There are times in my life where I'd have read these, been really deeply impacted by them, and picked up a new mantra or 2 for a few weeks. It's like "Get a plan, execute it violently, do it today".
If you're in a time and place where you're motivated to "move fast and break things", I think you'll nod along with Boris' post.
But it's so general and high level, the only meaning you get from it depends entirely on your own personal attitude and examples that you throw at it.
The obvious pro angle is: "yeah, understand stuff well, biased for action, act urgently, yeah!" and competent, motivated, currently-in-the-zone people will spring into action. (But they would have done anyway, because they're already motivated and in the zone).
The obvious against angle is "uuuh, last week you said we needed to be goal oriented, and now you're telling us to go and learn a bunch before we even know why/what we're learning? And I've learnt a bunch of stuff, but you're telling me it's not right because it doesn't fit within this framework you just invented that you're now telling me I absolutely have to follow and you're my manager so I have no choice?"
I'm not totally hating on this, there's a time and a place for it and I've found it very motivating at times where I was already thoroughly motivated, but I think it's also useful to recognise that it comes across as self-serving platitudes for a lot of people who aren't already in that kinda zone.
While true, I think trying to complicate or make this lesson “all accompanying” to make it more accurate to the real world would make it lose something in the process.
Many things we do or aspire to be are in some way cope for the world we find ourselves in, and cope is made to be simple and consumable like this. We all know it’s more complicated than what the mantras here entail; it doesn’t make the ideology any less significant for me though. As you are right, there are times when this would’ve ‘vibed with me’ and those are now behind me, like you. But even now, I still see the significance of these platitudes. They beat a lack of them, for me.
But I think you put it well that the problem is making it all accompanying. e.g.
> Something that people learn quickly when they work with me is that my approach to pretty much every problem is:
The overall sentiment is good, positive and actionable (think, do informed things intentionally, understand things well) but I feel like the tone tries to make it all accompanying and somewhat unquestionable, which is confusing for an article titled "I am often wrong" that ends with "I am open to changing it".
> They beat a lack of them, for me.
I generally agree, but I feel like there's a midground where we acknowledge positive, productive motivation, whilst also acknowledging that it is not how normal humans go around talking about their normal day to day activities. I feel I only see this stuff in environments where people are expected to be pushed to the point of being uncomfortable, and to be okay with it. There's a time and a place for that. I think it's not always sustainable, but that's not always understood/believed by younger engineers/younger me (and younger you?)
I think without that nuance, things like this will always be criticised/torn apart by people not currently in that kinda zone.
Yeah, it would lose any credibility it had as you realize that there’s nothing new there.
2. Reflect on doing things well
3. Humbleness about the process (or other meta)
If everything is urgent, then nothing is. This guy sounds miserable to work for and with. Assuming this is accurate and not just hyperbole, he is essentially saying he has no prioritization skills because everything is urgent. I think most people who have been around the block have worked with people like this, and unbeknownst to them, their coworkers develop a default snooze button associated with most of their requests and projects.
A more generous read, or, at least the reading I took: "once we (think we) know what we're doing, we violently execute."
So, "boo" on you. This guy sounds awesome.
Personally, I've seen far too many talented people in tech be worked too hard for too long by management that either is too clueless or too uncaring to the point where it can take years for their health and happiness to recover not to find it extremely alarming when someone says stuff like "everything is urgent". The likelihood that they mean pretty much exactly what they say rather than mean something more nuanced is high enough that the fact that don't seem concerned about the implication says more than enough.
Someone who has an ounce of leadership realizes that a team is a puzzle of different pieces of different shapes. You fit them together in varying ways, by observing how their processes and methods and strengths interlock to be greater than the sum of their parts. You do this fractally as you become more senior, and expect people to follow this meta framework rather than some fixed process or way of perceiving. You see quickly the organization takes on different strengths depending on the puzzle underneath them, composed of nonlinear amalgams of unique individuals. You do create protocols for communicating and decision making that are relatively uniform, but you get your grip off of people’s mojo and let them be people, not one of whom is Boris (unless Boris works for you). But beyond building a Postels law structure for communication and decision making, you expect the meta framework to be the way people evaluate their teams and you evaluate your team in the same way.
You eventually need people to shift around and reorg people to the shape of the system (Conways law) based on their strengths and processes that work for them and their teams. If you need the system to be different you organize the people in that way in and expect the system to change to fit (again Conways law).
None of what I read reflects a thinking like this, and I’d prefer to not work with someone who feels their role is to mint out clones of themselves. Further someone who posts about how they are frequently wrong is the first sign of a narcissist that believes they’re actually never actually wrong, but admits they might be misinformed at times. For me, it’s a red flag to avoid.
Everything about this blog post makes me think that I don't want to work with him, not just the "act with urgency" claim. The whole idea that he thought this was a blog post he should write and publish makes me not want to work with him.
