mvpu

As a leader, you should talk differently with your team and with execs. With your team: understand what they are saying quickly, ask good questions, make them think, teach them how to think and work with your principles and wisdom. With execs: understand what they want, "own" and ask what you need (logically) and "get things done". The buck should stop with you.

A VC friend once told me that _all_ money coming into VC via LPs represents <5% of their total assets, so even if all the VCs loose all the money their raised from their LPs nobody loses breath - only damage is to reputation. So fund raising is mostly about storytelling and showtime. Fund losing is about back luck. Better luck. Next time.

If a system setting is changed (in this case, power-saving mode = on) _without_ associated user trigger (UI action), then the system should issue a push notification and prompt for confirmation. That's the right thing to do - for all apps no matter who made them.

Some parallels with Uber here (minus the extreme culture issues) - semi-reckless CEO with Godly following, series of departures, constant fire from the media. But unlike Uber I don't think Tesla will see a new CEO. And that is good.

Horses -> Stick Shift -> Automatic -> Self Driving Cars. Nice.

Oh well. I don't think any of these "high net worth" clients are actually there to make money.. they're probably there to blow away a few million that they can recover easily from other investments or revenue sources. Re: cheese and sweeping things from hotels.. lol, they're human afterall :)

will report to both Kevin and me

Either I don't trust Kevin or X doesn't trust Kevin. Poor Kevin.

Agree. He can do whatever he wants in private, but before doing something stupid like this in public, he should think about the 100s of 1000s of people who bet their 401k money on Tesla stock. Public behavior matters for public company CEOs.

Spirited discussion! I think for the average Joe, this change does not matter (i.e neither good, nor bad). Two better changes: a) highlight https / secure connections even more prominently, and b) detect and highlight misspelled domain names (a major cause of phishing attacks). Rationale is that for the average Joe, a clear warning that they are about to go to a bad site is more valuable than looking at the accurate domain name.

Investors aren't stupid - they won't fund millions of dollars (series A and above) unless they see a working product that customers are raving about, a large market opportunity, and a clear go-to-market - general indications of product-market-fit (although the definition of PMF depends on the space and product). We have seen rare cases of outsized seed rounds w/o a product, but they are extremely rare (even today). So this notion of "go big or go home" isn't vaporware - most founders cannot get that kind of investments, and few that can (reputed, second time founders for example) think 100 times before they jump in.

Forgive me if it's a stupid idea - but why not shutdown these plane computers every night when they aren't in service and boot them again in the morning before the first flight? Let all the counters reset, all memory creep and leaks go away, start fresh....

Wonder why ships aren't trying solar panels and electric motors and auto-pilot... they're out in clear Sun, have a large surface area, and no traffic...

The key here is "double-blind encryption" - assuming they got that right, neither can see exactly what I am buying, so I'm good. Bigger point: I'd be ok with any company tracking my activities _as long as_ one of two conditions are met: a) it benefits me (and me only), or b) it benefits them _but_ they cannot identify me.

Great! Now redo this in Python and GoLang :)

I believe in AR/VR. I don't work in that space but I feel they should start with specialized use cases such as mental health and show value and be nimble about bringing it mainstream. Otherwise it will be a pie in the sky.....

This type of things are better off delivered as an SDK rather than a 3rd party API. Sending sensitive data to VGS for encryption would be a non-starter for many companies.. the probability of data getting stolen is same for VGS or anyone else...

I think this isn't just about self-driving tech (I believe Toyota already partnered with Waymo on that given the old Google self driving cars were Lexus RX and Prius) - but this is also about car sharing. I think car sharing might be a bigger and sooner threat to car manufacturers than self driving cars. By partnering with Uber Toyota gets to hedge.

Let's look at the facts: a) Tesla is the most shorted stock in history, b) 1000s of hackers are working hard to break things like this, c) if it was possible to break it and damage the company someone would have done it already. This just feels like an disgruntled employee.

Some traits I look for in engineer #1: a) should obsess about architecture and code organization (they will be laying a foundation so having a bit of OCD helps), b) should make good tradeoffs and optimize for speed (they will be building the wrong things initially), c) mature enough to understand that they will be writing and rewriting a lot (see (b)) and d) last but not least, should have a strong desire to do a startup (knowing all the risks)....

