People Decisions
50+ recent decisions
Make it up to Skip for working the GDC fire from a family vacation - money is a given, pair it with time away or something better, and ask him directly
Nov 3, 2026 · people · low70% confidence
Skip worked the Google kernel deadline from Disneyland during a family trip. Peter asked Nathan and Justin what CIQ is doing for him: money is a given, but asked whether it should be paired with more time away or something else, and proposed simply asking Skip what would make the rest of the trip more magical.
People: Skip, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
India location does not disqualify the kernel-security candidate Greg referred - take it seriously, Nathan runs the conversation
Nov 3, 2026 · people · low72% confidence
Greg referred a kernel-security engineer in India (Sachin Kumar) who reached out via X, said location is not a problem, and asked to be kept in the loop. Peter said CIQ will look at the candidate seriously, that nothing prevents having someone in India - the timezone cost was already accepted with Pratham - and routed the conversation to Nathan. HR confirmed Nathan would meet the candidate the following week.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Nathan Blackham, Sachin Kumar
Award the Linux and RAT teams for the CVE onslaught - deliberately sequenced: Greg thanks them publicly, Peter praises them at the Wednesday on-site, award announced then; Greg disowns Ginux-as-replacement
Nov 3, 2026 · people · medium78% confidence
Greg asked whether Peter had reservations about an award for everyone on the Linux and RAT teams dealing with the CVE onslaught. Peter said none and asked for it to be intentional: Greg posts publicly and thanks them (as agreed earlier), Peter praises them in person Wednesday at the Reno on-site, and the award is announced at that point. In the same thread he asked Greg to tell Arthur Tyde that Ginux is not the solution and does not compete with the RLC kernel, because the joke fed the team concern that Greg sees Ginux as a replacement. Greg then publicly called Ginux a research project that will never compete with Linux.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Arthur Tyde, Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
Use an existing open support req for an Arabic-speaking Middle East support hire - a new role, not a like-for-like backfill
Oct 30, 2026 · people · low70% confidence
On 10/23 in #human-resources Greg questioned a support hire. Peter approved it (good because Bjorn is good), told HR it is fine to use the existing open req, and told Greg the hire will not do the previous holder job: he will support the Middle East deployments first and foremost, as Arabic-speaking support.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland
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Decline the program-manager req for Wolford org - if CIQ spends a head there, make it an engineer
Oct 23, 2026 · people · medium66% confidence
Chris Baek read Wolford as underwater because confidence numbers had gone a week without updates and planned to open a program-manager req for everything in Wolford world. In the 10/22 Wolford 1:1 Peter disagreed: Wolford is busy but surviving; and if CIQ spends headcount in Wolford world it should not be glorified secretarial work Wolford has to negotiate with - Peter would rather get him an engineer. Peter checked the view with Wolford and offered to reverse it if Wolford wanted the PM, and told him the optics problem is stale confidence numbers, which he can remove by keeping them current.
People: Chris Baek, Chris Wolford
Start the long-tail work to position Tim Pepper for an RESF executive role, as the fallback if Lee does not grow into it
Oct 23, 2026 · people · medium70% confidence
In the 10/22 C-suite sync, after agreeing that the current RESF operations lead gets strategic coaching, Peter added a contingency and asked to start acting on it now: if Lee does not work out, Tim Pepper should already be positioned for an RESF leadership role, including within the RESF. That means building relationships now and working out whether Tim should be a CIQ employee. Peter explicitly framed it as not a change right now. Bjorn pushed for an elevated Tim role regardless; Greg was nervous about the employee question either way and proposed Lee bring Tim in as president.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland, Tim Pepper, Lee
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Nathan management layer - stop waiting on promote-from-within; Peter coaches a six-month candidate weekly; Nathan moves out of frontline management
Oct 16, 2026 · people · high76% confidence
In the 10/13 1:1 Peter moved Nathan management-layer plan from eventual promote-from-within to now. He did not see how promote-from-within works at Nathan scale; if someone could be promoted in six months, Peter will start meeting with them weekly now and take on development load himself. Nathan job is defined as critical customer calls plus building systems that scale the team; any other frontline management gets worked out of his plate.
People: Nathan Blackham
Stop hiring junior engineers - hire domain experts with decades of experience and pair them with AI
Oct 2, 2026 · people · high60% confidence
Peter stated in the Brian/Brady sync that he is no longer hiring junior engineers. He hires domain experts with a couple of decades of experience and pairs them with AI, because the expert can judge whether an AI-built thing is architected, structured and backed up properly, and a new graduate cannot. Raised while explaining why Ryan citizen-developer team (smart, well-tooled, not software engineers) should not ship and maintain customer-facing tools.
People: Brian Dawson, Brady Dibble
Nathan next manager can be hired from outside if no internal candidate fits - and must have managed before, so Nathan never trains a first-time manager while learning to manage managers
Oct 2, 2026 · people · high65% confidence
Nathan has 16 reports heading to 20 with no manager headroom. Peter told Justin that one of the people Nathan hires into his five open roles must want to manage, have management experience, and be able to pick up about half the team. Internal promotion is preferred, but if none of the internal people can or want to manage, an external hire is fine. Peter does not want Nathan first manager-of-managers stretch paired with bringing up a first-time manager.
People: Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
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Promotion write-ups are forward-looking - the next role expectations plus proof points, not a record of past work
Sep 25, 2026 · people · medium72% confidence
Peter set the standard for promotion write-ups in engineering: describe what the next role requires (e.g. a Principal is a force multiplier) and use past accomplishments only as proof points that the person can meet those expectations; appreciation goes in a separate good-job, not the justification. Applied immediately: a pending Principal write-up is rewritten because the role change is large; a pending Senior write-up stands because the step is small. Nathan drafts 3 to 4 bullets of expectations per level to align with Peter.
