The Manager's Guide – #88
Weekly Hand-Picked Collection Edition
“If you think technology will solve your problems, you don’t understand technology and you don’t understand your problems”
attributed to Laurie Anderson
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Breaking Down OnlyFans’ Stunning Economics
You can hate the game, but you have to respect the results…
💰 Massive Growth — OnlyFans revenue jumped from $300M to $6.3B in five years, making it the UK's most successful company founded since DeepMind in 2010
🌍 Market Distribution — US accounts for 2/3 of revenue, with UK/Europe at 16% and the Rest of the World at 17%. The platform has over 300M registered users and 4.1M creators.
💸 Creator Economics — Platform offers 80% revenue share to creators, distributing $5.3B in 2023 (more than Premier League payroll). However, earnings are heavily concentrated among top creators, with the top 1% earning around $49,000 each annually
📱 Platform Strategy — Success despite no mobile apps (due to app store restrictions on adult content), proving browser-based model can work for specific content types
📊 Business Performance — Extremely efficient operation with only 42 employees in 2023, generating $31M in net revenue per employee. Paid $1.1B in dividends since 2019
🔄 Distribution Model — Most creators use mainstream platforms (Reddit, Instagram, TikTok) as “front doors” for customer acquisition, with these platforms generally allowing such behavior
🤖 Future Challenges — Faces potential disruption from X's policy changes and emerging AI technology that could create virtual “creators” with perfect availability and personalization
How to Lead Your Team when the House Is on Fire
🎯 Core Focus Areas — Engineering managers must balance three key responsibilities: ensuring delivery aligned with goals, building high-performing teams, and supporting individual growth
⚡ Delivery Priorities — Wartime requires ruthless prioritization, empowered decision-making, and protecting team focus through techniques like rotating “firefighter” roles
🛠️ Technical Trade-offs — Speed takes precedence over perfection, requiring careful tech debt management and backward-looking (rather than forward-looking) refactoring strategies
👥 Team Management — Critical to maintain morale while avoiding “us vs. them” mentality, celebrate wins, provide transparent communication, and handle performance issues consistently
🎓 Growth Adaptation — Rather than formal training, focus on leveraging strengths and reframing challenges as opportunities to build transferable skills
🎪 Hiring Strategy — Prioritize experienced, self-sufficient engineers who can contribute immediately; leverage current market conditions while moving quickly on strong candidates.
🧘♂️ Self-Care Essential — Leaders must prioritize their wellbeing through healthy habits, peer support, and maintaining perspective to effectively support their teams.
💼 Context Setting — Acknowledge tough situations while projecting confidence, focusing on positive aspects of work, and maintaining open forums for concerns.
Robert Putnam on how to reduce workplace loneliness and polarization
Instead of blind RTO policies, we need to do the research.
🏢 Historical Context — The “water cooler” phenomenon historically played a vital role in workplace cohesion, with casual conversations leading to trust-building and cross-departmental learning
🎳 Community Loss — Companies used to foster community through bowling leagues, social events, and unions, which benefited both employee satisfaction and business efficiency
🏠 Remote Work Challenge — While remote/hybrid work is increasingly common due to talent competition, Putnam views this as potentially negative for social solidarity, with saved time often going to screens rather than community building
🤝 Building Connections — Effective workplace cohesion must be built through fun, voluntary activities rather than mandates — “it can't be spinach”
🌉 “Bridging Social Capital” — Workplaces can help reduce political polarization by creating opportunities for unlike people to connect over shared interests (sports, volunteering) rather than directly addressing political topics
⚖️ Leadership Approach — CEOs should invest in studying what actually works for reducing isolation, focus on positive incentives, and avoid taking partisan stances while facilitating cross-group connections
📊 Research Needed — There's a notable lack of scientific evidence about best practices for building workplace cohesion in modern contexts, suggesting companies should experiment and measure outcomes
Good software development habits
A no-nonsense shortlist that makes a lot of sense in my experience.
💻 Commit Philosophy — Keep commits minimal and frequent; if you're wondering if they're too small, they're probably just right. Rule of thumb: anything that compiles can be committed.
🔄 Continuous Refactoring — Make small, frequent improvements under 10 minutes; aim for half of all commits to be refactoring. Avoid big refactorings, as they're risky.
🚀 Deploy Early & Often — Undeployed code is a liability; frequent deployments provide real validation. Higher hosting costs are worth the confidence gained.
🧪 Smart Testing — Don't test framework capabilities; they're already tested. Focus on testing your own logic, and use TDD when API design isn't clear.
📋 Code Organization — Create new modules for functions that don't fit anywhere, rather than forcing them into existing ones. Allow copy-paste once, but abstract on the third instance.
🔧 Technical Debt — Focus on issues preventing work now (#1) and later (#2), but ignore hypothetical future problems (#3)
🎯 Design Evolution — Accept that designs get stale and need changes; there's no perfect design. Good software development is about managing change effectively.
✅ Testability — If something is hard to test, it's likely a design issue. Make testing easier through better design or improved test utilities.
Intellectual honesty
If you’re committed to seeing clearly, you can cut through BS, act with more self-awareness, and learn more quickly.
🧠 Core Definition — Intellectual honesty means seeking truth and accuracy in thinking/communication, considering evidence even when it contradicts your beliefs
🎯 Professional Impact — It's fundamental for professional growth; without it, people resist feedback and engage in mental gymnastics to justify their positions
🤔 Self-Awareness — Key distinction between “it's not possible” vs. “I wasn't able to do it” vs. “I don't want to do it” — being honest about your true motivations
🛡️ Ego Protection — People often make unsubstantiated claims about others' weaknesses to protect their own ego, rather than facing feelings of inadequacy
💭 Self-Assessment — Test your intellectual honesty by asking: “Is this true?”, “What evidence do I have?”, “Am I telling myself a narrative to avoid an uncomfortable truth?”
📈 Growth Mindset — Being intellectually honest means embracing opportunities to learn from mistakes and improve, rather than defending ego
🤝 Leadership Quality — It's particularly important in professional settings, where the ability to be direct while respectful requires honest self-reflection
Why Goodhart's Law Isn't All That Useful
Goodhart's Law warns of metric misuse but offers little guidance.
📊 Common Misinterpretation — Goodhart's Law (“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”) is often misunderstood as a complete rejection of metrics rather than a warning about their misuse
🎯 Metrics Necessity — In complex organizations, metrics are essential tools for coordination and performance tracking, making total rejection impractical
🤝 Good Faith Factor — The law overlooks that people often pursue metrics because they genuinely believe in their alignment with underlying goals, not just to game the system
⚖️ Better Approach — Instead of avoiding metrics, organizations should use multiple balanced metrics, combine them with qualitative measures, and maintain healthy skepticism
🔄 Evolution Required — Effective metric use requires continuous evaluation, adaptation to changing circumstances, and fostering a culture that questions and improves metrics
💡 Practical Philosophy — Metrics are like “powerful drugs” — dangerous if misused but essential for enabling coordination and optimization when used thoughtfully
🎓 Key Lesson — The real challenge isn't avoiding metrics but developing wisdom to use them effectively while being aware of their limitations
That’s all for this week’s edition
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See y’all next week 👋