Experiences from relatively early Amazon around organizing teams for maximum ownership.

A similar approach (autonomous teams) at Spotify, but with less laser-focus on results, and more on how to scale massively without adding layers of management and process. Interesting.

Fred Wilson notices that “It seems to me that once you get to 100-200 people (or 50+ engineers), you should be thinking about this”, “this” being the fact that hiring and paying for engineers in the central tech hubs, particularly the Bay Area, gets increasingly hard.

The comments are worth reading also, for a bunch of difference experiences of working in, and setting up, remote offices.

This is a slightly longer read, but great. If we expect somebody to be “difficult”, it’s likely they will be. In other words, our intention at the start of a conversation has a significant bearing on the outcome of the conversation. (The post is much more nuanced than I am being here).

Kate Matsudaira with some simple, but effective, approaches for dealing with conflict. Clear and helpful.

Less about conflict (although it’s in there) and more about how and when to give critical feedback to establish accountability. Good, fundamental stuff.

A list of (technical) interview questions asked of jcheng, and his rating of their effectiveness on various scales. If you’re hiring (and you probably are), might be good to know how your questions may be coming across.

A great narrative from a perspective we don’t hear about in the tech world. Nice post.

My Notes on a type of statement/excuse that keeps showing up in conversations and coaching (most recently in a Radical Candor workshop): “It’s just the way I am”, with the implication that there’s nothing the speaker can do.

This is, well… quite something. A series of long blog posts about, well, everything humans are, why they are, and why we get so entangled. Amazingly, it’s clear, easy to read and humorous. Download it, read the series like a small book. It’s great.

Continuing a series in this newsletter on building remote teams - an essential passage now in building any kind of scaling tech company.

Turnarounds don’t get a lot of love in blog posts. Not sure why - they’re always with us, and having a good sense of how to dig into a turnaround situation is an important arrow to have in the quiver. This is a good, careful place to start.

Nice. Turns the steps of working with a difficult team member into a handy infographic! Useful, straight-forward content, nice presentation.

A long read, including a bunch of different techniques and approaches for difficult conversations. Well worth the time - it’s the kind of article that you may take one or two valuable nuggets from.

Great post. Practical, dealing with difficult questions (“won’t we have to lower the bar? "Won’t this contribute to imposter syndrome?”), legal issues, process, and a ton of examples of actions that worked. Really cool.

This is pretty great. A framework for collaboration. Mostly aimed at product managers (for whom it is really a terrific resource), but super helpful for anybody.

Loved this. I remember many times fairly early in my career finding myself in situations where I thought “surely, here are the adults!” - my first Board Meetings, discussions with Legendary Companies (Netscape anybody?), one on ones with leaders who had impeccable pedigree - and finding, well, no, no adults in this room either!

There are some adults, for sure! Quite a few! But it’s not a good idea to wait for them to magically show up. Better to do the work the best you know how and learn what you need from those who are available.

Nice article about how to connect with software writers when you’re worried about deadlines and deliverables (or when you’re not). Honest and true.

A pretty great list of solid engineering principles. Hiring new engineers out of college or bootcamps? You could do worse than starting them here.

What if tech debt wasn’t always an accident, caused by incorrect

assumptions and unexpected circumstances? How would you spend a tech debt
mortgage?