Conversation
Hire only people who can do some of what you do better than you.
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This book is just amazing. I read every page so slow because it brings so dense info, implications and todos to think through. ❤️
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Disagree. The nature of human beings is to work hard on things we find interesting and valuable. As a product owner you need to convey that to your team, and you should expect that people’s output on operations won’t compare to new features.
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It takes real ownership to have this kind of efficiency focus. How far into growth do these kind of decisions start to get made by people who are highly disincentivized to fire, or otherwise acknowledge problems in their org?
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I’m biased, but I of course disagree ;)
Like Adam Smith said, “the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.” The bigger a company grows, the more it makes sense for people inside it to specialize.
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Also, the smaller of an impact they need to have, relatively speaking, for their salary to pay for itself, eg an engineer making a change increasing trip conversion by 0.05%
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reminds me of who talks a lot about a future where businesses pivot to vendors instead of hiring employees
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There is a massive opportunity cost to hiring someone.
Each additional person is like creating a new feature for your product.
Every hire means you cannot do something else.
Every hire takes away your attention.
Every hire adds to the org complexity.
Every hire needs support.
“be ruthless about firing” should be taken as extremely hyperbolic. You don’t want to open the door for managers to be able to use “gut feel” firings to get rid of superior engineers in order to protect the career paths of their less capable but more subservient lackies.
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Never underestimate people’s want for new friends/reports. Most hiring is done for social reasons.
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