kaushikbhat

shelf

Tweets, articles, talks and books that got me thinking — dated the day I shelved them, with a note on why. Undated ones were shelved before I started keeping dates.

  1. Sep 20, 2026
    Build a great product and get users and win Sam Altman · tweet

    You can skip all the parties, all the conferences, all the press, all the tweets. Build a great product and get users and win.

    Harshil shared this on LinkedIn just before GFF, under his own reminder for founders and builders during GFF week: go to the talks, meet people, exchange ideas, do the fancy demos, have fun — just don't confuse any of it with the actual work.

    Quite inspiring, especially because as a CEO he would usually have encouraged events like these pre-AI. With AI he is himself building and shipping regularly, and I loved his stance that shipping is all that matters.

  2. Sep 20, 2026
    The senior engineer death spiral Sunil Pai · article

    I am usually in this spiral loop myself. I have been many years in the industry and by now it's assumed that I have figured these things out. Leaders usually say these things to their teams — I did too — but more than that, I was thinking I also need to stop spiralling and just do what I do best: put my head down and do the work. Yes, I need to keep showing up and create visibility from time to time, but delivering continuously matters more than anything.

undated

  1. How to Ship Sean Goedecke · article

    Adding value is about getting things done based on leadership judgements.

  2. If You Build It, They Will Come Ben Landau-Taylor · article

    Communities, FOMO, networking. How to increase your circle of influence by being the one who is organising rather than just participating.

  3. Let a 1,000 flowers bloom. Then rip 999 of them out by the roots. Peter Seibel · article

    Experiments, reinventing the wheel, and then eventual platformization.

  4. Mistakes as a rookie manager Charity Majors · article

    Being too empathetic, not challenging the team enough.

  5. Other People's Problems Camille Fournier · article

    The art of saying NO — and what all to do before saying it. Especially applicable for platform teams.

  6. Perils, Pitfalls and Pratfalls of Platform Engineering Charity Majors · talk

    Common pitfalls in platform teams. Nothing new, but I wish someone had written it down explicitly for Platform BU — or I could have done this for Tech Infra BU.

  7. The four burners theory James Clear · article

    You can only be at your best in two of health, family, friends, work.

  8. The worst programmer Dan North · article

    How a Staff Engineer should be spending time: making other engineers better.

  9. Traits You Can Change, and Traits You Can't Stay SaaSy · article

    Shared by Shrivatsa.

  10. Unlearning Perfectionism Arun Prasad · article
  11. Why you need a "WTF Notebook" Nat Bennett · article

    There's a very specific reputation I want to have on a team: "Nat helps me solve my problems. Nat gets things I care about done."

    Good advice for Senior to Lead / Lead to Staff — make the team better.