Brian Alkerton

This All Happened: Cancun Edition

I'm really good at making single-serving friends, which is a really useful talent when you tend to travel solo. However, the standards for people you hope to hang out with while you're at a resort tend to be lower than those you'd set for people you consider your inner circle. That's not to say these aren't great folks - they're just not people I'm going to completely open up to the way I might with someone I've known for years.

It's what happens when you spend an hour at the hotel bar talking with a couple about their lives, their goals,...

So This All Happened.

Two weird experiences this week. One that multiple people told me to mock, one that actually deserved it.

I had an extra ticket to a show. No one cancelled on me, I just bought two tickets figuring it would probably get me a date on Tinder. It did, and a fantastic time was had, but not before sending a bunch of women messages saying "Hey! Want to check out this show tonight?" One of the replies was "I can't, but if you want to grab a drink on less short notice, let me know."

The woman in question said in her...

Whatever Helps You Get Through The Day

I don't believe in God, but at the same time I don't feel confident saying with anything approaching certainty that there is no God. I don't think there's sufficient evidence out there to prove he exists, but the evidence he doesn't exist, while it basically encompasses all of science so far... well, it's just that. So far. Did someone flip the switch on the Big Bang? I don't know. No one does. "But God requires faith..." That's the kind of bullshit people tell themselves to justify their worldview. I mean, it doesn't look like God exists, but it didn't look like...

One Secret To My Success

I'm lucky to have read a couple books this year that have seriously impacted my way of thinking: Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile is probably the heaviest read I've ever taken on a vacation, but ideas like optionality, iatrogenics, and black swan events have had a big influence on me. Another that I recently finished was Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. One impact that the latter book has immediately had on me is that I talk way more in probabilities.

I'm thinking about working on Parliament Hill now that I've put in the work to get an MP elected....

Why I Quit, And What's Next

So, tomorrow's the one-month anniversary of me quitting my job at Shopify. It was as amicable as these things can go.

To answer the one question I've heard more than any other since making my decision, why did I leave an amazing company with great perks? To be clear, Shopify is a great company, easily the best I've worked for. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the catered lunches, snacks, and camaraderie. But without diving into exact numbers, here's why:

Not the most elegant graph, but I'll try to explain. Joining Shopify...