People Decisions
50+ recent decisions
An ambiguous interview verdict is a no - hold the bar rather than adding interviewers
Sep 7, 2026 · people · low73% confidence
Steve Wallace reported on the security engineer req that he had interviewed Jared, a contact of Greg, and had told Brianne and Greg that he was not a yes but not a no. Wallace proposed pushing the candidate on to CeeLo or TJ to gather more input. Peter closed it on the spot: not a clear yes and not a clear no means no, leave it as a no. He framed the rule rather than the case - he would rather hold a high bar, and if a candidate is not a giant yes, move on.
People: Steve Wallace, Greg Kurtzer
Let the dual-loop candidate pick her team - then stop the other loop rather than finish it
Sep 7, 2026 · people · medium76% confidence
Kristin Cox was interviewing for open roles in both Justin Haynes org and Chris Wolford org. Bree wanted her steered toward Wolford req on the grounds that it had been harder to find strong candidates for. Peter overrode that without debating it. His instruction: have Bree ask the candidate directly which role she is most interested in; if she picks Justin, stop the Wolford process immediately and get an offer out as fast as possible; if she picks Wolford, let that loop finish. He told Justin to be selfish about it and said he would write to Bree himself. He also stated plainly that all else equal his thumb is on Justin side of the scale, because he is far more worried about delivery on the Linux side of the house than on the Fuzzball side.
People: Justin Haynes, Chris Wolford
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Extend Karl Lowenbjer under Wallace and land Atlas and Motherbrain in Engineering
Sep 7, 2026 · people · medium85% confidence
After spending the prior week reading the Motherbrain and Atlas code Karl Lowenbjer built under Tabatha, Peter concluded it was quite good - really well architected and thought through. Chris Baek did not want to keep Karl on the Operations side. In the Thursday 1:1 Peter pitched Wallace directly on taking both the contractor and the applications, telling him he is pretty sure Wallace ends up being the one asked to maintain things like Motherbrain and Atlas anyway. Wallace agreed the same call, having independently run a compliance and security read of the code and landed in the same place. On Saturday Peter DMed Karl himself, told him his contract ends in about a week and a half, and asked whether he wanted to let it end or extend it under Peter - then asked Sarah for 30 minutes with Karl on Tuesday or Wednesday to work it out.
People: Steve Wallace, Karl Lowenbjer, Chris Baek
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Hire Jori Koolstra now - go into the interview intending to sell, then compress the loop to days
Aug 31, 2026 · people · high94% confidence
Peter had a 10:00 interview with Jori Koolstra for the Linux Kernel Development Engineer role on Aug 30 (a Sunday). Beforehand he asked Nathan Blackham directly whether the slot was an interview or a sell, and said his own plan was already sell: I hope it is sell because that is my plan. I also really hope I like this guy because I LOVE his resume. Immediately after the call he told Nathan Hire him now. That is my take, and in the group DM with Nathan and Brianne Clasen he wrote We should hire Jori. Like... today. In #distinguished-leaders, replying to Bjorn Hovland asking whether anything ever happened with Tim Pepper and saying We need to be better at evangelizing Rocky and We just do not have an active community leader over there, Peter volunteered the same candidate: I also interviewed a kernel engineer candidate that I LOVED today (background in math) who wants to spend a lot of time evangelizing Rocky upstream and building a community. Bjorn replied Get him. Nathan confirmed the next morning that it was a sell, said he would get the roundtable scheduled for today or tomorrow, and added that he might be trying to get him out earlier.
People: Nathan Blackham, Brianne Clasen, Bjorn Hovland, Jori Koolstra
Answer the Gauntlet adoption fight as a cross-team communication problem and take it to the managers meeting as a case study rather than mandating the tool
Aug 28, 2026 · people · medium67% confidence
Ryan Smith team reads core engineering non-adoption of the Gauntlet test framework as a not-invented-here rejection. Justin Haynes team has an existing test harness that already meets their needs, so Gauntlet does not solve a critical pain point for them and the switching cost and risk are high. In the 2026-08-28 Justin 1:1 Peter diagnosed the friction as a communication breakdown rather than a technical one, and declined both available shortcuts - he did not mandate adoption and he did not arbitrate the tool. Instead he took it as the concrete case study on cross-team dynamics for the next managers meeting, with an action item on himself to add Gauntlet and cross-team communications to the Tuesday Horde agenda and to ask Justin to remind him.
