Random thoughts about software development, management, and investing.
Speed vs. Throughput: Finding the Right Balance If you are a race car driver, your goal is to go as fast as possible, and you optimize for maximum speed. But if you are trying to move traffic across town, the speed of one car doesn't matter so much as the overall number of cars you can get to their destination as quickly as possible across a freeway. The same principle applies to to business and…
Your privacy is the aggregate of your decisions to cede knowledge, power and control over you to another. These decisions can be in the affirmative or the negative, implied or explicit, remembered or forgotten. Example to follow. This works both in the singular (you as an individual) and in the collective (you as a group). Privacy is essential to personal liberty and collective democracy. It is…
In evaluating great engineers, I've noticed they often fall into two primary types: fast and slow. Fast Fast engineers are a favorite among product teams. Their speed in coding and deploying software is well aligned, especially in smaller organizations where the focus is solely on product output. While they excel in getting tasks completed quickly, this rapid pace can lead to significant technical…
Engineering Liquidity: Navigating Startup Team Dynamics In the realm of startup engineering, understanding the balance of team sizes and their functions is critical. As highlighted in my previous post about the complexities of team scaling, maintaining a certain limit on engineering resources can be advantageous. Particularly in projects where speed trumps throughput, like in greenfield…
I first encountered the concept of the "rule of ones and threes" from a military officer during a teenage visit to Washington DC. This principle offers a framework for organizing military units of various sizes—a concept I find parallels with in the growth of startups. The Growth of Startups Startups don't begin with thousands of employees. They start small and expand gradually. Let's examine this…
This is my first post, so I decided to go with one of my favorite observations: inversions. It is a fun lens to look at an industry — to take the basic premises and completely flip them. Based on my previous experience with forums, my favorite example is Twitter. In the old days, the best way to chat from your home was to use a BBS: a dialup modem from your home to someone else’s, back before your…