Will Larson+

It took me a long time to capture the idea concisely, but finally found way to t

It took me a long time to capture the idea concisely, but finally found way to talk about tradeoffs in a useful way, especially why some folks see tradeoffs everywhere, and others believe tradeoffs are rare: good tradeoffs are multi-dimensional. Post: https://lethain.com/multi-dimensional-tradeoffs/

Seeing across different layers of context is one of the hard skills to learn as

Seeing across different layers of context is one of the hard skills to learn as a Staff-plus engineer. It's also the only way to consistently get access to company-scoped problems rather than team-scoped ones. Some notes: https://lethain.com/layers-of-context/

What are your preferred books, blog posts or case studies about engineering stra

What are your preferred books, blog posts or case studies about engineering strategy? Pulling together my thoughts on this topic and looking to understand the prior art. Collection thus far in https://lethain.com/strategy-notes/

Although I'm quite convinced that I'll always be a writer first and a conference

Although I'm quite convinced that I'll always be a writer first and a conference speaker second (or third or tenth), decided to record a quick cut of the same slides I gave at QCon a few weeks ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkfzpQ10eI4&ab_channel=WillLarson

Another draft chapter, this one on gelling the leadership team that reports to y

Another draft chapter, this one on gelling the leadership team that reports to you (rather than one composed of your peers). Majority of "leadership teams" are "groups of individuals" rather than actual teams, and it's a lot more fun & effective as team. https://lethain.com/gelling-engineering-leadership-team/

Pulled together slides and talking notes for upcoming talk at QCon in SF, which

Pulled together slides and talking notes for upcoming talk at QCon in SF, which internally I'm thinking of as "Solving the Engineering Strategy Crisis" although that is indeed not it's official name. The "complex' solution here is basically: 1. Write down your implicit existing strategy 2. Use one of two methods (top-down, bottom-up) to improve it where it has issues Yup. https://lethain.com/solvi

Eng execs, and aspiring eng execs, talk a lot about personal brand. Generally, I

Eng execs, and aspiring eng execs, talk a lot about personal brand. Generally, I think that's not a super interesting topic, much more interesting is building prestige. "Brand" is active awareness, e.g. stuff you know about something. "Prestige" is ambient awareness, e.g. stuff you can find if you go look it up. https://lethain.com/building-prestige/

Miss the Increment magazine, pulling together resources appendix for upcoming bo

Miss the Increment magazine, pulling together resources appendix for upcoming book, and articles like this one surveying how diff tech companies plan are unique resources. Takes access and time to assemble these sorts of things, and rare for both to intersect. https://increment.com/planning/what-planning-is-like-at-netflix-mailchimp-and-more/

I have four chapters to finish drafting for next book, and I did not leave these

I have four chapters to finish drafting for next book, and I did not leave these four for last by accident 😂 Always staggered at how hard it is to get section sequencing right for some topics. Almost always evidence that I'm trying to fit too much into one chapter, but still not always straightforward to fix without impacting other chapters...

Working back into writing after starting my new role at Carta ~6 weeks ago. This

Working back into writing after starting my new role at Carta ~6 weeks ago. This one on a common communication anti-pattern I see between teams and executives. Full post https://lethain.com/extract-the-kernel/

Committed the cardinal sin of using a generated password for something I did not

Committed the cardinal sin of using a generated password for something I did not think I would have to type more than once manually, which I now definitely have to type more than once manually, and with unclear reset behavior 😅

Starting my next engineering executive role on Monday — what’s your best advice?

Starting my next engineering executive role on Monday — what’s your best advice? Stories particularly appreciated!

I'm starting a new role next week, almost the union of my past two roles, and ha

I'm starting a new role next week, almost the union of my past two roles, and have been thinking about the piece I wrote when deciding to leave Stripe a lot: https://lethain.com/forty-year-career/ While I disagree with most stuff I've written 3+ years ago, this one still holds true for me.

Pretty neat to see my first book hit 1,000 amazon ratings. When I'd first publis

Pretty neat to see my first book hit 1,000 amazon ratings. When I'd first published this thing, I'd go check the sales ranking and number of ratings multiple times a day, looking for some sort of evidence the book was alive. I haven't done that in quite some time (it's a lot less volatile 3 years later), but a pretty neat milestone. A pure vanity metric for sure, but always grateful to see folks r

Most importantly, the key lesson I've learned about planning is that the stated

Most importantly, the key lesson I've learned about planning is that the stated planning process is rarely the real planning process! Don't get too caught up in the stated process, it's always directional rather than perfect.

Company planning is... so hard? Everyone I've worked with is pretty frustrated w

Company planning is... so hard? Everyone I've worked with is pretty frustrated with their planning process, and there are layers of planning that I didn't really understand until stepping into my first executive role. Notes on how to navigate company planning in an engineering executive role: https://lethain.com/planning/

Scaled engineering organizations tend to generate a fair number of processes (te

Scaled engineering organizations tend to generate a fair number of processes (tech spec reviews, incident reviews, bespoke perf processes, etc), and I spent some time writing about who ends up running those processes in common scenarios. Full notes at https://lethain.com/who-runs-eng-process/

Does anyone have a theory for where Mailchimp's initial email it sends to a new

Does anyone have a theory for where Mailchimp's initial email it sends to a new subscriber might exist in its UI? Specifically for a mailing list I setup in ~2019 before their latest 1-2 iterations of automation products. Absolutely cannot find where my email template is that I send out to new subscribers. At this point may have to just change mailing list providers to fix it, lol.

Many of the new executives I've worked with had a rough time onboarding. The str

Many of the new executives I've worked with had a rough time onboarding. The struggles vary: often kicking off a giant migrations or marshaling an Engineering reorg before understand team context. I think it's relatively straightforward to help other execs onboard tho, and have written up some notes: https://lethain.com/onboarding-peer-executives/

Wrote up some notes on leaving executive jobs: thinking through the decision to

Wrote up some notes on leaving executive jobs: thinking through the decision to leave, whether you need another job, whether you're "leaving too soon" wrt resume impact, exit packages, and so on. https://lethain.com/leaving-the-executive-job/