People: Justin Haynes, Ryan Smith
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Keep the reference requirement because the failure to produce one is the signal - not because the reference itself is worth reading
Aug 24, 2026 · people · low66% confidence
On Aug 22, in the hiring group DM, Brianne Clasen asked whether a kernel candidate should still submit references after Nathan Blackham had objected that the ones offered were not from the relevant period of the person work history. Peter kept the requirement and separated it from its stated purpose: he would like to get one, not so much because he cares about the reference itself, but because if someone cannot find one, there is something going on. Brianne confirmed she had read it the same way. Nathan then offered to supply names of people from the relevant team the candidate could approach, which makes the negative result meaningful rather than an artefact of the candidate not knowing who to ask.
People: Brianne Clasen, Nathan Blackham
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Define the forward-deployed deployment hire as a spearhead and work-distributor whose job is to work themselves out of a job - and reject the all-remote premise outright
Aug 24, 2026 · people · high90% confidence
In the Aug 24 Ryan/Peter/Bjorn session on the forward-deployed engineering org, Bjorn framed the headcount - one head for deployment, sitting under Ryan, Core42 as the prototype, jack of all trades, paid real money rather than the slightly junior mold-them profile Ryan usually favours. Peter locked onto Bjorn word spearhead and redefined the role around it: it is great if this person can do a pile of the work and they should be able to sanity check it, but the core capability is getting to know the rest of Ryan org, knowing the capabilities, and being able to tap a shoulder and say I need Arsalan for 14 hours here, I need somebody in Nathan org for 14 hours here. They do not need to do it all themselves, they need to be a distributor of work. He added the geographic requirement - willing to be anywhere in the world - and rejected the stated Core42 premise flatly: the plan with Core42 is that it is all remote setup, 100 percent, my confidence that that is true is zero, absolutely zero. On the long-term shape he split from Bjorn deliberately: Bjorn does not want the person plugged in long-term, Peter said he expects they will be, and that he is not arguing, he wants them acting as if their job is to not be there later. He named why he likes it as a support role - the person stands up repeatable, stampable systems so that most customer issues funnel into Ryan down-the-middle support funnels rather than back to the deployment person. Ryan took the JD first draft and named a candidate, Chris Wolford former number two based in Florida.
People: Ryan Smith, Bjorn Hovland
Trade a company-wide VP definition to get Greg to ratify the engineering ladder - structure first, names later
Aug 24, 2026 · people · high93% confidence
In the Aug 24 1:1, Peter walked Greg through the engineering leveling spreadsheet. He deliberately separated ratifying the STRUCTURE from mapping the PEOPLE, saying he wanted Greg bought into the structure and cared much less about the mapping for now. The ladder collapses roughly 27 levels to four IC levels - Engineer, Senior, Principal, Distinguished - plus Technical Fellow retained as a title outside the ladder rather than a level, and leadership reporting to Peter as either VP or Director with no Senior anythings. Greg objected to VP on optics grounds. Peter did not defend the word, he defended the need: I wanted a senior leader and a junior leader title, what we call them I am far less interested in. The two then jointly settled a company-wide convention: VP spans organizations and reports to a C-suite, SVP means junior C-suite where no CXO title is being given, Directors can report to either. Peter committed unilaterally: you will never see me arguing for a VP that does not report to me. Greg accepted, and asked that the ladder not be built in a vacuum but be made cross-applicable and run as an org-wide initiative with Mariah. Peter agreed and took the write-up. They ended at Peter stating they were 85 percent aligned.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Mariah Rippee
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Re-anchor the no-more-Amazon-blood rule on the deficit it was actually naming - what the org is short of is people who have had a startup collapse under them, not people with different opinions about Linux
Aug 21, 2026 · people · medium74% confidence
Across the Friday roundtable and the Nathan 1:1 Peter restated a hiring rule he had previously given as no more Amazon blood. In the roundtable he opened on the first candidate by saying he almost wanted to disqualify him purely on years of Amazon experience, that it has become absolutely critical to get a broader set of blood into the organization, and conceded that since stating the rule he has let two more people in and gets why. He then corrected Nathan reading of it - it is not about bad Amazon, it is that there is so much Amazon that there is not enough discussion about how we solve problems. In the 1:1 he specified it precisely: the thing he is pushing on is how you internalize the risk of not moving quickly. At Amazon the cost of slowness is somebody misses a promotion or a bonus; at CIQ the company goes under. He said Nathan is not less aggressive because of ability but because he has not had a startup collapse underneath him, and that what it boils down to is a few more people in your org that just have experience at startups. He closed by saying explicitly he is not shooting for differences in how people think about Linux - it is differences in work experience.
