Brandy Cerne

Learning, I think, makes you forget, and this forgetting is a beautiful thing. You forget what you were. You forget how you defined yourself, and how you defined the world. You forget that you once told yourself that there was no such thing as possibility, that you were who you were. You forget, for a small and gorgeous instant, your shame. It... See more

Build honesty into your culture, not transparency.

This is what a healthy culture feels like. Expectations were high but I knew that I had the support and environment to deliver on those expectations. I wanted to be around other people because I needed them to do great work. This is similar to what Brie Wolfson had to say about why she put up with intense demands at Stripe: “it felt good to care... See more

Execute based on your own plan and not in reaction to others. Agency and ownership rule the day, and this is why “Send email to X” is stronger than “Send reply to Y” — the best work does not happen in reaction to what others do. Just build your own plan based on your goals and the information you have at hand, and don’t be afraid to update it as... See more

Theory for excellence. "Excellence" is a surprisingly generalizable skill. People who've been great at *anything* are more likely to have the drive and self-discipline to excel even at something unrelated. In 2015, we hired a number of ex-Juilliard musicians with no engineering experience with the assumption that “people who know how to be

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And while dropping off a full bottle of expensive booze at every table seemed like an unreasonably extravagant gesture, it was actually cost-effective. After an elaborate multicourse dinner (and usually plenty of wine), few people were interested in drinking more than a sip of that cognac. Yet the feeling of abundance was there.