Top all-time · #4285
Tig Kindel
Personal blog · ceklog.kindel.combusinesscareer
Tig Kindel's personal blog at ceklog.kindel.com covers business and career. Since 2011, 18 different Hacker News readers have linked it 83 times, most often “Be Either an App or a Platform, Not Both”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Tig Kindel's blog for a job decision matrix post for weighing what matters in a job, and for an analysis of why carriers downplay Windows Phone.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
This is Tig Kindel's blog. He writes about leadership and building products. Also about books, cars, guns, soccer, skiing, and beer.
Most-linked posts?
- Be Either an App or a Platform, Not Both2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-08-25
- Windows Phone is Superior; Why Hasn’t it Taken Off? 2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-12-26
- A Mouse and Keyboard Don’t Make a Hardware Company2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-07-27
- Experience = Stuff / Time2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-06-05
- Apps Must Be Cross Platform2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-10
- My Best Hiring Stunt to Date (2011)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-12-09
- Don't Build APIs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-04-18
What Hacker News says?
Write more. Read more. Seriously. It just takes practice. https://ceklog.kindel.com/2018/04/24/be-a-great-reader/
Comment linking /2018/04/24/be-a-great-reader/
on “The Amazon Builders' Library”Submitted Don't Build APIs as a story · 117 points
HN discussionKindel's 2nd Law – Companies with a subscriptions-based business model eventually behave in ways hostile to that company's customers.[1] [1] https://ceklog.kindel.com/2019/07/30/kindels-2nd-law/
Comment linking /2019/07/30/kindels-2nd-law/
on “Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website”Submitted Got a 4? You just got fired from Microsoft as a story · 39 points
HN discussionKindel's 3rd Law[1] – Amazon will enter every existing business, channel, and market. If said business, channel, or market doesn’t already exist, Amazon will try to invent it. [1] https://ceklog.kindel.com/2020/03/30/kindels-3rd-law/
Comment linking /2020/03/30/kindels-3rd-law/
on “AWS Ground Station”Submitted Google will abandon Android as a story · 33 points
HN discussionI wrote a similar piece predicting this would happen last March. http://ceklog.kindel.com/2012/03/31/google-will-abandon-andr...
Comment linking /2012/03/31/google-will-abandon-android/
on “Google has killed Android (the brand)”Submitted Microsoft shipped a broken DCOM CD-ROM and no-one noticed as a story · 23 points
HN discussion"Write Once Run Anywhere" is Anti-Customer. [1] Because of continued platform fragmentation WORA has been, is, and always will be a pipe-dream. People have been attempting to create WORA technologies since the beginning of time and they have all failed. The nice thing about Xamarin's model is your UI code uses native constructs, allowing for the best possible, most natural (to the user) experience. But you get to st…
Comment linking /2013/02/21/james-gosling-screwed-us-write-once-is-anti-customer/
on “Microsoft and Xamarin partner”Submitted Windows Phone is Superior; Why Hasn’t it Taken Off? as a story · 23 points
HN discussionThere is nothing Google can do about it. The cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Everything they try will simply make the problem worse. - Release new versions faster? Nope. More fragmentation. - Pressure MOs/OEMs to only ship latest versions? Nope. Just pisses them off and makes them more inclined to fork. - Reduce flexiblilty (better abstraction layers for hardware) ala WP7? Nope. MOs/OEMs care most about flexibil…
Comment linking /2012/01/14/fragmentation-is-not-the-end-of-android/
on “Android Fragmentation Visualized”Submitted Fragmentation Is Not The End of Android as a story · 12 points
HN discussionHere's a nice article on figuring out what's important for you when you are looking for a job: http://ceklog.kindel.com/2012/04/26/the-job-decision-matrix/
Comment linking /2012/04/26/the-job-decision-matrix/
on “I burned out at BigCo. Am I a fool for thinking I can avoid this at a startup?”Submitted Why Surface is Not a Microsoft Business as a story · 11 points
HN discussionI wrote a post the other day about how to think about career trajectory/growth. In my experience people generally think about it wrong. TL;DR: Don't think about your career as a ballistic trajectory, but more as a series of interplanetary missions. http://ceklog.kindel.com/2012/04/08/you-are-thinking-of-your...
