On management

Giving tasks to AI agents is similar to how we delegate to humans: - Delegate what you can't or won't learn from - Delegate repetition, routine, and noise - Do the work you do best - Skip when preparation exceeds value

Transparency can cost you more in large orgs. Someone with a vague idea can convince better than someone who communicates more details. It's so counterintuitive.

It is difficult to build empathy with someone without going through the same struggles. Think of two folks who always stick together over tight timelines, or wake up together for an incident at 3 am. They don't need to explain to each other why it's a

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