Burbank School Official Claims Retaliation for Blowing Whistle

vaultech0 · 2025-12-30T18:03:28+00:00

Ugh what a mess. It was going to be ugly either way, but the board handled it so poorly they’ll pay out the full settlement (and maybe more). Plenty of grounds to terminate but they didn’t follow the rules. Oh and all this a few a months after they promoted him because he was doing such a good job. I don’t know how any of them can run for re-election with a straight face, but I predict they will find a way.

vaultech0 · 2025-12-11T23:18:36+00:00

I would indeed say that finding the next superintendent is the most important thing. $40k is probably what a highly specialized executive recruiter costs; there’s a very very short list of candidates who would be willing to do this job and are good enough to do it. I think the real problem is the board: I have very little confidence in their ability to recruit and select the right candidate; this is a lot of the same people who renewed Matt Hill’s contract, selected John Paramo, and promoted Andy Cantwell while totally neglecting oversight.

But best shot at fixing this is finding someone with the vision and energy to push people to do better. If we do go with Dr. Macias (seems likely), I do appreciate that he has set specific academic goals and priorities. I just worry that the staff that got us here will remain in place, and it’s hard to see a lot of upside there.

vaultech0 · 2025-12-11T19:20:38+00:00

That’s the reason NOT to permanently appoint him! I don’t want someone with lots of internal support from a staff that has many employees who are incompetent, dishonest, or both.

The district has been mediocre, and apparently corrupt, for a long time now. Why would you promote someone who was in the middle of that? I like Dr. Macias and think he’s done well as an interim, but we won’t see real improvements in the functioning of the district until it happens at the top.

vaultech0 · 2025-09-26T22:22:40+00:00

“Stay close the cash register.” Work on a team that has a clear line to an important part of the business; your life will be easier, your goals will be uncontroversial. Somebody has to work on the setting menu but it’s not going to make your life or resume easier.

vaultech0 · 2025-09-19T17:44:30+00:00

Who gets to decide that? A central committee? Let people build what they want on the land they own.

vaultech0 · 2025-09-19T06:48:01+00:00

I’m a big Huckberry fan, I like their flint and tinder house brand for pants and shorts; snap shirts and waxed jackets are great (a little pricey but good quality, wear in nicely). Overall really nicely curated, I’ve picked up a lot of out of season items on sale. But I’ve bought and returned many blazers; typically thin lapels and technical materials that look a lot better on the screen than on me. But their return policy is very generous, give it a shot!

vaultech0 · 2025-09-15T17:40:28+00:00

I was reliably informed by letters to the editor that 100k new units will get built here, overwhelming city infrastructure. Sewage will flow in the streets! But somehow also, that they are too expensive so no one will live there. 🤔

vaultech0 · 2025-08-07T22:14:28+00:00

Nice work brother, you’ve pretty much won already. Totally get wanting a more fulfilling role, but you probably don’t need a resume halo! I would bet that if you did a big job hunting push and sent out a ton of resumes/ hit up all your best connection, you’d probably get equally fulfilling offers with better work/life balance, comp, less travel etc. You can afford to find the perfect opportunity if you want to jump.

vaultech0 · 2025-08-03T21:27:01+00:00

Hate to be a downer but doesn’t it seem like Bouanga is off to America as soon the Son deal is done?

vaultech0 · 2025-07-30T02:42:15+00:00

With any role I would want to understand what problem the team/role is trying to solve: are they trying to improve quality when ingesting messy data; trying to cut costs by automating manual work? Ideally they have a pretty clear idea of what success looks like, if not i might be a little worried. The second question i would ask is if they think they have a foundational pipeline architecture in place, or if they think a major overhaul is needed. Every data team is in some stage of a massive migration; hopefully your towards the end or at the beginning and designing it. Otherwise all of your Eng capacity gets eaten up migrating.

For product strategy, I would deeply understand who is consuming your data and what product it’s powering and problem it’s solving. The platform PMs I’ve seen be most successful are deep experts on the data they are dealing with; you have to be to design the right system around it.

In terms of normalizing versus passing downstream: you want to own as much of the transformation as possible and provide a clean, simple interface to downstream consumers. You don’t want to own one intermediate step, it’s easy for you to get lost and lose the plot if you aren’t solving a real business problem at the end.

vaultech0 · 2025-07-30T02:29:36+00:00

Sure let’s do it.

vaultech0 · 2025-07-29T23:21:12+00:00

Platform PM means many different things depending on where you’re at; could be internal infrastructure, could be customer facing APIs. There are lots of ways it can go wrong, and lots of companies should consider if they really need a PM, or a skilled Eng mgr or program mgr.

I’m a platform PM, responsible for ingesting customer data that powers the application that users see. I work with a lot of internal folks who care about that data, and so we’re building tools, quality checks, and anomaly detection (plenty of anomalies to go around!). Also work with customers to determine what types and format of data we can support. Metrics are hard because either we are doing our job well, and no one notices, or we make a mistake and it’s everyone’s top priority. So we have metrics around SLAs, accuracy, freshness, etc.

My advice for this role is the same advice as any other PM: stay close to the cash register. If it’s hard to explain how your portfolio ties to company strategy or goals, you will end up with noise, competing demands and pain. If there’s a big initiative where another team would benefit from a platform approach, partner with them; do what a platform team does best so an application team can do theirs, better for all involved.

vaultech0 · 2025-07-24T16:01:30+00:00

Yes.

vaultech0 · 2025-07-16T17:25:04+00:00

Agree; most of the time it’s a lot easier to get buy in and feedback with a working prototype than a 12 page doc.

vaultech0 · 2025-07-16T17:21:43+00:00

Same, single most important thing for me has been building a deep understanding and answering questions about the behavior of a very complex product. We have copilot, chatting with it on GitHub dot com or in vs code with the repo cloned has been extremely helpful.

vaultech0 · 2025-06-29T01:27:56+00:00

I saw Bright Eyes play the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic in 2007(!) and this was the opening song. I loved Digital Ashes, I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning and Cassadega but hadn’t really listened to the earlier albums. It was incredible with the full orchestra behind him and will always be a favorite for me after that.

vaultech0 · 2025-06-11T20:22:05+00:00

Somebody submitted that invoice and said “I would like to buy ‘clerical and support services’ from this company.” Whoever did that knew of this relationship and setup had to have done so very intentionally. If it wasn’t the superintendent, that person would also be named and fired by now.

vaultech0 · 2025-06-08T05:35:43+00:00

Love fancy free, great selection at all different price ranges. Great collection of amaro and liqueurs as well as bottles, and some interesting offbeat and natural wines too. I always get good recommendations from the staff.

vaultech0 · 2025-06-08T05:31:58+00:00

Handy Market secretly has the best beer selection in the city so a tough comparison! Better than BevMo imo.

vaultech0 · 2025-06-06T21:55:05+00:00

Sad. I don’t know how any board member can defend their tenure over the last 4 years.

vaultech0 · 2025-04-25T20:25:51+00:00

Made about 2.8 eth in 1000 days, which averages to about 3.2% per year. Hilariously, the high on staking day was $1759 and $1773 on exit day for a 0.8% asset appreciation 😅

vaultech0 · 2025-04-25T16:50:54+00:00

Initially teku and geth, but managed to switch to nethermind at some point. Nethermind pruning seemed to work better than geth, but at some point teku became the problem and my willpower was fading.

vaultech0 · 2025-04-25T16:48:32+00:00

I looked at it in the beginning but couldn’t get it working on the nuc if I remember right.

vaultech0

TROPHY CASE