executive

“If you want, like, a high-quality exec meeting, you have to let the execs own the pace.”

“I think that the best folks presenting to executives start super zoomed out and then zoom in to their specific problem over the course of like 30 seconds.”

“The most valuable thing as an executive you can do is educate like the other execs on how engineering works, not kind of protecting engineering from visibility from anyone else.”

“So like almost always when you get these like really like offhand random ideas from executives, there's a kernel of insight there that you can extract by kind of asking more, more detailed questions to them.”

“And this is like one of the, to me, most predictive traits for whether an executive will last more than a year at a company. It's where they come in and they start with, Hey, can I, how can I change myself to fit versus how can I force my entire organization t…”

“Testing a little bit with Folks who have context that aren't the exec themselves is the easiest way to help calibrate.”

“But when you present to execs, you should start with the conclusion. And then, if they already agree with you, stop presenting. Like, there's no reason to keep presenting.”

“I think they're fucking filled with happiness and enjoyment and energy and also tortured by the fear of failure and by whatever demons drive them or whatever passion drives them. Like there's this awesome Jekyll and Hyde yin yang You know, dynamic to what it's…”

“Per your point, if the, if you just have to assume that the distribution of failures is, like, pretty much the same across the org, I think it's always a pretty good sign if people have fired a lot. It's only because, like, they're gonna have to in whatever jo…”

“But a leader who's only been at one other company, I think I'd always have a few questions about because they're going to be very tempted to copy paste everything that they did.”

“I personally really worry about the, like, the two-year stints, sort of, like, multiple, like, two-year stints. Like, it just actually isn't enough time to show that you've done anything significant, I think, as a leader. So, like, this is a gross generalizati…”

“How many people moved to the next company that you worked at, that you worked with before? I think it's always a really, really good sign.”

“Like the funny thing about all these things, like when you are interviewing someone, inevitably they were good for someone somewhere. Otherwise you probably wouldn't be interviewing them, but it's the hard part is finding the right fit.”

“It is much better To frame whatever it is you want to talk to them about or your recommendation under an existing umbrella of what they already care about, of values they already have, of ways that they already think the business should be run.”

“I think that many pairings of execs and founders that work really well are when execs recognize that their founder can be spiky in different ways that might not really make sense, that they are really good at certain things and not as good as at other things. …”

“I think CEOs need to know, you know, about 80% of what their executives know about their function, I think, over time. So really kind of learn that discipline. Not enough to be good Add it, but enough to be, to know what good is and know if it's going well.”

“It gives you a level of resilience that nobody you ever hire is ever going to have.”