Two or three years into a role, you may find that your personal rate of learning has trailed off. You know your team well, the industry particulars are no longer quite as intimidating, the mystery of getting things done at your company solved. This can be a sign to start looking for your next role, but it’s also a great opportunity to build experience with succession planning.| lethain.com
This was an eventful year. My son went to preschool, I joined Carta, left Calm, and wrote my third book. It was also a logistically intensive year, with our toddler heading to preschool, more work travel, and a bunch of other little bits and pieces. Here is my year in review summary. I love to read other folks year-in writeups – if you write one, please send it my way!| lethain.com
Early in my career, I navigated most decisions by simple hill climbing: if it was a more prestigious opportunity and paid more, I took it. As I got further, and my personal obligations grew, I started to think about navigating a 40-year career, where a given job might value pace rather than prestige. Over the last few years, what I’ve come to appreciate is that there’s another phase: purpose. Purpose isn’t intrinsically the third phase of a career, but it certainly has been for me, as I...| lethain.com
The Silicon Valley narrative centers on entrepreneurial protagonists who are poised one predestined step away from changing the world. A decade ago they were heroes, and more recently they’ve become villains, but either way they are absolutely the protagonists. Working within the industry, I’ve worked with quite a few non-protagonists who experience their time in technology differently: a period of obligatory toil required to pry open the gate to the American Dream.| lethain.com
When I worked at Yahoo!, our team needed another engineering manager. We didn’t run a hiring process, or even do interviews. Instead, our Director brought on a colleague he’d worked with before. That new manager soon decided he needed a tech lead on his team. We didn’t run a hiring process, do interviews, or consider candidates on the existing team. Instead, our new manager brought over one of his previous colleagues. A third previous colleague reached out to our Director, and without a...| lethain.com
