"Stability leads to instability. The more stable things become and the longer things are stable, the more unstable they will be when the crisis hits." -Hyman Minsky

I was a middle manager. I was a glorified mouthpiece for the executives. I had close to zero influence on important decisions. I lost touch with technical topics. I had to learn a whole new language. I spent every single minute of every day in meetings talking nonsense. I saw

This is absolutely true, but the risk is that when you ask people who are great at what they do to no longer "do", they become depressed. One answer is to eliminate the manager role as a full-time position: world.hey.com/dhh/we-once-mo…

Best place I worked in terms of code quality was JetBrains. Every PR I submitted had like 50+ comments from my mentor on how to improve my code. Some might say it’s a toxic culture. But the key point is those comments weren’t rude. I really felt like my IQ grows two points

We do the same at 37. Pull requests, especially for more junior staff, is littered with even the most pedantic comments. Style matters. Linters don't capture it all. You learn by being shown the way. This shouldn't be controversial or seen as "toxic".

The real toxicity is thinking that programmers are "perfect just the way they are". Nonsense. Everyone has something to learn. The more thorough the reviews, the quicker the learning happens. If that bothers you, you're in the wrong profession.

"This focus on aesthetics is a form a deliberate practice. When the bar isn’t just a completed task but a delightful solution, you’re frequently forced to find novel solutions in the wilderness of unfamiliar techniques." world.hey.com/dhh/commit-to-…

Maciej Trybiło That's a dysfunction of a fuzzy hierarchy. The majority of reviews done for juniors should not be done by peers but by seniors. And then any difference in opinion is just another lesson in seniority.

Fabien Penso This is the beauty of explicit hierarchies. They resolve much of the tension between who gets to ultimately make the call. It's a liberation from the tyranny of structuredlessness.

When it comes to embracing the meaningful burden, nobody articulates the purpose and the challenge better than Peterson. His best bits on self-improvement, becoming formidable, accepting hardship, and carrying on are life affirming. youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Hu_U…

Interesting data: Most small business owners make about the same as they did as employees. Proves that we’re doing it for the autonomy, not (only) for the money.

So many scary things, that also can be fulfilling: startups, writing, marriage, kids. To guarantee failure, don’t even try. Don’t start. To guarantee failure, quit as soon as it becomes difficult. Success isn’t guaranteed, but certain failure is in your control.

You must avoid at all cost the idea that you can manage learning several skills at a time. You need to develop your powers of concentration, and understand that trying to multitask will be the death of the process.

At the end of every year, I conduct a Personal Annual Review. It's a transformative exercise that everyone should try. 7 simple questions that may change your life: (bookmark this + download the PDF template) 1. The Key to Success: When I interview the best in the world on The

Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education. They tell you about your own inadequacies.

Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done. In fact, it is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt. You will fail to question the element of luck, making you think that you have the golden touch. When you

Low performers are a tax on everyone and your best performers won’t be willing to pay it for long

Eventually, the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up with you, and the fall will be painful.

Writing software, especially prototypes, is becoming cheaper. This will lead to increased demand for people who can decide what to build. AI Product Management has a bright future! Software is often written by teams that comprise Product Managers (PMs), who decide what to build

Adding a "10x" programmer makes you slower. What matters is the speed of the entire system, from idea to delivery. Speed cannot be improved by introducing one faster person. We're a group walking single file on a narrow cliff path. The person in the middle might be the fastest,