My User Manual

My Leadership Tenets

Context is King. I aim to provide a clear vision and the context for how our work connects to it — why the work matters, why the work is more or less important than other work, what successful outcomes look like, and some constraints on how to get there. This applies both to large multi-purpose/multi-year efforts as well as small PRs or space cleanup efforts. Without appropriate context we risk solving the wrong problems, losing the sense that our work actually matters, and not providing sufficient agency to our highly talented team to deliver successfully on the goals.

Impatience can be a virtue. We're in a race for general-purpose robotics, and great talent wants to move fast. One of my biggest levers is removing friction — cutting build times, getting sufficient tools and infrastructure, unblocking decisions, dropping low-value meetings, and solving for the minimal set of constraints. Flag anything slowing you down, and act with appropriate urgency.

But patience can be a virtue too. That said, there are cases where slowing down sometimes pays dividends. Writing an RFC before diving into implementation, fixing root causes instead of patching symptoms, building sustainable tests — these compound positively. I'll give you the time and resources to do work the right way. Escalate if you're being pushed toward shortcuts.

Everyone is an owner. Ownership means more than writing the code or the doc. It means making sure changes are rolled out, adopted, and working — and that issues get resolved. In an ideal world efforts will have clear DRIs and RACI charts. But in the absence of those, I'd rather deal with "too many cooks" than "not my problem."

Be a Skeptic, Not a Cynic. I value constructive skepticism — the act of poking holes in a plan to make it stronger. If you find a flaw that saves us from a future failure, or identify a 'brutal truth', you've done a service to the team. What I want us to avoid is sustained pessimism — the state of believing a project is doomed without taking the agency to help fix it. I want us to have the 'hard conversations' early so we can decide to fix the problem or pivot.

Assume Good Intent and Capabilities. We're growing fast, and people will sometimes do work that surprises you unhappily. Start with curiosity: "Can you help provide me more details about what led to this solution?" instead of "This is a horrible idea." Most of the time you'll learn something about goals or constraints you weren't aware of. Occasionally you'll surface a real problem — then it's worth escalating.

Sweat the Details. Software rewards abstraction, but successful delivery requires working through the specifics. Know your work deeply: how it rolls out, how it fits the broader product, what alternatives you considered. Hold me to the same standard — if I'm rolling out a new policy, I should be able to clearly articulate every piece of reasoning behind it and what the implications are.

Engage with the customer immediately. Our opinions about what customers need are hypotheses until we hear otherwise. This applies equally to external customers using our products and internal customers depending on our work to do theirs. Stay close, listen without defensiveness, respond fast.

My Quirks

I bristle at formality and hierarchy signaling. Credentials or levels used to dismiss ideas from newer employees, rank-based offices, visible level/title displays. I understand why hierarchy exists for decision-making lines and clear organizational ownership; I just don't want it as theater.

"Why can't this be done by Thursday?" I ask this a lot. It is a gentle challenge, but I ask it with curiosity — I am trying to diagnose the system, not put too much pressure on the person. I want to understand if I've given insufficient context or if there is organizational friction I can help remove. If the answer is "it genuinely takes that long," I will be patient; if the answer is "I'm blocked," I'll do what I can to unblock you.

Low emotional range. I operate somewhere between "mildly content" and "mildly discontent." The upside: calm and solution-focused in a crisis, no emotional manipulation. The downside: I don't radiate exuberant enthusiasm, and I've had to train myself to celebrate wins instead of just moving on to the next problem. Please don't mistake this for coldness; I am genuinely happy to be here and deeply enjoy our work. I simply express my warmth through steady support rather than high-fives.

Easily nerd-sniped. I love technology and building things, which keeps me close to the team's day-to-day reality and informs useful context. The downside is I can get pulled into technical work when other work is more valuable, or fixate on how before I've nailed down why and what. I've trained myself to catch this, but it's a work in progress.

Recommended Books and Resources

Organizations as a System

• High Output Management — Quick read, introduced OKRs to the public, lots of practical tips
• The Goal — Operations thinking focused on key bottlenecks for overall system throughput
• Financial Intelligence — Clear, quick survey of corporate finance and how companies model themselves
• Microeconomics — Any text or online course works; I liked Mankiw's. Fundamentally about allocating scarce resources.
• No Rules Rules — Netflix's high-trust/high-accountability culture. Deliberately controversial, which makes it a thought-provoking read.

Organizations as a Collection of People

• Far From the Tree — Parents raising children fundamentally unlike themselves — great for building empathy and understanding for people with different life experience than you
• Rands in Repose — Blog on engineering leadership and management with most focus on tricky communication and people issues
• Radical Candor — How to care personally and empathetically while challenging directly

Career Progression, Particularly for Software

• The Manager's Path — Guide through every level of engineering leadership
• The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast — Software engineering at Big Tech and startups, from the inside
• Staff Engineer — Technical leadership beyond the management track

Technology Business and Strategy

• Acquired Podcast — Deep dives into the stories behind the world's greatest companies
• Build — Tony Fadell's unorthodox guide to making things worth making
• Dwarkesh Podcast — Deeply researched long-form interviews on science, history, and technology
• Stratechery — Persistently strong newsletter about technology developments and the business implications
• Crossing the Chasm — Technology products from early adopters to mainstream markets