Effective Engineer – Notes

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 estimated one year; it ended up taking almost two. I finished the book while working full-time at Quip.

At times, it was an amazing adventure. I loved going around Silicon Valley and interviewing people like Mike Krieger or Sam Schillace to get their stories and their most valuable lessons.

Other times, there were also intense periods of self-doubt. The first person I shared a chapter draft with was my wife. She's also an engineer and by default can give quite critical feedback. And, wow, did I feel shut down after my first round of feedback. It's confusing! I don't understand the point of this! etc.

I ended up spending two months iterating by myself on my next drafts to build up more confidence before sharing with more engineering friends -- they then really gave me the support I needed to feel confident about writing the book. The experience was a great lesson in how new ideas need to be nurtured, and you need to either find supporters who will nurture that for you, or ask for the type of feedback you want (which is what I now do with my wife). It was also a valuable lesson in getting feedback sooner on your project before you are too emotionally attached to feel comfortable about asking for feedback.

All in all, it's one of my proudest accomplishments in my career.

Why the word leverage?

Time is our most limited resource. And so the way to really increase our impact (say by 10x) is not to increase the number of hours you work, but to increase your rate of impact, which is how I define leverage in the book.

Another way to think about leverage is in terms of a lever, which lets you apply a little bit of force, have it amplified, and then move large boulders. Many of the stories and strategies from the book talk about these leverage points in engineering, e.g. investing in iterating speed or validating your ideas early and often, where small bits of effort end up having a disproportionate impact.

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't strictly the highest-leverage thing you could do, you can actually end up creating more impact because you do a much better job of it.

2) Sometimes what's needed is just a change in perspective about things you need to do. I play with this a lot in the leadership coaching that I do. For example, I hate responding to emails because processing them all feels like a chore. But if I reframe responding to emails in my mind to be hunting for gems that might lead to new opportunities, I'm much more likely to go through them (at least the ones that are gems).

And oh yes, there were definitely discouraging points. The story about early, negative feedback from my wife (that I posted in another comment) was one.

Another is that ten months into book writing, around the start of 2014, I started feeling a sense of intense FOMO from reading Hacker News. Stripe had raised a valuation round of over $1B, and WhatsApp had been acquired for $16B. That led to moments where I would wonder "What in the world was I doing writing a book?" and "When will I ever finish?". I had just finished a first draft, I wasn't sure how rewarding financially the book would be, and I was feeling like I had removed myself from the startup game.

That led me to start looking for jobs, which quite fortunately, also led me to my current role at Quip. So everything worked out in the end.

Once the majority is mediocre, it becomes accepted practice.