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Management Values I Didn’t Expect to Learn
Plus solar-powered data centers... in space?
Ted Goas
October 08, 2025
🔖 What I’ve been reading
I wrote something. I’ve been a design manager since 2022. Like many others in this role, I’ve been slowly shaping and reshaping my management values.
I was an individual contributor (IC) for over 20 years before moving into management. So I’m familiar with ICs, how they think, and what sorts of things they think about. Things like craft, product quality, three-month timelines, career development, and recognition.
Now that I’ve been in management for a while, I also see how leadership thinks too. They’re thinking about strategy, year-long roadmaps, revenue, and the overall health of the organization.
I have a foot in both worlds. I can help ICs think a little more strategically, and I can help leaders stay closer to the work. Whether or not “manager” is in my title, I try to be that bridge, and to help everyone around me get just a little bit better.
The article goes into more detail, but here’s the outline:
It All Starts With Team Health
Player Coach
Delegation is a Sliding Scale
Avoid Becoming a Bottleneck
Clearing the Path
Just Enough Process
The Manager’s Quiet Kind of High
Don’t Forget Who You Are
With AI automating parts of our design responsibilities, lots of folks have been writing about how “taste” is the thing that sets us apart. This article is one of them, but it’s one of the best ones I’ve read. A nice, short read.
🧶 Stray Links
David Hoang’s Blending IC and Management introduces a new model where managers take on more of a player-coach role and setting up spaces for people and AI to work together.
Hero images are dead. A click-bait-y title, but I love the examples of what some well-known brands are doing with their homepages these days.
Jeff Bezos believes there will be solar-powered data centers in space within 20 years.
Wild stat: Since the 2016 Paris Agreement, China has driven about 90% of global emissions growth. Worldwide emissions likely would have already peaked by now if because Beijing didn’t keep burning coal and building factories. But that’s starting to change. China has been building a clean energy system (mostly wind and solar), and exporting clean technology worldwide. It’s not Washington or Brussels making a difference, it’s China.
Offline Kids is a wonderful collection of activities for kids that don’t involve screens. Love the site design too!
🏛️ From the Archives
Julie Zhuo argues that AI is killing the plan-heavy product playbook. The future is tiny teams, code-first prototypes, and ruthless pruning. The future favors curious generalists.
❝One Good Quote
Complexity increases because adding is easy and removing is dangerous. Because everything that already exists has a champion. That clause in the tax code, that step in the process, that feature in the product ... someone fought for it, and they'll fight you if you try to remove it. But this is the opportunity. While everyone else adds mass to the system, removing it creates an unfair advantage. The lighter you are, the faster you move. Removing what shouldn't exist creates more value than any addition could.
Thanks for reading ✌️
Ted (@tedgoas)