On building of All Trades

I am ambitious. But in almost every other respect,

I am the opposite of the archetypal Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

I am allergic to bullshit, risk averse, introspective, have no interest in “going big or going home”

Agreeableness is not the same as agreeing. In fact, they have little in common. Finding someone who’s only job is to agree with everything that is said is easy. On the other hand, agreeableness is the skill of having a contrary position and being pleasant about it. It’s the hard work of bringing professional work to people who expected something... See more

ON SMALL TEAMS

Impressive things accomplished by small teams:

• Instagram had 13 employees when they were acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. They had 30 millions users at the time.


• Mojang (the company behind Minecraft) had 37 employees when they were acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion. At that time, Mojang had revenue of about $290 million

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Mihika likens the role of a 0-to-1 team within a large company to that of Hestia in Greek mythology, who is the “keeper of the hearth.” It is Hestia’s job to always keep the hearth burning, even while other gods go out on separate quests. This means always keeping the 0-to-1 project alive and helping it spread to others, mostly through setting... See more

By casting a wide net, I learned that I have very little ability to predict how useful a call will be in advance. There is relevance, when work is closely related to something you’re working on, and usefulness, when work advances something you’re working on. Relevance is easier to predict, but it’s not a very good proxy for usefulness, which is a... See more

“If done well, from a perspective of making everyone feel safe to share, to give themselves permission to fail or to not be perfect, virtual can potentially even nudge out face-to-face

To find happiness in your career and life, embrace the philosophy of playing infinite games, where the goal is to keep playing rather than reach an end goal.

The arrogance of improvement

Who are you to make things better?

How dare you raise your hand to help, offer an idea, take responsibility...

Perhaps it might be helpful to reframe that feeling as the generosity of improvement instead.

If not you, who? If not now, when?

Responsive organizations are fueled by individual and collective learning. Retrospectives are baked into the culture; feedback and learning drive strategy and growth.