Aseem Kishore

Writing more

Last year, I left one startup named Even to lead all of engineering at another startup named Cardless. I never ended up writing about it, but this was another valuable experience full of learning and growth.

This was my first time at this level of role (Head of Eng), and I made plenty of mistakes. With help and support from excellent advisors (Gil Shklarski), mentors (Nicholas Clark), coaches (Michael Langer), colleagues (James Paek), and especially my manager and Cardless CEO Scott Kazmierowicz, I learned and grew through those mistakes. And in the end, I hope and believe that I managed to deliver some decent value. 🤞🏽🙂

I’m tremendously grateful to those folx for helping me grow and to the Cardless team for the opportunity. Thank you all!

I left Cardless this past month to lead all of engineering at another startup. I’m excited to share more here, too, but for over a year now, I’ve also been thinking of writing and sharing more content around engineering leadership and management in general.

In preparation for my role at Cardless, and again in preparation for my next role now, I’ve read and devoured books and articles from the likes of Will Larson, Camille Fournier, and many other brilliant minds. I simply love this stuff and want to be the best leader I can be — to help any organization I work for be the best and most well-run it can be.

But when it comes to writing, I’ve never felt that I have anything particularly novel or unique to contribute. I’m just repeating what those others have already said (particularly Will Larson; he’s just so dang good).

I’m now feeling like I should still write and share, for three reasons:

  1. I’ve been reading and loving regular posts from leaders like Waseem Daher and Aki Taha. Their content probably also isn’t breakthrough or novel, but it doesn’t need to be. They simply communicate powerful ideas elegantly, and those ideas resonate. Their posts help crystallize my own thinking — and that’s the point.

  2. I’ve trained and coached new managers a few times now, and each of those times, I’ve found myself sharing lists of articles and ideas that I’ve found powerful. Even if I’m just repeating what others have said, the content is still new for those folx. And that’s also the point: this content can still help others — just like it’s helped me.

  3. I have some first-hand, real-world experience now, and I’ve formed my own point of view. Ideas that were once abstract and theoretical for me are now more concrete. Hopefully my lived experiences can help others, too. (And hopefully I even get feedback that helps me, too!)

So I’m going to try and actually write and share content now, even if that content feels “basic”. I’m excited to start!

I’ll keep posting here and sharing on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, but if you’re excited to follow along, sign up here to get each post by email, too. (This’ll be low-volume — probably only once or twice a month.)

Feedback always welcome. Thanks all! Let’s do this. 💪🏽 🚀