Peter Hagen

At a well-run seed stage startup, engineers will often describe the work experience as intoxicating . At a larger company, the best you get is "enjoyable".

I highly recommend this activity and format. You can start one yourself. It goes like this:

1. Choose where to walk — somewhere with lodging for 8 people every 15 km — where someone else can drive everyone’s bags from place to place.


2. Someone (local person or business) walks it all in advance to make sure it’s actually good. This person is the

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I write games so ugly that I am showered with contempt, and yet I make money! I’ll have a full, lifelong career! If I can have so many flaws and still succeed, you can too!

Figure out what you are really good at doing. Sell that.

Make your dream real.

Get it out the door, whatever it takes, whatever corners you have to cut. If you’re better than me... See more

In an interview with Forbes in January, D’Angelo argued that one of OpenAI’s strengths was its capped-profit business structure and nonprofit control. “There’s no outcome where this organization is one of the big five technology companies,” D’Angelo said. “This is something that’s fundamentally different, and my hope is that we can do a lot more... See more

Management is mostly needed for two things [*]:

- Organising the work and steering it in the right direction

- Ensuring that people work well together, help them grow, deal with "people problems"

If and when both of the above is achieved without a person holding the title "Manager", you don't need them.

Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part 2 was created at $220 million with nearly 200 staffers. Meanwhile, Guerrilla Games' Horizon Forbidden West set back Sony $212 million with 300 employees on the project.

My take on it is that fun comes from interacting with a system with enough depth for interesting stuff to emerge - maybe even things that will surprise you as a designer. I find that this happens when you get a few simple systems, get them working well independently, and then find as many ways as possible to interconnect them.