Thirty years, summarized
A few things two developers learned in consulting, startups, and the corporate machine — that we wish we'd known sooner.
Between the two of us, we’ve spent more than thirty years inside other people’s companies. Consultancies that billed by the hour and rewarded by the deck. Startups that confused velocity for direction. Large organisations where the most important meeting of the quarter was the one about how to schedule the meeting.
We learned the same handful of things in each setting, mostly the hard way. This essay is the short version we’d hand to ourselves a decade ago.
The list
Placeholder — write the actual list. Suggestions: small teams beat big teams, written beats verbal, taste compounds, the org chart is a lossy diagram of the real org, the work is mostly about saying no.