“Putting an employee on a performance improvement plan is the worst part of being a team leader. But giving tough feedback is a necessary part of the job.” | learn more
“Across the board, we tend to measure performance by what happens when things are going well. Yet how people, organizations, companies, leaders, and other things do on their best day isn’t all that instructive. To find the truth, we need […]
“Standing up and managing a service or building a custom service is a common desire for engineers. It’s usually a major mistake, that ends up costing a ton of time and money.” | learn more
I recently finished reading Rory Sutherland’s book Alchemy. This concept of his made its mark on me, and I’ve been able to use it a handful of times already. Dave Baily expanded it into this short blog post that highlights […]
This is a very insightful post from the anonymously published blog Applied Divinity Studies. “[W]hat’s really happening is that we’ve chosen to privilege certain combinations of skills as impressive, while taking others for granted. A physicist who studies math, can […]
Northwestern’s Melissa Kaufman shares her personal story of almost joining Airbnb in the very early days and the lesson she took from the experience. Punchline: “Forget about the title, compensation, and role. When you stumble upon something that you believe […]
“For a simplistic definition, the eigenquestion is the question where, if answered, it likely answers the subsequent questions as well. Great framing starts by searching for the most discriminating question of a set — the eigenquestion.” | learn more
He had me at “buy high, sell higher.” The author recently died, and the original website is gone, but this piece lives on via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. “Ask me a question back then and I would have answered […]
One interesting highlight is the difference in the decision-making pace between top executives and their direct reports. The more senior, the slower pace, and Bezos points out the risk of junior execs modeling the slower speed. “In an excerpt from a […]
On competing with big companies. “Every founder frets about competition from a big company, me included. We scoff at their inability to innovate and for prioritizing shareholders over customers, but still we quiver in fear.” | learn more