All blogs / Engineering management / careers
Aaron Klein
Founder of Contio. Building technology that amplifies the impact of human relationships through artificial intelligence.
- Posts
- 50 from 22 Oct 2016 to 10 Oct 2026
- Posting
- monthly (17 in the last year)
- Kind
- personal blog
2026 14
- The Speed of Bad NewsYour first reaction to bad news writes the real policy. Thank early candor, separate the signal from accountability, and make truth travel fast enough to change the ending.September 3, 2026
- Essays
- Abundance is a Choice
- Beyond the Meeting
- Derrick Kinney on Transformation: Four Turning Points and What Each One Cost
- Dan Zitting Spent a Week in the Dark with AI. Then He Made It Nitrogen's Superpower.
- AI is in the Apple II EraAI will make narrow software easier to replace, but it will make products with compounding data, network effects, and proprietary algorithms more valuable.August 10, 2026
- The $4 Billion Dollar Man: Leadership Lessons from Jason Wenk
- The Second Half of the WorkMeetings are only the input. In relationship-driven work, the real product is what arrives afterward: the plan, proposal, context, and follow-through that turn conversation into momentum. Manage the second half and relationships compound.July 9, 2026
- Your Hiring Process Should Treat Candidates as Innocent Until Convicted of GreatnessA polished candidate can perform for an hour; a rigorous process keeps probing until the performance runs out. Use a scorecard, interview past rehearsed answers, get independent evaluations, and treat references as e
- Always Know Your #1A long list of priorities feels productive while quietly protecting the hardest work from attention. Give every person one visible #1, let it break ties, and watch focus, alignment, and organizational speed improve.March 10, 2026
- Keeping Only the Best Athletes on Our TeamIn a growing company, a historic contributor can become a poor fit for the next role without becoming a worse person. Great leaders tell the truth directly, reward past performance, and help people find a team where they can thrive.February 6, 2026
- Why Great Boards Make Great CompaniesA board should be more than a legal obligation or quarterly slide review. The right directors force a CEO to think, challenge assumptions, bring perspective, open doors, and stay accountable—without running the company.January 10, 2026
- How AI Leads to the End of SecretsAI can infer strategy from public breadcrumbs such as hiring, interviews, product signals, and code. Durable advantage now comes from reducing exposure, compartmentalizing sensitive work, and executing fast enough that copycats stay behind.November 22, 2025
2025 20
- The Land of the Lost Pre-Read: J.D. Mullin on Why Meetings Fall Apart (and How to Fix Them)
- The Leadership Sin Equally Bad as MicromanagementMicromanagement is not the only way leaders fail. Abdication—giving total freedom before someone has the confidence or capability for the task—can be just as damaging. The right style depends on task-relevant maturity.October 20, 2025
- How a Routine Vendor Meeting Became Sheena Jester’s Never Ending Story
- From Potatoes to Presidential Campaigns: Why Even Todd Cranney Couldn’t Escape Bad Meetings
- How to Ensure You Don’t Lose Great Talent to PromotionsPromoting a great individual contributor into management can turn a strength into a failure—and cost you the person. Interim assignments, evidence-based scorecards, and restrained titles make career growth a reversible experiment.September 26, 2
- Why Morgan Housel Thinks Every Word (and Minute of a Meeting) Should Cost $100
- Do Humans Have a Role in a 150 IQ AI World?As artificial intelligence makes creation abundant, humans will not win by out-IQing the machines. We will win through taste, strategy, judgment, and the ability to decide what is worth building—and make it meaningful to other people.August 21, 2025
- How Donna White’s Interview Was Going Great… Until the Candidate Flipped the Script
- When Two of Travis Hawkes’ Meetings Bombed at the Box Office
- Performance Bonuses that Actually Inspire, Reward and Retain Your Best TalentAnnual bonuses arrive too late to shape performance. Quarterly bonuses tighten the loop between results and recognition, give managers room for candid feedback, and let exceptional contributors share more visibly in the val
- Even Mike McDaniel Couldn’t Stop this Board Meeting from Going Up in Flames
- When Brian Deely’s Meeting Went from “Managing Money” to “Saving a Life”
- How Stef Aragon Wields her Chief of Staff Title to Slay the Underwriting Dragon
- How Andy Swan Witnessed a Post-it Note Massacre, but Got 20,000 Splenda Packets in the Deal
- Replacing Annual Reviews with Regular Feedback and CommunicationAnnual reviews are too slow to improve performance or address problems. A quarterly feedback cycle creates timely coaching, clear ratings, honest conversations, and the data leaders need to retain excellent people.May 22, 2025
- The Leader’s Greatest Challenge isn’t People or Money. It’s Time Allocation.Leaders can look busy while neglecting the work only they can do. Reserve time to scan the environment, analyze what it means, advance top priorities, and then dive into the details with sharper questions and better context.
- Getting Clarity on Delegating DecisionsDecision-making speeds up when everyone knows who owns the call and how much input is expected. A five-level framework—from “I’ll decide” to “you decide”—turns vague authority into shared language and pushes decisions closer to the work.March 8, 2025
- Using Headcount as a Last Resort for Solving ProblemsHeadcount is a one-way door that makes an organization harder to run. Before hiring, test whether the problem is worth solving with software, outsourcing, or contractors; add a full-time employee only when those options fail.February 8, 2025
- Recruiting Amazing Talent with Merit, Excellence and IntelligenceCompany quality is downstream from hiring quality. A process grounded in merit, excellence, and intelligence widens the search for exceptional people, avoids tokenism, and makes clear that talent—not politics—earned the seat.January 8,
- Face to Face vs. Remote? It Depends What You’re Optimizing For.Remote work can restore output while weakening the conditions that produce breakthrough work. If you are optimizing for innovation, collaboration, and culture—not just efficiency—face-to-face time may be the better choice.December 9, 202
2024 7
- The People Who Can’t Work HereA list of ideal traits does not tell you who will strengthen your team. Define who cannot work in your culture—mercenaries, jerks, narcissists, and victims, in my case—to spot bad fits faster and protect the people who belong.November 9, 2024
- Elite Business Athletes are the Backbone of Great BusinessesGreat companies are not families; they are teams assembled to win a changing game. Hire and develop specialists for the roles you need, reward people who pursue excellence, and keep the roster honest when the fit no longer holds.September 8
- How to Head Off a Dysfunctional Culture: Disagree and CommitHealthy cultures make disagreement safe and commitment mandatory. Invite people to challenge a decision while there is time to change it, then expect everyone to say “we decided” and execute once the call is made.July 16, 2024
- Why Western Civilization Needs DefendingProsperity depends on the rule of law, private property, liberty, and the pursuit of knowledge. This essay argues that Western civilization’s free-market foundations are under pressure—and that preserving them requires active defense.March 28, 2024
- How I’ve Made a To-Do List my Secret WeaponA useful task list is a system for protecting attention, not a second calendar or inbox. Capture everything immediately, triage it into a few clear sections, and keep your priorities visible so you can do the right work at the right time.January 15, 2024
- What to do if someone is trying to break into your online accountsWhen someone probes your accounts, changing one password is not enough. Use unique, long passwords and two-factor authentication, then harden the email, phone, and cloud accounts that could let an attacker bypass the first line of def
- Off the Bullet TrainStepping away from the CEO role gave me a chance to slow down after twelve years on the bullet train. I planned the year around family, learning, service, and helping ambitious companies grow before choosing the next chapter.December 30, 2023