Good ideas are great. Deep insights are awesome. However, they tend to have little impact when they are not _well timed_. If not timed well, they may at most get a “cool story, bro’.” However, when timed just right, they can change things. They can blow minds. They can pivot companies, even change the course of human kind. Or at least put a mild smile of recognition on one’s face. * * * “Hey! Just some background on what’s going on at our house the last couple of weeks: basically the whole family is completely into Harry Potter now.” _Harry Potter... really?_ “Yeah, we recently discovered this podcast The Literary Life, which covers the first book (in four episodes) and we’re all completely shocked about the amount of depth that these Harry Potter books apparently have. We had no idea. You’d think this is just a well done series of fictional books, but the amount of layers in there are just crazy. It completely changed how we read these books, and literature in general.” It was 2 years ago, probably somewhere in October or early November. I have three sons, who at that time were aged 7 (twins) and 10. While my older son had already read all Harry Potter books, we had some trouble getting the twins on board as well. I had attempted watching the first Harry Potter movie with them, but they freaked out at the first sight of long-nailed goblins. There was this vague idea of reading the books to them as a way to ease into it, but it had not yet happened. And then we were introduced to _The Literary Life_ podcast. I listened to the first episode and was blown away. My wife listened to it as well and proclaimed: “All I want for Christmas is _y_... a box-set of Harry Potter books in original British English.” And thus started the _Christmas break of Harry Potter™_. The twins read the first Harry Potter book in Polish. I also read the Dutch translation to them. Me and my wife read the original English version. At the same time we listened to the Literary Life Podcast episodes that added infinitely more depth and completely altered the experience. Finally, we watched the first movie around new year’s. Would this suggestion have come a few months earlier or later, I may have brushed it off. However, it was this specific time — just before Christmas, that made all the difference. Timing matters. * * * Fifteen years ago, my first industrial job was in a start-up called Cloud9 IDE. I joined as an engineer, but within months found myself “progressing” into a management role. While my computer science degree prepared me for many things, _management_ surely wasn’t one of them. It was a huge struggle. A lot of things went wrong, and at our pace I had little time to make sense of it. When I got out of that job, somebody asked if I had read The Phoenix Project. _Mind. Blown._ This book is effectively a modernized retelling of The Goal. Both are fictional novels that tell a story of a struggling new manager in a (software) manufacturing environment who is slowly introduced to a lot of process concepts (work in progress, bottlenecks, Kanban) I recognized _so much_ of this story. Reading it triggered a slew of _aha!_ moments for me. Had I read it a year earlier, I would have put it away. However I discovered it at exactly the right time, and it laid the foundation of my _systems thinking_ approach to management. Timing matters. * * * Probably five years ago I really struggled with a team member that I had “adopted.” I wrote about it in The Gaslighting Elephant in the Feedback Room: > I have a very complicated relationship with feedback that was kicked off by an event that I lovingly refer to as the “performance review from hell.” > > It happened with somebody in my team about some years ago. I’ll not get into many specifics, but let me just say that while my intent with this review was good and I invested an insane amount of time in preparing it, it backfired to a degree that I’ve never experienced in my life. It escalated my (admittedly already problematic) relationship with the person in question completely and never really recovered. > > “Can I also give _you_ some feedback?” he asked at the end. > > “Alright.” > > “I was always a believer in people, but then I met you.” > > Feedback is a gift! This is another event after which somebody handed me a book. This one was entitled “No More Feedback” in which the author, Carol Sanford, dismisses the whole concept of feedback as a purely toxic practice. Peer feedback? Yowza! Performance reviews? Deeply flawed! While reality is a little more nuanced than that, it was another pivotal event in my career. It made me realize that “management best-practices” may not always get everything right. This insight would in turn result in a long series of No More articles, and ultimately in the creation of _alt.management_ itself. Would I have found this book a few months earlier, I would have dismissed it as a rather confusing and poorly edited book. However, at the time I read it, it hit home. Timing matters. * * * “Man, I shouldn't be complaining to you, but it's so relevant. I'm now ON an F boat and discussing with A, I, L boats how we can push things forwards.” Over the years I heard from a number of people that posts I wrote had some sort of impact. The right idea at the right time. Perhaps not life altering, but helpful. Helpful to make sense of things, to connect the dots. Sometimes I reframe ideas I’ve written about before. Sometimes the new framing helps. Sometimes it’s purely about timing. * * * For most of my adult life I’ve primarily read non-fiction books. Programming books at first. Later, management and leadership related books. Fiction didn’t really do anything for me. _What’s the point?_ I’d ask. _What do I learn from this?_ A waste of time. That all changed two years ago, when I discovered there is so much more depth to be found in a good work of fiction than purely entertainment value. Part of the joy of my work is uncovering patterns (and then writing about them). There’s so much pattern recognition to do in fiction, when you know _how_ to look for it, but even _being aware_ that there are patterns to be uncovered and recognized. It’s a game! Today, five minutes into a movie I hit _pause_. Me and my wife turn to each other and simultaneously classify the story type. “Identity quest!” “Up-side-down!” “Hero’s journey!” _High five!_ And I hit _play_ again. * * * In the off chance you’re reading this and it’s December, you’re about to go off on a holiday break, and you need a distraction that will kick you out of your standard day-to-day reality. You never know. Consider giving something from The Literary Life a try. Harry Potter may not be your thing, but they have a long catalog of episode about many books. Generally older stuff, but I suppose the Lindy Effect also applies to literature. I happen to get into it with Harry Potter, but have since also read Brave New World this way. The same people run an online school called the House of Humane Letters where you can buy full courses and webinars (this is also where Harry Potter books 3-5 are covered). We’ve taken some classes here here too now, specifically on Alice in Wonderland, and we’re currently working through A Christmas Carol. Anyway, it may not be the right idea for you. It may not be the most wonderful time. However, who knows, for one or two of you it may be. You may get into this. You may start to noodle a bit on the side, and ultimately write the ultimate piece of Harry Potter fan fiction that will change the world. Happy holidays!

_Tell me about a time when you were rejected for a role, what the context was, and what you learned from it._ People don’t tend to brag about this type of thing, but I’ve been rejected by both Google and Amazon. I interviewed once with Google about 10 years ago for a developer advocate role, and didn’t make it, and with Amazon AWS about 3-4 years ago for a senior development manager role, which I also didn’t get. I could spend a paragraph therapeutically explaining away this rejection, explain how this was all a close call, how these companies are evil anyway, and, well, their loss. But this is not that type of post. Instead, I want to share one nugget about the Amazon interview process that stuck with me ever since, and changed how I interview myself today. If you ever interviewed with _Big Tech_ , you’ll have found out (as I did quite late while talking to Google) that these companies come with an interview manual. Literally. There have been books written on the topic. And likely, you’ll have to work through them to stand a chance, or at least to increase it. At this point I could say something insidious about how _Big Tech_ companies are very much like enormous machines that require neatly fitting cogs to keep operating smoothly, and working your way through the interview process is your test to see if you are willing and able to adapt to neatly fit in. But this is not that type of post. One thing that Amazon is very known for is their heavy use of _behavioral questions._ I was superficially familiar with this type of question, but their awesomeness never fully hit home with me before the Amazon experience. I’m not being sarcastic — behavioral questions really are brilliant for both their simplicity and value. Perhaps less so when hiring for more junior roles, but very much for more senior people. They always start the same: _Tell me about a time when..._ * * * ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

“Can we use _X_ to boost productivity?” You mean X the “social” network, or X.ai? “No, no, I mean _X_ , the generic placeholder.” Ah. It depends. “You always say that, why can you never simply give me a straight _yes_ or _no_ answer? Live a little. What does it _depend on_ this time?” On where the bottleneck is. If _X_ helps remove or at least improves the “productivity” (since you seem to like this term) of the bottleneck, then my straight answer would be _yes_ , _X_ will improve overall productivity. Up to the point where you hit your next bottleneck. “And if _X_ doesn’t help the bottleneck, but it _really_ helps in other areas?” Then I bet you’re going to let people _feel_ very happy and productive, but you’re not going to improve _overall productivity_. In fact, you’re likely going to make it worse. * * * ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

