The Leadership Garden Newsletter – #35

We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can achieve in a decade. Miraculous things can be accomplished if you give it ten years. A long game will compound small gains to overcome even big mistakes.

How To Evaluate A Startup Technically

From the author: “In February 2021 I was asked to do a technical evaluation of a startup. The team had 7-10 engineers but lacked senior technical leadership, and the investment team and CEO wanted to make sure they were on track. I’ve sent this to a few other fractional CTOs who found it helpful, and maybe you will, too.”

Layoffs Don't Tell the Whole Story

High-profile tech layoffs capture the headlines, but are less significant to the overall employment market than the less dramatic hiring freeze. The author crunches some simple arithmetic to tell us that it’s not layoffs we should be worried about, but vacancy volume.

Lessons Learned from the Book 'Effective Remote Work'

Yup, we’re still on this topic (and will be for some time, trust me!). The article gives you a nice and easy shortlist of learnings about remote work.

Do we need an office?

Continuing with the remote vs. on-site struggle, this article explores the pros and cons of having an office. No spoilers, go and read it ;)

First Focus. Then simplify.

“Imagine two people — Person A acknowledges the complex problem, and focuses. Person B doesn’t see the complex problem, and simplifies.” Both approaches may seem very similar at first glance. “Focus looks like simplification. Simplification looks like focus.” But when things go wrong, as they tend to do, Person B will make bad decisions. They’ll pick bad strategies and tactics and spread the lack of context awareness to their team.