Comment linking /2012/04/08/you-are-thinking-of-your-career-trajectory-wrong/
on “Coding is priority number five”Submitted Apps are Dead. Long Live Experiences. as a story · 9 points
HN discussion>The whole 64-bit Adobe CS for OS X debacle comes to mind, it took them about 5 years too long to transition from Carbon to Cocoa, even though it was clear from the very first OS X version that Carbon was going to be replaced and would never have a 64-bit version. I think Adobe really believed they could strong-arm Apple on that. I think they were spoiled by Microsoft's dedication to backwards compatibility at all c…
Comment linking /2012/04/18/dont-build-apis/
on “Flash Player exits Android”Submitted Paying Developers is a Bad Idea as a story · 9 points
HN discussionYes, I posted this to several mailing lists that had thousands of people on them. I got about 500 responses. Most were of the "LOL" variety. One said "I found this to be in very poor taste." I got 11 solid leads, and 2 of those turned into hires. More here: http://ceklog.kindel.com/2011/10/27/my-best-hiring-stunt-to-...
Comment linking /2011/10/27/my-best-hiring-stunt-to-date/
on “Things I wish people who write job postings would stop writing”Submitted James Gosling Screwed Us: “Write Once…” is Anti-Customer as a story · 6 points
HN discussionApple makes almost no money, in relative terms, from app store sales (about 1% in '10)[1]. The business of running the appstore is not the reason they will never fully support cross-platform mobile development. The real reason is websites that run as apps break Apple’s strangle-hold on their walled garden. Apple's business model is to sell devices via a tightly controlled channel (read few middlemen) at a high-margi…
Comment linking /2012/07/24/apps-must-be-cross-platform/
on “Go native, HTML5 is going to lag for a while”Submitted Be Either an App or a Platform, Not Both as a story · 6 points
HN discussionIt is never a good idea to pay developers to support a platform [1]. I struggle to find a single proof point of a successful platform where early dev adoption was kickstarted by the provider paying for apps. All that paying for apps does is get uncommitted developers doing second-rate work. It sets the expectation that payments will continue as well. I was bullish about ADN until I read this news. Now I fear it is d…
Comment linking /2012/09/26/paying-developers-is-a-bad-idea/
on “App.net developer incentive programme”Submitted Google will abandon Android as a story · 5 points
HN discussion"Fragmentation means that the platform is divided into multiple incompatible versions." You are describing only one aspect/axes of fragmentation: Operating System fragmentation. To really have a discussion of Android's fragmentation you have to take into account the entire mobile ecosystem. You must consider the fragmentation across 5 axes: - User Interface - Device - Operating System - Marketplace - Service FWIW, I…
Comment linking /2012/01/14/fragmentation-is-not-the-end-of-android/
on “Measuring fragmentation in Android”Submitted Kindel's Law as a story · 4 points
HN discussionMicrosoft will make & sell, maybe 5M Surface units in the first 12 months. Maybe. Who's going to make & sell the other 345M PCs that are sold every year. This talk of Microsoft becoming a hardware company is crazy talk with no understanding of the underlying dynamics of the industry. I recently wrote a post on this: http://ceklog.kindel.com/2012/07/25/a-mouse-and-keyboard-don...
Comment linking /2012/07/25/a-mouse-and-keyboard-dont-make-a-hardware-company/
on “The end of the road for OEMs”Submitted Attention is the Currency of Leadership as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis is really about asymmetric competition. @asymco does a great job analyzing this; that Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, while competitors have fundamentally different business models. Even if these companies had similar business models to Apple, they would be insane to try to complete with Apple on Apple's terms. This is why Microsoft is not really becoming a hardware company[1] and why Amazon is focusing o…
Comment linking /2012/06/07/wanna-compete-with-apple-focus-on-experiences/
on “Kindle Fire HD 8.9 vs. iPad 3: Is the Apple Experience really worth $200?”Submitted Apps Must Be Cross Platform as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
