Two quotes about data and intuition. "I trust your data, and my intuition" subtly inverts the knowledge hierarchy and subjugates domain expertise to authority. Bezos's version — when anecdotes disagree with data, investigate the measurement — is the better instinct.
Eight questions to ask before introducing a new process. People overestimate how much process helps, underestimate the cost of maintaining it, and assume it'll work just because it exists. And remember, processes rarely die on their own — the ritual often outlives the purpose.
Judgment slips when decisions become emotional — when you're defending a person, a past call, or a principle rather than solving the problem in front of you. Four signals to watch for in yourself, and four ways to guard against them.
Andrew Grove treats management as a production system, but the deeper claim is that information workers are managers — their raw material is information, their output is influence. In modern Big Tech, being "a manager" isn't a promotion. It's just different work.
My operating principles: be serious but not too serious, be curious and build a shared mind, be radically transparent, move fast and break things.
A short verse on the choice between half-full and half-empty — I think it is a very important choice. It is a fundamental choice. It affects you more in your life, Much more than in your work.
Six years inside WhatsApp's improbably quiet Menlo Park building, where the motto was Keep It Simple and the F word was Focus; and where you hot-loaded code straight into production, no code review. It worked.
Five aspects worth weighing when picking a career or changing jobs: money, power, domain, people, growth. And one last gut check — are you having fun? If Mondays don't energize you more often than not, you're probably in the wrong place.