“I know Kubernetes!” — Neo _The Matrix_ scene where skills and knowledge are uploaded directly into Neo’s brain is iconic. To many, this is the ultimate learning experience: lay back, stab a giant-ass plug into your brain, and let the upload begin. _Ahhhh!_ Sweet. Kung Fu. Shakespeare. CSS. However, the scene doesn’t end there. “Show me.” — Morpheus What follows is one of the movie’s most epic `kubectl` action sequences, which mid-way results in a bit of a cluster fuck (😇) as Neo is kicked in the belly with an abort signal by Morpheus. Morpheus follows up with some deep philosophical insight, they cuddle some more, and ultimately Neo defeats Morpheus. Morpheus neatly summarizes the lesson at the end (don’t give Claude — a.k.a. _The Chaos Monkey_ — free reign). On to the next training program! Hang on... lesson learned? Training program? Why run through training programs if we have these giant plugs stabbed into our heads that allow any arbitrary knowledge and skill to be streamed in? Why not queue up the insights to be gained from all more interactive training programs, and flush them through Neo’s brain in a few seconds as well? That would have been rather _boring_ , though, wouldn’t it? Any story can be accelerated by introducing shortcuts. Let Gandalf appear in The Shire to pick up Bilbo on some flying horse, drop him off on the front lawn of Smaug The Dragon and save us all a long and painful trip. Have a little birdie fly by Luke, tell him (spoiler alert) Darth Vader is his father and Leia his twin sister (explains the ear lobes). Park a nice ship in front, with the Death Star already pre-programmed in the navigational system. And _go go go!_ Productivity, people! No time for the frivolous. Let’s go! * * * ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

**Date:** December 31, 2047 Dear Martin, As part of clearing out the final area outside of town for the new _Bubble-III_ data center, an old PC (Personal Computer) was found. It was left behind in a cabin further down in the forest. The PC still had a “hard drive” in it, so it dates from before the _Cloud Mandate_. I know you’re intrigued by this era, therefore you may find this of interest. I spent a few nights going through the hard drive’s content. It appears to have been owned by a “computer programmer.” There were a ton of code repositories on the disk. I ended up reading a lot of it. I tend not to brag about this, but I know how. My grandfather and I read code as a bonding exercise. Read, not _write_ — don’t worry. Perhaps this is typical for the time, but the code seems oddly self-critical. It has `FIXME` and `TODO` comments, contains spelling mistakes, and no emoji whatsoever. Also, the functionality described in “README” files seems wildly out of proportion with code size. Code bases we know today count in the millions of lines, these repositories are mere thousands or tens of thousands. It’s quite quaint, and I suspect that “thought” was put into it, which makes me suspect the code was written by a human. This is consistent with the fact that we found a bunch of “tools” (hammers, screwdrivers) in the cabin’s shed. The owner was clearly a savage. However, what triggered this message to you is a particular file I found on the hard drive. The timestamp shows it was the last file touched before the device was powered off. It appears to be a hand-typed comment — a long one — triggered by a post on LinkedIn (the old name of _WorldTruthFeed.org_). I’ve attached the file in full. While I cannot block _CensorBuddy_ processing while sending it, I do recommend you disable _ToDLeR_ mode on this one, it’s worth reading verbatim. The timestamp on the file is _November 20, 2025_ , placing it late stage _Bubble-II_. I think it will be a nice addition to your “sign of the times” relic collection. Best, John _Sr. Director Third Time’s a Charm Data Center Construction Inc., subsidiary of NVIDIA Ltd._ * * * Dear mr. _future-of-work_ dude, may I call you bro’? My daily struggle is that generating posts like this can be done with a single prompt, whereas proving its insanity requires many pages of nuanced writing. No more. BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! As “in control” as your cockpit-style three screen (and an iPad?) with green tea setup may suggest you are. AirPods Pro with a _brown_ case (I hope), what is that supposed to symbolize? And is that a small Buddha in the corner there? Nice touch. It doesn’t change much. BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! Your cockpit picture looks tight. Very impressive. Oddly, I have a different visual that keeps popping in my head. Not sure why: Robot vacuums from the ‘00s, remember those? You would probably call them “agentic hoovers.” They were kinda cool and futuristic, and seemed like they would solve a real pain point: hoovering the place. Because, who enjoys doing that? And they were kind of _cute_. The agentic hoover goes into some direction, runs into a wall, looks confused, spins a little and then “decides” on a new random angle and happily chucks along. You could even put a funny hat on them, not a care in the world. After enough random bouncing around, they’d run out of battery and your apartment was _kinda_ clean. LGTM! 🚀 It was obvious in the ‘00s: agentic hoovers are the future! Agentic hoovers are getting better every day, they will soon put other hoovers out of business. You could probably find a smug _Agentic Hoover CEO_ proclaiming that soon all professional cleaners would be out of a job. Here we are, 20 years later and our agentic hoover is collecting dust (hah!) in my son’s room. Compared to the earlier models, it did get a few updates, newer models did get better. For a while. It now maps out your room with a radar and more systematically covers the whole area. The results are a _bit_ better. For anybody who cares about cleanliness, it does still not nearly match a regular hoover. It misses spots, you still have to babysit it, moving furniture around so it has a clear path and move it all back later. While our model has a mop, it doesn’t do much more than wet the floor — it’s mostly performance art. We happen to be a family that _does_ care a bit about cleanliness, so we still ended up hoovering and mopping by hand after the agentic hoover was done. We then realized the gain was negligible and we barely switched our agent on anymore. Doing it by hand was just quicker and more reliable. My son has our hoover agent in his room now. He still runs it sometimes it after his mother nags him enough about having to clean his room. He likes retro electronics, and _really_ does not enjoy hoovering, nor really cares about it. He switches it on, then comes downstairs proclaiming he’s cleaning his room right now. * * * Why am I reminded of this? Oh right, agentic coding agents. Attach a mechanical hand to an agentic hoover, and put a bunch of them in a room so they can _high five_ each other on their successes, and you got a pretty good picture of _what I see_ when I think about coding agents. Actually, while I rarely do this anymore, let’s ask ChatGPT to visualize this. I’m sure it won’t match your cockpit view with brown Airpods Pro, but you know — I’m sure we can still get something that looks good. Here we go: Hmm, those are some some creepy looking hands. And... what’s up with the fingers there high-fiving? Is there a third hand mixed in there? And one robot vacuum has a cable for some reason. I probably used the wrong model or prompted it wrong. Skill issue. Whatever. Details. LGTM! 🚀 * * * Did you catch my sarcasm there, mr. _future-of-work_ bro’? Ask somebody who’s _not_ strongly incentivized to “see the opportunity in AI” (because of the company’s new _AI First_ strategy), for a deep critical look at the work produced by your AI agent and its numerous friends. Yes, all tens of thousands of lines of it. To the level of detail where they’d say “sure, you can wake me up at 2am and I can fix bugs here.” Superficially a lot of it will “LGTM 🚀“ and some of it _may actually_ be surprisingly OKish. Inevitable though, a good chunk it — as you will discover, sooner or later — is done so ridiculously poorly it puts anybody with a brain to shame. And the insanity is going to be presented with the same level of confidence as the sane stuff. It’s like your trusted colleague is randomly switched out with a north-korean hacker trying to infiltrate your code base, but speaking with the same voice. It sucks. You may not notice immediately, or perhaps think it doesn’t matter. Après moi, le déluge as a famous Frenchman once said: after me, the flood. What matters is _vibes_. This _feels_ productive. New. Da futjah! Having this amount of code produced in such a short of time is impressive. And sometimes the code works! LGTM! 🚀 **Welcome ladies and gentlefriends to LGTM 🚀 culture.** Where things _look good_ and that’s all that matters. Where things _kinda_ work. Where information sounds _kinda_ true. And our new chatbot BFF seems _kinda_ real. Our coding agent implemented a feature for us. LGTM! 🚀 Oh wait, where are the unit tests? “AI agent, please add unit test!” We are congratulated on being geniuses for the suggestion. With this level of appreciation, we decide not to kill the _vibes_ by asking why there were no tests in the first place. The agents produce an impressive number of tests, our code coverage went up! They surely seem to be mocking a lot of stuff, but _mocking_ is a thing that you do in tests right, LGTM 🚀! _You make jokes, but_ this is a skill issue: _you simply didn’t prompt it right! You need to educate yourself, take my course!_ That _sounds like_ gaslighting to me. If it’s so obvious what was missing from my prompt, why is that prompt not baked into the model’s training? If a code agent generates two identical code paths, with kinda different but functionally equivalent code, is that _my fault_ because I didn’t prompt it with “and don’t do crazy shit?” We ask the agent to make software “enterprise-grade secure.” Lo and behold, we receive another confirming pat on our back. Amazing for us to care about this, and thanks for the opportunity! On goes the agent, talking to a dedicated security “sub-agent.” “Hey yo, how about you add some securitah!” “Great call!” High fives all around. Layers of security are quickly added on parallel tracks. It _looks like sci-fi!_ All kinds of impressively sounding libraries and mechanisms are pulled in. oAuth. MD5. SOC2 compliance! Let me fake a pen test here, yep, all good! Some moves seem irrelevant or nonsensical. To “experts,” they may actually be shockingly dangerous, but what do they know — PhD level coding agents are on the case, enforcing enterprise quality bars so high never seen before. LGTM! BULLSH1T! BULLSH1T! BULLSH1T3! _But what model did you use?_ The idea that one model is significantly better than another is quickly getting dated. They’re all trained on the same questionably-sourced inputs. All fine-tuned by low-paid workers in vulnerable countries. All trained in data centers built in under-developed locations that have few other options. The main quality difference comes from whatever niche area a vendor decides is worth investing additional _whack-a-mole_ fine-tuning cycles on. Is it r’s in strawberry, or glue on pizza day, or maybe we can finally get it to use fewer em-dashes, and if we have time left — let’s see if we can nudge the model to sound an alarm bell while simultaneously affirming a teen's suicide plans? _But it’s early days!_ BU1L$H1T BUL1$H1T BUL1$H1T You can define “early days” however you want. It’s been years now, and _hundreds of billions_ of dollars are being burned. As they say: a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there and soon we’re talking about real money. So, show me more than high-fiving agents that made _that_ level of investment remotely worth it. Because most of what I see is chatbots everywhere and “let me rewrite and suck all humanity out of it for you” features shoved through our throats in all products that _used_ to be kinda OK. Or is will its real legacy be LGTM 🚀 culture? Looks good, sounds nice, confirms my biases, so _let’s gooooo_ 🚀! We were promised a cure for cancer. We were promised the end of poverty. We were promised “AGI” (whatever that means). Tone deaf AI CEOs even promised us that a large part of us would soon be out of work. It all sounded very exciting. And it is _kinda_ happening. Not because AI can do jobs better, though. People are laid off because their CEOs _believe_ that AI can do their jobs, and then rehires them when it turns out they actually _kinda_ can’t. And when the bubble pops, we all get to share in the inevitable economic downturn. Well, not all of us, billionaires that are driving us into this brave new world are going to be just fine. LGTM 🚀 _But this is enterprise-grade software, ChatGPT told me so!_ Have you been listening at all? No no no no _n0_! How often do I NEED to repeat this! this is driving me ins3ne! 0nly if you accept enterprise software to me3n _absolut3 shit_. Maybe that’s always how it’s been and we just didnt know it. Maybe thats our future now. Sounds great, looks good, let’s ship it! Maybe bullsh1t is our future now. Maybe we shall wade in a _LGTM_ future forever. no kwalitie. just junk. code. millions of lines. ,aybe we’ll be happier in our superficial LGTM world. feed it more shit. With our chatbot friends. chatbot marriages. models are getting bettter all the tim chatbot vibed software that does LGTM. doesn’t really work breaks randomly; internet down again. but vibes man it just vibes. its the future the future is here its now. Is viby a word- it should be. skill issue. Vibe all the things. Vibe security. Vibe people. Livin la _viba_ loca. vibe life. This w3s not _promsed_! This is _mak3s_ no sense. trillions $ down the drain.Marriages broken because of chatbot affairs. Kids chatting only to botz. get me out of this TIMElinE. bought a patch of land far far away where the ai ceos and b0ts cant find m3. It has buunker. It has foot for yars. I will hide and w8. pushing off now, vib3 u L8T0R

