Welcome, new leader. We’re glad that you are here. Your arrival fills a critical vacancy in our team, and we can’t wait to see what you can do at this company. We’re going to say that we’re not in a hurry and you should take your time, but we’re in a hurry. Before you arrive,… more
I am of the opinion that when you start a new role, not a new job, a new role that you have not done before, it requires a minimum of three years to become good or competent at that role. This window of acclimation grows with the complexity of the role. I’d suggest that while… more
My expectation early in my career was that promotions just showed up. You worked hard, and you figured out how to get along with your teammates. Every year or so, my boss would have a one-off conversation with me and alert me that I had a new role along with increased compensation. This hands-off cycle… more
I’ve worked at three successful start-ups and one failure. I’ve also worked at post-IPO successes such as Borland, Netscape, and Apple, which means I’ve seen a lot of different founders who, if you measure success financially, were quite successful. My backstory aside and with deep respect, most founders fail. You’ve heard of the stories of… more
You’ve had a small number of career-defining moments. These are the select few moments in time when the trajectory of your career changed instantly and drastically. I have two buckets of these: ones I expected and ones that completely blindsided me. While the surprise and subsequent scrambling involved in being blindsided are chock full of… more
The most common conversation I’ve had during the last three start-ups was the growth conversation. Some version of: “Rands. I am here. How do I get there?” For leadership-minded engineers, there are four career paths available to you. I will describe three briefly, and then I’ll talk about the fourth one a lot. The first… more
First job. Scotts Valley, California. Zero clarity what a manager did, but Rick seemed like a nice guy and he pointed me in the right direction. Mostly. Rick was demoted after we didn’t ship for three years and Linda showed up and OH MY a solid opening lesson in credible and effective leadership. Thanks Linda.… more
We’re going to play a really simple and really dumb game. I’ll explain the setup and the rules: Two one-person ‘teams.’ On a flat, boring surface, you draw two parallel three feet long white lines which are fifty feet apart. Teams choose one home baseline. The other line marks the opposing team’s home base. Team… more
If you’ve had a 1:1 with me in the last decade you know that once we’re done with our planned agenda that there is good chance that I’ll stand up, walk to the whiteboard, and start drawing some version of the organization chart (“org chart”). I believe the org chart is one of the three… more
Earlier this week a friend asked if I knew any 5-10 person start-ups that were doing interesting work in the productivity space. I knew a couple, but the always-full-of-opinion Twitter seemed like a good place to learn more, so I asked. The following is a selection of the surprisingly large number of start-ups that responded.… more
