Mar 17, 2024 22 min read weekly

DPS 周刊 140 - Burn Book, Burn Life

上周的 DPS 周刊我们推荐了 Kara Swisher 的 Burn Book，这周才把整本书读完，所以可以更好地介绍这本书。

整本书一共十六章，横跨了 Kara 三十多年的职业生涯。这三十多年也是美国科技业发展最迅猛的三十年，所以整本书的节奏非常快。在这些章节中，Kara 回忆了自己和诸多硅谷大鳄打交道的经历，比如 Steve Jobs，Elon Musk，Mark Zuckerberg 等等。尽管浸润在这样的环境中，Kara 始终保持自己的观点，从来不是任何大鳄的 fan girl。

她说自己有一个 P2P 指数，即 Prick to Productivity Ratio，用来评估这些大鳄。其中 Jobs 拿到了 8/10，而 Musk 只有 ∞/WTF。

In that spirit, I created a metric, the “Prick to Productivity Ratio” (P2P), that’s neither scientific nor is it particularly fair. But it’s allowed me to quantify my judgments of the powerful people I’ve covered over the years.

Jobs gets an 8 for being a prick and a 10 for accomplishments. Final P2P ratio: 8/10.

Loudly sexist, puerile, transphobic, homophobic, conspiracy drenched, and tweeter of unfunny memes, Musk utterly broke my ratio by turning up the prick to 11. To 12. To infinity and beyond. P2P ratio: ∞/WTF.

早在职业初期，Kara 就勇于发表自己的观点，从不向任何人低头。她说她的人生信条，就是只要是她认为对的事，她就会大声说出来，从不计较后果：

every major power falls at some point no matter how they strive and struggle.

“I think that sexual harassment is like pornography,” Swisher says. “You know it when you see it. People can tell you look nice and there will be no menace to it. With John McLaughlin, there was menace.”

Then and there, I decided that was the best way to go through life—not caring about the consequences of saying or doing what I believed was right.

“Kara Swisher, most people in this town stab you in the back, but you stabbed me in the front and I appreciate it.” Then he let out a giant laugh.

Reticence and subtlety were definitely not going to be my style, especially when accuracy and honesty were so effective. And so, without hesitating, I shot back: “Anytime, you son of a bitch.”

她和 Walt Mossberg 是最早意识到互联网影响的记者，当时 Walt 常驻在 DC，而 WSJ 在西岸没有报道科技业的常驻记者。于是 Walt 鼓励年轻的 Kara 往西边去，常驻湾区来紧盯这边的发展：

It was right then and there that I came up with the concept that would carry me for decades hence and still does to this day: Everything that can be digitized will be digitized.

As prolific tech pioneer Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse, early iterations of the graphical user interface, and more, once mused: “The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing.” He was right, and even more so when he said: “The better we get at getting better, the faster we will get better.”

When she moved to Russia in the fall of 1994, I wanted to stay in touch via something other than snail mail and phone calls. That’s when Lisa introduced me to email, suggesting I sign up for an AOL account.

In 1993, I tried out the Mosaic browser, created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina while they were grad students at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Walt Mossberg was already the most famous of tech reporters for his popular Wall Street Journal column, “Personal Technology,” which debuted in 1991 and opened with the single greatest lede about tech: “Personal computers are just too hard to use, and it isn’t your fault.”

Walt looked me straight in the eye and said: “Go West, young woman.” And that is exactly what I did.

In 1997, the Wall Street Journal had no dedicated reporter covering the Internet, and Walt was convinced that the paper needed to hire me to be its first explorer of this new world. So, Walt called top Journal editor Paul Steiger and basically ordered him to hire me.

In fact, Walt chose to live in D.C., far away from Silicon Valley, in order to maintain the distance needed to judge the products fairly.

当 Kara 一到旧金山，就被这里自由开发的环境所打动。

Unfortunately, sweaty leather was the first major odor that hit me on that particular day, due to the thousands of people jamming up the street and blocking me in traffic. They were attending the famed Folsom Street Fair, an annual BDSM and leather subculture event that takes place in San Francisco’s South of Market district.

