1 min lesson
Slack questions are a signal, not a weakness
Use the lesson to respond to this: "Two hours into the paid onsite, you realize the brief is far vaguer than you assumed and you're unsure you're building the right thing. What do you do?" Keep the answer plain.
Step 1 of 2
The channel exists to mirror how the team actually works. Asking good, specific questions - and showing you acted on the answers - is exactly the behavior of someone who ships well in a flat org. Going dark for eight hours and surfacing the wrong thing is the failure mode, not asking for clarity.
- Behavior
- What you build
- Reads as a win
- A pointed bet that shows taste
- Reads as a flag
- The safest, most generic feature
- Behavior
- AI usage
- Reads as a win
- Drives hard, verifies, rejects bad output
- Reads as a flag
- Pastes raw model output without judgment
- Behavior
- Scoping
- Reads as a win
- Walking skeleton first, then hardens
- Reads as a flag
- Builds wide; nothing works end-to-end
- Behavior
- Presentation
- Reads as a win
- Tight demo; owns tradeoffs and cuts
- Reads as a flag
- “It mostly works,” with no clear story
| Behavior | Reads as a win | Reads as a flag |
|---|---|---|
| What you build | A pointed bet that shows taste | The safest, most generic feature |
| AI usage | Drives hard, verifies, rejects bad output | Pastes raw model output without judgment |
| Scoping | Walking skeleton first, then hardens | Builds wide; nothing works end-to-end |
| Presentation | Tight demo; owns tradeoffs and cuts | “It mostly works,” with no clear story |
Budget the day backwards from the demo. Decide the demo moment first, protect the final stretch for making it real and let that deadline discipline your scope. A working thin slice you can defend beats an ambitious half-build every time - and the presentation is where “what I'd do next” turns a finished slice into a roadmap.