Will Larson is the chief technology officer at Carta. Prior to joining Carta, he was the CTO at Calm and held engineering leadership roles at Stripe, Uber, and Digg. He is the author of two foundational engineering career books, An Elegant Puzzle and Staff Engineer, and The Engineering Executive’s Primer, which will be released in February of next year. In our conversation, we discuss: • Systems thinking: what it is and how to apply it • Advice for product managers on fostering productive relationships with engineering managers • Why companies should treat engineers like adults • How to best measure developer productivity • Writing and its impact on his career • How to balance writing with a demanding job • How to develop your company values — Brought to you by DX—A platform for measuring and improving developer productivity: https://getdx.com/lenny | OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster: https://oneschema.co/lenny | Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-engineering-mindset-will-larson Where to find Will Larson: • X: https://twitter.com/Lethain • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-larson-a44b543/ • Website: https://lethain.com/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.