Farhan Thawar

Invest in infrastructure and APIs that enable others to build features rapidly rather than building point solutions yourself.

"How long would it take to build a platform layer, which exposes APIs so anyone could build NFT gating in one hour? ... If you put the gas in the tank, people could drive on that gas for a long time go..."

Develop a personal decision-making framework to evaluate new roles and avoid being distracted by titles or compensation that don't align with your values.

"If you don't have a written down framework of the things you actually care about, it's very hard not to be distracted. ... I actually sent my framework to a recruiter one time and I said, 'Hey, this t..."

Periodically reset the organization's calendar by deleting all recurring meetings to eliminate 'meeting debt' and inertia.

"Once a year at a random time, we will delete all recurring meetings that have more than two people, so not one-on- ones, and are internal people only... it forces you to rethink, 'Do we need a recurri..."

Actively incentivize the deletion of redundant code to improve system maintainability, performance, and developer clarity.

"We have a Delete Code Club. We can always almost find a million-plus lines of code to delete, which is insane. ... Everything gets easier, right? Codelets loads faster. It's easier to understand."

Utilize pair programming as a primary tool for knowledge transfer, intensity, and finding elegant technical solutions.

"Pair programming... is the most underutilized management tool in engineering, bar none. ... The throughput limiter is not hands-on keyboard. It's not like we're both sitting there and the limiter is l..."

Use 'life story' interviews to uncover the motivations behind career transitions and assess a candidate's curiosity and range.

"We have this interview step called the life story where we try to figure out if, are all the experiences you've had up until now actually going to be... Does it show that you are a curious person with..."

Prioritize job trials and real work samples over traditional interviews, as they are better predictors of actual job performance.

"Interviews are not a good predictor of performance. We know this. We know this from studies... what I really like to do is use this race car analogy. If I told you, 'Hey, I want to go hire the best ra..."

Model the behavior of asking 'stupid' questions to foster psychological safety and ensure the team prioritizes understanding over appearance.

"Not everyone can look stupid in public over and over, but I believe it's my superpower and I try to make it my whole team's superpower too. ... My goal there is not to annoy the person, but it's to un..."

Bias toward the 'harder' path when making decisions, as it guarantees learning and attracts higher-quality talent even if the project fails.

"If you have a choice and you choose the easy thing and it works great. If you choose the hard thing and it works great, you did more work, but if it doesn't work and you chose the easy thing, you've a..."

Implement a six-week review cycle to maintain high intensity and ensure leadership alignment without the lag of quarterly planning.

"We do six-week reviews. So, teams have this notion of every six weeks actually coming together and walking through the roadmap, the resourcing, and what they're working on... six weeks is a very good..."

Foster a 'demo culture' where progress is validated through live products or videos rather than static status reports.

"As part of the GSD updates, hopefully we encourage people to share high fidelity updates, which is not just imagery, but actually a demo. ... This short circuits a lot of misunderstandings, because yo..."