Author: Paolo Belcastro

Paolo is a modern nomad: after Italy, France, and Switzerland, he now lives in Vienna, Austria from where he works on Automattic's Jetpack and .blog products.

Passionate photographer, he also dedicates his free time to his family, cats, and hobbies.

Working remotely since 1994, managing distributed teams since 1998, he firmly believes that remote work is the key to peaceful coexistence for 10 billion humans.

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams

“I’m not going to ride on a magic carpet!” he hissed. “I’m afraid of grounds!” “You mean heights,” said Conina. “And stop being silly.” “I know what I mean! It’s the grounds that kill you!”

Sourcery – Terry Pratchett

A healthy product company is, confusingly, one at odds with itself. It has a healthy part that is attempting to normalize and to create predictability, but it needs another part that is tasked with building something new that is going to disrupt and eventually destroy that normality. Failure to create some form of predictability will result in chaos. Failure to create some sort of well-maintained barbaric chaos inside the company guarantees that a fast-moving, ambitious, risk-taking, and ruthless someone else—someone outside the company—will invade, because they know what you forgot: hacking is important.

Managing Humans – Michael Lopp

If you read one book about management in your life, let it be this one.