You should give yourself time to really reach the summit of any mountain you are going to climb, but you need to attack that mountain with a plan, and not just start ambling up the incline...

Read this article at https://josvisser.substack.com/p/ramping-up-is-hard-to-do. Includes bonus links!

Great chefs know more than just the recipes. They understand _cooking_.

Read the full article (with video!) at : https://josvisser.substack.com/p/the-black-box-engineer

Your value to the company is not that you can design the shiny city on the hill, that’s the easy bit. Your value is that you know how to get there while keeping the swamp that you are in right now functioning.

https://josvisser.substack.com/p/the-swamp-and-the-city

Strategies for how to get things done when you are stuck.

Read the original article (with links to additional content) here: https://josvisser.substack.com/p/overcoming-a-slump

One of the best decisions you can make as a senior person is to make yourself dispensable...

Read or watch at: https://josvisser.substack.com/p/the-gift-of-leaving, with many links to other articles and bonus content :-)

In my life so far I have made lots of mistakes but there are a few things I did well. Taking two very long breaks to figure out what I wanted to do at times when it was not at all obvious to me were among these. I can highly recommend it to anyone. It might be the greatest gift you have ever given yourself.

It is not hard to shine in a dim room...

https://josvisser.substack.com/p/pressure-makes-diamonds

As companies grow, the work changes and this leads to the hiring bar dropping, level inflation and more competition between employees as they change fewer good projects with opportunities for promotion.

https://josvisser.substack.com/p/nobody-escapes-corporate-gravity-391

Companies change because they hire more people and different people.

https://josvisser.substack.com/p/nobody-escapes-corporate-gravity-1dc

People in large companies often complain about the changes that come with size and these complaints are often justified. However, awful as these changes might be, they are inevitable. As companies grow, they have to change; they cannot not change.

https://josvisser.substack.com/p/nobody-escapes-corporate-gravity