Lane Shackleton, CPO of Coda, discusses career diagnostics with Lenny Rachitsky, arguing that feeling underqualified and stretched is the primary indicator of professional development.
“The basic kind of thesis is that moments that stretch you are moments that you feel uncomfortable in, or you find yourself saying like, oh shit, you know, I shouldn't be here. I'm underqualified to be here. Those are the moments you should be seeking out, right? Like, Those are the moments that stretch you and give you sort of like a new foundation. And so I have found that they turn out to be a pretty good way to calibrate whether someone is growing in their career.”
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More from Lane Shackleton
Opinion
Shackleton: Tech career ladders are overly complex and inconsistent
“Most companies have career ladders with, like, 10 or 15 levels, and, you know, as soon as they hit some scale, the levels, there's, like, levels between levels, and I feel like I looked at the one at Google and, you know, you kind of, like, needed a PhD to dec…”
Lane ShackletonOct 1, 2023▶ 10:50What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda)
Insight
Shackleton: Career ladders flip employee focus from company to individual
“As soon as you introduce this, then the incentives sort of like flipped from being company focused to being individual focused.”
Lane ShackletonOct 1, 2023▶ 13:15What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda)
Disclosure
Shackleton: Coda does not make employee levels publicly visible internally
“Role stages are not visible across the whole company. Like, you know, we're not showing levels of any individual PM or designer, and that's partially because we just don't want to put a big focus on it.”
Lane ShackletonOct 1, 2023▶ 15:20What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda)
Disclosure
Shackleton: Coda uses a centralized committee rather than managers for compensation
“We have a centralized compensation committee and that's who decides compensation. And so it's not the manager that drives your compensation.”
Lane ShackletonOct 1, 2023▶ 15:38What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda)
Insight
Shackleton: Product teams should focus on systems rather than goals
“Instead of being as obsessed with a goal, You know, be obsessed with the system that gets you there. And so the phrase I sometimes use is, you know, goals with good intentions don't work.”
Lane ShackletonOct 1, 2023▶ 19:09What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda)
Insight
Shackleton: Discussing product work in 1-on-1s is an anti-pattern
“A lot of work and project work tends to get discussed in one on ones. And actually that's like an, it's really an anti pattern. It's a pattern you should try to avoid. So if you're talking to your manager about product work what's not happening in that moment …”
Lane ShackletonOct 1, 2023▶ 53:17What sets great teams apart | Lane Shackleton (CPO of Coda)
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