The flying wedge.

Engineering organizations today have ballooned to huge numbers of people, but these huge engineering organizations don’t exactly have a reputation for high velocity output. Some of this is the result of what happens with products at scale: it is just fundamentally faster and easier to iterate, improve, or change a product with 100 users than it is ... See more

It’s trial and error or it’s working with people you already know and trust in a business context. Cliché as it sounds, you’re not going to find the right team, if you don’t know yourself – but that’s way too philosophical for this memo. Understand how you work and how you like people to perform under pressure. Set the culture of the business upfro... See more

In a well-positioned expert firm, only a few employees within a given category should be able to change jobs without a thorough, thoughtful orientation in your way of thinking and solving problems for clients. If the firm they are leaving is closely positioned to the firm they are joining, there should be no problem, but otherwise you’re going to h

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I think there is a similar fallacy for how we consider engineering organizations. Many of today’s “best practices” have been drawn from long-established internet companies like Google. However, the problem with copying their current practices on the basis of their success is that most of those companies found near-invincible business models that ba... See more