Leadership
Could a random hire thrive in your organization?
I made a couple posts (applicant-designed hiring, randomized hiring) about how less-controlled hiring processes could lead to designing an organization where more folks could thrive. It’s largely a thought experiment, so I’ll share my thoughts :) What would need to work for a random hire to thrive? Smooth onboarding...
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Why do we always think our team is so great?
If you ask someone experienced what they think of their team, they’ll usually tell you their team is the best team they’ve ever worked on. It’s so rare to hear someone say they think their team is bad or even mediocre. Why is this? We rationally understand that most...
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Managers learn lessons on the backs of their reports
When you make mistakes as a manager, you usually don’t pay the price. Your reports are always the ones walking away worse off — they have to deal with the repercussions of your mistake, and probably didn’t learn anything useful. This is an inherent part of hierarchical power dynamics....
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What if candidates controlled the interview process?
The software engineering interview process at most jobs is similar- phone screen, some programming work, a bit of architecture or systems design, cross-functional (aka “culture fit”) interviews. Companies are all over the place on how well they execute this formula, but the general formula is the same. Not only...
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Feature team models that work
Along with a number of “monolith to microservice” transitions, I’ve been a party to many “functional team to cross-functional team” transitions. I think there are some patterns and rules of thumbs that are widely applicable. The place these transitions fall down is where the definition of “cross functional” is...
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Jim Crow is hiding in Silicon Valley’s hiring
What do Silicon Valley interview processes have in common with Jim Crow literacy tests? A surprising amount!
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And now, some terrible advice
In a previous post, I talked about the most important advice I’d ever gotten. Now, lest you think some people are really wise and just dispense good advice constantly, I’ll tell you about how the same individual also gave some terrible advice.† The advice can be distilled down to...
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How the Zapier interview process is making me rethink my own
Over the last two months of looking for a new job, I’ve applied to over a couple dozen companies and interviewed with about a quarter of them. The process that stood out the most was Zapier’s. Their interview process is non-typical from start to finish. They have a great...
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Diffusing religious arguments
I called arguments between assemble-your-own vs. kitchen-sink framework approaches a religious one akin to tabs vs. spaces in my previous post. All of my leadership positions have been on brownfield products, usually turnarounds, so I’ve walked into minefields of religion that I’ve had to diffuse in order to focus...
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Comparing assemble-your-own vs. kitchen-sink frameworks
In my previous post, I wrote about some of the “performance” tradeoffs in build-yourself vs. off-the-shelf approaches as an analogue for remote vs. collocated teams. I’d like to wade deeper into the build-yourself vs. off-the-shelf approaches, in this case going with an “assemble-your-own” framework (Sinatra with Sequel, Flask with...
