Why I wear wired headphones...

People notice the wire before they notice anything else. In a boardroom full of sleek earbuds, the cable reads like I arrived by horse. I get asked about it enough that it deserves an answer, and the answer is the same one I give about most operational decisions.

They never fail

Wired headphones have no battery to die during hour three of a due-diligence call, no pairing handshake to fumble in front of a management team, no firmware. They have one job and one failure mode, and in twenty years the failure mode has never once picked the worst possible moment. That is more than I can say for anything with Bluetooth.

Reliability is a feature you only notice when it’s gone — which is exactly why it’s underpriced.

This is an operations lesson

Plants make this trade constantly: the clever solution with six dependencies versus the boring one that always works. The clever one demos better. The boring one ships product at 2 a.m. when nobody is watching. Choose boring more often than feels fashionable.

So — boohoo, I like wired headphones. They have never let me down, and my operations hold themselves to the same standard.