Today’s my last day at Carta, where I got the chance to serve as their CTO for the past two years. I’ve learned so much working there, and I wanted to end my chapter there by collecting my thoughts on what I learned. (I am heading somewhere, and will share news in a week or two after firming up the communication plan with my new team there.) The most important things I learned at Carta were:| lethain.com
A surprising number of strategies are doomed from inception because their authors get attached to one particular approach without considering alternatives that would work better for their current circumstances. This happens when engineers want to pick tools solely because they are trending, and when executives insist on adopting the tech stack from their prior organization where they felt comfortable. Exploration is the antidote to early anchoring, forcing you to consider the problem widely b...| lethain.com
In How should you adopt LLMs?, we explore how a theoretical ride sharing company, Theoretical Ride Sharing, should adopt Large Language Models (LLMs). Part of that strategy’s diagnosis depends on understanding the expected evolution of the LLM ecosystem, which we’ve build a Wardley map to better explore. This map of the LLM space is interested in how product companies should address the proliferation of model providers such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, as well as the proliferation of ...| lethain.com
The How should you adopt LLMs? strategy explores how Theoretical Ride Sharing might adopt LLMs. It builds on several models, the first is about LLMs impact on Developer Experience. The second model, documented here, looks at whether LLMs might improve a core product and business problem: maximizing active drivers on their ridesharing platform. In this chapter, we’ll cover: Where the model of ridesharing drivers identifies opportunities for LLMs How the model was sketched and developed using...| lethain.com
In How should you adopt Large Language Models? (LLMs), we considered how LLMs might impact a company’s developer experience. To support that exploration, I’ve developed a system model of the developing software at the company. In this chapter, we’ll work through: Summary results from this model How the model was developed, both sketching and building the model in a spreadsheet. (As discussed in the overview of systems modeling, I generally would recommend against using spreadsheets to d...| lethain.com
This is a work-in-progress draft! Often you’ll see a disorganized collection of ideas labeled as a “strategy.” Even when they’re dense with ideas, these can be hard to parse, and are a major reason why most engineers will claim their company doesn’t have a clear strategy even though all companies follow some strategy, even if it’s undocumented. This chapter lays out a repeatable, structured approach to creating strategy. In it, we’ll cover:| lethain.com
As discussed in Components of engineering strategy, a complete engineering strategy has five components: explore, diagnose, refine (map & model), policy, and operation. However, it’s actually quite challenging to read a strategy document written that way. That’s an effective sequence for creating a strategy, but it’s a challenging sequence for those trying to quickly read and apply a strategy without necessarily wanting to understand the complete thinking behind each decision. This post...| lethain.com