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Discussion on: I'm the CTO of Meetup, ask me anything!

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Dan Lebrero

What is the key lesson that you have learned?

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Yvette Pasqua

Wow, THE key lesson. I've learned so, so many lessons that it's hard to pick just one. In fact, I think the only way companies are successful is if they are constantly learning lessons from their failures. I think that's so important that the below is how I look at everything we do at Meetup and especially within the engineering team:

Build -> Fail -> Learn (repeat)

I think it's really important to build and fail fast, learn quickly from your failures, and directly apply it to your next iteration. That can apply to software development, organizational development, management techniques, whatever. But the key is to focus on failures as your most precious times of learning new things and applying them. Conversely, if you think of failures as times to point the finger or blame, you'll never move quickly and innovate as a company.

That all said, the key lesson...well, how about this -- speak up! Especially as an engineer, speak up about what you see, your ideas to improve things, your thoughts around how to simplify things, reduce technical debt, design a feature a better way, whatever. I've seen 1000 times now that engineers who speak up (within the right company cultures, of course) have 1000 times the impact than engineers who don't. Trust your experience, your instincts, you teammates and speak up!

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Dan Lebrero

Thanks a lot for all the answers!