Hartley Brody

Anyone who knows me knows that I love building stuff. And not only that, I subscribe strongly to the “do things, tell people” mantra, constantly sharing my projects with the world.

While this lifestyle has been super rewarding for me and has created a lot of great opportunities, one of my favorite consequences is that all sorts of people see me as a resource for advice.

Almost every week this semester, I’ve ended up grabbing lunch with someone I had never met who reached out and wanted to pick my brain. And I love it!

I’ve met a lot of great people with a lot of big ideas and I hope that I’ve been able to help them follow their dreams in some small way.

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One of the trends I’ve noticed recently is that a lot of these conversations gravitate towards finding technical people.

It’s a well-known fact that there aren’t nearly enough coders to go around these days, and companies are doing all sorts of crazy things to win the war for talent.

But if all you have is an idea and no technical skills, what are you supposed to do?

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I started learning Python 8 months ago as I was finishing up my awesome summer internship at HubSpot.

Before Python, I had spent a few years moonlighting as a self-taught PHP hacker tweaking wordpress layouts and reusing other people’s code. I consider Python the first language I’ve really learned how to use properly and effectively. But I know I still have a long way to go.

Using the language to solve problems isn’t hard. But using the language to solve problems effectively and elegantly was a struggle for me — it was hard to break out of my PHP hacker mindset. Do this, then do that, etc.

It took awhile before I really understood how to read a list comprehension, and I only recently wrote my first successful lambda function.

There is a great community around Python with tons of fantastic tutorials, but internalizing all that knowledge and thinking about problems like a true Pythonista proved challenging.

But I had a bit of an aha! moment the other night as I was reading Mark Pilgirm’s “Dive into Python” when he offered a great framework for thinking about problems in Python and writing more elegant code:

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I posted an instagram photo to Facebook last week showing the books I’m currently reading. Most of them are tech related, but the one that seemed to draw the most attention was “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” a New York Times Best Seller by Ramit Sethi.

I stole the book from one of my roommates in Boston (thanks Liam!) after following Ramit’s IWTYTBR blog for some time.

Ramit’s advice is specifically tailored to college students and young adults. The book is literally a guide full of simple, no-nonsense ways to automate your finances (“set it and forget it!”), save a little extra and, well… get rich.

The book also offers a lot of tips on hustling in general. I used his scripts in the second chapter to negotiate a 50% increase in my credit card limit right before spring break, even after the representative on the phone said that she couldn’t authorize that much initially. Swag.

You should definitely check out his blog, and consider buying his book if you have any interest in managing your money efficiently (hint: that means everyone!)

It’s also important to note that this isn’t just for people who dream of being millionaires. Whether you’re trying to get rich, or just want to live a simple life doing what you enjoy and living comfortably, you’re going to be interacting with money whether you like it or not. You’re going to be making it and spending it and saving it and hopefully investing it. So regardless of your goals, it (literally) pays to know what you’re doing.

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Privacy is one of the most contentious issues in the digital age — and it’s been in the news a lot the past few weeks. There was the recent Path address book scandal and then Google tracking Safari users on iOS and then the New York Times exposition on Target’s data collection, and how they were able to predict a girl was pregnant before even her parents knew, based on her shopping habits.

Every time a new “privacy scandal” like this emerges, people inevitably freak out. There are usually calls for some sort of reform or regulation, and the entity responsible for the “infringement” gets a PR black eye, and usually ends up apologizing and discontinuing the practice.

Onlookers wonder how a company could have ever thought it was acceptable to collect data in such a clandestine way. How could anyone think it’s okay to be so invasive!?

As marketers and developers, we’re expected to see a line in the sand between “acceptable” ways of collecting data, and those that are too shady. The problem is – no such line exists. Or rather, it’s only discovered when companies get publicly shamed for crossing it.

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I wrote an article for Bowdoin’s Orient Express entitled “How To Get Hired in 2012.” Click here to read the whole piece on the Orient Express’s website. An excerpt is below.

It has become taboo to ask someone where they’re working after graduation these days, for fear that they won’t have an answer. It seems like the default is to not have a job.

A lot of people roll it up with pithy niceties: “It’s okay, I’ve always wanted to travel!” “I think I’m just going to spend a few months trying to figure out what I really want to do with my life.” But no matter how you slice it, the reality sucks — unemployment.

The world has changed in drastic and fundamental ways over the past few decades. Technology has made workers far more productive, wiping out entire industries in the process. People still refer to our current economic situation as “The Great Recession” or the “Jobless Recovery” as if, one day, we’ll finally make it “back to normal” and there will finally be jobs for everyone. People lament the current job market and hope that one day everything will work itself out.

But what if it never does?

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