People: Nathan Blackham, Andrew Jorgensen, Jonathan Dieter, Justin Haynes
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Say yes to the Nikola Kolev hire only against a handshake that it starts a timer on Jason Rodriguez - and reject the three-or-four-more-people gate outright
Aug 21, 2026 · people · high90% confidence
Mariah reported that Nathan had told her he needs three or four more people in before anything moves on Jason Rodriguez, and would not be ready to start until October. Peter told Mariah flatly that is not going to be true, then took it to Nathan in their 1:1 the same afternoon. He drew the line precisely: he will shake hands on you can hire a Jason Rodriguez replacement before we do anything about Jason, but not on we filled every role that we could possibly fill before we are doing something. He then made Nikola conditional - if you want to move forward on Nick because you think it will allow you to remove Jason, then I will say yes, but I would like it to come with a handshake that you are getting super aggressive then with Jason. Nathan agreed to the handshake. In the roundtable an hour earlier Peter had held the same question open in front of the panel, saying the manager conversation had to happen separately.
People: Nathan Blackham, Mariah Rippee, Nikola Kolev, Jason Rodriguez
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Compress the Leandro Dorileo hire into a single week and run his final interview as a sell call rather than an evaluation - on the strength of Nathan like-mind endorsement alone
Aug 13, 2026 · people · medium86% confidence
Nathan told Peter that Leandro (Leo) is one of a very small set of people - alongside Andrew and Dieter - with whom he can sit down and know they understand the in and out of OS engineering, and that he would have offered on the spot. Peter asked what he should cover; Nathan answered sell call. Peter accepted that framing without pushing back, immediately compressed the timeline (I would love to get it handled before the end of the week), asked Brianne to schedule a decision call for Friday morning, and told Nathan to chase Dieter and Jeff for scorecards - proceeding to his own 2pm interview before those scorecards existed. Two hours after the 1:1 he confirmed in Slack: I think I sold him. I am a yes. Lets move.
People: Nathan Blackham, Brianne Clasen, Leandro Dorileo
Hire Hailey Mothershead without reservation, and take John Paul as a qualified yes with a standing instruction not to chase him if he declines
Aug 13, 2026 · people · medium97% confidence
At the Aug 12 kernel round table Peter gave two very different verdicts. On Hailey he was unreserved - I would hire her today, I thought she was smart, I thought she was inquisitive, I think she will work incredibly well with the team - and said that at a smaller company he would have called Brianne right after the interview and not let her leave the building without papers in front of her. He named his one real concern, a complete lack of C experience, and dismissed it as learnable, and flagged that she will find CIQ feedback culture blunt. On John Paul he deferred entirely to the technical panel, said he did not enjoy the interactions, did not believe JP is interested in what CIQ is doing, agreed with Shreeya read that they are getting roughly a year, and said he would not block a consensus yes. He then added the operative instruction: if we make an offer to him and he does not accept, let us not kill ourselves to make it work out. He closed the meeting with I know this team has felt pressured. I do not want this pressure to bring in the wrong person.
