review.firstround.comFirst Round Review
Most managers oscillate between over-involvement and abandonment. Good accountability is neither, it's a structured agreement about what, when, and how, with the manager stepping in only when the system signals trouble.
Compensation is the most visible expression of a company's priorities. Done well, it aligns incentives and attracts the right people. Done casually, it generates resentment, turnover, and the wrong behaviors.
The default mode of most companies is verbal decisions made in meetings that nobody writes down. The alternative, memo culture, forces clearer thinking, better decisions, and a durable record of why.
The reason most teams tolerate mediocrity is that feedback is expensive to give. Radical candor is the discipline of caring enough about someone to tell them the truth.