Growth Summary: 00 - 05

I started a newsletter almost one year ago, and I have really enjoyed doing that. It’s a great way to discuss and share insights on product engineering, leadership, and personnel growth. I’m also sharing articles, events, and any other interesting tidbits I find.

Past editions aren’t available online, and while some parts may not be relevant (such as events), it would be interesting to summarize a few of them into a single blog post. So here we are! Enjoy the summary of the first six installments of my newsletter: Growth!

Thoughts

Forcing functions

Forcing functions are your friends. They help you get other people to adopt the desired behavior on their own, with no mandate needed. You can also use them to force yourself to do some tasks you know you’ll benefit from in the long term.

Copying what others are doing

In the same way that classes are reusable but objects aren’t, one can copy business concepts or generic ideas but not specific implementations. Copying what someone else is doing will likely not be the best solution for you, but finding the underlying concept and building your version adapted to your situation (i.e., your instance) is a great approach.

Fairy tales

Throughout history, fairy tales have been used to pass along knowledge and convince and sell pretty much anything. When presented with a new idea, do you stop and reframe it outside its fairy tale presentation?

Change

People don’t like to change. If you propose a change, the default reception will be rejection. People change when they experience a problem and realize they have to change to address it. They see the change benefit them.

Learning

You can only learn if you accept that you may not know everything already, and that some of the things you know may be wrong. Someone with no interest in learning or changing their mind can’t be forced to.

Articles

• Andy Rachleff on coining the term product-market fit
• Big Ball of Mud
• Taking risks is not a success factor for innovation, reducing them is
• Short interview with Fred Brooks
• Has LLM killed traditional NLP?
• Backend to Frontend problem
• Why we’ve removed job titles at ElevenLabs
• Barriers to Change: Leader Entitlement

Quotes

“Feedback is perception”, –Joao Quiterio

“Inclusion starts with acknowledging exclusion”, –Kat Holmes

“Enjoy failure and learn from it. You never learn from success.”, –James Dyson

“Technology changes, humans don’t.”, –Deborah Schultz

“You can be a great manager regardless of your situation.”, –Andrew S. Grove

“If we are simply curious about something, it means that we believe that our existing ideas do not adequately capture or explain it.”, –David Deutsch