Philip Walton

This is not just any "hey, we are looking for a dev" post. This might be one of the most exciting engineering roles we have ever hired for. Let me explain why: I have the great privilege of being the product lead for the exceptionally brilliant Rendering Engine Team at Miro. Several months ago, we took a bold step to revamp our foundational rendering technology from the ground up, setting an ambitious vision far beyond what Miro is capable of today. Building a highly performant rendering engine for a product like Miro is not trivial though. You are dealing with an infinite 2D canvas with potentially thousands of multimedia objects, all while multiple people collaborate in real-time. We want professionals & creatives to spend the majority of their working days in Miro. Unfortunately, every lag when panning a large planning board, every jiggle effect due to low FPS when zooming out from a large planning session, and every slight delay when selecting hundreds of multimedia objects not only results in lost time but also slight frustration. It's that small, annoying feeling that something felt slightly slow, slightly not instant, slightly irritating. A products performance is not just about the time you lose; it is about the feeling this product gives you. On the other hand, we all know the feeling of delight when you do something complex in a product, and it happens instantaneously. That feeling that no matter what you do, no matter what workload you throw at an application, it will be responsive, fast, and instantaneous. This is what we envision: A rendering engine that continuously surprises you with its snappiness, making work feel light and delightful. We are looking for someone who is as equally annoyed by these issues as we are and wants to take the lead in solving them. We aim to build a rendering engine that raises the bar for what people consider possible on a web-based canvas. A computer graphics professional who wants to take on the challenge of working on a renderer that powers the day-to-day work of millions of users and some of the most creative and innovative companies in the world. If you work in the field of computer graphics and want to contribute to the heart of a product that aims to amplify collaboration and creative work, give it shot. Feel free to DM me for more information or directly apply below:

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Want to tease something my team has been working on over at Buffer! The attached image isn't a mockup, but a screenshot of a live prototype of RSS feeds directly in Buffer! It's only available internally and still pretty rough at this point, but we'll have it available for user testing soon. With this enhancement, we hope to help Buffer users easily find new and engaging content to share with their audiences. What do you think? Will RSS feeds in Buffer help you create more content?

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📣 Hey friends! After a year and a half, 3 rounds of fundraising and building out the design practice at MotherDuck I'm ready for new opportunities! I joined as the Head of Design and the first hire back in fall 2022, and helped shape what design means for the company. I hope you can feel the 'ducking' awesomeness through the product and brand. Now, I'm looking to explore head of design or staff roles in early to growth stage companies and even larger organizations. Can't wait to connect with compassionate founders seeking a design leader versed in UI, UX, IXD, UXR. But first, let me share some startup lessons I've learned over the last 14 years: 1. 🗺️ Have a clear vision A clear vision, articulated and illustrated through design, is a powerful tool. It's the magic that unites your team and customers, helping them SEE where you're going. Design leaders, in sync with the CEO and CPO, can bridge the gap between user expectations and their dream come true. 2. 💎 Quality matters when it matters With limited resources, small teams need to be strategic. A design leader should understand when to focus on the details or backlog them. Foster a culture of experimentation and user feedback. Remember, even as an SME, you might have bias. Listen to your users carefully. 3. 🌟 Lean into your super powers Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is key. If you have the right team, rely on their technical abilities instead of trying to be an expert at everything. It’s tough when you're small, but encourage adaptability and ownership. 4. 📂 Get organized Small messes grow into big ones, which turn into big expenses. Establish clear processes for documentation, meetings, note taking practices and sharing information. Standardize things at the company level and stay organized to scale efficiently. 5. 🤗 Lead with compassion Trust is hard won and easily lost. Leaders who put their ego aside and lead with compassion create a more open culture. Deep relationships, compassion, and a willingness to take a hit for your team will reap rewards in the long run. 6. 🙋 Know your users Get to know your customers and users. Invest time and money in foundational research around their needs and use cases. Share insights and find themes. Eventually, you might have a research function to do this at scale. Until then, let your users lead the way. You'll be amazed at what you learn. 7. 🥳 Have fun If you’re not, you’re not in the right place, find the team that will make you happy, healthy and hoping for more. If you’re constantly stressed, losing sleep, or finding yourself in the hospital for stress induced blood clots then you need to get out. Find partners that get your craft, respect it’s value and hold you up. Life is short, love those around you and make the world a better place. If you’re a compassionate founder with a goal to make amazing things with amazing people let’s design a better world together. https://raphaelhyde.com/

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Work at a natural pace. In Cal Newport's new book "Slow Productivity" he walks through 3 components to accomplishment without burnout. 1. Do fewer things 2. Work at a natural pace  3. Obsess over quality Working at a natural pace is an area I'm focused on as I transition to whatever is next in my career. Most of my career's natural pace was driven by anxiety, coffee, HIIT workouts and more caffeine - which I'm pretty sure isn't what he means. In my late 40's though, that just doesn't work anymore. Nor do I want it to. It's a tricky philosophy though because if you're in the startup world I don't know how you build something meaningful and work at a natural pace. I've never seen it happen. It appears this is a philosophy that needs to be applied to a specific time and place vs. everyone, everywhere. Anway, I don't have the answers, I'm just exploring different questions. What I do know is working at a natural place seems to be more appropriate for where I am today. 