I think there is a worthwhile idea in this blog post, which is that you should generally not strongly commit to any specific solution to a problem because you will learn new information while working on the solution, and that it is fine to say, "I was wrong; let's take a step back and rethink this."
But if you were to write a useful post about this, you'd focus on how to decide when to change your approach and when to stick to it, because always rethinking your approach can lead to infinite churn without any releases.
Perhaps, which is why I hedged with the possibility that it is mere hyperbole. However, I think what did it for me was his statement that he provides and expects feedback to anyone not following this recipe, which is at utterly without nuance. Incidentally, you can execute with focus and intention without urgency and arguably be more effective over the long haul.
It's not just prioritization. If project is no urgent, it's often gets stuck in "let's think this through", "have we considered X", "let's gather alignment", especially at e.g. Google
So "it's urgent, because X" is sometimes the only way for something to happen
To me this seems like a viable approach, and one that isn't obviously the correct approach (but what if busy stakeholder X only has time to discuss unrelated task Y 30 minutes from now? Do you still sit down to work on the shaped task to completion?). Choosing this approach isn't without its downsides, so choosing it is a deliberate decision with its own tradeoffs.
This guy is usually all over threads in which he gets to show off his internal knowledge of Claude Code. I'm sure he'll be here after getting clowned.
The entire Bay Area seems like the most insufferable people known to man. These people have zero introspection.
The post’s description of these steps is reasonable IMO. I’d write it as “put in order the relevant information you have” and “find the information which you know you need but don’t have at hand”.
By way of bad analogy, one could imagine writing up a document first off the top of your head, then filling in more of the document based on the documentation of the relevant systems, corresponding to these two steps the author describes.
Everyone loves being wrong in the abstract - this reads more like a self-congratulation than a genuine reflection.
Just not about your performance review.
The word “feedback” might be overloaded here also — if you haven’t worked in a culture where feedback is an honest, no-blame part of the culture, then I can see how the idea of giving feedback can feel like a disingenuous corp-speak way to make a person fall in line or have their career impacted. There’s also an inherent power dynamic in giving feedback. However, if the work culture celebrates feedback as an honest way to have more direct conversations, and makes coworkers feel psychologically safe talking to one another directly in this way, it is something that makes culture better for everyone and gives better results in the end. I have given feedback to many people, and I have received it in turn many times.
Also, I am an IC, not a manager.
> Also, I am an IC, not a manager.
I think this understates the power dynamics involved. At your level, being an IC doesn’t mean you aren’t in a leadership position, and feedback from you can still carry substantial weight.
Psychological safety is a worthy aim, but it cannot be assumed, nor will everyone experience it equally. I’d be wary of relying on it too heavily here.
Charlie Munger once said "The right way to think is how Zeckhauser plays bridge. It's just that simple." He managed to boil it down to a single way to think. You disagree?
Harder feedback: the writeup feels like a quickly hacked together memo, which claims it is “self healingly” good. Because it has this throwaway quality I’m not sure what is the goal? Shall I engage with it seriously, when the lead dev didn’t seem to put in the effort? But if I don’t engage with it seriously it means that I have to follow this patchy fremwork?
I've worked in this culture. I was an IC, tech lead, lower and upper management in medium to large AAA tech companies, household names, that had the same sort of feedback focus.
I think the all-in feedback culture is overall a net negative because it invites this kind of micro-criticism, rules-driven feedback sharing.
Given that, all I can say is that while you're appear to be well intentioned, I would at most share your framework once or twice and stop pushing it, assuming you're doing that (it sounded like it). I can see most people being annoyed but this kind of framework and that's why my reply was so upvoted.
For that you use internal communication channels.
Though we've known for a while that no one at Anthropic is capable of doing any proper communication.
> Sometimes I will give feedback to people when they are missing steps in the framework, or are poorly executing some of the steps. I expect the same feedback in return.
I also don't like that urgency is built in as the standard process either, no wonder everyone is burnt out.
> 6. Act with urgency to achieve the goal
How else would you describe iteratively solving problems?
It may sound weird but OODA starts making sense once you’ve identified the right problem to focus on.
In its original definition it was based on dogfights. There, your problem is clearly defined.
Is that not prt of what leadership always is? It might be less explicit. People often don't write their process down. Things get more confusing because people don't understand what is being asked of them.
But when is there ever no process that has to be followed? What leader lets people do whatever however and what's the role of that leader?
I think you're wrong. I think it's embarrassing. Though I might be wrong.
As others here have noted, it’s very easy to get lost gathering information that isn’t actually helpful in assessing whether the problem is well formed or whether potential solutions are applicable.
The more you force yourself to specify the problem clearly, but treat your initial problem definition as somewhat suspect - potentially missing key dimensions - the more you will be comfortable finding the information to validate / challenge it (or it's implied solutions) and re-shaping both the problem and it's solutions efficiently.
Organizations usually suck at this part. Being time & resource constrained, the focus on anything but actual problem solving is just staggering to me. I haven't worked at every place, so your mileage may vary.