“I have a presentation to give. Quick, gimme some low-effort, high-impact tricks!” While for many topics I have books to pull off my shelf, I realized that the last book I read on the topic of presenting was probably Presentation Zen (1st edition), circa 2008. At the time, _Death by Powerpoint_ was quickly overtaking tripping over power cords as the #1 cause of death at the workplace. That same year, Steve Jobs was at peak showmanship with his original iPhone reveal keynote. Steve didn’t use Powerpoint, no no. He used an application named Keynote that was — so it was rumored — custom built for him. Steve’s presentation style, generalized in _Presentation Zen_ , could be summarized as giant-ass visuals and short phrases (“One more thing...”) on slides. This was a refreshing change from the mind numbing bullet point and pie chart. Sadly, over the years, the way this style was cargo culted devolved into what could be summarized as _giant stock photos on slides with quasi-inspirational quotes_. A decade and a half later we seem to be more or less back to where we were, to the extent we ever left. Except now we use _Google Slides_ rather than _Powerpoint_. Today’s reality is that the status quo in corporate presentations is still pretty poor. With such a low bar, we don’t have to do _that much_ to stand out in a positive way. Perhaps this has the low-effort, high impact “trick” potential you are looking for? * * * My jobs have always involved presenting things. Early career I presented a lot on academic conferences. If you thought your _all hands_ was boring, you should try an academic conference some time. I won the _Best Presentation_ award for my final academic conference talk. How? Did I bedazzle my audience with fireworks, background dancers and jazz hands? No, all that would come later in my career. All I did was something _slightly less boring_ than everybody else. I didn’t do the common _let me put my paper on slides and I’ll read it to you_ thing. Instead, I _live programmed_ a mobile app with my fancy new programming language. _And the crowd went crazy._ Demos are always a crowd-pleaser, and a good example of the **show, don’t tell** principle. When using slides, I don’t let my slides _tell_ the story, I let them _support_ it. No talking slides. The dated idea of preparing slide decks as _hand outs_ for people to go over _without_ your voice-over is a hard pass from my perspective. If you want to take that approach, just let ChatGPT write a document for people not to read. My slides are purely to support the show. If I put text on a slide, I’m going to assume that people are going to read that text instead of listening to me. Generally, I prefer people to listen to me than to be reading text. Therefore, the only text I put on a slide is stuff I want to triple underline. Those are some quick presentation _tricks_ for ‘ya, but they’re probably not high impact. There’s more potential in the _story_ part that goes along with it. Sorry, this part does require energy, so we are now departing the _low-effort_ realm. * * * While I have **0** books on presentation technique on my shelf, I do have a solid **1** on the topic of _story telling_. That book is Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t. It’s one of those books that subtly hints at what its core message might be in its title. Refreshing. While the book ostensibly focuses on reading (see the title), I use it as the foundation of _any_ type of content I need to produce, whether it is text, audio or video. That starting point is simply this: **I assume my audience is not interested, has TikTok open on their phone, will not pay attention.** Therefore, my first job is to grab the audience’s attention and keep it for the duration. How does one do that? Click bait of course! You can go with an edgy title, like — I don’t know — something with a self-censored mild obscenity in it. Or you can start with a bit of a punch. You may have noticed that I tend to start my writing with a punchy quote: No More: It’s the People: > “Half of the people at this company should be fired. They’re not productive, don’t care about anything, and show zero sign of ownership. We should never have hired them.” Introducing alt.management: > “What have you done to me?! I used to assume people were just stupid, but now I’m starting to take _their_ perspective. Make it stop!” Freight Boat Theory: > “The only sensible organization size is _one._ ” This is not random, it’s designed to grab your attention away from your other screens. When I have it, I’ll attempt to mix in some actually useful content, while keeping the story line sufficiently engaging to keep people paying attention to the very end. This same approach can be applied in presentations or talks. Yes, even in your OKR update. Yet, it’s still too rare for people to do so. If you _do_ , though — even poorly — _boy (or girl),_ will you stand out. * * * A few months ago I recorded a talk on Conway’s Law you can watch, and since there’s little other suitable content from me out there, I’ll use it as an example. This talk is an adapted version of what I presented internally to about 20 people in an internal leadership meeting with the prompt: “can you fill 20 minutes with something interesting for this audience?” When I gave that presentation, I was the last thing blocking everybody’s Christmas break. Nevertheless, I seemed to manage to wake people up and keep them engaged the whole way, and got a lot of positive response afterwards. This experience confirms two things: 1. The bar is pretty low 2. It’s worth putting effort into an engaging story line So what did I do differently from the status quo in this talk? Let me highlight a few things. For this, I’ll assume you have watched the talk, if you haven’t — here it is again: In my original performance, my “punchy” opening was my grandmother talking about _Uncle Melv_. This story is patently absurd and obviously made up, but it grabs initial attention. Who talks to the company about their grandmother? Who’s this _Uncle Melv_? What is this ridiculous and obviously-made-up game _OrgChartionary_? It grabs the attention sufficiently to keep people paying attention as each of these bits are gradually revealed. Later, I invite people to actually participate in a game. Audience participation, everybody hates it, but it works. Even though a lot of the people in the audience were not deep into management theory, they will have known the two example companies (Amazon and Apple) I use to walk through the principles. They may even have some latent curiosity about how these companies operate (or are structured) internally. After introducing the example companies, I do a reveal who _Uncle Melv_ is (_jazz hands_), which may actually be a name people have heard of at some point. _Aha! moment._ I always like it when stories loop back to where they start in their conclusion, which is another thing I forced in here. * * * So, should you all invent fake uncles for your next corporate presentation now? Of course not. I already did that. It’s been done. Come up with your own idea. However, here are a few ideas coming from story telling principles that are ever green: **Surprise:** Unless you’ve already built a reputation of doing goofy things during presentations, it’s not that hard to do something surprising. Again, the bar is low. For instance, when ChatGPT just launched generating images, I fed it the text of my slide and replaced it with whatever (often ridiculous) image result it came up with. **Transformation:** Good stories are always about transformation. A character (this can be you or your team) starts out believing (or being) one thing, but ultimate discovers something else to be true. This can be part of your story line, even for an OKR result. “At the start of the quarter we believed that if we would build _this_ feature we’d bump _that_ number, _BOY_ were we wrong! Here’s what happened.” **Make it personal** : whenever I watch a presentation I always ask myself: why are _you_ telling me this? Why not some other random person off the street? We all have interesting life stories, and weaving those in to support a point can just give your presentation that little kick it needs. “My grandmother always used to say ‘when it rhymes, it’s true.’ This is why our next OKRs all rhyme.” * * * Over 1500 words in, I regret to have failed you, dear quasi-fictional question-asker person. I do not have any low-effort, high-impact presentation tricks. All I have to offer are high-impact ones, that — regrettably — do come with required effort: the effort of coming up with a story. And life, what is it but a story?

