A friend recently asked me about how I might define performance for web developers. It was an interesting question coming from one startup founder to another. He was concerned with how to present performance-based incentives to his developers when performance itself is so hard to measure for engineering work. I had a few thoughts to […]

I often get asked, “What do you do, what’s best for the person or what’s best for the company?” Or, “What happens when what’s best for the employee isn’t best for the company?” In my mind, doing what’s best for each individual person in an organization is what’s best for the company at large. At […]

In his essay, Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule Y Combinator’s Paul Graham points out that managers’ schedules and makers’ (i.e. programmers’ or writers’) schedules are quite different: Each day, managers’ schedules are cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change […]

I saw an interesting article recently titled “What is the Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology” by Ben Horowitz on TechCrunch. In it, Horowitz talks about the stressful aspects of being a CEO (there are many) and shares some techniques he uses to calm his nerves. The startup environment is frothy now. Money’s […]