When you think about what “value” means, you might see dollar signs. That’s what many companies think, too. 

In an era where social responsibility is increasingly important to consumers, companies are scrambling to showcase their “values” as a way to turn in a profit. There’s a reason so many tech company slogans sound similar. It’s not just that they’re all trying to do the same thing (make a profit), it’s also that they want to take our attention away from their primary goal—the bottom line. 

When Andrew and I first made the decision to move forward with starting Skiplist, we knew that establishing a foundation was a when, not an if.  Leveraging Skiplist’s tech talent, building a culture around the necessity of charitable giving, and adhering to our values were non-negotiable.

Today, we're all walking around with mini-computers in our pockets more powerful than all of NASA’s combined computing in 1969. In fact, most of us can hardly remember a time before smartphones—despite the fact that the first iPhone launched in 2007.

Tech evolves at a breakneck pace, but regulation is often slow to catch up.

Here’s what I mean:

Companies have been using our personal data to target sales and advertising for years, but it wasn’t until last year that lawmakers intervened in an effort to protect consumers.

For as long as we can remember, we’ve had houses, cars, and streetlights.

But today, there’s often more to these staples of modern life than meets the eye. Where a streetlight was once timed to turn red every 30 seconds, and after 15 seconds, turn green again—today, that light is smart, meaning it adapts to movement by pedestrians, cyclists and cars. And where a house was once just four walls and a roof, today it adapts its temperature based on its surroundings. Our cars are no longer simply at the mercy of the drivers—today, they can communicate with each other to slow down based on traffic patterns.

Businesses, like people, are all guided by different values.

Some want to sell ads, others are focused chiefly on adoption, and some only care about the bottom line. Most of the time, a company’s values fall in line with meeting the needs of their customers. But occasionally, a company’s goals and solving its customers’ pain points don’t quite match up.

This is a phenomenon that’s especially problematic—and common—in the tech space.

There is a common thought in entrepreneur circles that greatness isn’t defined by what you say yes to, but what you say no to. This rings true in many domains but in software it can become a way of life. In software, the build vs buy challenge is fraught with strong opinions either way. There are a lot of incredibly smart engineers that can build almost anything given the right resources. 

Abstraction is a powerful tool. Some of the greatest inventions in technology: operating systems, programming languages, compilers, etc. are abstractions. However, when misused or misunderstood, they can be destructive.

Over abstraction can create unmaintainable, untestable monstrosities. Under abstraction may mean duplicate code, but duplicate code is almost always better than unmaintainable code.

Most personal development books will tell you to set goals and work towards those consistently.

Consistency forms habits and creates progress towards goals no matter how small.

There’s an often-quoted statistic that if you do 1% a day or get 1% better you are 37.78x closer to your goal or improved as a person.

In software and in life, you are what you measure.

If you measure velocity, your team will optimize for delivery. If you measure code quality, you will optimize for that.

You must have both measures and countermeasures to ensure that teams stay on track and don’t stray too far in one direction. 

Your time is limited, and because of this, you have limited things - whether that is money, achievement or in the case of software: features, documentation, tests, etc.  

You must pick what is important to you and work on that. This means choosing the most needed features, the most impactful tech debt, and the most critical tests.