On management

The common advice "hire for character, train for skills" is usually misleading. The idea isn't fully wrong; it's just that most people underestimate how difficult and time-consuming it is to develop certain skills. Let's look at a simple situation. If you'

What Warren Buffett said about investment is true for management too: "The trick is, when there is nothing to do, do nothing."  The reality is that, sometimes, managers are intervening too much. This has a few bad effects in my experience: It reduces people's proactiveness, creates

Very few industries create a job title first, then figure out what it means. Software engineering's "Staff Engineer" is one of them. Talking to people about Staff roles made me realize most companies treat it as a glorified Senior position without a clear definition. There are

Procrastination isn't just an individual problem. Teams procrastinate too. It's just harder to spot. Team procrastination is when they delay decisions, intentionally or not. It feels productive because we label it differently: "building consensus," "we're aligning," "gathering more data,

I used to think team motivation was something I had control over. Eventually I started to learn I can't make someone motivated about a specific topic or project. Motivation is inherently intrinsic; it happens naturally. As a leader, you can't really motivate a person on your

I've noticed something on teams I've been part of: when there's misalignment, the best managers start with direct, private feedback to that individual rather than immediately jumping to team feedback or a new process. Unlike in software, where we want to generalize solutions, with