Top all-time · #4198
Jason Crawford
Personal blog · jasoncrawford.org · on HN as jasoncrawfordhistoryphilosophystartups
Jason Crawford's personal blog at jasoncrawford.org covers history, philosophy and startups. Since 2009, 18 different Hacker News readers have linked it 46 times, most often “How to cope with the Gmail redesign”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Jason Crawford's essays on engineering teams and productivity, plus Gmail usability fixes and a guide to Scott Alexander's writing. HN readers link his Gmail how-to and his 'stupid people' essay.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Writing about the history and philosophy of progress
Most-linked posts?
- How to cope with the Gmail redesign6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2012-04-21
- How to Work with "Stupid" People3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-11-20
- Precognition2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-14
- You are Probably Mis-Diagnosing People as Stupid2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-04-27
- Who is Scott Alexander and what is he about?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-02-14
- “10x engineers”: Stereotypes and research2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-07-14
- The Lessons of Xanadu2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-08-07
What Hacker News says?
For anyone interested, seems like a good overview: https://jasoncrawford.org/guide-to-scott-alexander-and-slate... hn discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26128579 (seriously, don't miss on reading some of Scott's posts -- you will be disappointed by almost every piece of nonfiction you read afterwards) It's definitely one of those cases of "If everyone thought a little more like X , Earth would be a muc…
Comment linking /guide-to-scott-alexander-and-slate-star-codex
on “Statement on New York Times Article”Submitted “10x engineers”: Stereotypes and research as a story · 290 points
HN discussionI appreciate the overall point of the article, but have a gripe. The author (and others) gets it wrong on the original meaning of 10x. A 10x engineer isn't someone who is 10x as productive as their peers, they are 10x as productive as their worst performing peer. The original study the author links to compares the difference of work between the fastest code and the slowest code. The fast debugger and the slow debugg…
Comment linking /10x-engineers
on ““Normal” engineers are the key to great teams”Submitted How to cope with the Gmail redesign as a story · 273 points
HN discussionYou might also like other advice from this article: http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-... At least for me it made gmail bearable again.
Comment linking /2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-redesign/
on “Whatever goes up, that’s what we do”Submitted You are Probably Mis-Diagnosing People as Stupid as a story · 193 points
HN discussionI've been able to get most of the old gmail interface back by following Jason Crawford's recommendations: http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-... The stuff I cared about anyway. I agree it is sad.
Comment linking /2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-redesign/
on “Introducing Outlook.com - Modern Email for the Next Billion Mailboxes”Submitted Amazon’s “two-pizza teams”: The ultimate divisional organization (2013) as a story · 114 points
HN discussionFYI, I found this article really helpful: http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-... It shows how to: get rid of "importance" markers, add some contrast back to the colors, remove superfluous whitespace, and most importantly, change the impenetrable icons back to text.
Comment linking /2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-redesign/
on “GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism”Submitted Who is Scott Alexander and what is he about? as a story · 65 points
HN discussionI can't fault Google for experimenting, but the 'all or nothing' approach they took to the rollout was an example of false choice. The classic coloring could have been offered as a theme to lessen the impact of the UX changes. In case you miss the old color scheme, try this Stylish theme: http://userstyles.org/styles/64637/gmail-google-mail-classic... Follow Jason's post to fix icons and spacing: http://jasoncrawfor…
Comment linking /2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-redesign/
on “GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism”Submitted Peak age for entrepreneurship? As an entrepreneur, I don’t care as a story · 53 points
HN discussionmany of these issues can changed to be more old-gmail-like http://jasoncrawford.org/2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-... 1) remove important markers 2) add labels to actions/buttons
Comment linking /2012/04/how-to-cope-with-the-gmail-redesign/
on “GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism”Submitted Ayn Rand's Objectivism and the Silicon Valley ethos have a lot in common as a story · 17 points
HN discussionYes, in particular, Amazon is notable for using written documents instead of slides: https://slab.com/blog/jeff-bezos-writing-management-strategy... And for their funny habit of reading the document in the meeting (Bezos calls it “study hall”): https://jasoncrawford.org/the-silent-reading-technique But of course there's lots of spoken communication as well.
Comment linking /the-silent-reading-technique
on “Amazon’s “two-pizza teams”: The ultimate divisional organization (2013)”Submitted Error messages are part of your UI as a story · 17 points
HN discussionMy brother wrote an essay on how to work with "stupid" people (which starts with recognizing they're not stupid). https://jasoncrawford.org/how-to-work-with-stupid-people
Comment linking /how-to-work-with-stupid-people
on “Books on Making and Maintaining Friendships”Submitted Respect the competition as a story · 14 points
HN discussionOriginal article: http://jasoncrawford.org/2010/04/how-to-work-with-stupid-peo...
Comment linking /2010/04/how-to-work-with-stupid-people/
on “How to Work with Stupid People”Submitted A Simple Guide to Life as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI just wrote a 1-year followup to this: https://jasoncrawford.org/what-really-happened-at-fieldbook
Comment linking /what-really-happened-at-fieldbook
on “What happened at Fieldbook (startup postmortem, 2018)”Submitted Startup idea: Turnkey self-publishing service for authors as a story · 12 points
HN discussionWell, turns out this was rather prescient https://jasoncrawford.org/the-civil-liberties-threat-from-co...
Comment linking /the-civil-liberties-threat-from-covid-19
on “Germany will issue antibody certificates to allow quarantined to work again”Submitted The Apollo Project as a story of adventure and leadership as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Work with "Stupid" People as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Lessons of Xanadu (2022) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Lessons of Xanadu as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Invite people to ascend PG's hierarchy of disagreement as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Software undergoes mitosis: Why Twitter’s API strategy was brilliant as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted What everyone should know about first aid as a story · 3 points
HN discussion