I’m turning forty in a few weeks, and there’s a listicle archetype along the lines of “Things I’ve learned in the first half of my career as I turn forty and have now worked roughly twenty years in the technology industry.” How do you write that and make it good? Don’t ask me. I don’t know! As I considered what I would write to summarize my career learnings so far, I kept thinking about updating my post Advancing the industry from a few years ago, where I described using that co...| lethain.com
I’ve never published an essay quite like this. I’ve written about my life before, reams of stuff actually, because that’s how I process what I think, but never for public consumption. I’ve been pus…| charity.wtf
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
One of the common conceits in leadership is that nobody is truly essential for a company’s continuity. I call it a conceit, but I do mostly agree with it: I’ve felt literally sick after hearing about some peer’s unexpected departure, but I’m continually amazed at how resilient companies are to departures, even of important people. About two-thirds of Digg’s team left in layoffs in 2010, but we found ways to amble on. Much of Uber’s leadership team turned over in the 2017 era, and ...| lethain.com
Occasionally folks tell me that I should “write full time.” I’ve thought about this a lot, and have rejected that option because I believe that writers who operate (e.g. write concurrently with holding a non-writing industry role) are best positioned to keep writing valuable work that advances the industry. This is a lightly controversial view, so I wanted to pull together my full set of thoughts on the topic. The themes I want to work through are:| lethain.com