Hi! 👋
My name is Lev. I live in San Francisco and work in the tech industry. I am passionate about building teams and helping people solve complex business problems. I'm currently working at Dagger where I get to work with an amazing team and spend my time helping developers remove toil from CI/CD.
Outside of work I enjoy cooking, eating, chess, reading, writing, music, peloton, traveling, and public transit. I spend a little bit of time every day studying Chinese. I am surrounded by great friends and a wonderful family. I am traveling on a journey through space and time with Aosheng, who is a brilliant designer and my favorite person in the world.
Recent Posts
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Meritocracy?
Earlier this year, large swaths of the tech industry declared death to DEI and ushered in the era of Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. I wrote about it then noting that hypocrisy rhymes with meritocracy. They made themselves a website to celebrate each other.
That website has a list of familiar faces if you’ve been paying attention to the random tech people that have donated money to Trump and his super PACs, or were first in line to kiss the ring on Nov 6th.
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Now What?
I have a dream last night where I saw my grandpa giving a speech. But in the dream I was watching myself watching him give a speech. I was crying, I miss him.
But maybe this was a sign? He was a huge Trump supporter, he found a way to bring him up every time we had a conversation over the last few years. We never agreed much on politics, but we always had thoughtful discussions and I miss those too.
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How to Play in the World Cup
There are two ways to play in the world cup. You can either qualify or you can host the games.
I see this as an analogy for a career in the tech industry. The world cup is “a seat at the table”. If you want to be an executive in a tech company you can climb your way to the top or you can take a shortcut and start your own company.
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长沙臭豆腐 - Changsha Stinky Tofu
My Chinese teacher gave me some homework to describe a place I want to travel to and what I am going to do when I get there. This is what I came up with.
明年我想去长沙旅游。
我的朋友告诉我，长沙有好吃的臭豆腐。 我想吃那个豆腐！😋
It says:
I want to travel to Changsha next year.
My friend told me that Changesha has delicious stinky tofu.
I want to eat that tofu.
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Changsha Skyline Image By Ckproject - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73973380Stinky Tofu Image By N509FZ - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92501017
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видно по глазам - you can see it in the eyes
I read a post today from Rene Coignard where he tells the story of unexpectedly being spoken to in Russian at a McDonalds in Germany. It reminded me of this time that I went to the Grounds for Sculpture in Trenton, NJ.
I was wandering around the grounds and enjoying all the wonderful sculptures when I came across a lake. There were two women standing near the shore and they were both chatting in Russian. Then one of them looked over at me and shouted to me in Russian “Hey! Can you take our photo?”