People Decisions
17+ recent decisions
Sensitive Decision
Sensitive Decision
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
Sensitive Decision
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
Sensitive Decision
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
Sensitive Decision
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
Sensitive Decision
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
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
Sensitive Decision
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
Sensitive Decision
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