How to ask for help.

One of the core parts of my job at Spotify/Peloton/early stage startups was knowing how to ask for help.

In tech, it is not about being polite; instead, asking for help is about spending social capital to accomplish a very specific mission in a small amount of time.

Once I had a team block and deprio my changes for a critical holiday project: 5% of total business and a slew of new markets. Obviously, they were wrong to slow me, so I needed help to break the stalemate.

I invited my VP and their team's VP to get coffee and told them "we would be effectively shooting Santa before Christmas."

Maybe not that funny reading it over text now, but the message was clear, and by the next morning priorities changed for everyone.