At a start-up, there are two organizational inflection points which drastically change communication within the organization. The first change occurs around fifty or so people — this is the moment when, if you’re an early employee, that you first see someone in he hallway that you do not recognize. This is troubling to you because,… more
My all time favorite line from The West Wing is, “We’ve got a thing.” There are variations of this favorite line which all revolve around the same word. “Is this going to be a thing?”, “Have you heard about the thing?”, “So, here’s the thing.” I immediately applied a generous helping of Thingdom to my… more
As already discussed, Managers are not evil. They’re often just stuck in translation hell where they need to say one thing in one way to one team and say the EXACT same thing to another team in a different way. This constant verbal tapdancing looks sketchy to you, the Average Joe, and you start to… more
I recently got into minor war of words with a co-worker regarding the proper solution to a problem with one of my products. As an aside, let me say that email is never ever ever never ever the right way to resolve controversy. Too much subtly is lost when you’re YELLING IN ALL CAPS. Don’t… more
One of my teams is facing a big fat decision regarding future product direction and the process has split the team in half the “Yes We Shoulds” and the “No Way in Hells”. The manager of the team is facing a minor rebellion and spending much of his time trying to drive the team towards… more
Somewhere between individual contributor and middle management, it became essential that I have a to-do list. I resisted this for years, secretly hoping that I could keep track of all the crap I needed to do in my head or an a conveniently located post-it note, but then stuff started spilling all over the floor… more
My favorite part of shipping a product is crunch time. It’s the month or so before a major release when you’ve acknowledged that you can no longer delay the inevitable — you must ship this product. What’s gratifying about crunch time is the velocity with which the product team moves. Decision-making occurs in the hallway.… more
You’ve been here… You get a random email from your boss that you need to meet with him urgently at some odd hour of the day. You sit staring at the email, wondering what could be up. No rumors of layoffs are in the air… the company is hitting it’s number this quarter. You don’t… more
As a manager, at some point, you’re going to have to deliver news that is going to be of significant consequence to your employees. It’s likely to either be big news (“the team has been split into three and everyone you know is no longer on your team”) or it’s going to be bad (“we… more
I build software for a living. I started out in quality assurance in the 80s and now I’m responsible for a reasonably large engineering organization tasked with developing four very different products. This week, the team sat down with the executives at the company and basically asked for several million dollars to finance the development… more