Career & Experience

I optimize for people, not just technology or business metrics. This isn't to say others optimize for the wrong things, but for me, optimizing for people has consistently led to better outcomes. The best products come from teams that are motivated, supported, and proud of what they're building together.

I have a strict interviewing rule: if I think a candidate would meet our most junior team member and think to themselves "I'm more important than them," they don't get an offer. This rule holds true from engineers to executives.

I've seen junior QA engineers catch bugs that senior engineers missed, saving entire teams from looking foolish. Everyone has an important role to play, and I won't tolerate anyone treating anyone else as inferior.

I create environments where people feel safe raising concerns. I've seen other teams where engineers were afraid to speak up to senior management, and the result was that critical issues went unaddressed. On my teams, people know they can always come to me with concerns, and I'll hear them out respectfully and with an open mind.

I once kept a brilliant engineer who was toxic to the team because I thought we needed them to hit our deliverables. I'll never make that mistake again.

As soon as we let them go, both the team and supporting teams told me the atmosphere changed drastically and productivity increased. The truth is, if we're doing our jobs well, the loss of one person should never seriously affect the team—and that includes us as leaders.