The first car I ever drove was a 2003 Honda Pilot.  It was a silver SUV that I drove to and from high school every day of my senior year, blaring pop music and not giving much of a shit that the thing didn’t have a single camera or screen. By the time I stopped … Continue reading I want to make things as awesome as backup cameras

I want to pursue my most important goals with single-minded vigor. In some areas of my life, I truly believe I could move mountains with enough time and effort. In other areas, not so much. There are plenty of things that I find worthwhile to do, but not worthwhile enough to perfect - things I'll … Continue reading things I’m ok with being just ok at

I have moved to the Seattle area.  It’s a fresh start for me, again, just like going to college was. I thought one of my close college friends was moving here too but he recently decided to stay on the east coast for his girlfriend. So I’m here with a good handful of starter friends … Continue reading 23

I write software for routers that shuttle packets between datacenters. The nitty gritty of exactly how packets are crafted, forwarded and received by different brands of routers and their respective OSes matters a lot in my day to day. So, I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few months working with command line … Continue reading Unix networking command line tools I use to do my job

A prosperous society is one in which people know enough and have enough to find happiness of their own accord.

A cynical take of mine is that no one wants to hear about what you’re doing unless you’re already successful at it. People take comfort in knowing that other people fail too, but it’s intensely uncomfortable to actually witness failure happening. A comedian bombing a set, a violinist butchering an audition, a politician stumbling through … Continue reading It should be okay to fail

It’s been almost a full year since I flew home from Brown to finish my senior year in my childhood bedroom. The announcement telling everyone to leave came on a Thursday I think, and after a frightened call with my parents, I booked a plane ticket for the next day. I spent the day packing … Continue reading 1 year of Covid-19

from: Amy Huang amy.jiamei.huang@gmail.comto: jason@jasoncrawford.orgdate: Jan 16, 2021, 6:13 PMsubject: Question from a Roots of Progress reader: first mile vs. last mile problemsmailed-by: gmail.com Hi Jason, I read your blog and twitter avidly. They help me think about the question "how do I do the most good for society?" I'm writing to ask for your … Continue reading An email I sent to Jason Crawford

I am devoutly atheist. Growing up in suburban Texas, I made a lot of religious friends, a few of which sometimes encouraged me to try Christianity on for a size. It did not work, but I gained a huge appreciation for religion. As flawed as it is, religion is admirable for being humankind's attempt at … Continue reading An atheist’s moral code

Lately I've been posting to Linkedin a lot. It seems like the right place to shout into the void about work stuff, and I enjoy bringing healthy cynicism to a platform known for disgustingly cheerful content. Here are 4 of my posts that I particularly like. On Managers Having a manager who is a decent … Continue reading 4 Linkedin posts I’m proud of