hire for strength rather than lack of weakness. - Ben Horowitz

In life, everybody faces choices between doing what’s popular, easy, and wrong versus doing what’s lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified a thousandfold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.

In times of peace, one has time to care about things like appropriateness, long-term cultural consequences, and people’s feelings. In times of war, killing the enemy and getting the troops safely home is all that counts.

Trust me.” That’s what a CEO says every day to her employees. Trust me: This will be a good company. Trust me: This will be good for your career. Trust me: This will be good for your life. A layoff breaks that trust. In order to rebuild trust, you have to come clean.