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March 21, 2022

Weekly Roundup - Issue #18

I started this newsletter on the 7th of March last year and I have somehow managed to post 18 newsletters irregularly and grown to 32 subscribers.

Thanks for the support and here’s to another year 🥂

Pave is a company on a mission to make the black box of compensation transparent and fair for everyone in the ecosystem. What I’ve linked to is part two in a three part blog series where they talk about what they kept in mind while they scaled the team to a 100 employees. A lot of stuff they spoke about reminded me of doing things that don’t scale and using that as a foundation to build the company on.

They have an upcoming panel discussion about design compensation that you can sign up for here.

The Do’s & Don’ts of Rapid Scaling for Tech Companies – Scott Ginsberg
The Do’s & Don’ts of Rapid Scaling for Tech Companies – Scott Ginsberg
If your tech company is growing fast, keep these ideas in mind
www.pave.com

While scrolling through the 500 open tabs on my Safari browser, I came across this article by Brad Frost from 2014 about the two kinds of people in your team; Bricks and Mortar.

Job Title: It’s Complicated – Brad Frost
Job Title: It’s Complicated – Brad Frost
I’ve been talking to an increasing number of people who struggle to answer the question “So what do you do?”
bradfrost.com

Another categorization of team members, that’s derived from ‘Accidental Empires’, refers to them as ‘pioneers, settlers and town planners’. I keep this in mind while I am evaluating a candidate because your teams need to be balanced for them to succeed in the long term.

This article was the one with the simplest explanation for what it means. You will need to scroll a bit to find the definitions.

The Power of the Elastic Product Team — Jonathan Golden
The Power of the Elastic Product Team — Jonathan Golden
Over the last 5 years, Jonathan Golden has watched Airbnb explode in size and productivity. Here’s what that journey looked like on the product team that powered it.
review.firstround.com

And finally, I guess one of the good things to come out of the Great Resignation is leaders reflecting about their learnings. Sophie Shepherd was at Github for 6 years and its a great read that talks about her career in the context of being at a company like Github

Six Things I Learned in Six Years at GitHub
After 6 years (S!) today is my last day at GitHub. I spent some time this week reflecting on the biggest lessons I’ve learned in that time, and wrote them up here.
sophieshepherd.com
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