Merge branch 'main' into dmontauk/unorganized

Author: dobromirmontauk

.gitignore

@@ -1 +1,2 @@
 .idea/*
+.DS_Store

README.md

@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ A good cookbook does a few things. This is inspired by [Mastering the Art of Fre
  * Create magical dishes by combining all of the above in interesting ways.
  * Explore variations on the themes.
 
-We'll use a similar structure here. We'll break down our most complex leadership & management recipes into combinations of simpler building blocks. Hopefully as you grow in your career, you'll move up the recipe complexity ladder and feel comfortable trying the hardest ones! And, as an open cookbook, we encourage you to add your own variations, techniques, insights, or entirely new recipes here. The goal of this cookbook is not to be 100% comprehensive; the topic is too vast for that. In many cases, we'll give a few example recipes, and then point at entire chapters or books dedicated to the subject. 
+We'll use a similar structure here. We'll break down our most complex leadership & management recipes into combinations of simpler building blocks. Hopefully as you grow in your career, you'll move up the recipe complexity ladder and feel comfortable trying the hardest ones! And, as an open cookbook, we encourage you to add your own variations, techniques, insights, or entirely new recipes here. The goal of this cookbook is not to be 100% comprehensive; the topic is too vast for that. It is instead an attempt to build a comprehensive 'overview'. Breadth vs depth. In many cases, we'll give a few example recipes, and then point at entire chapters or books dedicated to the subject. 
 
 # Contents
 ## Section Health

ingredients/README.md

@@ -9,6 +9,22 @@ Of course, some knowledge ends up being more relevant to Engineering Leadership
 
 # Uncategorized
 
+## Charlie Munger
+While I've always been a big believer in a multidisciplary approach to work -- nay, to all of life, inspired by Heinkein's quote: "Specialization is for ants" -- I was never sure about how to justify this to engineering leaders who have mostly succeeded on their specialized knowledge.
+
+Charlie Munger to the rescue. You might discard my opinion easily, but you are unlikely to discard his. Almanack.
+
+MODELS OF THINKING. Different from knowledge. Hanging your facts on a theoretical structure that helps connect them together. 
+
+## Organization
+
+Read the Economist. 
+Go to history museums. Understand the roots and effects of all major events in the last 100 years.
+
+This layout is organized roughly like a University might arrange its departments because, by and large, Universities do have a good grasp of the sphere of knowledge and how to teach it. Each page will have the minimum concepts that you should be familiar with, almost a 'glossary & quiz' approach so you can test yourself. 101 + 201 depth, nothing more. Links to where you go get the actual concepts if the description isn't enough to satisfy you.
+
+
+
 * Human psychology
    * Motivation 
       * (pyramid)
@@ -27,8 +43,39 @@ Of course, some knowledge ends up being more relevant to Engineering Leadership
    * Marketing
      * Category Creation
 	 * Funnel Concept
+   * Finance
+     * Accounting
+     * Important Engineering concepts
+       * R&D accounting
+       * Types of revenue
 * Visual vs non-visual
     * Tufte
     * Learning styles? 
 
-   
+# 7/2/24 thoughts
+The only things you need to learn:
+* Learn to Think.
+   * The Professor.
+   * Create Theoretical Frameworks
+   * Math taught me this. How to *think logically*. 
+   * Munger: "To this day, I have never taken any course, anywhere, in chemistry, economics, psychology, or business. But I early took elementary physics and math and paid enough attention to somehow assimilate the fundamental organizing ethos of hard science, which I thereafter pushed further and further into softer and softer fare as my organizing uide and filing system in a search for whatever multidisciplinary worldly wisdom it would be easy to get."
+* Learn to Organize. 
+   * Break down a problem into its components parts.
+   * Dependency graph.
+   * Estimate the work.
+   * Assign risks.
+* Learn to Debug
+* Learn to Dream
+   * The Artist. 
+* Learn to Learn
+   * Adding Facts to your Theoretical Framework
+
+
+# 7/11/24 More random thoughts
+Organizational Physics
+* These are the unviolatable laws that every organization succumbs to, like black holes gravity. Worth knowing because it explains some of the 'craziness' that is actually physics.
+* E.g. Law of Less Communication. The bigger the org, the less people at the top communicate with people lower on the ladder. So each individual interaction is more meaningful to the people lower and less meaningful to the people higher.
+   * Explains why ppl higher need to be more polished. That message benefits from being tight, not off-the-cuff.
+   * Explains why ppl higher stay consistent. They won't remember what they told you b/c they are talking to so many differnet ppl -- unless they have very few messages they keep repeating.
+   * Their opinion of you will be formed by what you say in just a few moments!
+   * Trust equation: your credibility gets set by the promise you make...\

