Work 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 #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.)

You Need to Be Proactive

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 11:29:39 -0400

One of the things that has been repeatedly drilled into me over the past year or so is the fact that if you want people to do things for you, you’re most likely going to have to harass them. (I don’t mean literal harassment, by the way – please don’t commit a criminal offense and say I encouraged you.) This is true especially when working with highly busy people like managers and professors. If you want something, you can’t just assume they’ll intuit that and give it to you – you have to ask (and assume they’ll forget, then ask them again). If you need them to do something for you, you’ll need to remind them, and inform them of the deadline, likely multiple times. Everyone has their own problems to worry about and the thing you need might not be top of mind. The burden of remembering is on you.

The Absolute Horror That Is Dressing for Work; or, How to Navigate Dress Codes

Sat, 03 Aug 2024 01:28:49 -0400

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I dress lately, which I think is something that happens to you when you’re in your early twenties and trying to figure out how to be a “professional”. I think dress codes were always sort of a sticking point for many people, but from what I understand, in the pre-covid era there were many workplaces with very strong implicit or explicit dress codes that (I am told) made it very easy, or at the very least, easier to understand how you were supposed to dress.

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.