A moment of conceptual breathing room by putting forward a well-articulated, divergent view could save a ton of resources later.

I’ve studied many performance rubrics, skill trees, and advancement systems for engineering departments. Boiling them down to core principles can bring clarity when you’re up to your eyeballs in criteria, factors, and value statements.

When you’re building a software product, time always feels like your enemy. Co-opting an existing feature for a new use can feel extremely clever, like you’ve sidestepped a ton of work. But it doesn’t scale, it adds friction, and it adds danger.

As a white dude who can smoothly “pass” as straight and grew up with strong, educated parents in a very stable environment with a strong safety net, I had the privilege of approaching social power structures however I liked. And I chose deeply irreverent.

To me, credibility as a leader is fundamentally whether you’ve convinced me our interests are sufficiently aligned and whether you have the skills & motivation necessary to keep them that way.

Your company isn’t a family. Every time I hear someone describe their workplace as a family, it’s a red flag. It means one of two things: You’re squeezing people, or you’re earnest but inexperienced.

Shipping new features feels like it’s increasing the “moat” around your product because just look at all the time and effort it took. There’s just one problem: Features aren’t a moat.