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I’m hiring a new Chief of Staff. In tech, a CoS can mean a lot of different things. For me it is two things. First, a person that gives me institutional grade leverage. Second, a person that can speak for me both inside Carta and outside. Many CoS’s have gone on to do incredible things like Matt Howland who after being my CoS became Carta’s General Manager of the captable business and subsequently a founder and now CPO/CTO of Cordial, Sumeet Gajri who became Carta’s Chief Strategy Officer and then Managing Director of Original Capital, and Jane Alexander who became Carta’s Chief Marketing Officer and now Partner at Capital G. Every chief of staff has brought their unique skills to leave a positive impact on me and on Carta. It is a hard gig. You will work my hours (which are a lot). You will do everything from deciding how to use my time to developing Carta strategy. You will be in every meeting I’m in, you will be involved in every decision I make, and you will see what it’s like to run Carta. You will see things you haven’t seen before, and if you’ve seen the press, it is not for the faint of heart. But if you do it, you will learn a ton, experience things most people never get to, and see the world in a whole new way. It is a three year tour of duty and then we try to place you in a leadership role somewhere within Carta. I’m posting this because I’d love to find a wonderful person to work with for the next three years. If you are interested please consider applying. For those that apply I’d like to ask you to submit two things. 1. Please submit a short answer (less than 600 words) to the following question. Last November I got a lot of negative press for sending a pre-emptive email to thousands of customers about upcoming negative press about my leadership style. The subsequent storyline was “Henry is terrible at PR and what an idiot for bringing more attention to negative stories???” They could be right. I could be an idiot. But for this question, assume I wasn’t. Assume that it was a calculated decision and, in hindsight, still a correct one. Why did I do it? Please write it in the form of a in memo to the Carta Board explaining why we made that decision and thought it was the right one. 2. Please submit a short video presentation (less than four mins) teaching me something I don’t know. It can be about anything. It can be a cooking lesson, a business lesson, a history lesson. I’ll give an example in the next comment. I know it is a big ask but hopefully not much more time than preparing for an interview. And it will give us a head start so that in the second round, instead of asking you questions, you get to come in and grill me. 🙂 If you are interested please apply through the posting below with your board letter and a link to your video; I'm excited to see it. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I’m super excited to hear from you. https://lnkd.in/gtmFfrjV

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This is how you write a job post

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"I need more meetings to be productive" Said no one who genuinely cares about getting things done. The engineers on my team often question the necessity of meetings, and they have every right to. In 99% of cases, these meetings could be summarized in a single Slack message or an email (for those who still use it). If you're an engineer, designer, or anyone whose role requires significant focus time, meetings are productivity killers. They are major distractions with minor benefits and disrupt the workflow. Regaining focus after a meeting requires a lot of mental energy and time. Next time you schedule a meeting, ask yourself: Do the engineers and designers on your team really need to be there? Is there a better way to share this information, like a Slack message, a Notion doc, or an email? What strategies have you tried to reduce the number of meetings in your calendar, and what has worked (or not)?

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I often find myself trying to communicate how the depth, breadth and nuance of thoughtful, contextualized product design can create systemic ripples across the landscape of society, culture, and economy. The principle of larger effects and systems seems rather timely given the impacts and implications of the work we find ourselves in the weeds. What might mindful, thoughtful innovation look like? If we are disruptive, working from a place of care and positive intent, are we still able to see the larger picture and the possible ripples from decisions? There is a power differential in recognizing the effects on systems. We often hear things like “technology is not neutral” or “the victors write the history”. This may mean there are far-reaching implications of decisions and systemic impacts without the realization of unintended consequences. If we are seeking to consider equity within a product we must increase our awareness and research, design, develop and execute from a space of curiosity without weaponizing approaches based on moral codes, personal beliefs and misaligned values. What does “for good” look like in practice, and to whom is it good for? We are often reliant on dominant narratives and frame things as edge cases. Those on the “edges” are often perceived as more work than necessary, less important, or statistically insignificant. This leads whole human identities to be framed as outliers.   These focused threads demonstrate how a product can drive change by reshaping perceptions and practices at both individual behaviours, choices, industry standards and cultural narratives. It’s about initiating change that can be sustained, leading to a reimagining of systems that have gone unchallenged. This guides us to examine the influence on social structures, economies, and ethical frameworks. A decolonization perspective asks us to critically examine how historical contexts have shaped products. Dismantling the inequities that are embedded within current systems, our journey begins in a world saturated with products designed without the richness of human difference in mind. The one-size-fits-all mentality prevails. Systems innovation would mean designing products that do not perpetuate colonial legacies but instead respect and uplift local knowledge, traditions, and needs. Who benefits from these innovations? Are these technologies accessible to all, or do they widen the digital divide? Do these innovations respect locality, or data sovereignty? Product equity must address global complexities, considering how a product fits into various cultural contexts and the impact on different communities. It's not just about doing no harm but actively doing good. Understanding balance—the need for steady iteration and the courage for radical change. We can build currents strong enough to redefine systems, rewrite narratives, and reshape these ecosystems. #ProductEquity #PrinciplesOfEquity #SystemsInnovation #SystemsThinking #Decolonization