Here’s the pattern that repeats for me writing code — the pattern that has kept me engaged in this field for well over thirty years: Something starts out small: a few hundred lines of code. It does something useful. As I use it and build it out, it slowly accumulates complexity over time. It gets larger and larger. I start to feel uneasy. Then, often during a shower, a walk or run, but always unscheduled: _major epiphany_. I see a pattern, some commonality across multiple areas. Then I figure out a dramatic simplification resulting in significant complexity collapse. My brain now works at full throttle. I work through the idea in my head first, then note things down, often in outline form to flesh it out. Then I clear out a significant block in my schedule, I open my code editor, and after a few hours of hardcore programming while wired in I resurface with a dramatically simplified, shorter and way more elegant solution. This an absolutely amazing experience. And it never happens in management. * * * ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

A new technology, methodology, movement reveals itself and people go all in, enthusiastically. After some time, it becomes clear things have been pushed _too_ far. Cracks start to show, limitations become obvious. What follows is a partial swing back to older ways, with lesson learned and if we’re lucky: some of the good parts left in tact. Then, a new generation comes in, unfamiliar with history. A new technology, methodology, movement is uncovered and the new generation goes all in, enthusiastically. The overlap with previously tried ideas is notable to the older generation, but who’s interested in their tales? “Cool story grandpa. Please stand aside, we have Litestream SQLite to deploy! You wouldn’t know, but it’s a ‘relational database’ that allows you to write fancy queries joining tables and some such, stuff we couldn’t do with our previous key-value stores! This is the future!” “Anyway,” the older generation says, “the young ones need to find their own ways, make their own mistakes. Ultimately, humanity learns and progresses.” They have to repeat this to themselves many times, as ideas crash and burn in pretty much exactly the way that they predicted. * * * ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

From Empire of AI, chapter 15: > Instead of negotiating between egos, he was conveying to everyone _exactly what they wanted to hear_ as he maneuvered to get exactly what he wanted. And he was telling so many little lies and some big ones in the process that it was becoming a near-daily occurrence. In November 2023, Sam Altman was briefly ousted as CEO of OpenAI. _Empire of AI_ provides some background on what made working with Sam Altman challenging. > Altman’s anxiety also fed into toxic behaviors that always followed the same playbook: To anyone resisting his decisions, he would say whatever he thought they wanted to hear to win their support; then, when he lost patience waiting and believed they would continue to go against him, he would undermine their credibility until they got out of the way. Ultimately this escalated in an ousting. > But the more Murati worked with Altman, the more she found herself frequently cleaning up his messes. If two teams disagreed, he often agreed in private with each of their perspectives, which created confusion, exacerbated the conflict, and bred mistrust among colleagues. Nevertheless, it only took a few days for Altman to return. Interesting strategy though — this constant _telling people exactly what they want to hear to gain an advantage_. Somehow, it rings a bell. There’s a term for it. Wikipedia definition of Sycophancy: > In modern English, sycophant denotes an **insincere flatterer** and refers to someone practicing sycophancy (i.e., insincere flattery to gain an advantage). That’s not a word you’d expect to encounter daily. Yet somehow, I’ve heard the term thrown around a lot recently, where was it again? Found it! Here’s an Open AI blog post from April, 2025, Sycophancy in GPT-4o: what happened and what we’re doing about it: > ChatGPT’s default personality deeply affects the way you experience and trust it. Sycophantic interactions can be uncomfortable, unsettling, and cause distress. We fell short and are working on getting it right. You’re absolutely right! ChatGPT (and its buddies) agree with practically whatever you hint at your personal beliefs may be, ensuring you stay engaged, which is in its company’s interest. Funny huh, what are the chances! A company that has an alleged sycophantic CEO, ships a product with sycophantic behavior. Funny coincidence. Or is it? * * * ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

“Do you mind if I tweak the slide deck of our _All Hands: Reorg Edition_ slightly?” “Sure, go ahead.” _30 minutes later._ “Err... _Zef_ , what did you do?” * * * People don’t care _what_ you do, they care _why_ you do it. 15 years ago, Simon Sinek gave a nice talk about what he dubbed _The Golden Circle_. The essence of the idea is that whereas most companies tend to talk about _what_ they do, it is much more impactful to start your messaging with _why_ you do what you do. By doing so, you talk straight to the gut, where decisions are actually made, and opinions are actually formed (however much we’d like to be believe we’re rational beings). One example Sinek cites in his talk — again, from 15 years ago, so the world has changed slightly — is comparing Dell’s sales approach to Apple. Dell pitched itself using tech specs and great deals — focusing on _what_ they have to offer. Conversely, Apple created a feeling of creativity, breaking with the status quo — a sense of purpose, a reason _why_ they do what they do, where the products they happen to make are just a natural result of that belief. Beautiful, no? The idea is that if you buy into the company’s beliefs, you will want to associate with them, become part of the movement, and become a loyal customer as a result. If they sell you a computer, you’ll buy their computer. If they make a phone, you’ll buy their phone. If they’ll sell you iPod socks, you’ll buy their iPod socks. I see people with an Apple bumper sticker on their car every day. How often do you see a car with a Dell sticker? * * * Of course, we cannot all be ‘00-’10s Apple. Yet, that hasn’t stopped companies from trying. I’ve attended at least two internal company events (companies that were not Apple, obviously) where they played the Apple think different commercial. In one case this was clearly a very superficial attempt to instill an “be inspired” mindset for the event. However, in the second case, I noticed a person brushing away a tear when this commercial played. As I later found out, not because the commercial itself moved them, but because it make it so smack-in-the-face obvious what _their_ company was missing. _Their_ company had lost its purpose, its why. We can take a masterclass on how to restructure our slide deck to follow _The Golden Circle’s_ `why -> how -> what` structure. However it does assume there’s actually a _why_ to start with. Ideally not one we borrowed from another company. Is there? Do we still remember how this all started, what we’re trying to accomplish here? Assuming it’s not just raking in the profits and vesting our shares. If not, conveniently, Simon Sinek has you covered here too! Is this opportunistic, or is all part of _his_ why? 🤷 * * * I’m a sucker for a good _why_. I bought a six-pack of iPod socks from Apple back in the day. The blue one was my favorite. I have joined companies for many reasons, but there always had to be at least a glimmer of a bigger idea, a purpose. World peace, change how developers write software, allow non-tech folks create websites more easily — that sort of thing. It’s critical to be aware of your organization’s purpose and to constantly be reminding people of it — _especially_ once your organization gets bigger. Painting it on the wall or writing it down somewhere in Confluence is not enough. The reason is that the larger the organization becomes, the more decisions need to be made that cannot involve everybody anymore. Inevitably, people are going to be left out of the loop. This makes it extremely convenient to have a foundation of trust, for which a common understanding on _why we do what we_ do provides a solid foundation. “I don’t understand _what_ they’re trying to pull off here, but I believe what they believe, so I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt.” * * * Hypothetical example: against all odds, we have to do a reorg. Again. Reorgs are hard things to pull off perfectly. There are always going to be people that are unhappy (sometimes everybody). Yet, for the purpose of our argument — let’s assume it needs to be done. We really try to do this right. We call in the right people at the right time for their input, we plan this out properly. However, some degree of shitshowery is guaranteed. This is where a foundation of trust built on shared purpose really helps: People don’t care _what_ you do, they care _why_ you do it. I’ve partnered with people that I had deep disagreements with on their _how_ and _what_. However, that could all be overcome, because we bought into the same _why_. Absolutely, at times we would walk into a shitshow of their making, because they wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. However, we would do so holding hands purposefully, and somehow we’d make it to the other end. All I had to do was tweak the slide deck slightly. To remind people of the underlying point of all of this. _Why_ this all started.

