Ed Batista

Executive Coach. Dog Walker.
Created The Art of Self-Coaching @StanfordGSB.
Take it for free here:

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

Life is full of suffering, and every day is a miracle, and both are always true. Man, it’s hard to remember that last part.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

The excitement and the anxiety are very unevenly distributed. I see this in my clients' companies, with some functions charging ahead and others paralyzed by uncertainty. But I also see this in some of my clients themselves. They're simultaneously excited AND anxious, and this can be hard to navigate. https://t.co/adnbXZTRgk

[Matt Stockton @mstockton]

I can tell you that I’ve also never had more fun building software over the last 20+ years of doing it professionally. I will also tell you that I know of a non-trivial number of professional software engineers who are fantastic, and are not feeling the same vibes. It is a really weird time for sure

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

Much of the discourse around AI involves the anxiety of people outside the tech industry who fear personal or societal displacement, and that conversation is so important, of course. But a trend that I see in my practice isn't as visible, and yet I think it also merits acknowledgment: Many of the people *working on AI* are also very anxious and stressed right now.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

If any of this describes you, note the importance of reaching out to people you trust. They don't need to be coaches or therapists (although I believe in both)--they just need to listen. Resilience isn't invulnerability. Asking for help isn't weakness. And if you think this might describe someone you know, don't assume that they're "crushing it" because their work looks glamorous and successful from the outside. Ask them how they're doing--you don't need to solve their problems, you just need to be a friend.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

Much of the discourse around AI involves the anxiety of people outside the tech industry who fear personal or societal displacement, and that conversation is so important, of course. But a trend that I see in my practice isn't as visible, and yet I think it also merits acknowledgment: Many of the people *working on AI* are also very anxious and stressed right now.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

I don't know how to help the people in the first group--that's beyond my scope as a coach. I do know how to help the people in the second group--that's what I do every day. And I know that 1:1 coaching *is* helpful, but I also know that it's just one tool among many. I've been convening virtual roundtables on AI for founders and CEOs, and these have been useful vehicles to exchange ideas and create a sense of camaraderie, but there's clearly more to be done.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

What stands out to me here: At a time of profound distress, he didn't hunker down (which so many of us do). He reached out, and many people responded helpfully. (He names five and refers to others.)

Resilience is not invulnerability. Asking for help is not weakness.

[Allen Walton @allenwalton]

June 2, 2024 was an awful day for me that eventually turned into a meltdown that lasted the entire summer.

We had maybe 25% our of usual Shopify sales that day. I mentioned it to a few people, thinking it was weird. Things got a little better, then worse, eventually led to a 50% drop in sales that I couldn't explain.

Something was wrong and I didn't know what.

Maybe 9 months later, I concluded that a pixel implementation service we used had screwed something up, causing conversions not to be tracked, which results in adspend dwindling down to 10% of what it used to be.

This was also peak Temu, which I think was eating a more sizable chunk of business than I had realized.

But in the face of half my business drying up, I did not take it well. Started having a lot of anxiety attacks. I thought I was going to have to fire everyone, shut down the company, and get a job. I couldn't be alone in my own house. Once the sun started going down, I started dooming over everything and couldn't relax enough to fall asleep.

I was getting probably 3-4 hours of sleep a night and couldn't think clearly. I couldn't understand why nothing was working.

To make things worse, 4 months later my house caught fire and we lost everything we owned. And then I had another kid a month after that. It was hard.

I have a lot of people to thank for helping me during that time and want to single out a few. Want to thank @phipps for his endless optimism, friendship and team for fixing the problems with my ad account, turning things around.

@AnythingIan for going over numbers and coming up with a plan when it was 1am his time and I couldn't sleep

@philiphodgen for reaching out and taking my calls when I needed someone to talk to.

@JeffreyDebolt for becoming my fractional CFO/motivational speaker and guiding me through the financials every single week.

My wife for being supportive and taking on more of the load when I couldn't.

And everyone who took my call and told me I was going to be okay.

I think the single best thing I did that entire time was pick up the phone and talk to my friends about what I was going through.