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In my previous piece on Threads (https://lnkd.in/gQB39p_B), I emphasized its potential to redefine social interactions, capitalizing on Instagram's massive user base to foster a more positive, casual conversation space, different from the often intense nature of X. From a strategic standpoint, this latest offer—while well-intentioned—feels like a stopgap rather than a solution. Threads' differentiation lies in its ability to offer a casual, text-based Instagram, yet this monetization experiment doesn’t tap into that uniqueness. Instead, it risks reducing creator interactions to superficial engagement metrics driven by sporadic incentives. https://lnkd.in/gARTvpbd

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We're hiring for some *very* special roles at Mozilla in our Innovation Studio as we build out some additional innovation pods. Principal Product Manager, New Products AND Senior Staff Product Designer, New Products. Are you an entrepreneur who wants to build new stuff with the support of larger organization when you need it? Are you passionate about building an AI future? Enterprise offerings? What about technology that helps families and protects kids? AI-generated Website builder? Yep. Products that make online shopping better and more trustworthy? Yep. Bug bounties for GenAI exploits?!? You betcha. The agent of the future - beyond the browser? Holy 🐄! Having a track record of building and shipping 0-to-1 is a MUST for this role. So is the ability to get stuff done independently and fast. The future of the internet depends on it! These are all areas we're exploring in our New Product Strategy. Come work with me, Imo Udom and tons of talented folks at Mozilla. Apply at the links below. If you're going to DM me I want to hear about the successful 0-to-1 project you built, what problem it solved and what it achieved.

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I've mentored and worked with over hundreds of recent grads, and a common mistake they make is think that they can wow their boss by taking on more work (but they never delivered on their actual current projects) 🤯 That is not going to get you good recognition. Instead, focus on your projects. Nail them. And then, and only then, should you think about taking on more work. #girlboss #newjob #corporate #career #branding #jobadvice #careeradvice #tech #consulting #finance #yourfirstcorporatejob

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💔 Laid off? Struggling to find work? Wondering what’s next? It’s a tough time out there. All over the world, people are being #laidoff, jobs are harder to come by, and the uncertainty can feel overwhelming. I know this because I’ve been there—four (yes 4) redundancies in three years taught me just how brutal the job market can be. But here’s the thing: that final layoff? It gave me the push to try something different. I was introduced to a program in Sweden called Starta Eget through Arbetsförmedlingen, which gives you the tools and support to start your own business. It’s not a solution for everyone, but for me, it was a game-changer. Since launching my business Tjena | Professional Wing People in March 2023, I’ve been sharing this program with others. And after a chat with Abel, I realised it’s time to put it all into one place. This isn’t just about Sweden—many countries have programs to support budding entrepreneurs. If you’re reading this, I urge you to check what’s available in your country. ✨ Why I’m sharing this: If you’re feeling stuck, this might be the opportunity you need. I’ve put together a simple guide to help anyone considering taking this step: ✨ How I navigated the Starta Eget process (and avoided common mistakes) 📚 Official resources to keep you on track 🤔 Why this might—or might not—be for you 📑 Ready to explore your next step? https://lnkd.in/d__B4urR This guide isn’t about quick fixes. It’s about sharing what worked for me, in the hope it might work for someone else. If you’re in #Sweden—or wondering if your country has similar support—this could be worth checking out. Let me know if you find this helpful, or share it with someone who might need it. And if you’ve been on a similar journey, I’d love to hear your story. We’re all in this together. 💛 Happy connecting, Shaena 🌟 #Entrepreneurship #CareerChange #Networking #StartaEget #JobSearch #PayItForward #Tjena #WingPeople

