tig.log - Geeky Leadership Rants by Tig Kindel

In May I helped a major medtech company jumpstart its internal AI efforts.

I have been writing about principles for a long time.

I spent 21 years at Microsoft interviewing people.

People ask me which of my posts to read if they want to get better at product management.

Early in my career at Microsoft, I remember complaining to a mentor about how much time interviewing consumed.

Early in my time at Amazon, I described something as a “process.”

These are the tenets for Principal Engineers that define the engineering culture at Amazon.

In 1938, P.G.

This week the argument found a name.

Last month I merged a set of pull requests into Mermaider, the dotnet Mermaid renderer that WinPrint uses to enable its kick-ass ability to print Markdown (and convert Markdown to PDF).

Years ago I sat through a project review that looked perfectly reasonable.

On February 22, 2004 I released version 1.0 of a little app called MCE Controller.

I, for one, welcome embrace our robotic overlords.

Updated July 2026.

For the past few months we’ve been architecting, refactoring, and refining. 146 commits.

I’ve heard “program” used to mean everything from a team to a project plan to a portfolio to lines of code.

In my user’s manual post on Mechanisms, I argued that “good intentions never work; you need good mechanisms to make anything happen.”

Every complex system, whether an organization, a product, or a culture, tends toward entropy.

Back in March 2019, I posted a thread on X about a feedback tool that changed how I lead and coach: the SBI model.

Terminal.Gui is a .NET UI framework for cross-platform terminal apps.

Most leaders claim they’re customer-focused or business-savvy, but let’s be brutally honest—most aren’t.

Organizational Silos Are Like Gravity.

Every great org starts the same way: a handful of people with conviction, urgency, and the energy of a shared mission.

The Single-Threaded Leader (STL) model was born inside Amazon and became foundational to how we scaled and delivered customer-obsessed innovation—especially in the early years of Alexa.

There are three states a leader can be in relative to people management: The Builder This is the Individual Contributor (IC) track.

The first rule of skills is simple: know the skill exists.

When an organization hits a wall (be it a product failing in the field, a critical project slipping off the rails, or a big customer walking away) the knee-jerk reaction is often to lean on the leaders already in place.

Let’s start with a simple question: What kind of work do you like doing?

This post introduces the concept of Working Backward (WB) narratives and formalizes the mechanism through which a company can drive product development.

Prioritization means making decisions that focus energy and resources on a few things that are at the top of the list, and starving things that are lower in the list.

The practice of selling ideas in meetings can lead to misalignment and superficial agreement.

I was a guest on the “Are We There Yet?”

In 35+ years of building companies and organizations in multiple industries, I’ve concluded most leadership books are great examples of survivorship bias.

In 2020 started hosting my Free and Open Office Hours as a way to give back and meet more people in the space industry.

When I was a baby my favorite eldest sister nicknamed me “Tigger” because I was bouncy and acting “Tiggerish”.

All human beings are prone to cognitive biases and fallacies that influence our thinking and decision-making processes.

Errors.

According to anthropologist Robin Dunbar, there is a cognitive limit to the number of people with whom we can maintain stable social relationships, which he calls “Dunbar’s number” or “Dunbar’s limit.”

A friend recently asked me if I had a Lexicon & Taxonomy for Innovation and Invention.

Mars has long captivated the human imagination as a potential destination for exploration and settlement.

The photo below illustrates how the torpedo fuses BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Datsun, Porsche, and others used in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s have not stood the test of time.

Once you get to the point in your career where you realize a) you’ll be just fine financially (because your resume kicks ass), b) your company doesn’t give a sh*t about you, and c) you know what the Right Thing to do is, act like a volunteer.

In November 2020, I declared I was going to break into the space industry for my next professional chapter.

Every decade I try my hand at being a videographer.

I’m honored to announce that Rebel Space Technologies has asked me to join them as a Strategic and Technical Advisor.

I’m working on writing down my thoughts on space.

Last Christmas (2019) my daughter gifted me Carv.

Last week I joined my good friend Den Delimarsky and his colleague Courtny Cotten hosted me on The Work Item podcast.

No, don’t debate excellence; become excellent at debating.

Great leaders don’t let changes happen to them.