management
Running the place: an executive's calendar, dissent, severance, and what a manager is actually for.
FilterEveryone, all time
- NF
Nat Friedman quoted
Our readingThe cultural prohibition on micromanagement is harmful
Their wordsThe cultural prohibition on micromanagement is harmful Great individuals should be fully empowered to exercise their judgment
- 1 day earlier
- GO
Gergely Orosz quoted
Their wordsThat’s the problem with large layoffs; they prompt precisely the best employees to quit to join competitors, or launch their own businesses.
↗The Pulse: Meta wanted to reduce teams by 60% because of AIblog.pragmaticengineer.com
- 8 days earlier
- DH
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Their wordsThe reason I say that is there's a lot of programmers who are not very good product managers. Software is product management. What should it do? Who should it do it for? How should it do it? How should it look? What are our priorities? What do we start with first? What does version one include? All of those skills are not easily or equally distributed across all programmers.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 13th of 41 in this recording
- DH
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Their wordsit was actually being damaged by overly prescriptive humans. And any programmer who's had a pointy-haired boss knows exactly what that is like. When the boss walks into the room, doesn't know anything, starts telling you how to program, how to code. What do you do? You sulk. You write shittier code if you're mandated to do things that are against your better judgment. Why would an agent not be the same?
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 14th of 41 in this recording
- 2 weeks earlier
- SP
Sunil Pai quoted
Their wordswe say we want disagreement, but every disagreement costs the person making it a little social/political capital. do it often enough and you become the negative person. people stop evaluating the argument and start evaluating the source.
- SP
Sunil Pai quoted
Their wordsan ai is oddly well suited to this job. cassandra doesn’t want a promotion and doesn’t need the people in the channel to like her. disagreeing with the vp three times this month won’t show up in a performance review. she doesn’t have an ego invested in being right either.
- 2 weeks earlier
- DH
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Their wordsAnd it was the best money we've ever spent on anything related to culture, maybe anything at all. Of all the things that I bought, that peace of mind we bought with those payouts was just priceless.
↗DHH: How to Build a Profitable Company Without Losing Controlyoutube.com 15th of 15 in this recording
- 4 months earlier
- DH
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Their wordsDesigners at 37 Signals are not just here to make a spec look pretty. They're here to find what the spec should be. They're product managers in many ways.
↗DHH’s new way of writing codeyoutube.com 4th of 20 in this recording
- 2 weeks earlier
- JH
Jensen Huang quoted
Their wordsAnd so some of the things that of course are practical things, like how do we think about succession planning? And I'm famous in saying that I don't believe in succession planning.
↗Jensen Huang: NVIDIA - The $4 Trillion Company & the AI Revolution | Lex Fridman Podcast #494youtube.com 21st of 23 in this recording
- 5 months earlier
- FC
Frank Chimero quoted
Their wordsThe fractures fell neatly along disciplines: engineers using AI to wish away designers, designers wishing away engineers, product managers wishing away both. In this climate, AI becomes frenemy identification technology, another way to avoid working together.
- 3 months earlier
- DH
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Our readingAn executive's empty calendar is a feature, not laziness: availability is what the job requires.
Their wordsWide open calendars should not be seen as lazy, but as intentional availability.
- 3 weeks earlier
- DH
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Their wordsAnd after that I thought like, no, no, I was right. This was correct. We should not have had managers. Not every programmer needs a therapy session with an engineering manager every week.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 19th of 36 in this recording
- 5 weeks earlier
- LF
Lex Fridman quoted
Our readingA meeting that wastes everyone's time is a meetings problem, not a communication problem.
Their wordsI personally hate meetings because a significant percent of meetings when done poorly don’t serve a clear purpose. But that’s a meeting problem, that’s not a communication problem.
↗Sundar Pichai: CEO of Google and Alphabet | Lex Fridman Podcast #471youtube.com 13th of 21 in this recording
- 2 months earlier
- JZ
Julie Zhuo quoted
Their wordsWelcome to the era of AI-native companies, where individual contributors (ICs) reign supreme.
↗The Death of Product Development as We Know itlg.substack.com
- 3 weeks earlier
- JN
Jakob Nielsen quoted
Their wordsVibe coding can execute instructions, but deciding what the software should do and why is not automated. Product managers and designers must still do user research, market analysis, and creative brainstorming. In that sense, vibe coding changes the implementation phase more than the planning phase of the product lifecycle.
- 3 months earlier
- JN
Jakob Nielsen quoted
Their wordsWhen a team of 10 AI-enabled super-designers can do the work that used to require a UX department of 100, the need for higher management levels shrivels. I call this the “pancaking” of the design profession.
↗Design Leaders Should Go “Founder Mode”jakobnielsenphd.substack.com
- 3 months earlier
- PG
Paul Graham quoted
Their wordsThere are things founders can do that managers can't, and not doing them feels wrong to founders, because it is.
- PG
Paul Graham quoted
Their wordsIn effect there are two different ways to run a company: founder mode and manager mode. Till now most people even in Silicon Valley have implicitly assumed that scaling a startup meant switching to manager mode.
- PG
Paul Graham quoted
Their wordsExcept in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground.
- PG
Paul Graham quoted
Their wordsWhatever founder mode consists of, it's pretty clear that it's going to break the principle that the CEO should engage with the company only via his or her direct reports.
- PG
Paul Graham quoted
Our readingFounder mode will be more complicated than manager mode, and will also work better.
Their wordsSo founder mode will be more complicated than manager mode. But it will also work better.
- PG
Paul Graham quoted
Their wordsI also have another less optimistic prediction: as soon as the concept of founder mode becomes established, people will start misusing it. Founders who are unable to delegate even things they should will use founder mode as the excuse. Or managers who aren't founders will decide they should try to act like founders.