You Must Choose Metrics, But Choose Wisely
I had lunch with Thomas from our production engineering team today. During our chat, we talked about the future of the company’s organizational structure…
Team
Never Have the “What Would It Take to Keep You Here?” Conversation
As a CEO, many of the scariest days I’ve faced have been those when a critical member of our team told us they were…
Some Thoughts on Firing Employees
This past week, I read a terrific Quora thread on firing. The depth and breadth of answers shows the wide range of opinions and…
When Brilliant Minds Become Brilliant Jerks
The NYTimes Bits Blog has a worthwhile read from last week entitled “What Do You Do With the Brilliant Jerks?” I’d encourage startup founders…
Interview Questions and Interview Strategy
It’s struck me of late that many smart companies with reputations for giving tough interviews are weirdly anti-strategic in their approach to interview questions.…
The Downside of Hedonic Adaptation at a Scaling Startup
The resiliency of the human mind is an absolutely astounding phenomenon. Evolution has given us the power to suffer massive, lifelong injuries, lose the…
It’s Not Just Technical Debt; Everything Gets Painful & Slow as You Scale
A tremendous amount gets written about technical debt (definition) in the startup ecosystem. As you scale your product and engineering, you inevitably make sacrifices…
The Uncomfortable Challenge of Topgrading Your Startup’s Team
If things go well at your startup, there will inevitably be a point where the business is growing ahead of the team’s abilities. Engineers…
Making Performance Reviews Better
We’re doing performance reviews at SEOmoz right now. It’s tough, because on the one hand, I agree with a lot of the general criticism…
Diving Deep on TAGFEE
For the last 5 years, SEOmoz has lived by a set of core values collectively referred to as TAGFEE. The acronym represents the values…