edmondlau

12 ms·

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by edmondlau 9y ago
My mission is to: “Empower engineers and technical leaders with the tools and mindsets to perform at their highest levels, so that they create the meaningful impact they’re capable of.” That mission started with me writing and self-publishi
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by edmondlau 9y ago
Awesome, I'm happy you enjoyed it! In some sense, it might actually be easier to tell at a startup because what matters at a startup is growth. That can be growth of revenue (if you already have a product to sell) or growth of users (i
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by edmondlau 9y ago
The perspective I'll offer is that good sales copy is also a skill, just like engineering or any of the other skills you mention. To be good at sales copy also involves many factors, like interviewing your prospective customers, unders
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by edmondlau 9y ago
Thank you! It means a lot to me hear its impact on you -- stories from readers are what keep me excited about doing this work.
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by edmondlau 9y ago
Wow, that is an amazing story. Thanks for sharing. It really hammers home how hard it is to disentangle good & bad advice and how easy it is for an outsider looking into to really underestimate the depth of someone else's expertise
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by edmondlau 9y ago
They're orthogonal dimensions. My fault that this isn't clearer. Here's a simpler ordering of operations: 1. Start with the most valuable, highest-leverage thing you want to focus on. 2. Figure out what the riskiest bit of th
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by edmondlau 9y ago
Awesome! Thanks for adding your notes to the discussion.
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by edmondlau 9y ago
I like the bottom-line perspective you provide at the end, of "success = preparedness + luck." Preparedness is what we can train ourselves for, and preparedness also has the effect of making you more able to see and take advantage
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by edmondlau 9y ago
For every person who rode a powerful technology wave, there are also many others who rode the wrong ones. One of my favorite stories from Drew was that when he first started Dropbox, he created a 4-minute demo video showcasing the product t
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by edmondlau 9y ago
Your observation is a key reason why taking the time to define your impact and to measure it is so important. As Drucker says, what gets measured gets improved. In business contexts, your engineering impact generally ties back to the busine
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by edmondlau 9y ago
At Quip, we run one coding interview that happens on a laptop, and where your conversation and discussions with the interviewer, including how you handle suggestions and feedback, matter a huge deal. For experienced hires, we'll do dee
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by edmondlau 9y ago
Yep! I've read The Effective Executive. One of my big motivators for writing the book was that there were all these great ideas that were encapsulated in business books or personal improvement books, and very few books that would tie t
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by edmondlau 9y ago
There's for sure a tricky balance on what fits into a CS education. I remember when I was at MIT (oof, over a decade ago), many project-based CS courses where students were just put into teams and expected teamwork to just happen. Some
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by edmondlau 9y ago
Your observation is a great one, and I'd love to see more data on this as well. A related point, though, also rings true. Soft skills like being a good coach and effective listening are so underinvested in, that even marginal improveme
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by edmondlau 9y ago
If there are engineers you highly respect on your team, their code is a great place to start. Otherwise, many top tech companies now open source software that they've written internally, oftentimes with their own websites. And there is
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by edmondlau 9y ago
I also just remembered that I wrote this blog post a while back on what self-publishing taught me about shipping products. It also shares a few vignettes and lessons from my self-publishing experience. http://www.effectiveenginee
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by edmondlau 9y ago
Two things I've learned since writing the book: 1) It's also important to align your energy levels and what you want to do with your list of high-leverage tasks. When you're really excited about doing something, even if isn&#
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by edmondlau 9y ago
Yes, "high-leverage" is a phrase I use in the book. I learned about leverage when I read Andy Grove's High Output Management. Why the word leverage? Time is our most limited resource. And so the way to really increase our imp
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by edmondlau 9y ago
In many ways, it was similar to building a startup product. I quit my full-time job at Quora and spent ten months full-time on the book (with bits of traveling). Like any other project, I drastically estimated how long it would take. I esti
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by edmondlau 9y ago
It's less about management and technical ability, and more about soft skills and hard skills. A recent Washington Post article shared an analytical study from Google on what made engineers at the company successful: "Project Oxyge
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by edmondlau 9y ago
Hi! I'm Edmond, the author of the book. Happy to answer any questions about my two-year journey in self-publishing the book.
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When Pride Gets in the Way of Your Best Work(theeffectiveengineer.com)
1 points by edmondlau 10y ago|0 comments
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How a 13-Engineer Team Successfully Builds a Product on 8 Different Platforms(theeffectiveengineer.com)
2 points by edmondlau 11y ago|0 comments
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What 2 Years Publishing a 77,000-Word Book Taught Me about Shipping Products(theeffectiveengineer.com)
1 points by edmondlau 11y ago|0 comments
25.
Don't Be the Bottleneck(theeffectiveengineer.com)
1 points by edmondlau 11y ago|0 comments
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'The Effective Engineer' has launched(theeffectiveengineer.com)
19 points by edmondlau 12y ago|3 comments
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Harvard Faculty Share Lessons from Work and Life(medium.com)
1 points by edmondlau 12y ago|0 comments
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The Hidden Costs That Engineers Ignore(theeffectiveengineer.com)
4 points by edmondlau 12y ago|0 comments
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The Cardinal Sin of Software Engineering(theeffectiveengineer.com)
8 points by edmondlau 12y ago|0 comments
30.
The Single, Most Valuable Lesson I've Learned in My Professional Life(theeffectiveengineer.com)
3 points by edmondlau 13y ago|0 comments

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