Decision making or decision making

When Evan, John, and I needed to make a decision, we could usually do it pretty quickly. We were all deep every day in customer conversations, the architecture of our software, and how all the pieces fit together. We could imagine how our decisions today would play out over time. Even though we each had our areas of expertise (Evan wrote a lot of the infrastructure, John wrote a lot of the core product services, I wrote a lot of the API, web, and billing layers) we all knew enough to act as one brain. When you hold the whole picture in your heads and you work together every day, you can make progress incredibly fast. That’s the power of a small team—there are no proxies; you’re just directly solving customer problems with your code.That’s the magic that makes startups so special and so productive. There’s so little overhead to manage, the coordination energy is negligible, and people tend to have a tremendous intrinsic drive because they’re so close … [Read more...] about The “dozen-bagel” secret to preserving startup spirit as your company grows

You may not recognize the Toronto-based design firm Teehan+Lax, but you probably know some of the hit products it’s behind, like the social publishing platform Medium and the reading app Readability. Now, the firm is closing, as Facebook–in a play for total publishing domination— has hired three of the firm’s three partners, Jon Lax, Geoff Teehan, and David Gillis, while the other ~40 people at the firm appear to have been laid off. … [Read more...] about Facebook Guts The Design Firm Behind Medium

“Instead of coming in like a big Hollywood company saying, `This is how it’s going to be done,’ we listen to their issues,” says Mazzara. “One was that businesses [whose fronts were going to be in shots] wanted to be open while we were shooting. We dressed up some of their back entrances, so that their customers didn’t feel like they were sneaking in through the alley. And we utilized those local businesses. There’s a coffee shop on the street, just outside the set. Well, trust me, cast and crew like their coffee, so we are going in there once an hour and dropping a lot of money. When we had a premiere screening for the cast and crew, we rented out the local bar; we had our cast dinner at the big restaurant on the main street; we utilized the local hotels, rental cars, and ice cream shop. We’re pumping money into that local economy, and the cast and crew enjoyed shooting in a small town.” … [Read more...] about The Walking Dead’s Glen Mazzara On Managing the Undead Way

Harassment and hate speech have been long-standing issues for Twitch, for social media sites in general, and for the gaming community in particular. Twitch has also faced allegations of sexual assault, harassment, and racism within the company itself, and in June, a group of prominent streamers conducted a one-day blackout on the platform to protest Twitch’s inaction. … [Read more...] about Twitch bans the Confederate flag as part of a bigger hate speech crackdown

Today, Systrom says, the company’s mission is “strengthening relationships through shared experiences.” The idea underpinning this goal is that Instagram should offer users a more overt and unvarnished way to connect through the universal language of images—to broadcast moments and not just just-so snapshots. “A lot of times you’re on the way to the airport, or you’re at a campground, and [a photo] doesn’t need to endure, because you’re not actually sharing a photo: You’re just communicating a status update of what you’re doing,” says product manager Stein, who has only been with Instagram since May 2016 but fell in love with the app as one of its original beta testers. “That [emphasis on experiences] wasn’t always clear to us,” Systrom says. “It wasn’t always clear to Facebook. And it wasn’t always clear to the world.” … [Read more...] about How Instagram Changed—Before It Had To