People: Nathan Blackham, Brianne Clasen, Sultan Alsawaf, Shreeya Patel, Jonathan Maple
Take the engineering re-leveling from principle to a concrete ladder - 13 levels down to 4 (open to a 5th), leadership down to Director and VP - and commit that no mapping ships without the direct report in the room
Aug 13, 2026 · people · high98% confidence
Across three 1:1s on Aug 13 (Nathan, Steve, Ryan) Peter walked each direct report through a spreadsheet he had shown nobody, collapsing roughly 13 engineering levels into Engineer / Senior / Principal / Distinguished, and collapsing his own leadership layer from directors, senior directors and head-of titles down to Director and VP. Nathan argued for a fifth level (Staff) to separate Jeremy from Sultan; Peter took it as reasonable without committing. Ryan was placed in the VP bucket and told so directly. Peter named two hard constraints: nobody gets a pay cut, and existing option grants cannot legally be reduced. Timeline given to Ryan: weeks, not months. Sequence: get Mariah bought into the framework first, then walk each org through its own mapping.
People: Nathan Blackham, Steve Wallace, Ryan Smith, Mariah Rippee
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Set a six-month horizon on migrating low-value work off Damens plate - naming it the one change he requires from Justin, while refusing the headcount answer until the work is concretely scoped
Aug 11, 2026 · people · medium80% confidence
Following back-to-back 1:1s with Joseph and then Damen - the second scheduled entirely because of what Joseph said, which Peter confirmed unprompted as 100 percent of it - Peter reported one yellow flag. Damens interrupt load splits into two buckets: stuff that is worth his time and stuff that is a complete waste of someone with his brains time. His judgment: he is fine right now, but if he is still carrying that percentage in six months, I do not think he will be fine. So it is figuring out how we get stupid off of Damens plate. But that is it. That was the only significant takeaway for me of a change that I need to ensure happens. And it does not have to happen today. It is just, it is a migration. When Justin floated hiring college students, Peter declined the shape while keeping the door open: I do not want to bring in three college students just because, but if you can stare at something and go, one relatively smart kid could hold the reins on these things and free Damen up, yeah, I am happy to have that conversation - I am going to want to have a conversation in a concrete manner around what you want this person or persons doing. He tested the AI substitute first and rejected it for a specific reason: can AI do the stupid work in front of Damen, and when Justin said that is what he uses it for, Peter pushed back - that is what he uses it for, but it is still him driving it, somebody has still got to drive it.
People: Justin Haynes, Damen Knight, Joseph
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Give the Fuzzball engineering team the Arcee credit ahead of Bjorn, in writing, in their own channel - then cross-post it to department heads so the framing is on the record
Aug 11, 2026 · people · medium92% confidence
Arcee closed on Aug 6 - the first major Fuzzball deal, to an AI lab that will run a model training run on the product. On Aug 7 Peter posted a note to #fuzzball that opened by naming and then subordinating the commercial credit: Bjorn pounds his chest about getting the deal across the line (and he earned that - he was hounding them daily). But you are the reason there was a deal to close. They did not buy a pitch. They bought Fuzzball. Everyone here understands that, and I want to make sure you hear it from me directly. He acknowledged the cost - I know about the long nights and weekends that went into making that happen. Thank you. It is not lost on me - and then added three forward statements: the standard is now understood so this gets easier from here, Arcee is the first of these and it is the worst Fuzzball deployment that is ever going to happen, a reference customer changes the conversations we get to have with the next AI lab and with investors, and this team has changed gears and is holding the pace, which is the hard part. He then reposted the whole message into #department-heads with the framing just so you all have visibility into what I am telling the Fuzzball engineering org. He had told Chris Wolford in their 1:1 that morning that Bjorn will pat himself on the back for getting the deal across the line, and yeah, he was hounding them daily, but your team did the work - and tagged Mini-Me in the same breath to remind him to send it that evening.
People: Chris Wolford, Bjorn Hovland
Crown Andrew owner of NARF with real authority and an explicit cannot-wait instruction - accepting the recommendation while rejecting its stated rationale out loud
Aug 11, 2026 · people · medium88% confidence
The programs previous steward produced an assessment of why NARF had not moved forward during his absence, with recommendations. Peter read it and took the main one - hey, Crown Andrew is king of NARF, I am fine with that - but named his objection to the logic in the same breath: the one problem I have with it is it is Crown Andrew is king of NARF, in part because Andrew has not moved NARF forward. I have trouble with that linkage. But whatever, I can get over it. He then converted the recommendation into a delegation instruction for Justin with three distinct components: You need to tell Andrew he has to own this thing. And run it like he owns it. He has got the authority to do what he wants with it. He cannot wait on the previous steward. The last clause was the operative one - it pre-emptively removes the dependency that had produced the stall, rather than waiting to see whether it recurs. He linked it explicitly to the stewards impending step-back from day-to-day delivery. Three days later the org-wide announcement named the handover of NARF stewardship to Andrew and Nathan as a fact.
