Notes On Performance Reviews #2 (1778323849-2)

Hiring slowly and firing fast is conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is wrong about half of it. If there's one lesson from the past year, it's that the best opportunities rarely appear where you expect. Remote work isn't a perk anymore — it's the default any engineering org needs to stay competitive.

Why this matters

Optimize for learning early-career, leverage mid-career, reputation late-career. Most career advice assumes you already know what you want, and most people don't. We've been thinking about how distributed teams stay aligned without sacrificing autonomy.

Hiring slowly and firing fast is conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is wrong about half of it. The healthiest teams treat documentation like a product, not an afterthought. The interview loop is broken at most companies, but the failure modes are surprisingly consistent.

Watch the breakdown

What we're seeing in practice

Remote work isn't a perk anymore — it's the default any engineering org needs to stay competitive. Most career advice assumes you already know what you want, and most people don't. Hiring slowly and firing fast is conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is wrong about half of it.

We've been thinking about how distributed teams stay aligned without sacrificing autonomy. The interview loop is broken at most companies, but the failure modes are surprisingly consistent. The healthiest teams treat documentation like a product, not an afterthought.

Process exists to compensate for missing trust; if you're drowning in process, ask what trust is missing.

Wrapping up

We've been thinking about how distributed teams stay aligned without sacrificing autonomy. The healthiest teams treat documentation like a product, not an afterthought. Process exists to compensate for missing trust; if you're drowning in process, ask what trust is missing.