What Working at Stripe Has Been Like | Kalzumeus Software

A stupendous portion of that advantage is just consistently choosing to get more done. (View Highlight)

Set one’s operating cadence to ‘run.’ Organizations have a lot of difficulty operating at a cadence which is unlikely their default one, and that cadence tends to get slower over time as the organization’s energy gets taxed to support the organization itself. People also seem to have a set operating cadence, though theirs is more context-dependent; I’ve noticed wild swings in mine over my various jobs, mostly in conforming to local norms. Relentless execution is something of a cliche, but it is a cliche for a reason. Organizations that need to hire a Head of X to start Xing will necessarily pay a multi-month cost to start Xing; you can get a lot done in months. Many organizations will have a culture which says “Why do X in the interim when we don’t know the best practices and will inevitably throw it away?”; they will lose out on months of progress. The returns to pushing your cadence to faster are everywhere and they compound (View Highlight)