Ken Kocienda saw Steve Jobs and Brian Chesky work up close and found that they had few key similarities. They both had deep intuition, a tireless work ethic, an unwavering commitment to their vision, and a fantastic ability to effectively guide and empower their teams. At the same time, they had differences such as Steve Jobs advocating for leaving smart people alone, while Chesky believed that founders needed to be more in contact with the “lower levels” of the company.

Traditional management techniques for scaling startups are fundamentally flawed and detrimental to founder-led success. This post highlights Brian Chesky's experience at Airbnb, where following conventional wisdom led to disastrous results, prompting him to develop a new approach. This new approach, "founder mode," is characterized by closer engagement with the company, even at the detail level, and a willingness to break conventional norms.

This engineering manager learned three things from his time at Amazon: solve problems through mechanisms, communicate with precision, and give teams full autonomy. He misses the deep technical talks at Amazon but doesn't miss the inconsistent management culture before Andy Jassy's leadership changes.

This article examines the differences between Apple and Android designs over the years. It reveals the UX philosophies that underpin their design choices and offers vital lessons for crafting products that resonate. Android values flexibility, adapting to user preferences while maintaining a cohesive user experience through collaboration with device manufacturers, unlike Apple, who emphasizes rigorous market research, extensive user feedback, and highly emotional and practical products.

Unsung design heroes like Larry Tesler, Susan Kare, and Douglas Engelbart created fundamental UI elements. Corporations often prefer to keep their employees anonymous, leaving great product work largely unrecognized. While the best designs usually go unnoticed, the design narrative tends to spotlight individuals over teams. Still, it's important to seek inspiration from those who have tackled similar challenges and examine their strategies.

This article challenges three common engineering leadership anti-patterns. First, it argues against always avoiding micromanagement, suggesting that leaders should engage in "conflict mining" to understand context and write down the details of company strategies. Second, it advocates for measuring imperfect but useful metrics over waiting for perfect ones. Lastly, it challenges the idea of managers as umbrellas, suggesting that exposing teams to the "gory details" and providing less buffered information is probably better in the long run.

Amazon's leadership principles create shared expectations across roles and ensure that everyone is working toward common goals. The company prioritizes a single obsession to create a focused direction, with the goal of becoming the best in the chosen area. This allows for clear guidelines of success for both products created and for clearer role guidelines on an individual level, removing ambiguity from performance evaluations.

Apple Fellow Phil Schiller has been selected for an observer role on the OpenAI board. He will be able to observe board meetings but will not have any voting power. This will allow Apple to gain insights into how decisions are made at OpenAI. The arrangement will take effect later this year - details of the situation could still change.