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Principles of Technology Leadership | Bryan Cantrill | Monktoberfest 2017

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  • Recommended by 10 people: 9 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2018 to 2022.
  • Presented by Bryan Cantrill of Joyent
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

79K views8 years ago10 recommendations

Careers and interviewsTools and practiceEngineering managementInside tech companiesCode review and teamwork

Bryan Cantrill explores the difference between real organizational principles and vague corporate values, criticizing the practices of companies like Uber and Amazon.

The kind of talk that only Bryan Cantrill of Joyent can give, one which (enthusiastically) explores the importance of leadership principles ranging from the Gettysburg Address to Uber and exhorts the audience to think about how they might consider and apply these lessons to their own organizations.

Why it's here

10 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a hilarious and sobering examination of how corporate leadership principles can be weaponized or rendered meaningless when they are too vague.

kbensonon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Talks I have given”

Before we get to the list: if you only watch one talk of mine, please watch Principles of Technology Leadership (slides) presented at Monktoberfest 2017. This is the only talk that I have asked family and friends to watch, as it represents my truest self — or what I aspire that self to be, anyway. Let me just say, this is an extremely good talk1. Very uplifting and depressing at different times. It goes through serious turns, and very funny periods. Ultimately though, the message is very important and worth hearing. I highly recommend it. 1: link to this video
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warp_factoron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Anti-Application video for YC120”

I love Bryan Cantrill for being that classy bad-ass engineer with so much integrity. His talk on companies principles is a must-watch: link to this video
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nonfamouson Hacker News • Recommends

On “What are your company's anti-values?”

No discussion of company values would be complete without a link to Bryan Cantrill’s classic talk, “Principles of Technology Leadership”. link to this video Uber once had a stated company value of “Always be hustling”. Really.
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z3t4on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads”

Related talk by Bryan Cantrill (Principles of Technology Leadership) Watch the whole video, it's good! link to this video
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faitswulffon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Quitting Amazon 5 months after I started”

> Supposedly, every employee should be guided by the leadership principles during their day-to-day routine. The principles actually make a lot of sense, when used appropriately. As time went, I discovered that the most common application of the principles was to creatively find a leadership principle that best supports the situation. Bryan Cantrill has a sometimes hilarious takedown of Amazon's "leadership principles" here, which definitely corroborates this blog post: link to this video
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jkaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Key Values – Find Engineering Teams That Share Your Values”

Is the Key:Values team (nice choice of name by the way!) familiar with Bryan Cantrill's talk on 'Principles of Technology Leadership'? link to this video It seems to resonate pretty closely with what you're building, so if it helps align or educate anyone (candidates, recruiters, or the team) that'd be neat. Edit: FWIW, the talk uses the term 'principle' to indicate what your site calls a 'value'; in practice I've seen tech companies talk about their 'core values' and so I think yours is very valid.
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Fellshardon Hacker News • Recommends

On “No Shenanigans”

This subject and the utter vagueness of the values presented here require me to bring up Bryan Cantrill's talk, 'Principles of Technology Leadership'.1 He gives Amazon a lambasting over their core principles, and Uber even moreso. It's both funny and sobering to examine how what seems like a useful and valuable foundation ends up being flimsy and easy to ignore when made vague enough. 1 link to this video
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dev_sndon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Amazon announce two new leadership principles”

There's a great talk by Brian Cantrill about Leadership principles 0 which also includes a discussion of the Amazon Leadership principles. He argues that Amazon's leadership principles actually aren't helpful and don't make much sense and I tend to agree. 0 link to this video (The part about Amazon starts around minute 26, but I recommend watching the whole talk)
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goldenkeyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Amazon Pip Horror Story”

…s instilled this shite culture into Amazon. And his midlet pawns carried out his half-baked decrees like those fucking wet noodle "Leadership Principles" which make no actual sense and aren't principles at all in any sense of the word. Brian Cantrill (of 0x1de computers) gives a great breakdown of how sacrosanct Amazon's leadership principles are: link to this video Principles are things like Integrity, Honesty, Respect -- not Amazon's fuckwit bulletpoints like "Be right a lot" or "Frugality." Technologically, AWS is built like a fucking house of cards with spit, tape, and glue. There is no real cohesion or organization, just a bunch of teams doing their own practices and gluing their rando codebase in…
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friendlysockon Lobsters • Recommends

Principles of Technology Leadership
1View on Lobsters

eurticketon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Anti-Application video for YC120”

…use he isn't a native English speaker) to word something 'wrong', is a simple fix, who cares. - The real part of this whole mess was because he tried reversing a commit that was made by the project lead after it was worded to include more users. Ben was the main agitator in this almost 6 year old mess regardless of his amount of contributions. 0 link to this video…
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bcantrillon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Oxide cofounder: I pay everyone in my company the same salary – $180,250”

For whatever it's worth, the only (real) difference between the blog entry and the op-ed that Business Insider asked to run is this closing paragraph that I added at their suggestion: Some of the specifics of our model may or may not be a fit — we appreciate that uniform compensation is an unusual luxury, and we know that transparency of compensation can be a painful change to effect in an organization that has no history of it (or worse, has secretly been rewarding similar work vastly inequitably). But we do believe — fervently — that compensation reflects a company's values, and that it's absolutely essential that companies elucidate those values. If your company has no formal values, ther…
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ignoramouson Hacker News • Mentions

On “Amazon announce two new leadership principles”

Tim O'Reilly's blog post (before this announcement, which likely comes on back of Bezos' final annual letter to shareholders 0) contrasting Ingram's and Amazon's approach towards the marketplaces they operate in sheds light on why the inclusion of these principles is substantial 1. Leadership principles, though in tension with each other (and so, some argue they really shouldn't be classified as "principles" but rather "values" 2), permeates the culture of performance and team building at Amazon; and that makes me think this is not only a welcome but potentially a company-defining change. 0 link 1 link 2 link to this video
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bcantrillon Hacker News • Mentions

On “I refuse to let Amazon define Rust”

The problem is that they are bromides and claptrap, not principles. There is an important distinction to be made here between principles and values, which they are not making in part because Amazon themselves do not understand the difference.0 Having a community define its values is important1, but this is emphatically not the way to do it -- and these are not it besides. 0 link to this video 1 link
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bcantrillon Hacker News • Mentions

On “How a startup loses its spark”

I think I would point you instead to my beliefs about principles0, values1, and (because you are young), the promise and peril of youth2. 0 link to this video 1 link 2 link
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bcantrillon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Oracle justified its JavaScript trademark with Node.js–now it wants that ignored”

…nce -- tragically -- become the norm. I refuse to accept this, however: I will continue to speak my truth about the moral decay in tech, and why we must hold ourselves to a higher standard.01234 And I obviously agree with your indignation that poor corporate behavior should not be the status quo! 0 Principles of Technology Leadership , link to this video (2017) 1 Andreessen's Corollary: Ethical Dilemmas in Software Engineering , link (2019) 2 (Anti-)application Video for YC120 , link (2019) 3 Coming Of Age , link (2022) 4 Intelligence is not Enough , link (2023)…
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