Mariesa

I'm dead 🤣 This is the zeitgeist of our times, y'all. youtu.be/3TNpOD6bov8

“One disappointment is forgivable; a pattern is what erodes trust.” Great article from Leigh Christopher, PhD leighchristopher.substack.com/p/trust-in-a...

AI coding agents generate more code, but not more software. arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/a...

Recruiter: "You say you practice Lean Agile, but you're also talking about the double diamond, so which one do you use?" Me: 🙄🤔😪🤯 (Thinking: where do I start? I could spend the whole 30 min on how they're different & also work well together, but I don't have time. Ugh.) "They're the same thing."

An oldie but a goodie from @erikahall.bsky.social came up in a design group conversation today. Worth a re-watch and is pretty damn evergreen content, if I do say so. conffab.com/presentation...

Part two of the series is live: The Viewpoint That Wouldn’t Move. On the halo effect, belief perseverance, and what it actually costs a team when a leader would rather be certain than right. wildenough.substack.com/p/the-viewpo...

art 2 of a 3-part series I’ve been writing on “learning to see” in leadership comes out tomorrow! I’ll touch on the halo effect, belief perseverance, and what it actually costs a team when a leader would rather be certain than right. Follow along: wildenough.substack.com

The sad and completely unnecessary state of USWDS fedscoop.com/websites-jeo...

VCs: Look past the pitch & stop falling for narcissistic charm. Dark traits drive pitch performance, not company success. Instead: conduct 360-degree reference checks with former subordinates and peers. Not just references provided by the founder! True character shows in how they treat staff.

Images not loading on here? 🎶let’s do the vibe code agai-n🎶

The thing that I’ve continuously failed to successfully communicate is an unbridled focus on design system adoption is a one way trip to devolving into a UI library. A design system isn’t a design system if every single edge case/preference is covered. It’s exclusionary by design.

The "he's off his rocker, but genius" for start-up founders is dead. 💀 ⛔️ Data confirms Dark Triad traits offer ZERO cognitive or intelligence advantages. ☣️ Toxic behaviors in leadership aren't a byproduct of elite intellect; it’s an abusive pathology that damages companies & ppl inside them.

Fascinating 😳😳 "Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that AI produced less formal and less complex workplace writing when prompts contained language patterns more commonly associated with women." www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-writ...

Also guilty of many of these myself. Great insights by @johncutle.fish ✨️ cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-442-10...

While historical tech culture romanticized the "brilliant but difficult" leader, data reveals the true long-term cost: 📉 Accelerated employee burnout and high turnover 🚫 Eradication of psychological safety, killing actual innovation 💸 Severe financial and reputational risk

Great leadership isn't about being a tyrant with a pattern of letting people go after giving them the silent treatment. We need to stop mistreating people in the name of "disruption" and "impact" and other made-up excuses. #OrganizationalPsychology #WorkplaceCulture #MentalHealth

⛔️ MYTH: Toxic, hyper-aggressive tech founders are just "passionate geniuses" whose results justify their behavior. 😳 REALITY: Decades of meta-analytic research show traits like psychopathy, Machiavellianism, & narcissism don't drive sustained success, they destroy companies from the inside.

Art work in progress 🧵🕊🪡 Lately I've been bringing embroidery thread into my drawings. Thread is all about connection; it ties things together, mends, holds. But it's also a line that can fray, snap, or leave gaps between the stitches.

In my figure painting class recently, our teacher told the class, "Art is really about learning to see, not about how you're laying paint down on paper." The line has stuck with me for weeks because it's not about art. It's about everything else too. wildenough.substack.com/p/youre-not-...

As if it wasn't clear before, the tech industry has officially lost both it's mind AND it's soul.

The real singularity is using AI to accelerate the productivity of the rework caused by the last time you used AI

All this engineering and all this money and both tech and software just get less and less interesting by the day. All this energy; so little imagination.

Yesterday I finally finished The Small and The Mighty by Sharon MacMahon. Probably one of the best books I've read in a decade. Not only is it a master history lesson but in a more meta way, it's a master class in storytelling too. It made me 🤣, 😭, and 🤯 over and over. Highly recommend ❤️🤍💙

The manager’s job is to see who holds a surplus of given kinds of capital, who has a gap, and how to move the capital in question between them. Creativity and commerce were never opposites to balance. They are instruments to play together. hbr.org/2026/08/the-...

Over the last two weeks, I found out (after the fact) that meetings I attended 1:1 were transcribed & recorded without my consent. Is this what we've come to now as a society? We're just surveillancing each other w/o permission and its just normalized behavior under the guise of 'note taking'? 🤬

The word "toxic" is used so often it's worth being specific. Research consistently identifies three drivers of workplace toxicity: poor leadership, dysfunctional social norms, and poorly designed roles. In short, the experience of chronic emotional unsafety. www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-em...

Unpopular opinion, but a peaceful life is built through confrontation of issues, not avoidance. Conflict is inevitable but it doesn't have to be invec​tive. People who insist on consistently avoiding tough conversations are willfully embracing toxicity and should be avoided at all costs.

Just enjoying a nice afternoon on Waikiki Beach, sketching & people watching. No Sunday Scaries here. 🌊🖊🥥🌴

Successful designers, he proposed, “reshape not just objects, but also the culture and institutions that create them.” And so, if leadership is a design problem, the goal is to create the conditions for continually new and productive outcomes. news.mit.edu/2026/reframi...

there doesn't have to be an end goal you can just make useful things for people who want to use them, and live a happy life

As a leader, your number one job is to create trust. You can raise millions, vibe code anything you dream up, land huge contracts with whales, and hire the fastest most AI fluent employees in the market. But if your team doesn't trust you, you can guarantee it'll all ultimately go to shit.

Still laughing about this

Nailed it. Minus that the background would be better if it was SF and not NYC... ☠️

If you can’t clearly articulate your understanding of the people who use a product, the problem its trying to address, and the outcome you’re trying to achieve before building, it doesn’t matter what role you’re in, you don’t belong behind the wheel of the maker-machine. medium.com/@MKLenz/what...

What Being a Chief of Staff Taught Me About Being a Designer Finding space to breathe again. I return to my desk, newly assembled after making the almost 3,000 mile journey across the Pacific Ocean from Washington State to Hawaii. The space is new but the tools are so familiar. I look around and…

While many executives publicly endorse psychological safety, Norman says consistent implementation remains elusive because leaders often underestimate the level of self-awareness required. www.forbes.com/sites/rodger...

Allyship means advocating for someone by listening to them, not by making decisions for them behind closed doors. www.forbes.com/sites/juliek...

Love the idea of archetypes vs dedicated title & rigid responsibilities list. This is so flexible and inclusive - and in a moment when the lines of so many of our jobs in tech are blurring together, a bit more of this mindset is exactly what we need. www.inc.com/ashley-couto...

The study showed that when your people feel like they are blocked from having impact — when their purpose cannot be achieved — they will “withdraw effort, speak less positively about their organizations, and are far more likely to quit.” www.inc.com/peter-econom...

“It’s tough being a manager,” Noor said. “You talk to people all the time and you think what you get is the whole story – but you never get the whole story on anything. Never assume you’ve gotten the whole story.” today.duke.edu/2026/06/why-...