Tom So

No one can see past a few months in the future for any software development project. That was the major failure of the waterfall approach. Roadmaps are at best North Star visions of where a company should head towards.

If Autonomy is about contracts with others and Mastery looks inwards at improving yourself, Purpose asks how you want your toils to contribute to the wellbeing of others.

Transitioning a career to think more about purpose is a typical evolution many people find mid-career (or at least it was for me). You could define mid-life as the transition to deeper purpose – society is clear that you should establish your mastery of something in your 20’s and 30s; it’s less clear what to do with it in your 40’s and 50’s (hence... See more

The resume templates, examples and tips I wish I had when applying for product manager and APM roles

I’m talking about using in-product levers to grow, in place of or in conjunction with external marketing and sales channels. When people can try your product for free, they experience the value of your product before making the decision to pay. This turns more people into happy users, creating more opportunity for them to tell their friends, who in... See more

The best story of my own snacking behaviors comes from my time at Stripe. I was focused on revamping the engineering organization’s approach to operating reliable software, and decided that it might also make sense to start an internal book club.