bwilkins

Also approx. 15 years experience, have a newborn (my first). Probably different circumstances, but I'm in Australia - our hiring system doesn't value Leetcode at all (and even when I've gone to work for US businesses, we've done without needing to do it). So IMO Leetcode is a complete waste of time.

I've been told by a great many fathers before me that the child becomes the hobby. I don't 100% believe this myself; I've always had interests far exceeding my capacity to fully explore them, but I hope that when my kid is old enough, I can explore them with him. In the meantime, I tinker on my 3D printer on the weekends.

And as 95% of other comments have already effectively said - you're working way too much! I've only ever worked a 50+hr job for 2 years, straight out of high school. Now with a kid, I'm basically trying to figure out how to do less work, not more! Get your hours down to 37.5 or 40, and/or work 4 days a week.

Negotiate for extra pay for after-hours support. Time-and-a-half (or double-time if you can swing it!) whenever you get a call and have to work; ideally get a 10% retainer for the inconvenience of having to work.

Or, you know, get a different job without the after-hours support contract. Your time is important, particularly with two kids.

I think the article assumes "all other things being equal" - so given an engineering (or sales, or marketing) capability equal to that of another business, these factors are what the author believes differentiate the business enough to be able to perform better, and especially in execution.

And I don't think this stuff is BS; "updating beliefs" is important, as many business decisions are made based on a belief - especially if your product has not gone to market yet. "Updating beliefs" is also reflective of an openness to change, and being able to cope with being wrong at times - people find it hard to find out (or be told) that they are wrong - their ego is hurt, they fight back.

"Don't do BS," specifically the documentation side of things, strikes a particular chord with me, as it's something that I've had to do recently, it goes against everything I know about writing software, so I am 100% happy to see it being spouted here!

All of the points made in the document are about execution, but they're about executing as a business, and not a "how to make your engineers perform better" guide. That said, these practices will _probably_ have your engineers performing better anyway, but you'd need to dig into how each change affects the psychology of those doing following these practices in order to understand how/why.

I think there's a difference between "trying to set up a grind farm" and creating a work environment and culture where people feel comfortable to just get down and do work.

This requires building trust (real trust) and showing vulnerability.

> We trust that people are doing their best and they shouldn’t feel like they need to overwork to hit some arbitrary deadline.

This is, in my mind, the opposite of a "grind farm."

How about VSRP - Very Short Reply Preferred?