He created an environment where (at our best) we could have fun doing work that had a real impact, and we could it with people we enjoyed doing the work with. He pushed us to be creative to authentically empower and inspire developers. Wanna build a video game that teaches developers how to code and use Twilio? Let's try it! Wanna build an AI application with Tony Hawk and have Tony Hawk debug the code live on stage? Sure!
And Jeff would always be spending time with developer tools and Twilio's products himself, to the point that he could live code at the drop of a hat to show off what we'd been working on. This meant his own understanding of developers and their problems never ceased to amaze me.
But more than all of that, he was a rare CEO that led with empathy, humility and care.
Thank you, jeffiel. We can't wait to see what you build next.
Because Jeff wanted to be a celebrity CEO, and it was to the detriment of the company.
All of Twilio's growth (as a public company) happened on George's watch.
I don't think it's a coincidence that well after George left, on Jeff's watch - they had to do 3 different layoff for a total of ~24% of their entire public company being let go.
Note: former senior level Twilio employee, posted anonymous for obvious reasons.
It's so hard to find real problems if you spend 90% of your time finding problems.
Having a job is a great fix.
Building side projects with no purpose works too.
For instance, you can sell a boilerplate to make it faster, or get feedback from users and build for them.
Although it's much harder to start, and hard to navigate life without $ for months (years in my case)