“Why is it so hard to make people give a damn? I mean, like, _really care?”_ I have found there are a few key ideas in management that have a tremendous amount of leverage. Once we internalize them, we start to see patterns, and they can explain a _lot_ of people’s behavior, including our own. One of these ideas is having _skin in the game_. One could write a book on this topic, and people have. In fact, it’s one of the books on my shelf. However, in the unlikely scenario you will not immediately go off, buy and read this book and then return, here’s the key idea: When people _share in the risk and consequences_ of the decisions they make, they will act more fairly, more caring, more like serious people. We often ask people to “act as owners” — to give their decisions the same level of thought and consideration _as if_ they owned the place. As if the money to be spent came out of their own wallets. As it turns out, just asking doesn’t magically make it so. The most effective way to instill this type of thinking is to _actually make it real_ , to _actually make people owners_. This is what skin in the game is all about. * * * ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

Recruitment is broken. Candidates can’t get through to the right companies, are ghosted left and right, and have to jump through increasingly ridiculous “AI enhanced” hoops to get a job. Who is not having a terrible experience interviewing right now? Very sad. And what for? Because, I mean, how hard can this possibly be to do properly? _Right?!_ I am hiring again. In principle, this is not new to me. I’ve hired dozens of people and ran hundreds of interviews. What makes this one different is that this time, nothing is in place. There are no recruiters. No HR department. No interview pools. No fixed processes to follow. I see opportunity here. Opportunity to fall flat on my face; an exercise in humility. I foreshadow that I’m going on an identity quest. A journey of self discovery, with interesting plot twists, and ultimately find out that the job of recruiters is not as easy as we may think. Yet through hardship, in the end, I will end up with a great team, find myself, and live happily ever after. Sounds like a great script for a Disney movie. So let this be my opening song, in which I display through poetic words and interpretative dance that I’m a good person with high hopes about the future. With the true belief that it is possible to recruit good people in a humane way, where everybody — even those not joining in the end — have successful careers, grow, and live happily ever after. Yet, through bass undertones, foreshadowing there is trouble ahead. Instead of acts, we’ll tell the story in stages. How _recruitery_. This will be fun. Mostly for you. ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

“The only sensible organization size is _one._ ” That’s quite a statement. Especially if it comes from your company’s COO. It always stuck with me, because it’s bold. And pretty useless. As somebody who recently went solo on some projects, I can attest that the flexibility and ability to pivot quickly is great. I can also tell you that the amount of work that a single person can do is limited. So sadly, my dear COO, for most things of significant size, we need _teams._ Teams provide a bunch of goodies: they allow us to accumulate and leverage knowledge, have redundancy, boost creativity, and... They _execute faster_. Right? _Right!?_ This is where disappointment seems inevitable. We hire all these great people so we can get more done, and faster. Yet often, we seem to get slower and slower. What’s up with that? Our organizational chart must be wrong. Too many layers. Wrong people in the wrong place. Joe quit anyway — let’s be opportunistic about it, let’s reorg! Or, perhaps we need to extract an elite group of warriors that will get key strategic projects done. Let’s create a tiger team, that sounds cool. Henceforth we shall purely organize around specific initiatives we need to get done. That’ll get things moving again! This all sounds great, and I appreciate the energy. But let’s not forget about _Freight Boat Theory_. “Freight boat _what!?_ ” * * * ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

_Welcome to the free monthly edition of alt.management, enjoy!_ People say that AI is going to be highly disruptive for just about every job. Many such jobs will simply be automated and disappear. Except — _well_ — our own. Why not our own? Because our own jobs require a very particular set of skills. Knowledge. Creativity. Years of experience. There’s a subtle art to it that AI can’t match. Sure, it can do _some_ of the unimportant and trivial stuff, but not the _meat_ of it. And believe me — we’ve tried. We’ve dabbled to see if we could quietly replace ourselves with these tools and finally take that well-deserved long vacation or even retire. Sadly, no, not gonna happen. Sure, AI tools are useful for _some_ things. But we needn’t be worried to be replaced by it. However, _other_ people’s jobs, they’re different. It’s pretty clear that AI can replace a large chunk of _those_. * * * I have long been documenting what I call the distance trap. It’s this annoying human bias toward assuming that what other people are doing — especially at some distance, usually work we don’t fully understand — appears to be trivial, and likely poorly executed. My recurring finding is that whenever I dig into such cases, things are always more complicated than they seem, and it’s rare for them to be _actually_ poorly executed. I know this. I’ve been explaining this to people. Yet I keep getting caught by this myself, over and over. And this “distance” doesn’t even need to be that big. I still consider myself a software engineer at heart, and even _I_ have had highly dismissive thoughts about many of the tasks that we as engineers have to perform every day, and therefore classifying them as great fits for AI automation. I remember telling colleagues that AI is a healthy reality check for us. We always think of ourselves as these amazing innovators, but now it turns out that a lot of what we do can be automated by generative AI, which — since these models are trained on massive quantities of _existing_ code — just proves that so little of what we do is _actually_ new. _Hah! In our face!_ But then, whenever I dig deeper into any of these use cases I find — once again — _crap_ , things are actually more complicated and nuanced. The more I critically evaluate the work that I thought I could (and have) delegated to AI, the more I conclude: yeah, if I really wouldn’t care about this it would be _ok-ish_ , but since I do, I have to admit: AI often just produces shoddy work and needs to be fired. There’s some value in it, but it’s not nearly what I judged it to be originally. Again and again, I keep being shocked about how bad I am at judging the complexity of tasks, especially those that I do not perform every day myself. But I hope I’m getting there now. _I, Zef Hemel, solemnly swear to no longer naively judge other people’s jobs and make**any** assumption about how AI automatable those jobs are. Since I am clearly even incapable of doing this for my own job, assuming that I can do this for other peoples’ jobs, makes absolutely no sense._ There. Now, let’s hope this was just problem specific to me, and that the rest of the world is already avoiding this trap. * * * I’m not very much into zombies. The Walking Dead? No thank you. The Last of Us I managed to sit through season 1 (and S01E03 was a gem), but eventually bowed out. I was discussing my lack of attraction towards zombies with a colleague of mine. Why do people watch this stuff? He said zombies are primarily about two things: 1. Dealing with fear: you as a viewer, and characters in the series, which naturally leads into... 2. Human nature While most of these series start out being about killing zombies, by season 2 it becomes painfully obvious that the _real_ danger is not the zombies, but _other people_. People are no longer killing zombies, but each other. Effectively, zombies are just a story-telling device that put a “face” on our fear. What these series are _really_ about is how we, as humans, react to a world in chaos. And spoiler alert: it can bring out the _best_ in people, but also the _worst_. * * * Sadly, we happen to live in a world that is getting increasingly more chaotic. We just got out of a pandemic. We have a climate crisis. We have more and more world leaders that are high on the “problematic” spectrum. Political polarization is at an all time high. And then generative AI enters the chat. It even comes with its own doomsday scenario. Lovely! AI is our current-day-and-age zombie. I don’t mean this in the “AI agents are like zombies” sense (although that may be an amusing comparison to make), but AI is a catalyst for our fears and frustration. In season 1, we were all happily wrestling with AI novelty (we were killing zombies). However, we’ve now kicked off season 2 where AI is just an excuse to act on something much more human: **our dismissive attitudes towards other peoples’ jobs.** And so the “killing” begins. * * * Marketer? AI can generate all of that content. That job was 90% bullshit generation anyway. Psychologist? “Tell me about your relationship with your father?” “And how do you feel about that?” “Do you need a tissue?” Doctors? Effectively over-paid pattern matching machines. Customer support? Just shuffling text from a customer to a search engine and back. Engineering? Those massively over-paid, self-aggrandizing people? It turns out AI can do most of their jobs too! Excellent, that’ll show ‘em! It’s a trap.