Only two ways to get investor attention in the initial stages: traction (i.e build something that people are raving about) or team (i.e find people with reputable backgrounds). Without one of these, it's a waste of time.

Engineering Manager (or Director/VP) is about building a "machine that builds product". Engineer (or Architect/CTO) is about "building the product". Switching between the two as described in the article is perfectly OK and a good career path - but if you really want to be good at one you'll have to give up the other. Management (or building the machine that builds the product) is a skill that requires a lot of experimentation, studying, mistakes - just like any new programming language or stack. If you want to become good at it, you'll need to focus on it full-time for several years.

First, be valuable to the company - get work done, be reliable, be available. Second, understand the manager's strengths and weaknesses and become valuable to them individually.. if architecture is their weakness, help them understand that; if not tolerating skipped deadlines is their weakness, don't skip them, etc. Third, provide constructive feedback in 1:1s - help them become better. Finally, do not make them look bad in public, especially when their bosses are around.

My personal bias matches your first point - I prefer candidates that are curious (to understand how things work), versatile (dabbled with more than one language), hungry (to build things) and accomplished (have built things they are proud of). I do not care about OCD. I don't think the next engineer should be better than the last engineer.

That said, I would hire one person that meets your bias, get them to do great things, and use that example to influence your peers. Once they start seeing results, they are more likely to use your bias. I would also opportunistically discuss the performance of people they have been hiring and trigger trigger thoughts.

However, I've found that hiring alone does not fix the core problem in engineering - which in my perspective boils down to building a culture of obsession. I've never seen a team full of rockstars. But I've been able to improve outcomes by constantly obsessing about some aspect of the product or code with engineers and getting them excited about it and take ownership and make things better. Get someone excited about UX, someone excited about code quality, someone about security, someone about unit tests, and constantly talk to them about it, and reward them for making it better. And over time you might see better results.

Pick a last date with plenty of time (say 3 months). Write down your thoughts in a doc - make it detailed and touchy with reasons for leaving, a rough transition plan, timeline. Schedule a lunch. The night before, send the doc. So that he reads the doc, gets 12-14 hours to digest and think, and then reconcile with you and work out a transition plan.

Indian engineers in India are like animals in a zoo. Indian engineers outside India are like animals in a forest. They thrive and shine because they are free. It's all in the environment. The only way to add "offshore" teams safely is to find people who refuse to accept a code review comment because that's not the right thing to do, no matter which part of the world they are in.

Wait. The author wants me to pay for what appears to be an outside-in, uneducated, irrelevant take on Tesla's internal problems? No thank you. Let them deal with it.

"On March 25, 2018, we became aware that during February of this year an unauthorized party acquired data associated with MyFitnessPal user accounts" => highly likely they stole more than what MFP thinks they stole.. we don't know what we don't know. Sigh.

The sad part isn't that CA mined the data or that Palantir helped build models, it's that those 50 million people believed in the campaigns they were fed. If a few powerful people can influence the masses to achieve their objectives, what good is democracy bringing to the table? More importantly, how different is mental manipulation compared to physical manipulation as commonly seen with dictatorship?

1. What did you learn in the last 6 months that was super exciting? 2. What's on your todo list for the next 3 months? 3. Who are the engineer(s) you learn from most / admire the most? 4. What can QA / DevOps do to make you more productive? 5. What can your manager do to make you more productive / happy?

I have used this method at every startup I worked for. It will only work for companies that want to hire and keep good engineers. When you join the company, your manager will lay out your strengths and areas to improve to get to the next level (in a direction you want to go) in the very first meeting. Then, she meets with you every quarter and refines the vision for growth. Between those meetings, she'll create opportunities for you to challenge yourself, shine, and grow. That's it. All we care about is ownership, accountability, and leadership -- and your peers will keep you in check. Our job as leaders is to remove speed brakers and avoid pot holes. I can't think of a better way than this -- "performance" reviews are meaningless.