People Decisions
28+ recent decisions
Louis — No Acting Role for Next Couple Years
Mar 13, 2026 · people · high95% confidence
Decided Louis cannot have any acting role in RESF for the next couple of years. Technical contributions may be allowed later by whoever runs RESF. Priority is not muddying the transition message.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Louis, Mustafa Gezen
Excluded Brian from RESF Pre-Transition Planning
Mar 13, 2026 · people · high85% confidence
Decided to exclude Brian from pre-transition RESF planning based on synthesizing risk signals from multiple sources. Brian's role will be carefully managed post-transition.
People: Ryan Smith, Greg Kurtzer, Brian
Sensitive Decision
Zorina LOA — Grant Extended PTO to Retain
Mar 10, 2026 · people · medium77% confidence
Decided to grant Zorina 5 weeks of PTO (May 4–June 5) if her FMLA application is denied. FMLA application goes first for compliance, but the fallback is already decided. Remote work from Bulgaria for 2 weeks is also approved pending IT security check. Delegated execution details to Justin and Mariah.
People: Zorina, Justin Haynes, Mariah Rippee
Sensitive Decision
Sensitive Decision
Westley Transition — 70% Fuzzball, Maintain Depot Support
Mar 6, 2026 · people · medium82% confidence
Westley will start transitioning to Fuzzball at 70% allocation while maintaining depot support work for Justin team until fit is confirmed.
People: Westley, Justin Haynes, Chris Wolford
Damen — Action-First Title Policy
Mar 5, 2026 · people · medium76% confidence
Set clear position on Damen's request for an AI ownership title: titles are granted AFTER impact is proven, not as a motivator to drive it. Directed that Damen should escalate issues with other teams publicly rather than absorbing work and complaining privately. Asked Justin to get Damen to define specifically what 'owning AI' means and what title he wants.
People: Justin Haynes, Damen
Michael — Create-a-Hole Performance Framework
Mar 5, 2026 · people · critical85% confidence
Coached Justin that the goal with Michael's performance management is to create a 'hole' for a high performer (like Ben), NOT to raise Michael to 'barely acceptable.' Framed 'barely acceptable' as worse than low performance — a barely-acceptable employee is hard to remove, creating permanent drag. Told Justin to leverage startup advantage (no HR handcuffs) to set higher bar, and shift mindset from 'fair for Michael' to 'fair for the team.'
People: Justin Haynes, Michael, Ben
Ascender Developer Hiring — Network-First Sourcing Strategy
Mar 5, 2026 · people · high78% confidence
Decided to hire a dedicated AWX developer for Peter's team to offload maintenance from Jimmy Conner, freeing him for strategic architecture, sales engineering, and customer engagement. Hiring strategy: Jimmy sources from AWX network first (leveraging dissatisfaction with project's shift to internal repos), Brianne as fallback. Compensation: culture-forward, candidates may accept $25-50K pay cut for culture/stock options, $100K+ gap is non-starter.
People: Jimmy Conner, Bjorn Hovland, Katie O'Malley, Brianne
Team Building Mandate — 6-Month Priority Over Features
Mar 4, 2026 · people · high91% confidence
Directed all engineering managers to prioritize team building over feature delivery for the next six months. Includes permission to swap out low performers, with Peter providing air cover for the risks involved.
People: Nathan Blackham, Ryan Smith, Max Spevack, Steve Wallace, Justin Haynes, Chris Wolford, Chris Baek, Brady Dibble
Coached Justin on Michael performance management with net-good framework
Feb 27, 2026 · people · high91% confidence
In Justin 1:1, directed Justin to deliver direct performance feedback to Michael next week with Andrew-level success metrics. Framed PIP as high-bar exercise to confirm exit decision. Differentiated Michael (low performer, manage out) from Brady (high potential, wrong role, coach/move). Used weeding the garden and Expedition 33 metaphors to help Justin reconcile empathy with accountability.
People: Justin Haynes, Michael, Brady
Shaped Ryan's H-1 strategic plan with specific direction
Feb 27, 2026 · people · medium62% confidence
Reviewed Ryan's H-1 plan and gave specific strategic direction: reframe team skill tracking to outcome metrics, loop Product into GTM translation validation, create simplified 4-page sales pitch deck, align with Max on Rocky Linux upstream strategy (pure RESF vs hybrid best-of-breed) before engaging community, and present AI-assisted goal-setting process at Engineering Weekly Sync.
