Executing Organizational Cartography
A few years back, during my early days at Affirm, a couple of us engineering leaders[1] were trying and struggling to orchestrate a reorg across our teams. There were a number of strong personalities...
Management
Exclusively "A" Players
Steve Jobs supposedly said, "A players hire A players; B players hire C players." Silicon Valley takes this to heart, a guiding light for tight hiring process and keeping a high bar when...
Trust, then Clarify
A theme that I return to on this blog, and throughout my time in people management, is dispelling the notion that leader knows best. It's an expression of the Great Man Theory, that...
Strategic Leniency
I recently came across an article discussing Riot Games' anti-cheating division. All their games revolve around competitive multiplayer gameplay—the biggest and most famous being League of Legends—so it's been a...
Review: Ask Iwata
Ask Iwata is a fairly unique biography, as far as biographies go. Satoru Iwata was the beloved Global President of Nintendo Corporation Limited. It's a posthumous memoir, but one written based not on...
Beyond Servant Leadership
I've never liked the term "servant leadership." As I eased into my engineering director role, one of my main responsibilities was conducting interviews for a wide breadth of engineering and engineering-adjacent...