Today's guest is Camille Fournier!
Camille is an accomplished CTO and executive with 20+ years of experience in tech, and author of the timeless The Manager’s Path, possibly the most influential book ever written about engineering management!
With Camille, we talked about good vs bad management, the controversial founder mode, and career advice for managers.
🎙️ Episode
You can watch the full episode on Youtube:
Or listen to it on Spotify, Apple, Overcast, or your podcast app of choice.
🥇 Interview Summary
If you are a 🔒 paid subscriber 🔒 you will find my own summary of the interview below.
It’s the 10-minute, handcrafted takeaways of what we talked about, with timestamps to the relevant video moments, for those who don’t have time to sit through the 1-hour chat.
Here is the agenda for today:
🏢 Founder mode vs manager mode
👨💼 Good management for founders (09:16)
📚 Lessons learned since writing "The Manager's Path" (30:38)
🚀 Career advice for engineering managers (42:40)
🔧 Platform engineering and future plans (55:12)
Let's dive in 👇
On this summary we tried something different than usual! We embedded a lot of quotes from the actual interview, which deliver Camille’s insights in her own words.
Let me know if you like it!
1) 🏢 Founder mode vs manager mode
We kicked off the chat by discussing Paul Graham's recent essay on "Founder Mode".
Camille points out that the essay presents an overly simplistic view of "founder mode" versus "manager mode". Real-world management is far more nuanced, with even large corporations often operating outside the stereotypical "manager mode" described.
Camille believes a lot of this talk is driven by the widespread desire, among technical leaders, to find a foolproof algorithm to run and scale companies. She is skeptical about it:
“Leadership is not that. And I absolutely do agree that, if you think that there is an algorithm whereby you hire good people and you treat their teams like black boxes and you, the founder, I don't know actually what the founder is doing in this case... I think you're absolutely right that that's not going to end well for you.”
So, Camille warns both against the extremes of detached management, and excessive micromanagement. Her advice is to strike a balance: stay engaged while trusting your teams, focusing on results rather than constant oversight.
Of course this is hard to achieve, but there are no shortcuts.
2) 👨💼 Good management for founders (09:16)
Camille discusses the evolution of management practices and scaling leadership challenges:
Find your area of genius 🌟
To stay engaged in daily work and not fall into detached manager mode, Camille advises founders and leaders to identify their “area of genius”:
“I think, as a founder, you've got to figure out what your thing is. Like, what is the genius that you have brought to this business where you just have that clarity of view?”
She points out this could be in product development, marketing, or shaping company culture. Leaders should focus on these areas while delegating others.
Delegate wisely + stay accountable ⚖️
Camille also stresses the need for balance in delegation:
