Jobs on rkempe’s blog

30-Minute Meetings Are a Scam, Revisited

Sun, 24 May 2026 22:33:42 -0400

Last year, I wrote a blog post about why I think half-hour meetings suck. You should read it first before reading this one – it’s short. Also, I still stand by a lot of it.

The tl;dr is that most things that require meetings actually take 15 minutes, 45 minutes, or an hour, and that almost everything else shouldn’t be a meeting in the first place.

I am now going to elaborate and add a whole bunch of caveats.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #5

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 21:00:04 -0500

I am still trying to get rid of my backlog of links I wanted to post about, so please bear with me.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #4

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:04:20 -0500

I am currently doing what I am going to call “spring cleaning” on my blog. What this means is that I want to get rid of a huge backlog of articles and things I started writing about in the past because I have lots of ideas for new things I want to do here (how shocking), and I’m honestly not super happy with the direction this blog has been taking. I don’t think I write enough about my own ideas, or about the things I spend hours learning about. In fact, I don’t think I write enough at all.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #3

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:20:43 -0500

Hi! Here is a linkdump. I told myself I would post these with really minimal context because I am too busy to summarize these things and have a really giant backlog of links I’ve been wanting to post, but uh, the writer in me won out and I failed. Some of these have way more description than others. But I do also have quotes I’ve pulled for some of them, so maybe that will help make this post more interesting.

“Warm” vs “Cold” Networking

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 23:57:33 -0400

“Networking” seems to be one of those buzzwords that everyone uses and nobody can properly define, which I find extremely annoying. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and maybe I can help offer some clarity. I’m starting to think that there might be two types of networking, which I’m going to refer to as “warm networking” and “cold networking”. If you’re familiar with the idea of “warm contacts” vs “cold contacts”, that’s where I’m borrowing this terminology from.

30-Minute Meetings Are a Scam

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 23:08:58 -0400

Really, most meetings should be 15 minutes, 45 minutes, or an hour long.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #2

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 15:34:26 -0400

Here’s another linkdump—a list of links to stuff I thought was interesting but likely won’t get to properly reviewing any time soon.¹

I reserve the right to more fully review any of these article at a later date, of course. (Though at this point, it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen.)

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #1

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 22:07:57 -0400

I keep coming across articles (and occasionally videos, and occasionally fiction or poetry) online that I want to share and comment on, but I recently realized that I will never have time to fully comment on everything I read that I find interesting. So I’m pulling another page out of Cory Doctorow’s book: here is a dump of links to cool stuff, along with some (hopefully very) brief descriptions of why I found these articles interesting. (Also, here is a link to a link dump where Doctorow ¹ talks about link blogging. It might be interesting for you to look at.)

Thoughts on résumés and the "shortcut game"

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 07:50:48 -0400

So I’ve been thinking a lot about résumés lately and I think one of the reasons why I might have such a vendetta against them is because of something I’m going to call “the shortcut game.”

When I say “shortcut” here, I mean anything someone can at least semi-truthfully claim that will encourage people to make positive assumptions about them. For example, when we say someone went to Harvard, we use it as a shortcut for saying they’re smart and competent and qualified, because those are things we generally believe about Harvard grads.

I don't want to be self-employed, actually

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 17:53:40 -0400

This might just be a gen Z thing (though it started before our generation), but I’m starting to feel more and more like the societal expectation is for us to want to be self-employed in some way.

As in, that should be the dream.

As in, you know you’ve made it when you can quit the day job and pursue that thing you’re super passionate about full-time. Even better if you never have to have the day job.