Arriving at this moment in my Subaru Outback was kind of a perfect cliché for a lesbian entering her new life.

从互联网泡沫就直面这些巨头，让 Kara 对他们有深入的了解：

As a journalist, I came to realize that rather than lying to me, these entrepreneurs were more often lying to themselves.

Few tech leaders had learned the most potent lesson of the sector yet: The young inevitably eat the old.

What I desired most boiled down to one thing: the ability to say no.

也因为很早就报道硅谷，所以 Kara 和众多互联网巨头保持着不错的视角，比如 Google 的 Larry Page 就曾经睡在 Kara 母亲的公寓里。这也让她能够更近距离地观察这些巨头：

Doerr was insistent that I meet Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the pair of Stanford PhD students who had started the company at the university in 1998. “They’re a little odder than people you’ve met so far,” said Doerr, “but they are really special.”

Her name was Susan Wojcicki. She charged them $1,700 a month for the space, although she first asked for stock options. The twins declined for the rent, but she got a pile later when she became a full-time employee.

Another smart move that only a few companies made at the time was to bring in professional management. In 2001, Google recruited well-known tech leader Eric Schmidt to essentially be the adult in the room.

In an odd twist, there was a major blackout in NYC that day, and Page and Wojcicki could not get to their hotel rooms on the high floors of the skyscrapers. They ended up joining Megan and me at my mother’s ninth-floor midtown apartment, where they camped out on the floor.

Google was a place where personal and professional mixed a lot. At one point early on, it felt like everyone there was dating someone else there, a situation that would become a problem later.

早年的 Jeff Bezos 非常想借助媒体造势，所以和各路媒体保持着不错的联系。而 Kara 也是其中之一：

“Feral,” in fact, was the first word that jumped into my head when I met Bezos in the Seattle area in the mid-1990s.

Seattle was cheaper than Silicon Valley, full of tech talent because of Microsoft and Lockheed, and ideal for shipping across the world.

Bezos graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton with an electrical engineering and computer science degree.

Tech leaders loved to dole out these origin tidbits for color, and the often-hungry media ate them up with gusto. And at the time, there was no one more performative than Bezos.

Since Bezos was not as deeply insecure as many tech types, even if he was just as narcissistic, he had no problem cutting ties with anyone he did not need once the momentum got going.

Kara 对于 Steve Jobs 的评价非常高，认为直到他去世前，都一直让她感到惊喜：

Until the day Steve Jobs died, he kept surprising me.

Yes, I got a hug from a tearful Steve Jobs, and it was as awkward as you might imagine.

The speech had a key line: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

But things got worse by early 2011 and he had stepped down as CEO of Apple by August. Jobs picked his longtime operations genius Tim Cook to take over, the least flashy choice he could make among his longtime executive group.

Immediately, we contacted top News Corp executives, including Rupert Murdoch, and requested that all the video and audio of Jobs’ appearances at our AllThingsD conferences be made free for anyone to listen to forever (on Apple iTunes, of course).

“Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve’s final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW.”

His death triggered my usual ruminations on mortality, which was always a major part of my psyche since my father had died so young.

“You’ve got to find what you love,” Jobs told the graduating class. “And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

In 2007, he shared our stage for a historic joint interview with his longtime nemesis Bill Gates. This extraordinary meeting of tech’s two greatest pioneers revealed both their deep rivalry and enduring respect. It would turn out to be one for the ages.

Here are two things to know about Steve Jobs: First, he was always acutely aware that life was finite; second, he could never resist a chance to tweak Bill Gates.

Incredibly, other than at marketing events, Jobs and Gates had never sat together to chew over their deeply complex and competitive relationship that had defined the modern digital landscape.

Gates thought Jobs to be precious in his approach, and Jobs thought Gates had little respect for product excellence. But the two also shared an obvious admiration for each other.