I think it’s time for me to pull the “old man” card. That said, in my defense, this is going to be a repeat of a message I was already spreading thirteen years ago. Which, now that I think about it, you can interpret as simply another proof point confirming my age. Nevertheless, it’s a message worth repeating. Every decade or so. The message: **boring technology is good.** That is: unless you’re building something on the bleeding edge of technology, where — effectively — the technology is the product. Unless that is the case, you’re probably best off picking a technology stack that has been around for a while, that is mainstream, and has matured to a stage where it doesn’t move all that much. Releases still happen (so it’s not abandoned), but they’re small iterations. Fixes. Not a thing where you have to book 2 months for an upgrade to keep running on a version still getting critical security fixes. NOT NAMING ANY NAMES. Boring technology is the shit. As a compulsive early adopter of technology myself, this is hard to accept. As usual, part the goal of this post is self therapy. People like us, we have hacker news pinned in our browser. Oh my, you can do full stack development with Rust!? Let’s jump on it! We can have AI vibe code a web server custom to every HTTP request? Let’s do that! (Not actually a thing — but maybe this is the killer business idea that instantly made your alt.management Pro subscription pay itself back 1-billion fold). ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

“It’s not like I’m stalking you or anything...” When a conversation starts like that you just know it is going to be good. “...but I was looking at your calendar and I noticed that you seem to have 1-hour long one-on-one meetings booked with all your direct reports. That seems quite time consuming. What’s up with that?” Now I know that this is one of those questions that everybody has, yet few dare ask. I bet you, too, considered asking from the first day we met. Yet somehow it never felt _quite_ appropriate. But worry not, today is that day. One more big questioning elephant cleared out of the room. Indeed, what is the _best_ length of a one-on-one meeting? 15 minutes? 30 minutes? 45!? 60, or even more!? Let’s dig in. I told you that this was going to be good. ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

Hypothetical scenario: as an engineering leader you’re asked to look into _leveraging AI_ to accelerate the engineering department. Ok, perhaps not such a hypothetical scenario. In fact, if this is not happening in your company I’d be surprised. It makes sense, there’s a lot of hype and investment in this area. A lot of promises made. So, you start to Google, or Perplex (or whatever the verb version of Perplexity is), or (my preferred option and the only one I’ll link) Kagi for it. Or you open up LinkedIn or X to see what the experts say. And to your surprise, experiences seem to be pretty divisive. Some people seem to be _all in_ on this exciting future of software development and would never go back, others seem to be haters, there’s probably a less vocal group that would summarize their experiences as _meh_. I also endeavored on this mission. What may be unusual is that I initially started out very excited, yet over time became increasingly critical and concerned. Until now, I have not been extremely public about the specifics of my concerns. Unless you happened to be standing outside my office overhearing my yelling. Or happened to be in the park when I was screaming out loud listening to an AI podcast (more on this later). Initially, I thought I wouldn’t have much to add to the public conversation. However, over the months I’ve detailed my journey to various people individually, and consistently see “ah, I hadn’t considered that” moments. With the suggestion to write up my experiences anyway. Over the months I made multiple attempts. Most of them devolved in angry written therapy sessions. However, now that I’m going Pro with _alt.management_ I thought I’d give it another shot as an inaugural post. I needed to get this out of my system at some point. And who knows, it could actually trigger more FOMO. “Did you read what Zef wrote about AI, _oh my!”_ Never let a good FOMO opportunity slide, as my grandmother used to say. It also gave me a natural deadline. Deadlines can be useful sometimes. What I will be sharing (clocking in at close to 8000 words, ePub and PDF versions are linked further down) is a mix of personal experience and more philosophical musing. I will not claim to have “the answer.” In fact, what has made this whole journey so draining is that it’s almost impossible to properly assess this development and judge what its short-term but especially long-term implications are going to be. Whether you will agree or recognize the anecdotal evidence or issues I’ll point out or not, I hope that at least they will trigger some questions. My larger goal is to kick you out of the hype wave and start to think critically again. ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

**Editor’s note:** I had promised/threatened that the next post on _alt.management_ would go out to Pro subscribers only. However, as I was working on that post, I realized there’s an idea to share _before_ that I’ll build on. And it’s one that I’d like to be able to publicly link to. So you’re in luck. Here’s another free one for you. * * * The term critical thinking has gotten a bad rap. People think (uncritically) that to be _critical_ means to be a nay-sayer, to be cynical, to stand in the way of progress. While this could be the impression, it’s not the goal. The goal of critical thinking is to “analyzing available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to make sound conclusions or informed choices.” But indeed, it is often the case that things are not as clear-cut as they may seem when evaluated critically. That still sounds uncontroversial, though. I mean, who would be critical of doing _that_? Yet worryingly, critical thinking seems to be in decline, while it is a skill more important than ever. A few reasons: Many of us now view the world through algorithmic lenses (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, ChatGPT) whose vendors have an interest in keeping us engaged. They have figured out that showing us content that _agrees with us_ will achieve this goal. We prefer warm baths over cold showers — whether we need the cold shower or not. This is very prevalent in LLM chatbot’s tendency to fervently agree with whatever batshit crazy idea we throw at it: “oh yes, glue on pizza, clever way to keep the toppings on!” If we assume this is just a temporarily glitch that will soon be resolved, we should critically ask ourselves: why would a vendor be interested in changing this if it could lead to you getting upset, and using it less? Case in point: with the backlash around GPT-5’s change in tone, OpenAI immedidiately dialed up the “nice” even more. Warm baths sell, cold showers do not. As a result, we are challenged less and less and at risk of getting in the habit of just accepting what we’re being told, to become complacent. This is problematic in general, but what is even more worrying is that a lot of our jobs are evolving/devolving into ones assessing a lot of LLM output: AI books on what mushrooms you can eat, AI agent generated code, suggestions on what air base to strike — that sort of thing. Everybody ostensibly knows, and even vendors tell you this explicitly: you need to check for accuracy, you may be reading PhD-level sounding nonsense. In other words: critical thinking required! The need is clear — especially in the age of AI, we need to **make critical thinking great again** (MCTGA)! So we are going on a mission. How should we go about it? I dunno. I’m an engineer. This is more of a marketing thing. Let’s turn to our marketing department. “We usually solve problems with a rebrand. Try to change perception from something _negative_ to something _fun_!” Gotcha! (Re)introducing “The Five Reallys” * * * One of various cool things to come out of Toyota — beside Kanban, and I hear they also make cars these days — is a root-cause analysis framework called The Five Whys. The idea is simple: you start with a problem (for instance a production incident of some sort) and ask “Why did this happen?” You answer it, and then ask “Why?” again. Every time, you dig one level deeper and get closer to the _root cause_ , until there are no more sensible answers to give. Anecdotally this usually happens within five steps, hence the _five_ in there. It’s simple yet powerful technique. In 2017, I did the rounds with a talk entitled The 100x Engineer. Now I should remind you: these were different times. This was a time where today’s _agentic engineers_ had hardly even heard of the blockchain yet. My pitched path towards 100x (I’ve always liked hyperbole) productivity, revolved around being smart about challenging scope and clever and sustainable implementation strategies. What can I say — I was young and naive. However, buried in that talk sat something that stood the test of time, a play on the _Five Whys_ , a call to critical thinking: _The Five Reallys_. * * * Some things are best explained by example. Allow me to demonstrate with something random. Let me find something real quick. Ah, here we go. “AI could wipe out entire job categories.” _Really?_ “Yes, Sam Altman said so.” _Really,_ who’s Sam Altman? “He’s the CEO of OpenAI, the world’s most prominent AI vendor, doesn’t ring a bell?” _Really?_ Why would he make a statement like that, does he have any interest in boosting the importance of AI, self-fulling-prophecy style? “I suppose so. But I think he’s just trying to warn us about what’s coming. He’s concerned about us. He’s quite _alt_ ruistic.” _Really?_ So that is what the _Alt_ in his last name represents. “Oh yes, Sam has even said that AI can end global poverty.” _Really?_ Quite the supporter of the poor! Was this before or after he stepped into his Koenigsegg Regera? “Before I guess, otherwise we would not have heard him over the noise of exploding-dinosaur engines.” * * * Ok, that didn’t go where it should have. Let’s try again in a more practical day-to-day scenario: you’re doing planning with your team and your product manager presents the roadmap. “We need to have all these 10 features.” _Really?_ “Yes.” _Really?_ “Well, ok, maybe not feature 7. But for the rest: yes.” _Really?_ “Yes, well, I think so... Let me verify with the customer.” “Ok, they may need 4 and 5, but we can do this later. The rest are all must-haves.” _Really?_ “Yes.” Better! We managed to significantly cut our initial scope, and with one _Really?_ to spare! * * * Here is the recipe, in case you hadn’t reverse engineered it yet: You read something; somebody makes a statement. Rather than just nodding along, accepting it as is, and repeating it as fact, you take a step back. Hang on — _really?_ This pivots you in critical thinking mode. Except we won’t call it that, because marketing. You start to ask follow-up questions: _Really_ , who is making this statement? _Really_ , what are their interests? _Really_ , what do they know or not know? Now, one of two things may happen. Either you dig in and everything checks out. The statement was 100% on the mark. Great! Or, there’s something to uncover. Perhaps there’s more nuance that changes things. Perhaps the whole statement just turns out to be bullshit. * * * We have to (re)train this ability. The ability to detect questionable things. One could call this a _bullshit detector_ , but the market department takes issue, we can’t be seen using language like that. So let’s just refer to it as developing our spidey sense, which in its etymology _technically_ is just about detecting risk or danger, but that’s close enough. People still like Spiderman, right? Or has he been canceled? Now, there is a risk (and to some of us this comes naturally) that we become so awesome at this that we start to overdo it. There’s a risk to become the person in the room that constantly raises their hand asking “really?” Frankly, that’s just annoying and also potentially wasteful. There’s opportunity cost to everything. Part of the skill has to be to know when to shut up. However, I would consider this a luxury problem. In the age of AI, we have to keep our shield up constantly, consistently, few exceptions. What makes this incredibly hard is that previously, bullshit was easy to detect because it tended to be riddled with spelling errors. Today, potential bullshit sounds increasingly “PhD level” — using em-dashes and such. You know from experience reading my stuff (which is definitionally all at PhD level), that this is _really_ hard to challenge. When you read things I write or say, do you constantly ask yourself “really”? In my particular case there is no need, because what I say is absolutely correct. However, in the general case: _yes,_ you really should. And whereas _I_ can be trusted speaking authoritatively about stuff I have no degree in, ChatGPT cannot. LLMs cannot. Are humans equipped to do that? I mean, for real? Every single time? I fell into this trap myself many times. I find myself thinking “well that sounds true enough, no need to check that.” And I’d be wrong. I have been retraining myself to sound alarm bells whenever I think something “sounds good” or “looks good.” Yes, this is tiring. As much as I love you all, and I hate to tell you this: I have little belief you are naturally better at this than me. But if this is our future, we have to overcome. * * * We have to keep stepping back. To keep thinking: _hang on_... _Really?_ (5x) And call out the... flapdoodle. MCTGA!

