Sitemap - 2024 - Scarlet Ink

Why Your Vision is a Critical Ingredient in Goal Setting

Don't Let Others Run Your Life — Cut Your Schedule Like a Slasher Movie

How I Transformed Amazon's Internal Transfer Process

6 Ways that Good People Build Trust, and Become Leaders That Others Follow

Fake It Till You Make It — To Become a Leader, Act Like One

Three Tales from an Amazon Bar Raiser

A Three Topic Article — Interviewing, Multiple Choice Management, and My Holiday Gift Guide

4 (More) Good Things and 2 (More) Bad Things and 2 Misunderstandings About Working at Amazon: From 12+ Years in Management

3 Good Things and 3 Bad Things About Working at Amazon: From 12+ Years in Management

Stories of Good and Bad Feedback Dave Received From His Managers

Good Employees Follow the Rules. Great Employees Break Them.

Why You Can't Teach Leadership — Experience vs. Instruction

10 Reader Questions About Career Politics, Investing, Job Hopping, and AI (among others)

Dave's Path to Amazon — And He Makes Fun of the Midwest

9 Simple Actions You Can Take to Build a Culture of Empathy

No More Excuses: Trading Blame for Action. Practical Steps Towards Ownership Instead of Whining.

Work Enemies: Actions You Can Take to Protect Yourself From Bad Relationships

Six Reader Questions About Meetings, Feedback, Communication, and Ideas

Senior Engineer or Senior Citizen? How Can Vintage Tech Workers Age Like Fine Wine?

The Ideal Manager Exercise — How to Choose and Communicate With Your Current or Future Manager

How Senior Leaders Evaluate Ideas — And a Story of Amazon's 3-Year Planning Process

How Frugality Creates Innovation in Products and Apparently Movies

You Should Be a Product Owner — Plus a Story of Dave Being a Jerk

6 Mechanisms Which Drive Personal Career Success

6 Behaviors of Lazy People That Create Career Success

Are you Leading or Winning? You Can't Win a Promotion.

Why Senior Employees Need to Audit and Verify Things for Themselves — It's Not (Only) That We Don't Trust You

Changing How Others Perceive You. Most Importantly, Those Who Dislike You.

A Simple Guide to Financial Independence

Burnout and Layoffs — Approaches to Managing Overwork and Limited Resources

Reckless Bias for Action — A Tale of Immaturity and Impatience

A Non-Coding Engineering Manager is One Thing, But What About Non-Technical?

Answer the Unasked Questions — A Guide to Proactive Communication

Create Career Success: 11 Key Phrases for Your Workplace

How to Estimate Projects Without Being Absolutely Hosed

Why "They" Are Always Screwing Up: A Guide to Removing Enemies

Discover Exactly Why Insisting on High Standards is a Thorny Issue

A Day in the Life of a Software Development Manager with 14 Direct Reports

AI Won't Take Software Engineering Jobs

Stories of Three Employees Requesting Raises. Lessons on Increasing Your Income.

Process to write social media for Substack newsletters

Introvert to Director — Leading in Your Unique Way

Articles categorized by topic

Managing Up — Stories and Guidelines for Working with Senior Leaders

A Personal Story of a Mistake, and My Evolving View of Diversity and Inclusion

Unlocking Return Offers: 8 Key Internship Behaviors for Success

You're Poisoning Yourself in that Toxic Work Environment

My Amazon Interview Loop — A Tech Director Remembers His Own Development Manager Interview

Have You Been Ignoring Implicit Feedback, Letting Your Career Pay the Price?

A Complete Guide to Interviewing Candidates — From Competencies to Questions to Debriefs

A Day in the Life of an Amazon Tech Director Poaching a Senior Engineer

A Day in the Life of a Senior Manager at Amazon Creating the World's Worst Operations Meeting