ingredients/business.md

@@ -1,5 +1,13 @@
 # Product-Market Fit
- 
+
+# Startups
+## Evaluating a startup
+### Growth
+* https://staxbill.com/t2d3-path-to-saas-growth-1b-valuation/
+* 
+### People
+* John's LinkedIn approach
+
 ## Resources
 * Lean Startup?
 * The 4 Steps to Epiphany

ingredients/power.md

@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+# What is Power?
+The ability to change reality by a certain amount in a given amount of time. (I GOT THIS FROM SOMEWHERE -- what was the source??)
+
+More power means you can change the world more, or in a smaller amount of time.
+
+What does 'change the world' mean?
+* In the end, it's literally the atoms of the universe. Moving them around. 
+* Lots of steps to get there, e.g. Larry & Sergey had a ton of power, even though they weren't moving that many atoms ... because of what?
+* Can you measure power (analytical) or is it computational? E.g. do you need to run the simulation to know what was powerful and what wasn't? How do I know that an idea has power and another one doesn't?

ingredients/psychology.md

@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+# Reading List
+* Adler -- 
+    * The Courage to be Disliked -- easy version
+    * 

random.md

@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+Birkman styles -- like True Colors?
+
+# Is the universe Analytical or Computational?
+* Most of physics has taken an analytical approach. By that I mean that if we can come up with the right set of rules we should be able to explain how everything works. The GUTE (Grand Unified Theory of Everything)
+* But perhaps the universe is *computational*. You can come up with rules of the computation, but that doesn't mean you can explain everything with an analytical approach anymore.
+* Feedback loops in everything make analysis impossible? 

recipes/README.md

@@ -34,9 +34,15 @@ new generation of "non-manager" leaders and "I-love-management" managers.
 So how do we come up with a useful definition of Leadership & Management that allows us to organize recipes in a helpful
 way?
 
+2025.09.02 thought: 
+* _management_ is the art of dealing with individuals
+* _leadership_ is the art of dealing with groups
+* spectrum because a couple of individuals may not quite be a group yet --> group dynamics are different than individual dynamics
+* the fluid dynamics theory of people :)
+
 [TODO(dmontauk): I want to add 5-6 examples here that make it intuitively clear what the difference is]
 
-We hope that the examples above motivate one specific realization: _leadership_ seems much more dangerous! There's a
+We hope that the examples above motivate one specific realization: _leadership_ seems much more risky! There's a
 certain _step change_ needed to make something qualify as 'leadership' instead of 'management'. When a management
 approach fails you kind of end up where you started. When a leadership approach fails, things might be _much worse_ than
 before. Why is that?
@@ -87,7 +93,7 @@ destination, or fail to.
 
 ### It Gets Worse
 
-We said above that "Most team members will agree this makes sense". They unfortunate fact is that it's unlikely that
+We said above that "Most team members will agree this makes sense". The unfortunate fact is that it's unlikely that
 everyone in your organization even has the same optimization function in their head (if they do, congrats! You must be
 doing something really well!!). Reality looks more like this:
 
@@ -140,4 +146,7 @@ My recipe has a TON of stuff I want to expand on. Notes here:
 1. My L/M recipe: leadership is about risk to yourself, to your reputation, to your career. If there is no risk, it’s not leadership. 
 2. Small leadership ‘bumps’ for a Sr. EM might be huge leadership moments for more junior employees. That’s why leadership/management is a spectrum. 
 3. See all my notes I wrote up in Google Docs [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LwOIhMI0MsCYePKU7sz2eigs-PcSJ6tuVXIbZGtUJdk/edit#heading=h.gu4ti1e72vvr). Need to integrate that here.
-1. Need to use examples of a strong leader / bad manager and poor leader / strong manager to distinguish between the two types.
+1. Need to use examples of a strong leader / bad manager and poor leader / strong manager to distinguish between the two types.
+
+# Raw
+* Management is about creating systems that solve problems. Leadership is about creating systems that reveal problems. 