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When I worked at Meta, I was in the top percentile of company-wide bug reporters for a while. Part of it was that I aggressively QA products I work on, and part of it is I've always been a big believer in dogfooding what I work on to see how well it works in the real world. This week, I'm dogfooding a LOT with Phoria. I went through my closet for my seasonal swap of clothing, and I found that despite thinking about clothing every day for the last 2 years, I've kind of neglected my own wardrobe lately. My body has done what bodies do—change—and my well-loved pieces are looking like exactly that. My mending pile grew, but ultimately, I need to bring some new things into the mix. So I'm using what I've built to fill in the gaps in my closet. While using Phoria to find what fits me right now, here's what I've learned so far: - Shopping in an online space filled with larger bodies in every imaginable style is so. damn. refreshing. It reflects the real world I live in, and it makes me so happy. - Shopping for multiple items within a brand—rather than hunting for a specific item across many brands—makes building a mix-and-match wardrobe feel a lot more achievable. "Brand loyalty" has so many benefits beyond "brand name" status points. - The "sold out in your size" struggle is reeeeeal. I've been saving items I love even if they aren't in stock in my size to double-check secondhand sources or other brands for similar styles, but boy that moment is always a bummer. - Worrying about future body changes can be such a deterrent to investing time into making more of my own clothes, but I'm grateful to pattern designers who value adjustability in garments. What gets in your way when you're shopping for clothes?

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"Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode" What a podcast title! I've been obsessively listening to Decoder with Nilay Patel, brought to you from The Verge. (On the Vox Media network) It's awesome. Each podcast features a powerful tech CEO and breaks down their frameworks, market position, and company goals. But I always take a bit of meta-enjoyment in each episode from this framing: how does a CEO spin their often crass form of cut-throat capitalism into a hippy-dippy public good that just HAPPENS to make money? This episode was the ultimate example of that. Everyone knows Intuit has lobbied to keep taxes complex so it can make more money. Every major media outlet has reported this for years. Possibly one of the biggest harms to gig workers and small businesses in the US over the past few decades. It was wild to hear how that was addressed (so poorly that Goodarzi actually claimed they're lobbying to make taxes SIMPLER) and then hear how their communications lead asked to delete that part of the podcast. A podcast is a big time commitment, so just listen to the first 10 minutes. What do you think? Did Goodarzi stay on the right message, or do you think he should just say the quiet part out loud: "Our market position depends on taxes being complex and tax code being opaque, so we protect that." https://lnkd.in/dMJ98riY

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**A Stellar Product Means Nothing If Terrible Service Overshadows It!** I recently purchased a Dyson Gen5 vacuum cleaner, excited about its features and capabilities. After buying it at a specific price, I discovered it was available elsewhere for much cheaper. Naturally, I wanted to return it and get a better deal. The store promised to match the lower price and even offered to cover the difference to add insurance for the vacuum instead of a full refund as per their policy. Five days later, my wife received a call from the store while she was driving. Not only did they backtrack on their promise, but the representative was also rude, denying any previous commitments made by their colleague. This unexpected call came at a very inconvenient time and added unnecessary stress to her day. This experience highlights a significant issue in customer service: the dangers of overpromising and setting poor expectations. It's crucial for companies to ensure consistency in their promises and communication. Such practices not only tarnish their reputation but also erode customer trust. As consumers, we all deserve better. Clear communication, respect, and honoring commitments should be the standard, not the exception. #CustomerService #Overpromising #Expectations #ConsumerRights #Dyson

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Reader feedback for my latest post about how to use AI and my PRD template to never have to write a PRD from scratch again. Read the full post here: https://lnkd.in/eJjVXJUJ

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🔥💼⏰🏆 Hot take: You don't actually need to keep overworking to get that promotion. ⏰ For years I worked long hours, worked on weekends, and took on any extra projects that came my way. 💼 I thought that if I worked more than my peers, I'd demonstrate that I was ready for that next level, and the salary bump that came with it. 🏃‍♀️ I missed important family events, outings with friends, and having any type of fun. 😓 But even with all of this overworking, my career didn't level up in any substantial way. 🔥🎭 What I got instead was burnout and even more pronounced impostor syndrome. 🚫 But now I know that overworking like that has absolutely no impact on the kinds of promotions you get, how much you get paid, or whether you actually level up your career in any meaningful way. ✨ There's only one thing that works to do this for you and that is knowing your own intrinsic worth. 🎫 So here's your permission slip to stop the endless grind. 🌱 Start investing that energy into recognizing and owning your unique value. 🏆 When you truly believe in your worth, others will too - including those who make decisions about your career and paycheck. 🔗 Now accepting coaching clients. Click the link in my Festured section to learn how we can work together! #personaldevelopment #career #worklife #selfgrowth #careercoach #wellness #wellnesscoach #mindset #leadership #confidence #impostorsyndrome #CareerGrowth #WorkplaceWisdom #ProfessionalGrowth #CareerAdvice

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