People: Nathan Blackham
Build a prototyping culture in engineering - Peter shields engineers from product pushback and stops the we-asked-for-XYZ-got-ABC framing
Sep 25, 2026 · people · high80% confidence
Peter told Nathan he wants engineers originating prototypes rather than waiting for product requirements - Greg should not be the first person carving out four hours to build a desktop. Commitments: Peter stands between engineers and product pushback and will correct the recurring Bjorn framing that product asked for XYZ and engineering built ABC; at the Reno onsite Peter will ask engineers what he has set up that gets in the way, taking the blame himself; possibly a raise-a-hand mechanism for anyone to take a day to build something. Engineering still delivers what it agrees with product - this is culture on top of that contract. Peter opened it with Bjorn as a peer conversation the same day.
People: Nathan Blackham, Bjorn Hovland
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Set the Sr. Application Engineer comp anchor on internal team parity, not on the candidate Amazon total comp
Sep 23, 2026 · people · medium84% confidence
Justin Haynes brought Peter a compensation question on Kristin Cox, a Sr. Application Engineer candidate coming from Amazon, whom Peter had interviewed four days earlier. Peter ruled the Amazon number out entirely - nowhere near that, you are not going to compete with Amazon on TC - and gave Justin the reference class to use instead: look at the rest of your team for the barometer. He named what CIQ is actually selling in place of cash, saying she comes to a startup for the moonshot. He gave Justin the barometer rather than a number, leaving the offer construction with him.
People: Justin Haynes, Brianne Clasen
Refuse to ink Oleg contract now for a January start - treat his delay as a free search window and leave the call with Nathan
Sep 23, 2026 · people · medium84% confidence
Oleg came back through HR saying that if he takes the job he would start in January. Peter told Nathan not to sign anything now. His instruction: tell him we like you, you seem to like us, let us talk in January - and use the intervening two to three months to see whether there is somebody Nathan would rather put in that chair. If there is not, bring Oleg on. Peter framed the January constraint explicitly as a gift rather than an obstacle. Underneath the timing call he made a manageability judgment - that Oleg would be a royal pain to manage - citing that Oleg named his own salary number, CIQ hit it, and he then complained that CIQ was doing the bare minimum. Oleg had performed strongly on the technical panel.
People: Nathan Blackham, Ryan Smith, Brian Dawson
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Hand the Dawson document-noise complaint back to Justin with an instruction - be done with subtle
Sep 11, 2026 · people · low74% confidence
Justin DMed Peter that Brian Dawson AI-generated document output is an increasing source of wasted time for more people than just him, attached the RLC Pro HPC specification document and a related Jira bug, and closed with no direct ask for you, just awareness. Peter declined that framing, asked whether working it from my side meant being very clear with Brian, got Justin admission that it meant being polite and probably too subtle, and answered - be done with subtle.
People: Justin Haynes, Brian Dawson
Slot Karl under Wallace rather than take a new direct report - with a stated escape hatch and a three-month contract extension
Sep 11, 2026 · people · medium84% confidence
Peter told Karl the HR paperwork was signed and moving, encouraged him to meet Steve Wallace whenever he wants, and confirmed the intent for Karl to report to Wallace. He named his own constraint plainly - he does not want to add direct reports right now - and in the same breath acknowledged Karl will be a different animal from anything else under Wallace, told him to reach out directly if he is not getting what he needs, and pre-committed to changing the arrangement if the fit does not work. In parallel over Slack, Peter asked Chris Baek who to talk to about extending Karl contract by three months and offered to do it himself. Karl is evaluating one other option and will confirm Monday morning.
People: Karl Lowenbjer, Steve Wallace, Chris Baek
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Put the lost-candidate accountability on Justin, and require him to make Jesse Hines say no a second time
Sep 11, 2026 · people · medium88% confidence
Jesse Hines, the top candidate for the Senior Application Engineer role, accepted another offer before CIQ made one. In the 1:1, Justin asked for the miss to land on him so he could take learnings from it, and Peter answered Learn from it. That is good. Yes, please. Period. Full stop. Peter then directed Justin to email Jesse directly - congratulate him, say CIQ still wants him, and ask what it would take - while telling Justin the odds were about 3 percent. In the Mariah sync an hour later, Peter confirmed independently that the responsible party in this situation is Justin, and agreed with Bree that CIQ waited too long because Justin wanted Kristen so badly.
People: Justin Haynes, Mariah Rippee, Brianne Clasen
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Delegate level placement to each direct report - Peter owns the scheme, managers own who sits where
Sep 11, 2026 · people · high80% confidence
In the Sept 10 weekly 1:1 with Steve Wallace, Peter walked through the new four-level engineering scheme and explicitly refused to place anyone. He told Steve he is not going to put people places - Steve is - and that he will not do that out from under him. The map Peter shared was framed as a diagnostic rather than a proposal: it represents his take on how people are actually functioning today, shown only to his direct reports, and is not a suggestion that this is what CIQ should do. He attached a condition to the delegation: if Steve places someone at principal, Peter will want Steve to demand that they perform as a principal, autonomously, driving change across the entire organization proactively. Peter said the one thing he would force is the move to a much simpler level structure, and that beyond that Steve owns his org and Peter will not define it for him or for anybody else. He offered to be a partner in the conversation but not the decider, set no deadline, and said it is not something he is attacking with urgency. He also noted he is not cutting comp for anyone slotted lower, with one exception he flagged for a separate conversation if that person is slotted down.
People: Steve Wallace, Nathan Blackham
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