Brian Hall
9.6K posts
Brian Hall
@IsForAt
#1 WA state stan. x-VP Google, AWS, Microsoft + startup CEO. Seattle native, helpless M's (and WA) fan. Massie kinda R, MGP kinda D. need opptys for our kids.
Seattle, WA Katılım Şubat 2012
2.8K Takip Edilen9.8K Takipçiler
@JenMsft I held off as long as I could! I've had perfect vision my whole life, but when I turned 47 my reading vision went waaaaaay downhill.
I have also purchased reading glasses. What have I become?
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I regret to inform you all that I have begrudgingly increased the font size on my iPhone. 👓
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Brian Hall retweetledi
Had dinner last night with my in-laws and their non political older friends. If anything, I'd say they are all old school liberals, but anyways... here is my takeaway:
* There is a feeling that the current leadership in Olympia is going to get creamed this election.
* They called it the "millionaires tax".
* They flat out believe the "millionaires tax" will become an "everyone tax" if it isn't overturned.
* Everyone was against the income tax.
* They knew that Rob McKenna was leading the lawsuit against the income tax.
* Direct quote: "I simply want what my high taxes already pay for, and I'm not getting it."
* Everyone was misinformed that they could simply live in another state for 6 months + 1 day (the new tax hits you at 30 days of residency).
* Nobody at the table even mentioned Trump during this discussion.
* Only one person knew there are 5 supreme court seats up for election.
* The friends now know what Future 42 is.
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Scottsdale Unified School District announces that Victor “Butch” Goncharoff is Saguaro's new football coach, approved by district governing board.
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@Anusien totally. Or you realize the CEO and leadership team are in their last chapter and it's "don't screw it up for the next few years" versus trying to really make something happen. (and that is why good = not just caretaker boards matter too my friends)
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This is also a life hack to understanding why companies do anything. Usually the different goal is “don’t get sued” or “make our investors happy”.
Brian Hall@IsForAt
it's remarkable how often in life things that don't make sense are just optimized for a different goal. The exercise I use at work for when there is strong conflict is to ask each to explain why the others' idea would be correct. this normally helps distill down not good/bad idea but what is top priority. it's applicable pretty broadly, even with why wars are happening or silly taxes are being passed in WA state. but then again, sometimes the answer for the optimization bugs you more than what was just a "dumb idea" before ;-)
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it's remarkable how often in life things that don't make sense are just optimized for a different goal.
The exercise I use at work for when there is strong conflict is to ask each to explain why the others' idea would be correct. this normally helps distill down not good/bad idea but what is top priority.
it's applicable pretty broadly, even with why wars are happening or silly taxes are being passed in WA state.
but then again, sometimes the answer for the optimization bugs you more than what was just a "dumb idea" before ;-)
Brian Hall@IsForAt
The reason it doesn't work this way is that you are asking for the title to represent reporting, when in reality in most companies it means pay and level of impact expected from the job. You can agree that one manager job can be harder and higher impact than another, so they get different titles in this optimization. You CAN optimize for less titles, e.g at very basic level last I checked Amazon had no level 9 when Microsoft and Google have equivalents. But then you have an issue with logjams at 8 and risk of losing people to the others who have an in-between of director and VP. So not saying you're wrong, just that's not pri1 for what titles are accomplishing most of the time
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Brian Hall retweetledi
This is the thing that #Seattle + #WA electeds don't seem to understand - companies don't just spring from nowhere and aren't perpetual money machines to be harvested. A society that doesn't encourage entrepreneurship is a society in decline, it just may not know it yet.
David Senra@davidsenra
"Capitalism created the possibility of the win win win. It used to be a zero sum game where somebody won, somebody else lost. The biggest mistake people make, intellectuals in particular, they still think we're in a zero sum world. They're obsessed with some billionaires because Bernie Sanders thinks that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk somehow stole the money from the people. They don't understand that it's this prosperity machine that's creating more, not just for those billionaires, but for everything that they're touching. They're creating value for their customers, they're creating value for their employees. Their suppliers are flourishing, their investors are seeing their capital go up. It can be reinvested and compound. All philanthropy ultimately comes from business. That's where the profits are. Where does all the taxes come from? It ultimately comes from business as well. This is the engine that's lifting humanity out. The entrepreneurs are the drivers of that engine. Somebody like Elon Musk, he gets a very, very, very tiny sliver of the value that he creates for the whole world." — @iamjohnmackey
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@matvelloso Already happening, e.g. Google publicly talked about the security focused Gemini that was initially only available through Google security products.