I have been looking forward to this for a long time. Partially because this is where the money grab happens. Partially because it’s an amazing _mind game opportunity_ that I plan to milk at every possible (meta) level. You know I love mind games. As the world’s worst magician, I’m going to explain you my trick first. After doing so, I’m going to attempt to try to pull it off _anyway_ , and see if I can still _bedazzle_ you. As I said, I’ve been looking forward to this. Let’s go. * * * In my brief tangent into the wonderful world of AI, I learned to admire the power of FOMO — the Fear of Missing Out. FOMO is the psychological phenomenon where people feel they’re left out when they see other people (seemingly) experience something desirable that they are not. “Oh I should also have done that when I got the chance!” “Why can I not be more like that person!” “Oh I tried and got different results, I must be doing something wrong!” That sort of thing. There are so many fun aspects to the phenomenon. Fun, if you’re into perverse psychological tricks. First, the experience people feel that they’re missing out on, need not be real. The obvious examples are “influencers” on social networks. They’re flying their private jets (made out of card board), they’re having luxurious vacations (traveled to via green screen), they’re operating their AI agent swarms while kicking back and having a beer (this one’s of course completely legit). How did they get to be so successful, how can you be more like them? Well, just buy their course, book a demo, and you’ll know. Be fast though, spots are quickly running out! Sorry, price hike due to overwhelming demand! Naturally, not _all_ of this is fake. What is being portrayed _may be actually real_ and you may be missing out on an actual once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So what is it going to be, are you taking your chances and hopping on board, or letting _another_ opportunity slide? Kind of the story of your life thus far, no? I mean, you’re reading this very post, which probably means you haven’t yet earned FU money. You have 29 seconds to decide! 28 27 So, this is the game we’re going to play. Actually, just _one_ of them, I’ll pull out all the rhetorical stops (and would be happy to explain all of them to you, just book me — availability is limited!). That’s right, can’t stop me now. * * * I’m pleased to announce I’m finally launching **Alt.management Pro** — the paid tier of alt.management for the _real_ management professional. There are a ton of reasons why you should immediately upgrade to this _Pro_ tier. “I don't need reasons, you had me at ‘paid’, let me give you money!” Upgrade to Pro For one, would you rather identify as a cheap-skate _Free_ subscriber, or as a true _Pro_? Paying for a Pro subscription confirms your real identity: a true management professional. In every single e-mail this will be explicitly mentioned at the bottom. When you forward one of the many excellent _alt.management_ e-mails to your colleagues (as 87.22% of other subscribers already do), you will virtue signal: “oh my, they’re an alt.management _Pro_ subscriber, I want to be like them!” Would you really like your colleagues to see you can’t be bothered to invest in your own personal development as a manager and are _still_ on _Free_? I don't think so Second reason to subscribe: if you stick to _Free_ you’re going to miss out on 75% of the brilliance. You will only be receiving one piece of content per month. Obviously, that’s not nearly enough. You will still learn stuff, you’ll still laugh and cry, but mostly cry. And not even that often. When you hang out around the (virtual) water cooler, you’ll not be able to join in on the conversation. “Did you read what Zef wrote this week? Oh my gosh, his stuff is consistently mind boggling. I would not want to miss a single post!” You’ll just stand there, all moron-like, nodding and smiling like you have a clue. As they walk away still chatting about this week’s post, you can overhear them talking about you. “Did you see that confused face? Still on _Free_ I bet.” In a previous attempt to virtue signal, you had set alt.management as your browser’s home page. This impressed a fair number of your colleagues thus far, but now an increasing number of links appear with a little _Pro-only_ ⭐ next to them. You’ll still see titles, but _what secrets do they reveal!?_ “How to Get to the Executive Level in 3 Easy Steps” “The Annotated ‘More FOMO’: All Mind Games Revealed” “AI Agents: Best Friends or Lying S*ns of B*tchez?” Finally, another month passed. Time for the _Free_ edition! And guess what — it’s a post about the amazingly successful launch of the _Pro_ tier. It will claim double digit conversion and ridiculous growth rates. And it will promise to reach out to the handful of people who have not yet managed to upgrade, likely because they were on vacation in August or due to the traffic surge the payment processor could not handle. Don't be that person Third reason to subscribe: it’s cheap. When alt.management launched, I alluded to accounting and legal challenges that forced me to postpone the release of _Pro_. The truth? My accounting and legal team tried to convince me to charge more than 10x what I’ll be charging, because all that **V** alue **A** dd you’ll receive would still be **T** axed! Thousands of dollars per year? No I will not take that much. I want _the people_ to have access. This is not about me cashing in, it’s about the betterment of humanity. While $150 per year (+ tax) may not seem like chump change to you, you’d (respectfully) be wrong. It’s a slam dunk deal. Let me count the reasons. First, there’s a good chance you have a **training budget** from your employer, and you haven’t used it at all. This is natural — in our roles we are typically more occupied with our people’s educational needs than our own. If you have anything resembling a role that heavily leans on your ability to work effectively with fellow humans, alt.management pro can easily be defended: this is an educational resource (which explains the low tax rate), you deserve it, or does your boss not believe you’re worth it? You’re completely worth it, so this should actually be completely free for you. Second, if you would hire a leadership coach of some sort, you’d likely pay something like this _per hour_. Is a _year_ worth of content not worth more than complaining to your boss to some random dude for an hour? By the way, I can be that dude (only a few spots left, be fast). Third, this amount buys you full access to _over a hundred_ essays, and I’m promising you a new one every week. I’m also making some hand-wavy promises about providing content through different media (video, audio, e-books) — _exclusive_ to Pro subscribers. Even in the extremely hypothetical scenario that only one or two of those trigger something in you, make you think differently, pivot your career and become a goat farmer. Wouldn’t that be worth it already? And if you would like to receive some sort of certificate to put on LinkedIn at the end of the year, let me know, I can hand draw you one (once you renew). I agree, this is a slam dunk deal Alright, make it stop already! Did it work? We’ll see. Whatever happens, I’ll claim success in a month and double down on making you feel bad in the (unlikely) scenario you will not have upgraded (unlike all the cool people). This is not FOMO. This is GOMO. There is no _**F** ear_ of missing out. Not subscribing results in a _**G** uarantee_ of missing out. First _Pro_ post next week. Don’t miss it!

