Peter Hagen

Instead of spending time planning and concocting roadmaps, replace that activity by talking to current or potential customers on how their lives can be improved, and letting that determine your next feature. Injecting the actual customer who uses the software into the development process is key to creating value. The more proxies you have between... See more

Planning a walk is hard. Planning a walk for a group is even harder. For months Chris sent research updates. During one reconnaissance trip he got lost and spent the night on the mountain curled up, waiting for dawn. On another he took a spill off his mountain bike while double-checking some of the road walking. His blood was on this path and soon,... See more

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.

If you look closely, all these problems fundamentally come from:

1. Decreased skin in the game, which reduces team alignment


2. N^2 communication, which creates need for managers and specialization, which reduces individual agency and breadth of learning


3. Reduced risk tolerance, which slows everything down

#1 and #2 are inevitable results of having more... See more

Google has turned into the "new IBM" for years now. I've worked with Google engineers and managers from different "generations". It's shocking how the newer engineers are just your average consultancy engineer with leet code practice. They have little abstracting capabilities and would be pissed-off if you use some tool/workflow that's not "The... See more

I worked on Google Maps monetization, and then on Maps itself.

Monetization was a dismal failure. I don't know how well they're doing now, but Maps was a gigantic money-loser, forever. I'd be a little surprised if it didn't still lose money, but maybe less. I don't what those "pin ads" cost, but I'd bet it's way less than a search ad.

If you don't... See more

We send people away for years, tell them exactly what to do every day and they get to make exacrly one choice every day: do you obey or not? That's the only choice you get to make. Then, after 3, 5, 10 years, we send them out into society and tell them, "Make better choices." But we haven't prepared them for that at all. We have given them almost... See more

Many who are unfamiliar with this industry are surprised to find that artists are some of the highest paid people. Good, reliable artists are rare! Check out this site https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/games-artist/salary/, for salary estimates.

If I'm lucky enough to find a good artist who wants the job, with bonuses and benefits and so on, I... See more