Selling Lemons

Frank Chimero is publishing again and his is a fresh voice crying in the wilderness.

What are we even doing?

the automated scale of the application process—candidates firing off applications by the hundreds, companies screening by the thousands—and the result is a highly inefficient market that wastes everyone’s time.

Frank nails lots of stuff in here:

Candidates polish résumés and present curated versions of their abilities, listing outcomes and impact statistics with dubious accuracy and provenance. Companies do the same, putting culture and mission front and center while hiding systematic dysfunctions and looming existential risks.

And that’s just the job market stuff!

He has opinions on product too, like how the only thing that matters is what you make. KPIs, sales numbers, up-and-to-the-right charts, etc., they’re all trailing indicators of what you make and give to people. Frank calls these “outputs”:

outputs (code, design, the products themselves) are the load-bearing work—the actual prerequisites for the outcomes desired. Focusing on outcomes while ignoring outputs means hiding in abstractions and absolving oneself of accountability...The safest, smartest path is also the most mundane: keep the main thing the main thing. Outcomes matter, but output literally comes first. Outputs are the business to everyone outside it—what customers see, buy, and use.

The meta-work of the work — lines of code written, tickets closed, documents written — is just a place to hide and dodge the reality of your outputs (the things the meta-work is supposed to be in service of).

The meta-work won’t get you where you think you’re going:

The climb may feel like progress, but at the end you’ll find yourself at the top of a mountain of lemons, perhaps not of your own making, but almost certainly of your own doing.

Damn it’s good to hear Frank’s voice.