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Dan Rose

26 Aug, 14 tweets, 3 min read

My wife Allison and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this week. We were married at 24 yrs old and had our first child at 25, so I've been married with kids for half my life. Here are some reflections on being a husband and father while building my career.

I started business school when our oldest son was 6 months old. All of my classmates were partying while I was changing diapers. We couldn't afford a babysitter, but my schedule did allow me to be home a lot. I also set my classes to start at 11am so I could help with night duty.

One of the reasons I dropped out of b-school after one year was because I had a kid - Allison and I were both itching to get on with our lives. Dropping out to join Amazon full-time was one of the best decisions of my career, and I wouldn't have done it without her encouragement.

I joined Amazon at 26 yrs old. Many of my colleagues were also in their mid/late 20s, but I was one of the few with kids. I always felt this made me more efficient. Others would stay late to finish their work, I was super focused during the day so I could leave the office by 6pm.

I took one week of vacation from Amazon when each of my next 2 children came along. We didn't have a paternity policy so I missed out compared to new dads at FB and other Silicon Valley companies. Fortunately Allison wanted to be home with our kids, and she was an incredible mom.

I once overheard Bezos say he preferred to integrate work and family rather than set aside dedicated time and space for each. That's always been my approach too. I was often distracted around the house, but I spent more time at home as a result. We each have to find our own way.

We had 3 kids under the age of 10 when I joined Facebook at 33 yrs old. The company had 130 employees, avg age early 20s. There was a group called "FB employees over the age of 30," I was like ~15th member of that group. Zuck was nearly closer in age to my oldest son than to me!

I kept my promise to Allison to be home for dinner most nights, but then I would go back into the office after putting the kids to sleep just as Zuck and other product leaders were hitting their stride. That was a hard time in our marriage but we did our best to keep it together.

We moved to Hawaii 4 years ago because our kids wanted to get out of Silicon Valley. They saw friends and classmates struggling with anxiety (including our family) and pushed for a change. Allison never flinched, she picked up and moved with the kids while I commuted for a year.

After flying across the ocean a lot and missing my family, I finally left FB. It was hard for me to leave because I helped build the company. Our team felt like family to me. Also my identity/ego was tied into my role as Facebook VP. But I ultimately chose my family over my job.

After I announced I was leaving FB, my friends at Coatue asked me to help them build their new venture business. They didn't care where I lived (they were ahead of their time!). I left FB on a Friday and started at Coatue the following Monday, with my ego (and family) intact.

My kids are now approaching the age when Allison and I started a family, and we find ourselves encouraging them to wait until they are older to get married. I know it's hypocritical, but marriage is hard and in many ways we got lucky. Then again, who knows?

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More from @DanRose999

Dan Rose

@DanRose999

3 Aug

In 2006 I fumbled an initial job offer from Facebook. It was nearly the biggest mistake of my career. Here's what happened:

I was working on the Kindle team at Amazon in Fall '05 when my friend and mentor Owen van Natta first tried to recruit me to Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg had recently promoted him from VP of Business Development to COO. The BD role was open and Owen encouraged me to interview for it

I was living in West Seattle with my wife and 3 young kids. Amazon was rising from the ashes of the dotcom bust and I was working with Jeff Bezos on a secret project. Facebook was barely a year old and Zuck had just reached legal drinking age. I told Owen I couldn't leave Amazon.

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Dan Rose

@DanRose999

5 Jul

One of the most important things I learned from Jeff Bezos was to develop a bias for action. He wasn't always right, but he was always ready to act (and he was right much more than wrong). Like the time we were flying to Chicago and nearly wound up in Paris. Here's what happened:

In 2004, I joined Steve Kessel's newly formed digital team to incubate the Kindle. This was Amazon's first hardware project, a somewhat daunting initiative for a retailer. Jeff had met the CEO of Motorola who invited him to Chicago for a tour and meetings, and he brought us along

Steve brought me + 2 other people from the team, we got on Jeff's plane in Seattle. Jeff was fired up from the start, posing strategy questions & brainstorming our approach to hardware, software and content (my job). He had us captive for 4 hours and didn't waste a second.

Read 9 tweets

Dan Rose

@DanRose999

12 Jun

In my experience the best founders develop a fighter mentality. Mark Zuckerberg was a fighter, and without that mentality Facebook would never have achieved its full potential. Here’s what I saw over 13 years working for Zuck:

One of Mark’s first big fights was with his own board + exec team. They tried to convince him to sell the company to Yahoo for $1B in '06. At the time FB had 5M users (all college) and was 2 yrs old. At the age of 22, Mark stood to gain $300M personally. How could he say no?

Everyone told Mark to sell. Friends said he'd be crazy to pass up $1B. His management team wanted an exit. His board put pressure on him. But Mark knew something they didn’t – FB was on the cusp of launching new products that would completely change the trajectory of the company.

Read 16 tweets

Dan Rose

@DanRose999

23 May

Important lessons in your career can come from brief interactions with effective leaders. I had one of those interactions with Charlie Bell at Amazon 20 years years ago, and I've never forgotten it. Here's what happened:

I was a middle manager in Amazon's retail business and Charlie was a vp of engineering (on his way to svp and co-founder of AWS). We were working on something urgent, I don't even remember what it was. But I remember Jeff Bezos was not happy with me.

I ran into Charlie at the company picnic. I pulled him aside and said "we need to do something right away because Jeff is pissed." He looked me in the eyes and said "let's forget about Jeff for a minute, what's the right thing to do here?"

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Dan Rose

@DanRose999

26 Apr

I was ambitious and worked hard to advance my career at Amazon and then Facebook. I thought the way to get ahead was to deliver results, then push for more responsibility and position myself for promotion. I later came to realize I had it totally backwards. Here's my story:

Ambition can be a good thing when it's channeled productively. Ambitious people push forward. For example, my litmus test for whether I should stay in a job or make a change was always to ask myself whether I was still on a vertical learning curve. If not, find a new challenge.

But early on I was nakedly ambitious. After one year at Amazon I thought I deserved to be Director. When my manager didn't promote me, I moved to another team who offered to promote me as part of the move. The promotion was later rescinded because my new manager lacked authority.

Read 17 tweets

Dan Rose

@DanRose999

3 Apr

What defines a great company culture? I worked for two iconic companies and founders with nearly polar opposite cultures. Amazon was heads-down, secretive, forthright. Facebook was open, transparent, collaborative. Here's what I learned about culture working for Bezos and Zuck:

Culture implicitly sets expectations for behavior. Strong cultures are well-defined with sharp edges, and well-understood by everyone in the organization top to bottom. Strong founders with unapologetic personalities set the culture early and maintain it as the company scales.

When I joined Amzn in 1999, we had top-secret teams working on new products like Auctions, Toys and Electronics. Before a product launched, the only people in the know were those who needed to know. Everyone else was told to keep their heads down and focus on their own work.

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