I've been interviewing engineers for a while now, and it seems the more interviews I do, the more I realize how many my initial assumptions about hiring were wrong. For example, take resumes. Initially, before every interview I'd carefully review resumes. I'd look at candidate's … | Continue reading
In March 2020, as the world locked down, I was on the tail end of a vacation in New Zealand. As COVID started to spin out of control in the states, my girlfriend and I made the decision to stay. A ten day trip turned into a year-long adventure. I | Continue reading
Let's talk about what makes a great lifestyle business. | Continue reading
Let's talk about what makes a great lifestyle business. | Continue reading
I love lifestyle businesses. I've started a couple (one failed, one sold), before founding a larger business. Lifestyle businesses are intriguing to people, they sound too good to be true but the reality is they are imminently doable. Since I get quite a lot of questions regardin … | Continue reading
There’s a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt when it comes to stock options, and I’d like to try and clear some of that up today. As an engineer, you may be more interested in getting on with your job than compensation. However, if you’re working... | Continue reading
A company’s culture is something intangible and nebulous, and yet it can be just as important to success as revenues or growth. Culture influences everything, from design and product implementation to the level of support and operations of a... | Continue reading
There’s a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt when it comes to stock options, and I’d like to try and clear some of that up today. As an engineer, you may be more interested in getting on with your job than compensation. However, if you’re working... | Continue reading
A new year and a new decade: What does the future have in store for us? Information revolutions, medical advances, AI? How will humanity tackle its largest problems? I guess we shall just have to wait and see (or get busy inventing it!). I’ve... | Alex MacCaw | JavaScript program … | Continue reading
I’d just like to take a second to point out how absurd all this is. We’re monkeys on a rock flying through space who’ve decided to climb down from the trees, put on costumes, and makeup names for each other. We didn’t stop at names. We’ve made up... | Alex MacCaw | JavaScript pro … | Continue reading
I had the privilege of speaking to some Berkeley students last week. Below is the talk reprinted in full: If you could call yourself 10 years ago and speak for a minute, what would you say? That’s the thought that was going through my mind when I... | Alex MacCaw | JavaScript pro … | Continue reading
Aligning the right people with jobs to be done is an age-old problem in company building. And on a micro level, aligning yourself with the right role is also challenging. What should you delegate? Where should you focus your efforts? I’ve found... | Alex MacCaw | JavaScript progr … | Continue reading
Conscious Leadership is about being more interested in learning than being right. When our egos make us afraid to be wrong, that fear leads us to defend our ideas at all costs, and to work too hard to convince others that we are right—often with... | Alex MacCaw | JavaScript prog … | Continue reading
Over a three month period last year I was lucky enough to have Matt Mochary, who I consider to be the world’s best coach, come around Clearbit and teach me everything he knows. Together with the folks from Bolt, we developed a system for running a... | Alex MacCaw | JavaScript pr … | Continue reading
Feedback, performance reviews, appraisals. A collective shiver just went down all of your spines. These words are so highly politicized in today’s work environments it’s no wonder people can’t stand them. For many years I too dreaded the idea of... | Alex MacCaw | JavaScript prog … | Continue reading
Every world-class athlete has a coach: every tennis player at Wimbledon, every golfer in the PGA, and every hitter in the MLB. An athlete without a coach is incomplete. So, why don’t we think the same way about coaches for CEOs? Perhaps it’s... | Alex MacCaw | JavaScript programm … | Continue reading