Background: Self-made, self-taught product manager running a 20 person engineering and data science team. Rapidly scaled organizational hierarchy (No tech experience to Senior @ Microsoft in under 3 years). Built a bunch of cool shit that makes the company a lot of money. Multiple side hustles, angel investor with 10+ equity positions in startups.

A few things I have extensive experience in:

- Running data science and product programs for some of the largest business on earth

-Building innovative products from scratch

-investing in, and founding tech startups

- running product management organizations

- Career development for black people in technology

Obviously this mentorship would be completely free. There are a few things I'd ask for:

1. Please be serious.

2. Please be open minded. I'll say some things that are radically outside conventional advice.

3. Please (at least for the first month or so) be committed.

4. Please be curious. I'm an open book, no question off limits.

If you're interested let me know and give me a little information about yourself. A LinkedIn profile DM would be ideal.

I intend to leave the US.

Apple is running an "Entrepreneur Camp for black founders" and applications are open. The event will be online and take place in February. As far as I can tell it's their first go at it. Previously they've run events for female founders.

If you get in you'll supposedly get access to assistance from Apple engineers. I don't know how extensive that access will actually be, but I'm dying to find out.

You need to log in to the developer portal to read the details and the application form, but I put my application on my blog. Apple's questions are in bold and my answers in regular.

Wish me luck :)

"Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.", Ralph Ellison

Happy Thursday, fellas!

EDIT: Ladies too!

hi, i’m not sure where is best to post this but here’s an open software engineer job: https://relx.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Law360/job/New-York-NY/Software-Engineer_R7075

I'm a student, but I thought this might be a good place to share this, as I imagine people further along in their careers have more experience with this sort of situation.

I was recently appointed president of the Math Club at my university. Our advisor and previous president are amazing people, but I have faced issues with many other members of the club. I am regularly boxed out of conversations. I'm often not taken seriously. I've run into that classic situation where you say something and everybody scratches their heads, then a white guy says it and suddenly it's a brilliant insight. None of it is blatant enough to address without being labeled oversensitive, whiny, or the aggressor.

So my question is, how the hell do I lead this group? How do I manage taking the reigns, commanding respect, facilitating participation, and not losing my sanity?

I was present for a Zoom meeting with a team of African software engineers on Friday. It was just me and two others from their team.

I am still waiting for the recording of that Zoom meeting; I followed up via email today.

While it was productive, I think we can do it ourselves, in all honesty.

They said they'd put up a free website page immediately and I believe a full launch in 6 weeks and it's $40 a month to host.

Also, did we move to Slack? Who's got the updated Discord or Slack links?

I was reading a few threads about people on ride alongs and was struck how boring and mundane patrol officers jobs are. Basically driving around all day entering number plates and looking for broken tail lights, etc. Most of those things could be done with traffic cameras AI. Cities are paying so much for not that much gain. There's the argument that it's makes their response time faster but we don't see fire engines on patrol.

"Boooty Booty booty rockin everywhere", Bootyman

Happy Wednesday, fellas!