come back with your shield or on it

this was an early draft of something that evolved into our “do your job” memo. it’s a much messier collection of thoughts

before going to war, spartan family members would tell their warriors “come back with your shield or on it”. shields are heavy, and soldiers throw them away when fleeing. the message is clear: win or die. see it through. there is no world where you should feel ok abandoning your team.

we expect

• three tiers of ownership

  • it’s your job to do this. the entire team depends on you to get this done

    • this is your personal job, specific responsibilities that fall into your domain or not.

1. ownership is when you take responsibility for something and it’s yours to own

   1. it’s when every single time someone asks you “why” on repeat, the final answer is “because i decided to”

   2. it disappears when you ask someone for approval - because the moment you needed to get X’s approval it’s no longer “your thing”, the decision was made buy committee and not your decision

2. ownership feels awesome when you win

   1. when you win, you know that you owned it. then it wouldn’t have succeeded the way it did without you

3. ownership feels horrible when you lose

   1. when you lose, you know that you owned it. it wouldn’t have failed the way it did, without you

4. autonomy is when you feel free to take ownership for every decision

   1. if asking for approval means taking away someone’s ownership

      1. autonomy means the right to not ask for approval

   2. if you ask for approval - you lose ownership

      1. if you have autonomy, you gain ownership

5. we’re subconsciously inclined to be ambiguous to whether we’re asking for input or approval; that means when things go well, we can take the credit when we win and let the other person’s contribution count as input. when things go badly, we can put the blame on the other person as their approval

asking for someone else’s input is not the same as asking for someone else’s approval

if you ask for someone’s input, you retain ownership

if you ask for someone’s approval, you do not

if mark asks for my input on making a new repo, and i shill hard for making a new repo, and he makes a new repo, and it’s a horrible idea

that was mark’s idea

and it’s mark’s decision

and he owns that

seeking other’s input does not displace the ownership

if mark asks for my approval to make a new repo, and he makes it, and it’s a horrible idea

it’s our idea

and the failture is ours

and we own it

which means no one owns it

if multiple people own it, no one owns it. if no one own’s it, it doesn’t get done

on this team, everyone should be entrusted with a great deal of autonomy. with that autonomy comes ownership.

if you take that ownership, score a win, and i try to take credit - punch me in the face

if you take that ownership, score an L, and you try to shirk responsibility and say “but i got input from others so that’s why i did it” - go work somewhere else

at other companies, this is called the “every failure an orphan, every success has many parents” phenomenon

i hope we never hire anyone who wants to get credit for a success they wouldn’t have been on the hook for if it failed

examples of it that need to never happen again

• X asks me for UX feedback - does the thing i suggest, and then says it’s my fault if it doesnt’ feel good

• Y sees a decision Mark made, decides not to raise any objections, then says Mark was the only one who could’ve noticed because he implemented it

^ this shit is disgusting. and totally unacceptable. dont fucking do it.