recipes/leadership/alignment/growing_up.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+# Growing Up
+A startup's purpose is to provide value in the world & continue to scale up so it can increase the value it provides.
+
+This is the same purpose that any child has. For them, we call it 'growing up'. I think if we apply a similar mental model to startups it helps us understand the *phases of development* that must be tackled.
+
+# Engineering Maturity Model
+
+# Where is Your Company/Organization/Team? Where Should it Be?
+
+
+
+# Scratch
+* Asia: 'why shouldn't a startup hire people for big salaries' --> my analogy of a child not being able to carry 50LB bag. A startup cannot carry a $500K salary.
+* A startup needs to *eventually* be able to take care of all its employees, *eventually* have space for all sorts of individuals... but it doesn't start that way. 
+** Hot Take: diversity & inclusion. Perhaps a startup cannot afford to do this in the beginning. It should not be judged by *can it do it today*, it should be judged by *is it growing up in the right way?*
+* What is growing up? There are the beliefs we have, and the roll out of those beliefs. We may believe certain things (e.g. we should have diverse teams) but not roll them out -- yet. 
+* Everything is a tradeoff between surviving and growing up. Wrong trade off if you die; then you have failed your purpose.
+* Every company eventually fails in its purpose; every company eventually disappears. How do we think about that?
+* As engineering leaders, what are the dimensions of growing up that we need to carefully consider?
+** The Engineering Maturity Model
+*** Quality
+***** Testing etc --> Quality Maturity Model
+*** Cost (of system) --> Cost Maturity Model
+*** Efficiency (i.e. cost of people)
+*** Reliability
+***** SRE book examples!
+*** Accuracy
+*** Speed (wall time to delivery)
+* Applies to companies/organizations/teams -- may need to have different maturity models across different areas.
+** Kids have the same thing -- different parts they have different maturity.
+* Use the "star" pattern graph to map where you are vs where you should be
+* 

recipes/management/README.md

@@ -10,6 +10,88 @@ This is a simple, powerful way to slice our management recipes. If you are looki
 # So... What is 'Winning'?
 TODO(dmontauk): not something Wade answers in his talk? 
 
