Cooking lessons

Recipes are rigid. Principles let you adjust the dish according to the ingredients you have or your guests’ preferences.

That’s why growth and marketing hacking are pointless. So is copying Spotify’s squad model without understanding why it exists.

Try your dish. It’s hard to know what to adjust if you haven’t tasted it. A lot of engineers never log into the product they’re trying to improve.

It’s hard to cook many dishes at the same time. You have a limited number of burners, and you can’t hold a dish under the heat lamp for too long. Instead, make one good dish. Over time, perfect it.

The same goes for building products. Focus on one. Stick to it to the point of obsession.

Some things don’t work. Some dishes don’t go together, some ingredients don’t play well. Same with projects and features. Sometimes the answer is no.