Tag: Strategy
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The FDE Ships the Product. Someone Must Own the Outcome.
Define First to Deploy Fast The numbers are mind-boggling to me. Job postings for Forward Deployed Engineer roles increased more than 800% between January and September 2025, according to the Financial Times. Salesforce committed to building a team of 1,000 FDEs. The framing from a16z lands because it’s true: “Enterprises buying AI are like your…
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Being a VP: Moving from Doing to Transforming
“We have too many VPs acting like directors — they are overpaid and ineffective for what they produce.” Someone said that to me early in my career. It landed hard. Not because it was harsh, but because I could picture exactly who they meant. The VP role is genuinely ambiguous. Most people who get promoted…
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Proficient CS Ops Begins With Clear Ownership Responsibilities
Fresh eyes: help to see things anew. Sometimes when we are so close to something, we cannot see it for what it is. Or we get so into the details that we can miss what’s important: what does CS Ops actually do and what are their responsibilities? We can’t see the forest from the tr—I…
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You Are Building a Case Study
“You are building a case study here.” My boss told me this early in my time at GitLab. I’ve turned it over many times since. On the surface it sounds like encouragement. Look closer and it’s a warning. We didn’t hire you to run the playbook you ran somewhere else. We hired you because you…
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Two Ways of Looking At It
There are many changes in life. There are many kingdoms rising and falling, the world the shifting. And we can either look at that with fear and blame it for causing us poor performance, or we can look at it as an opportunity to grow from & into. I can look at the bad economy…
Jeff Beaumont 