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Ev Williams
Ev Williams

Dec 9, 2021

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1 min read

Any engineer who has spent years on a complex application knows that you always have a layering challenge. If you pick too low a layer to build on, you end up having to recreate a lot of pre-existing functionality that is not fundamental to your product mission. But if you pick too high a layer, you end up constantly struggling to get it to behave or evolve the way you want; it’s like trying to paint a portrait with a 4 foot paintbrush. 99 out of 100 engineers would prefer to err on the side of picking too low a layer. Of course, idea…

Yuck, Office HTML
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Terry Crowley

What layer to work at is a question that applies at the engineering, company, and career levels.

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CEO of Medium, partner at Obvious Ventures, co-founder of Twitter, aspiring motivational speaker 🤸‍♂️

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Ev Williams

Ev Williams

CEO of Medium, partner at Obvious Ventures, co-founder of Twitter, aspiring motivational speaker 🤸‍♂️

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