It's exactly 2 years later. Today was our best sales day since Black Friday of 2023 and hasn't been this profitable since 2021. It was a hard time I wouldn't wish on anyone, and I'm glad I made it out the other end.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

@isaiah_bb So good.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

@batcountry1980 Great song. And "The Basketball Diaries" gets all the attention, but the follow-up, "Forced Entries" is the better book (although not light reading.)

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

I was just reminded that Al Green is still on this planet, and that's a reason for joy. Whatever troubles you have, and we all have some, put on "Greatest Hits" and set your burden down for a while.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

@daniellevine Followed on the strength of this alone.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

"I am highly skeptical of 'AI as a cause for engineering layoffs'. I think this is a large-scale polite fiction..."

I don't know @johnloeber, but he's reliably one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking voices here.

[John Loeber 🎢 @johnloeber]

Notes on 100+ Recent Technical Interviews

I interview a ton of engineers. Recruiting is the single most important technical CEO activity. Here are a bunch of impressions

1. There is a severe ZIRP engineering overhang that is currently washing out. They're getting laid off, managed out, etc. after having been massively overhired around 2020-2022. This is worst for Tier-2 big tech (think PayPal, Bill, etc.) but also FAANGs. These are overwhelmingly bad engineers.

2. This flood of unqualified but good-on-paper candidates makes this the hardest SF hiring market I have ever seen, due to the amount of nominally strong-looking candidates that you need to grind through.

3. I am highly skeptical of "AI as a cause for engineering layoffs". I think this is a large-scale polite fiction -- the companies don't want to admit they overhired, the engineers don't want to admit they are bad at their jobs. Everyone's blaming AI when it's really just the market rectifying itself.

4. Many of these engineers appear never to have had a real engineering function at their corporations. They're sitting in meetings, "making decisions about technology" but are unable to write software. I leave many interviews baffled by what exactly they were doing for so many years, let alone what their manager was doing.

5. I have interviewed some engineers from FAANG companies so shockingly nontechnical that I am forced to conclude that there is either (1) a lot of resume fraud going on or (2) that there are kickback grifts within those organizations -- people hiring their cousins and splitting the pay, that kind of thing. I have no other explanation.

6. There's a fun side-effect where after interviewing 20+ people from certain small but public companies, I actually feel like I am gaining a short sellers' advantage: there are financial technology companies out there that, knowing what I now know, I would never deposit a single dollar into.

8. Based on this "exhaust" data, and extrapolating a little bit, maybe aggressively so: I think folks like @pmarca are basically right when they say that ~every tech company is overstaffed by a factor of 2-4x. Whatever the reason -- staffing ahead of need, monopolizing certain engineer types (Google-style), headcount-driven promotion incentives, the reality is that a lot of these companies are not being run for the shareholders. The aggregate SBC expense is insane, and I expect this is going to get rectified eventually.

I'm sure that AI will play a role in rectifying this -- but I fear that people are going to blame AI for taking people's jobs when the reality is that the jobs were already long-gone, possibly always useless, but the highly-paid butts-in-seats remained. People will be mad at AI for taking away their lucrative sinecures. Maybe that's the same effect from a public policy perspective, but it feels different morally.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

@mcbridesworld Thank you for sharing these memories.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

@work_matters @rohindhar Nice. My Dad will be 86 in a few months, but he lives back East. I'm thankful we still get to talk every Sunday, but I don't get to have a drink with him very often. To you and your son, salud!

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

@work_matters @rohindhar That spot has a long and checkered history, Bob! Before my time it was the Holy City Zoo, a famous standup venue in the '70s and '80s. In my era it was just a crappy dive bar, first Dog's Bollix and then Dirty Trix. (Such terrible names.)

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

@work_matters @rohindhar We frequented Inner Clement for 30 years, and the restaurant scene there has always punched above its weight class. So many great options. I was sad I never found a really great bar there, especially after we moved to the Richmond in '07. Fine pubs, yes, but no great bars.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

I first read "The Goal" in my Operations class @StanfordGSB in 1999, and I've never forgotten it. Highly recommended.

[Ethan Evans @EthanEvansVP]

I hated today's most important book for leaders. I was forced to read The Goal, by Eli Golderatt, and I hated it. I think it may be the most valuable possible book for leaders right now.

[Ed Batista @edbatista]

@RonCarterBass @mcbridesworld Two all-time GREATS.