Management

Software engineers love design patterns. Factory, Observer, Strategy-we have names for recurring solutions to recurring problems. Management has patterns too. Not organizational structures or methodologies, but specific, repeatable practices that work across different contexts. Here are patterns I’ve seen work in startups, scale-ups, and enterprises. Pattern 1: The Written Decision Record Intent: Make decisions visible, reversible, and learnable. Context: Teams waste time relitigating old decisions, or worse, making decisions without knowing why previous choices were made. ...

You don’t need venture capital to steal good ideas. Here are battle-tested practices from exceptional companies that you can implement tomorrow, regardless of your team size or industry. From Amazon: The Narrative Memo What They Do: Amazon banned PowerPoint in 2004. Every meeting for important decisions starts with 20 minutes of silence, reading a six-page memo written in full sentences. What to Steal: You don’t need six pages. Start with one page. The format: ...

The best way to learn how to ship software effectively is to study companies that do it well. Let’s pull back the curtain on how real engineering organizations get products out the door. Stripe: The API-First Approach Stripe treats every internal system as if it were a public API. This isn’t just about documentation-it’s a fundamental way of thinking about dependencies. %%{init: {'theme':'dark', 'themeVariables': {'primaryTextColor':'#e5e7eb','secondaryTextColor':'#e5e7eb','tertiaryTextColor':'#e5e7eb','textColor':'#e5e7eb','nodeTextColor':'#e5e7eb','edgeLabelText':'#e5e7eb','clusterTextColor':'#e5e7eb','actorTextColor':'#e5e7eb'}}}%% graph TB A[Payment API Team] -->|Treats as External| B[Internal Risk Engine] C[Billing Team] -->|Treats as External| B D[Checkout Team] -->|Treats as External| B B -->|Strict Versioning| E[Breaking Changes = Major Version] B -->|SLA Commitments| F[99.99% Uptime Promise] What This Looks Like in Practice: ...

It’s a hot summer afternoon in Coleman, Texas. A family is relaxing on the porch, playing dominoes and enjoying the fan. The father-in-law says, “Let’s drive to Abilene for dinner.” Nobody really wants to go. It’s 53 miles away in 104°F heat, in a car without air conditioning. But nobody speaks up. The wife says, “Sounds good to me.” The husband, not wanting to disappoint, says, “Sure, I’m in.” The mother-in-law agrees. ...

No vacation policy. No expense policy. No approval process. Just one rule: Act in Netflix’s best interest. In 2009, Netflix published a culture deck that became legendary. Sheryl Sandberg called it “the most important document ever to come out of Silicon Valley.” It laid out a radical philosophy: Give people freedom. Expect extraordinary results. Fire quickly if they don’t deliver. It’s provocative. Some love it. Some hate it. But everyone talks about it. ...