There are some words that stuck with me over the years. I've been thinking about them for a while now, and I thought it would be nice to write them down.

During a conversation I had with Tom Cox, at that time, I was in the process of changing my job. But I was also in a sort of confused space. I listened to many different opinions and tried to look at the market from different angles. Yet, I wasn't sure about almost anything.

Until, he said these words:

I do not want my CTOs to code.

And it's not just the actual words. It's the natural way those words came out. It was like saying the sky is blue.

I don't remember exactly, but I think I was feeling a sense of relief. Having a CEO saying this (and not a CEO of a company of one), was a good sign. It was also a lesson for me that I need to spend more time with other CEOs from various industries.

The second conversation that I had and stuck with me was with Valentin Radu. Actually, I was in a meeting listening to him. And he was referring to a book he recently read.

In his summary, there was this company who had a faulty product. They needed to fix it. Their approach was: gather all the smart people, let them work on the problem, make calculation and a bunch of different simulations and such. After a lot of effort, they came up with a solution. Then they implemented that solution. And it failed.

The second time around, they changed their approach. Instead of spending time on the theoretical part, they started real-world experiments. They created a prototype. Tested it out. Failed. Learned from the failure. And then tried again and again until... the issue was solved.

In short, iterative.

Why was this important to me? Because I was, intuitively, doing the same iterative approach for years. I was not aware of it. And I always thought that I was doing it wrong. That the other approach was better and by not doing it I am not really a pro.