Halftank Fuel - Product Inspiration

I've watched it happen more times than I can count. A CEO or executive becomes obsessed with choosing paint colors and fabric swatches for the new office redesign, micromanaging decisions that should be left to the interior designer they just hired. It's like watching someone plan a wedding where every napkin fold becomes a referendum on their vision and taste. Except this isn't a wedding. It's a software company. I call this the CEOzilla pattern, and it's one of the most reliable red flags...

Picture this: You’re on a Zoom call during the pandemic. Your team just survived a massive layoff at a financial company. Nobody knows where design requests will come from anymore. The executive who’s supposed to lead your newly reorganized team keeps taking calls from his realtor, because he’s shopping for a beach house. Most of your team can’t afford to buy a first home. You’re all terrified about losing health insurance in the middle of a pandemic and you’ve seen a lot of colleagues just...

The avocado toast joke has become so embedded in our cultural consciousness that it's practically a cliché. You know the one: millennials and Gen Z can't afford homes because they're too busy brunching on $14 avocado toast. The stereotype has become so pervasive that I once spotted a bakery menu item cheekily labeled "The Down Payment": a wink at the very indulgence we're supposedly sacrificing our financial futures to enjoy. But here's where my story takes an unexpected turn, like...

I've been fired for speaking up. I've also regretted staying silent. After nine layoffs over the last 15 years and countless toxic work situations, I've learned that the problem isn't whether to dissent, it's how to do it without destroying yourself in the process. The Pattern You're Probably Seeing Organizations love to talk about "psychological safety" while punishing anyone who tests it. They hold workshops asking for honest feedback, then spend 50 minutes on icebreakers and claim there's...

The stereotype is so pervasive it’s become a tired joke: designers want impossible things, developers say no to everything, and both sides roll their eyes at each other across the conference table. We’ve built entire careers around this supposed incompatibility, treating the designer-developer relationship like an inevitable conflict requiring constant mediation. But what if this whole narrative is wrong? The Myth That Costs Everyone The biggest lie in product development is that designers...

How the Internet Revolution Revealed a New Path for Print Media The internet didn't just change newspapers—it forced them to confront a fundamental choice about their identity. Would they cling to printing presses and classified ad revenue, or would they recognize that their real expertise lay in gathering, verifying, and presenting information to communities? The organizations that survived understood the difference between their tools and their mission. Having studied journalism with dreams...

In the United States, 40% of workers have experienced at least one layoff. Nearly half of all adults worry they’ll be laid off in the next year. Yet we’re still getting career advice written for a world that doesn’t exist—one where hard work guarantees job security and “being yourself” at work is always good advice. My upcoming book BAD FIT: A Career Survival Guide tackles the uncomfortable truth: sometimes you’re not the problem. Sometimes the system is broken, and trying to fix yourself to...