People: Justin Haynes, Andrew de Wergifosse, Nathan Blackham
Proceed with the Patrick Culp offer as US-only and say absolutely nothing about the future - if we lose him, we lose him
Aug 11, 2026 · people · medium88% confidence
Nathan raised that Patrick Culp intends to relocate to Japan with no firm date, and Brie asked whether to proceed and how to shape the offer. Nathan proposed telling him relocation is not something we would be open to in the short term and would have to be re-evaluated. Peter judged that about 80 percent correct and cut the remaining 20 percent hard: I would not make any future looking statements, even something - I would not make any future looking statements, period. We just do not know what is going to happen. Even in the short term, we do not know what is going to happen. What he authorized instead was a statement of present fact framed against Patricks own Amazon background: unlike Amazon, unlike Apple, unlike Google, we do not have a Japan entity right now, so there is no Japan CIQ to move you to. It is true that we have people working in Japan right now - they do not actually work for CIQ. And I would leave it at that. No more than that. He gave one reason for today - today I would not support moving an engineer to Japan because they do not work for CIQ and because the hiring policies make it prohibitively difficult - and then stopped. He accepted the cost out loud: and if we lose him, we lose him. But also, as long as he is willing to hear this is what is true today, and he is willing to sign on to it, I am happy backing it. Nathan and Brie agreed to have the conversation before writing the offer, with the US number known internally but not presented.
People: Nathan Blackham, Brianne Clasen, Mariah Rippee, Patrick Culp
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Mondays session with the Linux org is universally positive - period, full stop - and any fix-things conversation goes to a separate meeting
Jul 30, 2026 · people · medium78% confidence
Gregs company-wide 1:1s surfaced that the Linux organization - Nathans and Justins teams together - is measurably less optimistic about the future of the company than the rest of CIQ. Not massively unoptimistic, but a clear differential. Peter checked the instrument before trusting it: he watched a couple of recordings of Gregs 1:1s just to make sure that he was not leading the witness and asking the question the same way in all of them, and judged he was doing a pretty good job of it. His response is a Monday session with Nathans team, and he set a hard constraint on its contents. Content: state the finding transparently to the team, then walk them through what he is seeing in the Middle East from his second trip and from the Axiom Space meetings - we are seeing a massive uptick in our ability to do business - then walk them through what dealing with Google over the last week and a half has been like, explicitly attributing his own ability to do it to their groundwork: I got to do that because of the work that your team has done, laying the groundwork, and I want them to hear that, understand it, I want to thank them for it. Constraint: It should be just a universally positive meeting with your team on Monday. Period. Full stop. And I really want it to stay focused on being a universally positive meeting. If there are places where we want to talk about fixing things or tweaking things, that can be another meeting. But I do not want to muddy the message at all. He also gave Nathan the entire rationale in advance rather than staging it - I will say all of this to them, super transparently.
People: Nathan Blackham, Greg Kurtzer, Justin Haynes
The engineering re-leveling lands as a conversation with each direct report, not a directive - and Wallaces org is over-titled but not over-paid
Jul 30, 2026 · people · medium80% confidence
Peter settled how the engineering leveling and compensation review will be delivered. The artifact is a spreadsheet comparing each orgs leveling and compensation against all of engineering, and he will walk it through individually with each direct report next week. He pre-emptively stripped it of authority in both 1:1s where it came up. To Ryan: it is going to be the spreadsheet I am putting together is the beginning of a conversation with each of my direct reports to say, here is how your org is structured from a leveling perspective, here is how all of engineering is structured, here is how your org is compensated, here is how all of engineering is compensated. I am not going to shove it down your throat. To Steve, twice: it is not something I am going to force down your throat or anybody else throat, it is the beginning of a conversation, that is all it is - and I will get it in front of you sometime next week, but it is for a conversation, not for this is what I am doing to your team exercise. He also delivered the specific diagnosis for Wallaces org directly to Steve: your team has titles that are far above the rest of the organization, so there is going to be some leveling reset that ends up impacting your team - but from a comp perspective your team is not overly compensated, in fact they may be low in some places, so I think you are going to have a fine story to tell. To Ryan he was blunter about the same finding: the number of directors we have across Wallaces org is just stupid, and it does not fit what I am doing everywhere else in engineering. He deliberately left the remedy open - we could change it by making more people VPs, we could strip away VP titles, we could do a lot of different things to level it - and named Mariah as involved with probably Bjorn a bit. He deferred the Steve walkthrough to Monday because he was slammed both days.
