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Issue #157: Interview methods, myths of breakthroughs, and personal perspectives on Gaza
By Harris Sockel
Last weekend, computer scientist and Y Combinator founder Paul Graham published a instantly viral essay about how to lead a team (not lead). It’s called “Founder Mode,” and while I’m oversimplifying it, he essentially argues (please don’t @ me): micromanagement can be a good thing.
The conventional management orthodoxy is, “Hire great people, give them autonomy, and don’t interfere!” However, Graham believes this is terrible advice for founders. He doesn’t mince words, calling most professional managers “fakers” and “liars.” A more diplomatic way to put this is that they are better at managing than being managed. In contrast, leaders in Founder Mode work closely with the person closest to the problem, even if that person is at the bottom of the org chart.
Graham got the idea from Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. In the media, CTO Zakwan Jaroucheh explains that Founder Mode stays as close to the product as possible. He started coding it himself after recalling a time when outsourcing components to third parties didn’t work, leading to many breakthroughs. Investor Amir Shevat opposes Graham’s essay, viewing Founder Mode as an excuse for leaders who don’t do the work of hiring trustworthy people.
I’m tolerant of ignoring all memes. Most of them use “Founder Mode” as an implicit excuse for predicted CEOs to steamroll employees. Chesky himself acknowledged how gendered this conversation is. Women with a practical leadership style are perceived differently than men. In any case, the essay seemed to unlock a new conversation about when micromanagement might actually be helpful.
Lighting Round: Memorable, recent Medium stories in one sentence or less.
- There are two perspectives on the war in Gaza. One deals with ongoing protests against the Israeli government from an Israeli writer (“We were a country of anxiety, protest, anger, and disillusionment before this happened”) and one from Palestine. An American (“I still feel conflicted about being open about Palestinian identity.”)
- Translator Yuri Minamide explains why Murakami is so popular in the U.S. His writing style was born from translation. The novelist was dissatisfied with how his stories sounded in Japanese, so he translated them into English and then back.
- Engineering leader Marianne Bellotti lists the best questions to ask when interviewing for a job. “Let’s say you’re the person I’m hiring. Six months have passed, what’s different?”
💥 A piece of practical wisdom: On breakthroughs
If you’re still interested in cognitive biases after last week’s deep dive, introduce breakthrough errors. We actually track significant changes in our lives by returning to isolated turning points that are “contextual, situational, slow, difficult, and sometimes even unconscious.”
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Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis edited and produced
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