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New engineering leaders fail by assuming prior company context transfers directly

Will Larson · A masterclass in engineering leadership from Carta, Stripe, and Uber | Will Larson (CTO at Carta) · Nov 16, 2023 · at 3:32

Will Larson, CTO at Carta, discusses common failure modes for engineering leaders joining new organizations.

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“The number one way that I see new engineering leaders struggle when they come to a company is they just assume the context from their previous company applies as is. And if you've got new leaders who come in and really make a mess of things, It's always because they assume the previous context from their earlier company, maybe a much larger company like a Google that has, you know, tens of thousands of engineers, or maybe a much smaller company with like a startup with only 10. They just assume that context actually applies to their new environment.”

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