Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth

Stated preferences vs. revealed preferences: When News Feed launched, everyone said they hated it — and immediately doubled their usage. That cognitive dissonance told us to stick with it.

The lesson from News Feed isn't 'don't listen to your customers.' It's knowing when you've done the thing wrong vs. when the thing itself is right but the details need fixing. That distinction is an art — and you don't always have usage data to help.

When responding to disagreement, replace defensiveness with curiosity: 'Fascinating — you have to tell me more about why you think that.' People feel genuine curiosity and lean in. It tears down walls between points of view.

Your worst behavior always comes out under identity threat. When a core part of how you see yourself feels in question, you fight to defend it — because reconceptualizing who you are is so expensive your brain refuses.

The all the failures that I regret, that I take seriously, are personal failures where I affected a person in a way that I'm not proud of. Almost every product failure I learned from. The personal ones are the ones that stick.

Nobody wants you to be more awesome than your manager does — because when you're amazing, your manager's life gets easier. They are rooting for you. I promise you that.

Most people think their job is to do it themselves. It's not. Your job is to get it done — done well, done right. The tools you need to do that often live with your manager. Use them.

You cannot not communicate. Silence is communication. The absence of check-ins has meaning. Org charts are communication devices. Everything — your face, your clothes, your body — is always communicating something.