If both died on the same day, one observer told me, Gates’s obituary would begin by noting that he was “the world’s richest man” while Jobs’ would begin with the words “tech’s greatest visionary.”

That’s why Walt approached Jobs first, knowing that Gates would jump at the chance, while Jobs would play hard to get.

ATD did not typically put out press releases, but as soon as both were in, we did, figuring that once the news of the event was public, it would be harder for either to back out.

We persevered and asked Gates a question about some small detail. Suddenly he blurted out: “Why would I know that? I run hell.” We all froze. Except Jobs, who was holding a very cold bottle of water that was drenched with condensation. He extended his hand with the water bottle toward Gates. “Let me help you,” Jobs said playfully. And that, thankfully, broke the very ice that he had made.

The smiley smirk again curled at the edges of Jobs’ mouth, as he deadpanned: “We’ve kept our marriage secret for over a decade now.” The crowd loved it, although Gates looked uncomfortable, caught between wanting to roll with the obvious sexual undertone “hey we’re gay” joke in order to not seem uncool and being, well, uncool.

“You know when Bill and I first met each other and worked together in the early days, generally, we were both the youngest guys in the room,” Jobs commented. “I’m about six months older than he is, but roughly the same age. And now when we’re working at our respective companies—I don’t know about you—I’m the oldest guy most of the time. That’s why I love being here.”

And then, he delivered his famous one-more-thing. “I think of most things in life as either a Bob Dylan or Beatles song,” Jobs said in perhaps one of the more wistful moments I ever saw him in. “And there’s that one line in a Beatles song, ‘You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.’ ” He paused for exactly the right amount of time, the consummate performer, and then added: “And that’s clearly true here.” He gestured to Gates with a little wave.

Unlike a lot of journalists, I was not a Jobs fanboy. We often argued about things and disagreed intensely.

At D3 in 2004, I had jokingly told him to cook me up an “iPod phone,” and he replied, “Well, that’s a hard problem,” to which I said, “You’re smart,” to which he said, “Isn’t it funny a ship that leaks from the top?”

When we pointed out his deception, Jobs shrugged. So, we shrugged, too. Because nothing mattered but the phone he held in his hand, which was about as perfect as it got.

Jobs continued, “Okay great. So let me start at the beginning and tell you what this is all about. Podcasting is a word that’s a concatenation of iPod and broadcasting. Put together—podcasting.”

Apple’s version was a pioneer that allowed the introduction of a spate of other mobile-oriented digital companies including Airbnb (2008), Uber (2009), and Instagram (2010). The iPhone would also force larger entities like Facebook to drastically shift their business models or shift around it, as Google would in 2008 with the introduction of its Android platform.

至于 Mark Zuckerberg，她一路看着他成长起来：

Zuckerberg told me he was eager to sit with Jobs over dinner by the Pacific Ocean, which I found touching and earnest.

Bill Gates had become a mentor to the young entrepreneur, but it was Sandberg who would prove to be Zuckerberg’s most important ally over the next decade.

the Winklevoss brothers. (These handsome hustlers, who were twin rowing champions, got paid out by Facebook later and then launched a cryptocurrency exchange

I advised Zuckerberg to laugh it off and told him to go to the premiere and even hug actor Jesse Eisenberg, who was playing him. “Control the narrative, Mark,” I said. “It’s coming whether you like it or not. And who cares, because you’ll be richer and more famous than any of them in the end.”

This attitude was in full flower for Mark when the Harvard dropout returned to give the university commencement speech in 2017. Starting off with the lofty idea of having purpose as your guide, he then veered quickly onto the grievance highway. “It’s good to be idealistic. But be prepared to be misunderstood. Anyone working on a big vision will get called crazy, even if you end up right. Anyone working on a complex problem will get blamed for not fully understanding the challenge, even though it’s impossible to know everything up front,” he said. “Anyone taking initiative will get criticized for moving too fast, because there’s always someone who wants to slow you down.”

