benkuhn.net
You should try contra dancing
A popular icebreaker in San Francisco these days is “How would you spend your life if AGI meant...
24th Apr 2026
A popular icebreaker in San Francisco these days is “How would you spend your life if AGI meant nobody needed to work?” For me, I think a surprisingly big part of the answer is a dorky-sounding kind of folk dance called contra dancing.
I started trying to answer that question by...
benkuhn.net
Advice for time management as a manager
This post was adapted from an internal doc I wrote at Wave.
Welcome to being a manager! Your...
1st Apr 2025
This post was adapted from an internal doc I wrote at Wave.
Welcome to being a manager! Your time-management problem just got a lot harder.
As an IC, you can often get away with a very simple time-management strategy:
Decide what your one most important thing is.
Work on it until...
benkuhn.net
How I've run major projects
My few most productive individual weeks at Anthropic have all been “crisis project management:”...
16th Mar 2025
My few most productive individual weeks at Anthropic have all been “crisis project management:” coordinating major, time-sensitive implementation or debugging efforts.
In a company like Anthropic, excellent project management is an extremely high-leverage skill, and not just...
benkuhn.net
Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly
This is an adaptation of an internal doc I wrote for Anthropic.
I’ve been noticing recently that...
13th Jul 2024
This is an adaptation of an internal doc I wrote for Anthropic.
I’ve been noticing recently that often, a big blocker to teams staying effective as they grow is trust.
“Alice doesn’t trust Bob” makes Alice sound like the bad guy, but it’s often completely appropriate for people...
benkuhn.net
How I build and run behavioral interviews
This is an adaptation of an internal doc I wrote for Wave.
I used to think that behavioral...
25th Feb 2024
This is an adaptation of an internal doc I wrote for Wave.
I used to think that behavioral interviews were basically useless, because it was too easy for candidates to bullshit them and too hard for me to tell what was a good answer. I’d end up grading every candidate as an...
benkuhn.net
Some mistakes I made as a new manager
This post was adapted from a “management roundtable” I gave at Anthropic.
I had an unusually hard...
23rd Apr 2023
This post was adapted from a “management roundtable” I gave at Anthropic.
I had an unusually hard time becoming a manager: I went back and forth three times before it stuck, mostly because I made lots of mistakes each time. Since then, as I had to grow my team and grow other...
benkuhn.net
Leaving Wave, joining Anthropic
Last Friday was my last day as CTO at Wave, capping an incredible ~8 years filled with more...
1st Feb 2023
Last Friday was my last day as CTO at Wave, capping an incredible ~8 years filled with more professional and personal growth, joy, and meaning than I could have hoped for.
This was the hardest decision I’ve made. I’m still just as excited about Wave’s mission and trajectory. And...
benkuhn.net
Staring into the abyss as a core life skill
Recently I’ve been thinking about how all my favorite people are great at a skill I’ve labeled in my...
22nd Dec 2022
Recently I’ve been thinking about how all my favorite people are great at a skill I’ve labeled in my head as “staring into the abyss.”1
Staring into the abyss means thinking reasonably about things that are uncomfortable to contemplate, like arguments against your religious...
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