks
The Atlantic - For the First Time, I'm Doubting My Decision to Come to America: This one was written based on Coronavirus, but also relevant to racial injustice. It brought me to tears the first time I read it. It's crazy to think that America has turned in from "a safe haven full of opportunity for all" into a country others now fear to travel to. We have a lot of work to do
Stratechery - Dust in the Light: More on this topic next time, but another thing that has been top of mind for me between COVID, elections, and racial justice is the internet's relationship to how we communicate with one another and consume content. There's a big debate now around what the right trade-off is between preventing harmful content from surfacing on the internet and empowering everyone to express themselves fully. This post by Ben Thompson is a temporally relevant intro to a way of thinking about this space that has most resonated with me so far.
What I'm thinking about
What can I/we be doing to help accelerate the end of COVID? I feel like I've exhausted my options to contribute. Hopefully this ends soon.
I don't believe I'll ever be able to fully appreciate the struggle of Black Americans. I'm ashamed of how little I've done to understand and help ameliorate racism around me. I have a lot to learn and a lot to do in this area. More on this later.
I'm fascinated by the internet content moderation debate, and am reading a bunch about that now. I think this is one of the most important problems of our lifetime given its impact on how well (or not) our democracy functions
Music
I haven't been as on top of discovering new music lately as I like to be, but here are some albums I've kept coming back to over the past several months:
Film
I really enjoyed watching the Before trilogy (Before Sunrise, Sunset, and Midnight). Maybe the best dialogue in any film I can remember.
My favorite newsletters
Other people's newsletters I love. Always looking for more recommendations if you have any! I'm embarrassingly lacking in newsletters from women and people of color and would love to add some to my list.
Some friends' personal newsletters: James, Preet, and Varadh