But moments later, when he realized how bad it was, Mark gave in. “Maybe I should take off the hoodie,” he said. As he stripped off his protective layer, revealing metastasizing sweat stains under Mark’s armpits and down his back

It was like that from the moment we met, Mark seemed to think of me—and maybe all the press—as an adversary.

I did not think he was an asshole. I thought he was probably an asshole, an opinion based on what many others had told me.

Most thought he was just another tech bro who was—say it with me now—frequently wrong, but never in doubt.

But then I stopped myself and decided to just let it play out, since I needed to understand the depth of his shallow thinking on this important and dangerous topic. Sometimes, it’s best to go very quiet in interviews, and this was that time.

While Zuckerberg was not evil, not malevolent, not cruel, what he was, and continued to be, was extraordinarily naïve about the forces he had unleashed.

No, Zuckerberg wasn’t an asshole. He was worse. He was one of the most carelessly dangerous men in the history of technology who didn’t even know it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the worst of them.

Many at the company were distraught over the egregious invasion of privacy, which seemed a bridge far too far in an endless series of crappy bridges crossed at Uber. Me too. That’s why I wasn’t going to stop. I was going to hit as hard as I could, through fair reporting of Kalanick’s long running and increasingly terrible behavior as a CEO.

I didn’t say it out loud, but in my head I screamed a line that I wanted to say to an increasing number of players in the Internet space: “You’re so poor, all you have is your money!”

Getting to inclusivity was a painfully slow process, always hindered by the excuse that there was a “pipeline problem” and that the always male leaders needed to maintain “standards” of quality.

No matter how clever those lawyers were, the accusations against Kleiner resonated for women at all levels of tech companies.

Sandberg told a lot of stories about women to whom she offered jobs and how they worried about taking the job because they could become pregnant. She told them: “Take the job anyway and then get pregnant.”

His only joy, he said, was finally meeting his biological sister, novelist Mona Simpson, whom his birth parents had raised after putting him up for adoption.

“The people who love you are the only ones that count,” he said to me. Then, tearing up, he added, “Don’t waste your time on anyone else.” And then, wonder of wonders, he gave me a hug.

作为一个专注报道硅谷突发新闻的记者，Kara 常年保持领先，非常不容易，这也和她的职业习惯有关：

比别人付出得更多；
有很多信任她的信源，当她还是会反复确认各种消息；
她能比对各种信息，然后勾勒出整个事件，即使这些信息都不完整；
她总是在关系好的时候，问别人要联系方式，这样即使关系不好的时候也能联系；

But if I had to choose two reasons for my success, I’d go with: I worked harder than anyone else, and I was good at scenario building, which is a fancy way of saying I’m a good guesser.

Once I tracked down an exclusive, I’d confirm the facts, reconfirm the facts, add context and background, write the story as quickly as I could, and hit upload.

My sources ranged from student interns and low-level workers all the way to, most of all, CEOs.

Over time, I cultivated a group of trusted sources whom I could call and ask, “What’s going on?” I learned to count on certain sources to be honest and tell me, “Oh, yeah, this is a mess,” or “What they’re saying is this… and here’s what they’re actually doing.”

Would you say that on the record?” I asked. He would not. I declined to use it.

Employees continued to slip me company documents, to the point where Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg once observed: “It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, ‘I hope Kara never sees this.’ ”

But they leak because they feel like you’re not listening to them and that you do listen to me. And, therefore, employees believe the best way to effect change that needs to happen is to leak. To me.”

Remember: People always like to tell their side of the story.

One of my favorite things to do is reverse engineer a story. I’m really good at piecing various snippets of information together (thanks, cruel stepfather!) and would devise scenarios in classic CIA tradecraft.

Sometimes, I used rumors as a jumping off point for complex analysis.

Thinking like these CEOs was a big part of my job and it helped to spend time with them in person.

Pro tip: I always asked contacts for a cell phone number when things were good, so I had it when things went sour.

Goldberg explained, “[Kara] knows way more than she ever writes, because she doesn’t have it really carefully confirmed, or because she doesn’t want to write something that’s going to be personally painful to someone but isn’t relevant from a business standpoint.”

