My technical career has been an amazing journey, having been spent mostly within leadership roles for high growth organizations. I’ve scaled multiple engineering organizations from a few engineers to hundreds and along the way, made important contributions to engineering, marketing, finance, support, sales, and product. I’ve also been on both sides of the acquisition table, helped take a company public, and retired — all before fifty. Many would view the highlights and call this an unmitigated success.

To me, though, my career has often more closely resembled a series of ABC Afterschool Specials than it has any amazing Silicon Valley success story. Life has a way of humbling us if we listen and are willing to introspect and mine has been no exception. What I’ve discovered in the process is that the lessons that are hard-won are sweeter than the ones that come easy. Being able to share them with others and seeing the benefit of those lessons in their lives is even sweeter.

A very dear friend of mine once asked me to codify how I build engineering organizations so that he could give it to some folks who needed it. I really don’t believe that he understood what he was asking me to do. As I reflected on what needed to be put to paper, I realized that it would span at least forty topics. The time was not right then. Now it is. This blog is for Sameer who thought highly enough of what I’d done to believe that everybody would benefit from my writings. My hope is that at least one person does.