Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, Third Edition

© Michael Lopp 2016

Michael Lopp, Managing Humans, 10.1007/978-1-4842-2158-7_26

26. The Value of the Soak

Let your mind stumble and strike out in random directions

Michael Lopp¹ 

(1)Los Gatos, California, USA

In 2006, I gave a presentation at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. My pitch was this: in creating a startup, you’re going to be faced with a thousand seemingly inconsequential decisions. Tucked among those thousands of decisions are five decisions that actually matter. These decisions will change the face of your company. What I didn’t say was that I believe it’s next to impossible to figure out which decisions matter and which ones do not.

How depressing.

Here’s the deal: you can spend a lot of energy deciding what the big decisions ...