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Recap

移民听起来就是一个很有挑战的个人项目：没有外在的推力，要靠自己实施起来并不容易。特别是当我们 DIY 技术移民时，要准备找工作，又要学习新语言，还要准备各种材料。简直就是难上加难，恐怕这也是很多朋友迟迟没有动手准备的原因吧？

那么究竟有没有什么办法破局呢？既能让我们开始准备，又能一直保持斗志坚持下去？

简单说来，就是当你遇到一个很大的项目时，先不要管太多。捡起其中的一小部分开始行动，然后慢慢你就会从这一行动中找到动力，然后推动整个项目前进。只要你坚持行动，慢慢地，这个项目就会滚起来，你也会找到更多的动力，更多的灵感。即使中途调整方向也没问题，因为你会离胜利的终点越来越近。

如果我们把这一方法复用到技术移民的准备上，也完全适用：

明确方向
分割项目
从小事做起
中途调整也不要紧
先去跳板国家也没问题

Eddie Cheng 整理了 Elon Musk，Sam Altman 和 Naval Ravikant 的学习方法：

构建知识树：当你先理解主干（即基本原则）再去关注叶子（更细节的部分）时，你可以将你的学习能力提高10倍。
如果你对一个问题不是真正好奇，你在解决它的道路上永远不会走得很远。
不要为了完成而阅读。要为了理解而阅读。
经验会教给你的东西，任何书籍都无法比拟。
接受你的错误，并且不断尝试。
与世隔绝，专心致志。
创建一个重复学习的系统。
当你注意到你的思绪在学习时游离，放下一切去睡觉。

Ryan Holiday 指出，在工作，家庭和社交之间，你最多只能选择两样。这是因为：

生活充满着各种权衡，而以上三者之间的矛盾在于时间的分配，所以如何权衡这三者的本质是，如何权衡时间；
要做权衡，就意味着要说不，要对大大小小的事说不；
只有当你明白了对什么说不之后，你才会对真正有意义的事说 Yes。

Herbert Lui 认为写作是和其他创作完全不同的形式，我们更应该享受写作本身：

写作既是一个创作过程，也是一个完成产品，两者合二为一；
写作的起点和终点可能都在纸上或者屏幕上，不像其他创作形式，比如电影起始于剧本，终结于胶片；
所以别管太多，提笔就写，也许你会找到灵感，也许你会找到快乐；
最重要的是，写作本身就是思考的一部分。

Tony Dinh 于一年前开发了 ChatGPT API 的客户端 Typing Mind，一年之后的今天，他靠这款产品获得了50万美金的收入，以下是他的心得：

当你是第一个进入这个细分市场的时候，你的第一个版本不必非常惊艳；
如果我来得晚了，那么所有烦人的问题都已经被解决了，或者至少这些问题不再那么痛苦了；
Typing Mind 的收入现在混合了一次性购买和订阅收入。这是一个健康的组合；
来自订阅的收入完全覆盖终身用户的成本；
大多数用户会很乐意一次支付并永久使用产品：长远来看，这样能为他们节省更多的钱。

Tuomas Artman 指出现代 MVP （最小可行性产品）的定义已经和之前的大不相同：

由于市场上已经有各种产品，所以大部分的 MVP 都是在现有产品的基础上做出改进。既然如此，这些已经在市场上的产品已经验证了商业上的可行性，所以新的 MVP 就不需要再验证这一点了；
也由于市场上已经有这些产品，所以他们就是既有门槛，只做出最小可行性产品是不够的，必须比他们提供更多的价值给用户才行；
所以当代 MVP 的定义应该是，找出市场上已有产品的痛点，然后在此基础上做出改进的版本；
根据以上定义，构建现代 MVP 的第一步是把产品浓缩到最能提供价值给用户的那一点上；
Linear 的做法就是先制作一个能服务自己团队的版本，然后面向创业公司的创始人推荐，获得反馈，进一步迭代。

DPS 周刊 140 - Burn Book, Burn Life

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