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# Kalzumeus

> Patrick McKenzie (patio11) writes on the intersection of marketing and engineering. He's not the best marketer or engineer in the world, but he's a better engineer than almost all marketers and a better marketer than almost all engineers.

This site contains essays, podcast episodes, and resources about software development, marketing, career advice, and business topics. Most writing these days goes into [Bits about Money](https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com), a weekly newsletter on the intersection of technology and financial infrastructure.

## About Patrick

Patrick grew up in the US and moved to Japan right after college. He worked for Japanese companies for six years. Concurrently, he founded a small software company and it took over his life. He ran a succession of small software companies, then worked at Stripe for six years before transitioning to advisor. He is currently on semi-sabbatical.

Proudest professional accomplishment: running the U.S.'s shadow vaccine location information infrastructure (VaccinateCA) during the 2021 rollout, likely saving thousands of lives.

## Most Important Essays

- [Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued](/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation.md): Instrumentally probably the most useful thing I have ever written. Responsible for ~$15 million in marginal improvement to compensation according to reader reports.
- [Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice](/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer.md): Career advice for engineers, but widely applicable.
- [Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names](/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names.md): Identified a common class of bugs in application design. Spawned a genre.
- [The Story of VaccinateCA](https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-story-of-vaccinateca/): Oral history of that time I tweeted myself into becoming the U.S.'s vaccine location information infrastructure czar.

## Key Topics

### Career Advice
- [Salary Negotiation](/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation.md)
- [Don't Call Yourself A Programmer](/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer.md)
- [How to get your first consulting client](/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-mckenzie-on-getting-your-first-consulting-client/)
- [How to set consulting prices](/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-mckenzie-on-why-your-customers-would-be-happier-if-you-charged-more/)

### Marketing for Engineers
Every software company should assign full-time engineers to working on their marketing funnel. Virtually no one does. Most of my largest career wins are shipping relatively simple engineering artifacts which directly affect funnel math by 3~15%.

- [Strategic SEO for Startups](/2010/01/24/startup-seo.md)
- [Engineering Your Way To Marketing Success](/2009/12/31/engineering-your-way-to-marketing-success.md)

### Japan
- [Doing Business In Japan](/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan.md)
- [Some Perspective On The Japanese Earthquake](/2011/03/13/some-perspective-on-the-japan-earthquake.md)

## Current Work

Most of my writing cycles these days go into [Bits about Money](https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com), my weekly newsletter on the intersection of technology and financial infrastructure.

## Accessing Content

Every essay on this site has a markdown version available by appending `.md` to the URL. For example:
- HTML: `https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/`
- Markdown: `https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation.md`

## Contact

Email: patrick@kalzumeus.com - happy to get email, can't promise a reply but do my best. See the [Standing Invitation](/standing-invitation/) for more details.