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If you think this is concerning, wait until models become fully private. Not stage releases, actually private.
Then the companies that build models vs the ones that outsource them because they can't build a model to save themselves will be clearly segregated.
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The reason it doesn't work this way is that you are asking for the title to represent reporting, when in reality in most companies it means pay and level of impact expected from the job.
You can agree that one manager job can be harder and higher impact than another, so they get different titles in this optimization.
You CAN optimize for less titles, e.g at very basic level last I checked Amazon had no level 9 when Microsoft and Google have equivalents. But then you have an issue with logjams at 8 and risk of losing people to the others who have an in-between of director and VP.
So not saying you're wrong, just that's not pri1 for what titles are accomplishing most of the time
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How I wished job titles worked in big tech 👇
In my role I spend a lot of time chatting with senior execs from big tech companies and the sheer variety and way that job titles are used amazes me.
So here is how it should work.
CEO = Reports to the Board
SVP = Reports into the CEO
GM = Reports into an SVP
VP = Reports into a GM
Director = Reports into a VP
Manager = Reports into a Director
Individual Contributor = Reports into Manager
If the organisation needs more than five layers of executives between the CEO and the people on the ground doing the work then something else is wrong.
Thoughts?
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@stevemur It's worse - it's considered disrespectful to inspect. Racist even some times. Gotta get past that first...
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Can we do away with the general "honor system" method of doling out billions of dollars?
We used to have a high-trust society. In far too many places, it's fallen into low-trust. The "Chump Effect" is when one plays by the rules but sees others take advantage of the law-abiding. It's set in. People have taken advantage, and the privilege of trust is now gone.
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️@christopherrufo
EXCLUSIVE: California spends $30 billion per year paying 800,000 people to cook, clean, shop, and watch television with family members and others. This "in-home care" program operates mostly on the honor system—and loses $6 to $12 billion a year to fraud. city-journal.org/article/califo…
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@meowiners hahaha my son is a huge M’s fan and happens to also doing be psych research at Harvard — he said “Ha! The IRB (Institutional Review Board) would never allow that kind of cruel experiment anymore”
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Good evening. “Seattle Mariners baseball” was a 50 year psychological study conducted by Harvard University. We are now complete with our study. Thank you for your time.
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@QuinnyPig They were super late to the game - not even acknowledging the need until later. It's on their multi cloud path...
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I did not expect to see Google and Microsoft both outpacing AWS here. Hmm...
Google Cloud@googlecloud
Forrester has named Google Cloud a Leader in The @forrester Wave™: Sovereign Cloud Platforms, Q1 2026 Learn more about our sovereign-by-design philosophy in the full report, here → goo.gle/4cb61nE
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umm, I just asked it to format something for me and:
"
What I cannot do directly
❌ I can’t silently edit the live Word file for you in the background
❌ I can’t “push” formatting into that document without either:
generating a new corrected .docx for you to download, or giving you text that you paste once
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isn't this the most obvious use case? I was asking copilot to just format some text.
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I am in Microsoft Word. I press Copilot. I ask for a table.
The AI can't modify the Word document so it creates a new document in the cloud. It then allows me access the document through a link. Presumably I am supposed to go there, copy the table and put it in my Word document myself.
Who designed this ?
This is so obviously a low-effort implementation that I am baffled. It is almost as if they wanted to fail.
Why can't Microsoft see that having direct access to Microsoft Word is an incredible edge that they could leverage to embed the AI directly?
It is almost comical.
Imhotep@hiddenmarkov1
@lemire I was in excel. I wanted some visuals for my data so I hit the Copilot button and told it do make an infographic of my data. it said I don't have access to the data, you need to upload it. Even though the sheet with the data was literally next to the Copilot window.
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"Roll the Fuckin' rock away, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar
"Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell" -- Jake Tapper reads Trump's Truth Social post on air
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Hey @AngieMentink how did you know the double shoulder was coming for Klassen? First rate call!!!
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@nypost Can I say something without everyone getting mad
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Notorious Gen. Soleimani's sultry grandniece led lavish lifestyle touring US hotspots, as her mom promoted Iranian regime trib.al/y38evjw
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@camaustin Yep - we're making sure there are some great judges running and we'll share the list. @bkheywood and @stevemgordon67 doing a great job leading
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@IsForAt hey there are 5 open seats on the WA Supreme Court up for election this fall, and the registration deadline is next month. Do you know—is anybody doing anything about getting some rule of law judges to run? The biggest problem with this tax is that it’s so unlawful.
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