People: Peter Nelson, Ryan Smith
Personnel action plan from effort/impact matrix review
Feb 26, 2026 · people · critical77% confidence
Conducted comprehensive effort vs. impact performance review of ~20 engineers across kernel and platform teams, resulting in specific personnel actions: underperformers on short improvement timelines or face replacement, one engineer to be replaced with a high-impact hire, one engineer requires direct performance conversation about ownership and visibility, one to be reassigned to simple packaging tasks.
People: Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes, Max Spevack
Approved retention check-in strategy for must-keep employee list
Feb 25, 2026 · people · medium64% confidence
Approved the must-keep employee list prepared by Mariah and Chris. Committed to personally leading retention check-ins with must-keep engineering employees. Bjorn leads check-ins for his org. Mariah and Chris excluded their own teams (already monitored closely).
People: Mariah Rippee, Chris Baek, Bjorn Hovland, Greg Kurtzer
Sensitive Decision
Escalated Ian Kaneshiro retention to CEO level
Feb 24, 2026 · people · high81% confidence
After learning Ian Kaneshiro (PIC team, reports to Chris Wolford) resigned to join an AI startup, Peter immediately directed a retention escalation: told Mariah to get Greg talking to Ian, told Greg to do anything to keep him. After learning Ian had already accepted and wouldn't go back on it, shifted to ensuring the door stays open for a future return.
People: Ian Kaneshiro, Chris Wolford, Greg Kurtzer, Mariah Rippee, Bjorn Hovland
Approve Jason Rodriguez performance exit path
Feb 20, 2026 · people · high58% confidence
Approved Nathan's plan to tell Jason Rodriguez he's 'not meeting expectations' and create an exit path. A 1-month exit plan is acceptable if Jason agrees. Performance gaps include missed deadlines (shim review for Rocky 9 late, Rocky 7 review pending) and unshippable code (large PR unlikely to pass review).
People: Nathan Blackham, Jason Rodriguez, Dieter, Peter Nelson
Override hiring freeze to hire Ben and Jamin for Linux engineering
Feb 20, 2026 · people · high71% confidence
Decided to bypass the company hiring freeze to bring on two key candidates: Ben (priority hire, competing with Anthropic offer) and Jamin (from Oracle, expensive but high-performing with strong ownership). Committed to sync with Mariah to clear headcount for both.
People: Nathan Blackham, Ben, Jamin, Mariah Rippee, Max Spevack
Sensitive Decision
Sensitive Decision
Directed Nathan to surface eng-product communication gaps
Feb 12, 2026 · people · medium78% confidence
After Department Heads meeting, spent 30 minutes coaching Nathan 1:1. Praised his handling of the meeting despite frustration. Directed Nathan and Justin to be proactively transparent with product, and specifically to surface instances where engineering communicates clearly but product claims ignorance.
People: Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes
Coached Max to assert authority more forcefully with engineering
Feb 11, 2026 · people · medium59% confidence
In DM with Max, Peter directed him to stop asking engineering and start telling them, with Peter CC'd for authority backing. Told Max to be willing to express disappointment publicly and to demand engineering show their work rather than just request it.
People: Max Spevack
Jason Rodriguez evaluation - clear deliverables, no guardrails
Jan 30, 2026 · people · high85% confidence
Rather than building guardrails around Jasons working style (works alone, doesnt communicate, delivers code that doesnt integrate), set clear deliverables with acceptance criteria and evaluate on results. If he cant deliver, move on. Do not coach around his limitations.
People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Jason Rodriguez
Nathan job redefined - build a team, not deliver outputs
Jan 30, 2026 · people · critical95% confidence
Nathan deliverable is a team that can adapt and learn, not technical outputs. Focus shifts from figure out how to deliver X with current team to build a team that can deliver what CIQ needs. This is fundamentally different from traditional engineering management.
People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Peter Nelson
Performance review redesign - define traits with observable behaviors
Jan 28, 2026 · people · medium72% confidence
Committed to drafting a proposal to fix the performance review system for the April/May cycle. The approach keeps existing traits but defines each with observable behaviors so managers and employees have shared understanding of what success looks like.
People: Mariah Rippee, Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland
Addressed Nathan tendency to shield his people from criticism
Jan 26, 2026 · people · high78% confidence
Identified and communicated to Max that Nathan pattern of shielding his people from criticism is counterproductive and puts them at risk rather than protecting them. Aligned with Max to give same message to Nathan that we dont have time for this.
People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Jason
Address Damen visibility/recognition gap through demos
Jan 23, 2026 · people · medium82% confidence
Damen will present at the Monday demo day (11 AM PST, on Bazel) to increase visibility. Peter will attend to show support. Peter committed to investigating and fixing the systemic visibility gap for all engineers, not just Damen specific case.
People: Damen Knight, Max Spevack, Peter Nelson