People: Steve Wallace, Ryan Smith, Mariah Rippee, Bjorn Hovland, Nathan Blackham
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Nathans user-space recs are the highest-priority reqs in the company - told him to ask Brie directly whether they are her top priority and escalate to a three-way if the answer is no
Jul 30, 2026 · people · high92% confidence
Nathan said his biggest focus is hiring, that Brie had not moved anything on the Linux user-space side while he was away for two weeks, and that he would push her hard and dedicate his own time to it. Peter escalated the framing rather than the complaint: You should also be really comfortable asking Brie, hey, are my recs your highest priority? I am really curious what she would say. I hope she says yes. If she says no, it is probably worth a conversation with you, me, Brie, and whoever else rec she thinks is a higher priority. Then, unprompted: Because I think your recs are the highest priority in the company right now. Nathan has five open recs - three user space, two kernel. Nathan also floated an October/November Linux offsite for his team and Justins, and Peter tied its value to how much of the hiring is done by then.
People: Nathan Blackham, Brie, Justin Haynes
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Run a Monday state-of-the-Linux storytelling session on pipeline, and have Baek carry the same rah-rah into the all-hands
Jul 29, 2026 · people · medium75% confidence
Acting on a morale signal that surfaced in Gregs round of one-on-ones, Peter committed to sitting down with the Linux org on Monday to walk them through what he is seeing in the Middle East and with Google. He framed it explicitly as storytelling and cheerleader rah-rah about why he feels so bullish, not as a status update, and asked Chris Baek to sprinkle a little bit of the same into the upcoming company all-hands. He gave the diagnosis comparatively - the Linux org is meh on our future while Fuzzball is gangbusters and Ryans org is gangbusters, and there is no reason for Linux to be less positive about our future than everybody else - and bounded the response with it is not a risk right now. Sarah had already blocked Monday for the session.
People: Chris Baek, Greg Kurtzer, Sarah Almaraz, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
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Yes to anointing Andrew NARF tech lead - but Max confers it, so it does not set a precedent that the CTO blesses tech leads
Jul 27, 2026 · people · medium74% confidence
Max proposed formally naming Andrew tech leader for NARF with full review and merge authority. Peter interrogated why Andrew could not simply claim it, and Max explained Andrew is afraid of stepping on Maxs toes and needs to be told it is his ballgame. Peter approved - we will say yes to this - while stating plainly that he does not personally believe in the anointed tech lead model. He then separated the approval from the ritual: on learning Max could confer the title himself, Peter routed the naming to Max specifically so the org would not learn that authority flows from a CTO blessing. Max will speak to Andrew before their Thursday 1:1.
People: Max Spevack, Andrew, Nathan Blackham
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Bring Ryan to SKO (Aug 19-21, LA) - make the ask on his behalf and let him choose his own duration
Jul 24, 2026 · people · low88% confidence
In the 7/23 Ryan 1:1 Peter learned nobody had asked Ryan about the sales kickoff. He decided support should be represented, said he would take it to Chris Baek himself, and explicitly refused to dictate how long Ryan should attend - I am going to turn it around, I am going to support whatever you want. He called Baek the same evening and confirmed back to Ryan an hour later that Baek was on board. Peter himself attends only Thursday the 20th.
People: Ryan Smith, Chris Baek, Lindsay Aamodt, Hope Lynch, Sarah Almaraz