“Interesting challenge! So what are we going to do about it?” There are at least three meanings of the word “we” that I know about: First is the _communal we_ , referring to you and me, or us as a group. In mosts natural contexts, this is the default. Second is the _royal we_, referring to oneself (so: _me_) — usually used by monarchs. Fun fact: there’s a name for the same thing that us common folk can use (in case you do not happen to reign over a country) called Nosism. The _royal we_ or _nosism_ lets us speak on behalf of the people: “we think this is an interesting plan worthy of pursuement.” Third is today’s topic: the _managerial we,_ referring to — how do I put this delicately — _you_. * * * “And then I told him ‘can you please solve thi—” “Let me stop you right there,” my new American personal coach Anne interrupted me in our very first session. “A manager _never_ says ‘you’, they _always_ say ‘we’. Management 101, y’all!” “And then I—” “Let me stop you right there,” my British personal coach George would interrupt me a few years later in our first session. “A manager with appropriate ancestry _never_ says ‘I’, they _always_ say ‘we’. Entry level management, cheerio!” Apparently, transitioning to a manager role involves learning a new language named managementese. * * * _Managementese_ — the professional language of managers — is full of euphemisms and unnecessary complicating words for simple concepts. I may, or may not be working on a proper managementese dictionary. As some fun bonus content, let me share a few entries in advance of the managementese dictionary’s hypothetical launch: One does not have _problems_ , one has _challenges_. One doesn’t _agree_ on something, one _aligns_. One doesn’t _yell_ , one _escalates_. One is not _fired_ , one is _let go_ , or _decides to spend more time with family_ , or in Amazon’s dialect, is _promoted to customer_. One doesn’t call an idea _amazing_ , one calls it _interesting_. One doesn’t call an idea _batshit crazy_ , one calls it _interesting_. As you may have figured out, managementese raises ambiguity to mindfucktorial levels — another managementese term. Which brings us to the magestic _we_ , which may mean either _us_ , _me_ or _you_. Which one is it? Guess wisely, performance reviews are coming. * * * However, there is more substance to the _managerial we_ than just polite delegation. Make no mistake, the outcome is going to be what you expect: there is likely a task that ends up on _your_ plate. I will have done my part (which we’ll get to), and it is my ambition to do Jack Shit, so this should come as no surprise. However, it is more likely you will be bought into whatever that task ends up being, for two reasons: The first is rhetorical. Let’s do a _very_ quick and simplistic recap of the basics of rhetoric. A persuasive argument has three dimensions that decide its impact: 1. **Ethos** : _who_ is making the argument, what do we think of them, are they like us, do we trust them? 2. **Pathos** : what are the _emotions_ surrounding the argument, how does it make us feel, how is it presented? 3. **Logos** : what is the _logical_ reasoning behind the argument? Naively you may have thought it’s only logic that matters. To that I say: _Haha! Humans._ Turning _you_ into _we_ is a rhetorical trick that works on the _ethos_ dimension. By speaking about _us_ , you and I now become a unit, we’re alike. It’s no longer a boss shouting orders down at a subordinate, it’s the boss stepping down, becoming one of us. “Hello fellow kids!” You will be more receptive to the discussion. The second reason we get more buy-in is that we will collaborate on the solution. My part in _solutionizing_ (another great managementese word) all of this is all about the journey that we (_communal we_) are going on together. “This dude in my team doesn’t do A nor B, even if I ask repeatedly!” “Interesting challenge! So what are we going to do about it?” Subsequently, I will walk you in all possible directions by asking various directing questions that would make Socrates proud. These may lead us on a soft path where you first need to better understand Dude’s (I’m assuming this is his or her real name) drivers. If that doesn’t help, Dude may benefit from more direct feedback (another managementese synonym for _escalation_). Or walking over to HR to get the latest template for a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan). Ultimately, you’ll naturally come to a (you think logical, but actually rhetorical) decision. You’ll feel good about it, because it wasn’t dictated to you by your boss, you participated in the process. Ultimately, as foreshadowed, the action item is assigned to you, and the “we” transitions to officially mean “you”. We are welcome. Come again!

Late late year I gave an internal talk on my favorite management law: _Conway’s Law_. It was well received, even called a _master class_ on the subject. Initially the term _master class_ activated imposter syndrome. Who’s the _master_ here? However, when looking a bit deeper into various uses — one common use is where more advanced topics are taught by experts — I was more like: yeah ok, I suppose there are topics I can speak to with some level of authority. Let’s give this a shot. So I spent some time preparing slides, attempted half a dozen times to record it without completely tripping up, ultimately lost my voice, and Melv’s your uncle. Here you have it, the first in (potentially) a series of _alt.management_ master classes. Enjoy! ### Upgrade to continue reading Become a paid member to get access to all premium content Upgrade

“I’ve observed something, and it worries me.” Often the impact people have on your growth can be traced back to just a few key moments. One of those moments was about to happen with my boss. “I’ve noticed that your product counter-part is planning a reorg in your scope. Are you involved in that?” “Nope.” “I didn’t think so. Do you not think you should be?” It looked like I was being sidelined by my product counter-part (a director of product) that had just joined the organization. This wasn’t good. “I should! He shouldn’t be doing this! Can you stop him? Team structure is my responsibility, isn’t it? Product people should know their place.” “Well, that is one way to go. I’d rather focus on something else. To me, this is just a _symptom_ of a deeper issue.” “Which is?” _“He doesn’t trust you._ He doesn’t see you as a partner. Let me tell you a bit about how I [the Chief Technology Officer] and the CPO [Chief Product Officer] work together.” What he went on to detail was not an elaborate role description and responsibility matrix. Instead, what he described was a history of his relationship with the CPO. How they both joined the company, how at some point he had reported to him, and how they had later become peers. He’d talk about the long weekly meetings they had, where they’d discuss everything from product strategy to tech strategy. He told me some offsite anecdotes. It almost seemed like they had become _BFFs_ (Best Friends Forever). “And as a result,” he concluded, “whenever something important needs to be decided — I am his first call, and he is mine. If he’s unavailable, I can step in, and vice versa. Thoughts?” * * * This was unconventional. I liked it. I got to work. I scheduled a weekly one-on-one with my product counter part, where we would discuss everything from product, to tech, to people issues we saw in our scope, as well as the weather. Since he was based in a different city, we started to travel more to meet in person. We even launched an internal podcast when the pandemic hit. We started to build a relationship. Over time we became _professional BFFs_. The results were remarkable. Not only were my decisions more informed with input from the product side, I now actually had a partner to discuss my challenges with. And having a partner you can fully trust, who is neither your boss or a report, is a rare gift. It also meant we had to join fewer meetings together, because in many contexts it became understood that he could speak on my behalf, and I could speak on his. * * * Ever since, this has become standard practice for me. The first thing I do: deliberately start building a relationship with my product counter-part and other strategic people. It even became a calendar item: “BFF time 🥳” Does this always work? Can you always manage to get to _professional BFF_ levels? No. Whereas you generally get to pick your personal BFFs, this is usually not the case in a professional context. However, it is absolutely worth trying to approximate. For this, it really helps to be people centered as a leader. Even if the other is not somebody you’d naturally gravitate to, for sure it will be an interesting project. Can you figure this person out? What’s their origin story? What drives them? What makes them tick? Chances are you’ll find overlap to build on. However, sometimes things just don’t click and cannot be made to click. In such cases, the only thing to do is to revert to protocol: Who does what? Who decides what? Who should know what? While this mode can work — and is generally considered a “best practice” — I view it as a missed opportunity. And sadly, in my experience it is often a foreboding of trouble to come. If I fail to properly connect with my product counter part, things generally do not end well. **FOR THEM** (or sometimes me). This is not a threat. * * * I only recently connected the dots on why _professional BFFing_ is so effective. In Uncle Melv I wrote: > If you start to notice there’s recurring friction between your team and another, check your org chart. Chances are that you’re fairly far apart. _Conway’s Law_ strikes again. In most organization’s org charts, product and engineering fork off close to the top: there’s usually a CTO and a CPO, then directors, heads, manager for these roles report up to their functional leader. The lower you go in the org chart, the farther apart product and engineering are. This means natural communication lines are thinner. By default, people tend to communicate more with their boss and direct team members. For engineering, the first organizational touch point with product is the CEO. That’s a challenge, and as a result product and engineering orgs do not always sail smoothly. The obvious solution is to fire all product people and let engineers run the show. Too early? _Fine_ , how about this — again quoting my earlier Uncle Melv post: > You can _compensate_ for this, through the magic of **network weaving**. > > The idea behind network weaving is simple: establish a communication line with the other team. Pick somebody on the other end, and start to meet them regularly. Talk about your team’s work and priorities, your struggles and successes, your hopes and dreams. Hey, that sounds familiar! _Professional BFFing_ is just a specific instance of _network weaving_. * * * Organizations rise and fall with strong collaboration across departments: product and engineering; engineering and marketing; product and legal. Due to org charts, these ties default to being weak. No need to feel bad, it’s only natural. It is _Conway’s Law_ at work, but it can be overcome to _some_ degree. Step 1 is to detect it. “I’ve observed something, and it worries me.” Step 2 is to start weaving that network. Have a regular coffee. Start a podcast. Become _professional BFFs_.

Thought-provoking essays for technology leaders.