+Random thoughts
+* Everything is about solving problems...?
+* The problem is not knowing WHICH problems to solve...
+* Value function is undefined (future is unknowable)
+* Measurement of progress is imperfect ('fog of war')
+* How do we split WINNING vs INCREASING CAPACITY?
+    * It feels like winning is MOVING UP THE CURRENT LOCAL MAX
+    * 'Winning' can be long-term losing. Examples: Google+, TellApart bought by Twitter, Loomis at Google...
+    * So 'winning' has different *resolutions*. E.g. you can win a battle but lose the war. You can win in engineering (ship the code) and lose at product (nobody finds it useful).
+    * Winning is a local definition. There are 'layers' of winning. 
+        * A junior engineer needs to write good code. 
+        * A senior engineers needs to design a scalable system.
+        * A soldier needs to take the next house.
+        * A captain needs to take the next village.
+* What is a PROBLEM?
+    * Three types of problems. 
+        * Inertia 
+        * ?? (things falling apart) 
+        * Power: force in a different direction than you want.
+* What are the TOOLS of winning?
+    * As an engineer:
+        * Writing code: having computers repeatedly solve the problem for you.
+        * Simplifying a design: preventing problems from happening altogether.
+        * Standardization? Making a group of problems all the same problem?
+        * Operational: doing one-off work to solve a problem (e.g. deleting files to free up disk space)
+    * As a manager:
+        * 
+    * As a manager-of-managers:
+        * 
+* For the various layers: your WINNING is their INCREASING CAPACITY?
+    * Teaching an engineer how to write better code is WINNING for an EM. But it's increasing THEIR capacity??
+    * Recursive? It does feels recursive. When you solve a problem, it removes friction/energy being used to tackle that problem, which frees up energy for other problems, meaning you've increased SOMEONE'S capacity to win...?
+    * E.g. Mashgin makes checkout easier. Frees up time for customers --> they can use that time to do more.
+    * ALL TECHNOLOGY is increasing the capacity to win for users of the technology --> is all winning translate to increasing the capacity to win for someone else?
+    * 
+* Mashgin example problems
+    * Need to integrate with P97 
+        * Increases the capacity of our sales team to win. They can close more deals!
+        * If we close one deal, we get more revenue. Increases our capacity to win since we have more $. For the customer, if they are getting value from the product, it increases their capacity to win somehow as well.
+        * Integration would be considered a win. But now assume we do NOT sell any more pilots because of it? Then we haven't actually increased the capacity of anyone, and we wasted resources doing it. So the 'win' ends up being a loss. But how could we know that ahead of time?
+        * Time value of problem solving? ROI? What's the right way to think about this? Increasing capacity is non-deterministic; just because we increased capacity doesn't mean that more wins WILL happen.
+        * There is a time component and a risk component. 
+            * E.g. a page costs me 1 hour a week to investigate & fix. If it takes me 12 hours to fix this this page, then it will pay off in 12 weeks. Fixing the page is a deterministic win: it will definitely increase my capacity to win over the next 3 months.
+            * What if the page is random? May never happen again? Or if it happens, it costs me 20 hours? Then there is a chance that in the next 3 months my 'win' would have been worthless, if it never appeared. So the 'win' might be a 'loss' (with time value included).
+        * So should we give credit to the engineering team for winning if we launch P97? Or should we wait until the pay-off happens?
+            * If a soldier takes a house, but the captain fails to take the village, should the soldier be punished? If the captain takes the village but the generals picked the wrong village to attack, should the captain be punished?
+            * Winning is local...?
+    * Random example
+        * Hunting for food. What is the 'problem' and how does that 'increase capacity'?
+            * Technically capacity would go down if you die. So that's an edge case?
+            * This is the fighting entropy problem --> you need to run just to stay in place.
+            * Does fighting entropy count as increasing capacity? I don't really think so... it's about 'maintaining capacity'?
+            * Are the actions to fight entropy different than the ones to increase capacity? Perhaps they are the same, and entropy is just a constant minus term in the equation that you need to fight...
+            * 
+* I do like the 'winning is about solving problems.' 
+    * 49ers game yesterday. What is winning/losing play-by-play?
+    * Each player could 'win' -- do exactly what they were supposed to do, solve the problem they were supposed to solve, yet the team can lose. Solving the WRONG problems -- coach's fault?
+    * Winning/losing play-by-play is obvious. Each yard gained by the opponent is 'losing'; each 1st down is 'losing'. The game is obvious too; the season is obvious. The introspection is easy: everything is recorded, visible. You can tell how a team is doing, and STILL can't predict the end of the game.
+    * Much harder when you can't introspect? And when the 'score' is unclear?
+    * But a lot happens off the field -- training, coaching, teamwork -- which translates to the field indirectly.
+    * How do I use this in engineering? What is the daily/weekly winning? The PROBLEM that needs to be solved TODAY?
+        * This is why I like daily PRs... Weekly goals...
+        * 
+
+
+2/18 thoughts
+* You can't win if you don't know what your goal is. Objective function is MORE fundamental than winning.
+* Most of our lives objective functions are given to us: school, sports, even a large chunk of our careers.
+* Reaching a point where you can define your own objective function can be disorienting. 
+    * Easy to still lean on external ones, e.g. when you run your own company you don't need to become rich or huge, but many founders still lean that way.
+* Why does my runimating matter --> first thought is that I've seen so much 'local' winning where 'global' is losing, e.g. G+, Loomis, TellApart, ...  -> and WINNING at your level is making sure your team's efforts don't go to waste. Vic Gundotra lost. Wade lost. 
+    * IS DEFININING THE OBJECTIVE FUNCTION PART OF LEADERSHIP, OR MANAGEMENT??
+    * Is understanding the objective function part of leadership, or management?
+* Back to winning... so if you DO have an objective function, then you can win. 
+    * Even if your objective function is wrong, changes over time, etc -> we can still defining winning as moving the objective function. This helps us separate winning from... something else.
+    * Winning: "Given an objective function, can you improve against it...?"
+    * Increasing: "Given an objective function, can you make MORE progress in increasing it, within a given unit of time"...?
+    * Most of my life I've been a little mystified by winning because so often it seems like it isn't; but really it can still be winning, while improving your objective function is just a different thing.
+    * So now we need strategies for winning. But don't those depend a TON on the objective function??
+* Venn diagram... does leadership/management overlap? Does leadership contain management?
+
+
 # Balancing Winning vs Increasing
 TODO(dmontauk): This is one of the core tensions of management! Also not something Wade talks about in his talk?