When to build versus buy, the age of average, and how to brainstorm

Figuring out how to balance my inner swiss-army knife

Thinking a lot about data storytelling, hiring, and early-stage infrastructure? We are too. Grab some time here and let’s chat.

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It’s probably safe to assume that many of us here are tinkerers at heart. We relish the opportunity to sink our teeth into an interesting problem, new technology, or novel solution.

At massive companies with croissant-level layers of middle management, reaching outside of your skillset can sometimes be frowned upon. Your manager might say: Let the engineer do the coding, the data scientist run the experiment, the finance analyst crunch the numbers, and the marketer write the copy. Basically, how dare you try and learn something new. It slows us down and breaks the process.

At smaller companies, however, swiss-army knife generalists are incredibly valuable. Interviewing someone with that “I have no clue but I’m excited to figure it out” mentality is exactly the culture I want to define. Why? Because it’s contagious. You are hiring someone that loves building and a challenge. They bring energy to the table.

Being willing to be a student in one area while being a master in another is a superpower. While listening to Gustaf Alströmer talk about his experience working with YC companies, I was struck by the notion that, even though technical ability is a critical skill for founders, many of us write off learning to code later in our careers. There are probably hundreds of opportunities like this, regardless of our roles, that could wildly change our approach to work if we’re willing to include them in our T-shaped versions of ourselves.

However, there are (of course) tradeoffs. How much longer will this take you to learn? What are the downstream risks of something breaking? Is this, instead, an opportunity to hire and learn from an expert? What will you not be doing because you are excited about the shiny thing? I don’t know if there is a perfect formula for figuring out the build versus hire question. Maybe, it’s just a balancing act.

Happy weekend,

Raman at Rhetoric

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📚 What’s made me a better storyteller this week

If brainstorming is hard for your org, try brainstorming questions instead. “Getting together and listing every question you can think of about a problem, a process, or a situation is uncomfortable at first, and then in very short order enhances collaboration, decreases risk and puts you on the path to being a learning organization.”

If you’ve noticed recently that every coffee shop, hotel, city skyline, you name it looks exactly the same, no matter where you are: you’re not wrong. Here’s more about the Age of Average, how our obsession with best practices and rules contributes to it, and how to use it to your advantage.

When you’re dealing with information overload, here’s how “treating your "to read" pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it)” is a winning strategy.