Own Your Tech Career

15 Be a data-driven, critical thinker

Good businesses attempt, as much as possible, not to run on gut instinct or opinion. Instead, they try to be data-driven in as many aspects of the business as possible. Being data-driven can be difficult: as humans, we are strongly guided by our experiences, and the opinions those experiences help us to form. So even in ordinary, day-to-day, team-level thinking and decision-making, it’s important for us to step back and let data be our guide.

15.1 In business, never “believe”

I can’t speak for other languages, but in American English we use the word believe a lot. I actually find it a little problematic, in part because I like to split hairs over words, but in part because the word is not specific enough. ...