David Heinemeier Hansson

Juniors are judged on effort, seniors are judged on outcomes. That’s a common and useful heuristic for evaluating employees. It neatly separates productivity from effectiveness, and places a premium on the latter. But the biggest benefit of this distinction ought to be of the second order: Increased bandwidth.

With junior people, you not only owe them frequent feedback to aid their advancement, but it’s a prerequisite to getting what you want out of the work. That’s not to say you have to micromanage every little thing, but you can’t just stay hands off – or too many things will end up coming out wrong.

The value of this frequent feedback is clear: diligent practice demands diligent direction. It’s a beautiful process that can grow capacity in fertile minds with potential. But it requires a lot of managerial bandwidth.

And good managerial bandwidth ought always be scarce. There’s nothing more dangerous than excess managerial bandwidth. This is how you cultivate constant churning of plans and processes. We’ve always tried to starve the managerial bandwidth at 37signals by having the bulk of it provided by moonlighting managers.

It’s a little like “if you want something done, ask a busy person”. If you want “just enough management, but absolutely no more, hire managers who’d rather be building”.

Which brings me to senior employees. The best of them all encompass the ideal of being managers of one. Capable to finding the right path independently to a destination worth heading. Interested in taking fuzzy problems and turning them into crisp solutions.

That’s how you increase organizational bandwidth. When the team has enough senior people who only need a rough pointer, preferably at infrequent intervals, and then just get on with the act of delivering delightful solutions.

This framing also makes it clear when to demand more of someone who has ostensibly reached a role of seniority, but ends up sucking out more bandwidth than they contribute back. That’s not tenable. You need that bandwidth for junior folks who deserve it. (And you should be wary of adding more lest you end up with too much.)

As I see it, the goal of the organization is to mix just enough junior talent that it's preparing for the future, with enough of the seniority needed to tend to the present. And the balance should yield enough productive bandwidth that a busy working manager can get a tolerable amount of what they want, but not quite all of it.

Simple. But not easy.

The saying “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM“ is at its essence about risk management. The traditional wisdom goes that if you buy from a big company, you're going to be safe. It may be more expensive, but big companies project an image of stability and reliability, so buying their wares is seen as the prudent choice. Except, it isn't. Certainly not any more. Meta killing Workplace is merely exhibit #49667.

Any company that hitched their wagon to Workplace just got served with an eviction notice. In a about a year, the data will go read-only, and shortly after that, it's game over. Now companies from Spotify to McDonalds, along with millions of others, have to scramble to find an alternative. Simply because Meta can't be bothered to maintain a platform that's merely used by millions when their consumer business is used by billions.

This, right here, is the risk of buying anything from big tech like Meta and Google. Their main ad-based cash cows are so fantastically profitable that whether it's the millions of paying accounts on Workplace or the millions of live websites once hosted by Google Domains, it all just pales in comparison, and is thus one strategy rotation away from being labeled “non-core“ and killed off.

Buying from big isn't the sure bet they want you to believe. Buy from someone who actually needs your business to make the wheels go round.