/Will Larson

Trapped in a Values Oasis tl;dr: A Value Oasis is when a team's values misalign with the org's. This can be "messy," especially when the team's leader - who created the Oasis - is no longer present. An effective leader can use the "model, document and share” method to effect wider change within the organization.

featured in #187


Your First 90 Days As CTO Or VP Engineering tl;dr: Covers the following areas - priorities and goals, making the right system changes, tasks for the first 90 days, learning and building trust, building a support system, organizational health and process, hiring, execution & technology. 

featured in #170


How Stripe Invests In Technical Infrastructure (Video) tl;dr: Prioritization is especially challenging for infrastructure engineers. Will presents his approach as Stripe scaled, discussing when to firefight, work on new features and more.

featured in #164


Reclaim Unreasonable Software tl;dr: Code is "big ball of mud" at growth stage companies. Will describes a new approach to untangle it. "List all the beliefs you'd need to have to be confident in modifying your software" and see how they move up the behavior & property ladder, which he describes in detail.  

featured in #162


A Forty Year Career tl;dr: Will focuses his career on growth and engagement, not equity & IPOs. He looks at it from a 40 year perspective, and how to maximize factors important to him - pace, people, prestige, profit and learning.

featured in #157


How To Size And Assess Teams From An Eng Lead At Stripe, Uber and Digg tl;dr: Larson shares his system for gauging size and state of engineering teams - ratios and frameworks to structuring team size, combining and spinning up teams, and assessing and accelerating team progress.

featured in #144


How To Invest In Technical Infrastructure tl;dr: Playbook on managing technical infrastructure focussing on how to transition from constant firefighting mode to a structured operational framework.

featured in #143


How To Evolve An Engineering Organization tl;dr: The following are explained in detail (1) measure what you hope to improve (2) size the org against peers, goals and performance (3) structure into smaller teams (4) project growth (5) rest in between changes to master the current structure.

featured in #135