Seth Purcell

After two decades of building software products and teams in a variety of roles and industries, I’ve come to appreciate that engineering, product management, design, security, marketing, operations, etc. are all just different flavors of the same fundamental approach. Beneath their mutually unintelligible jargon lies the exact same iterative process of acquiring new knowledge and reasoning about goals. Namely: get clear on your guiding principles; nail down the ground truth; identify the right place to focus your efforts; and experiment your way toward solutions. None of this is easy, and no one can ever tell you if you’re on the right track. But despite — or perhaps because of that — I find it to be a lot of fun.

And while a book or a framework (or an LLM) can point you in the right direction, it cannot do this work for you. It takes a great team, and a great culture, and those are the things that I’ve most enjoyed building. My career goal has always been to do work I’m proud of, with people I admire, for a good purpose. And ideally, learn a ton along the way.