Top all-time · #2050
John Cutler
Personal blog · cutlefish.substack.comcareerbusinessproductivity
John Cutler writes The Beautiful Mess, a personal blog at cutlefish.substack.com about career, business and productivity. Since 2021, 36 different Hacker News readers have linked it 82 times, most often “TBM 245: The Magic Prioritization Trick”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
The only comment is a plug for Kitemaker, a work-tracking tool, and says nothing about this blog's writing, so HN's reason for linking it is unclear from the thread.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The beautiful mess of cross-functional product development. Click to read The Beautiful Mess, by John Cutler, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- TBM 245: The Magic Prioritization Trick3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-10-08
- First Focus. Then Simplify3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-06-30
- We need someone who has done “it” before2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-21
- Tokens, Hours, Points, and Other Curious Proxies2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-08-19
- The Bottleneck Strikes Again2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-06-26
- The biggest source of waste is untapped skilled pragmatists2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-02-05
- Decision Making vs. Decision Understanding2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-08
- How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-03
- TBM 25/53: Persistent Models vs. Point-in-Time Goals2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-11-19
- Seeing Everything, Understanding Nothing (The Context Trap)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-19
What Hacker News says?
I'm going to shill for my current employer, you should checkout Kitemaker[0]. The unique shtick is that our 'issues' are large collaborative documents (we call them work items) and are meant to track deliverables rather than development tasks. The idea is that a work item is created as soon as someone has an idea and all the exploratory work happens in the work item. So it could start with someone writing down how a…
Comment linking /p/tbm-1052-what-didnt-end-up-in-jira
on “Ask HN: What are you using to manage in your team the projects/features?”Submitted The biggest source of waste is untapped skilled pragmatists as a story · 294 points
HN discussionSubmitted We need someone who has done “it” before as a story · 246 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why don’t we have a strategy? as a story · 172 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Most Strategies Lack Clarity as a story · 43 points
HN discussionSubmitted We Kind of Suck at That Right Now as a story · 37 points
HN discussionSubmitted TBM 333: Lean Graph Theory as a story · 27 points
HN discussionSubmitted TBM 377: Time Allocation ≠ Capacity Allocation as a story · 19 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Simplicity Fetish as a story · 13 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sources of Truth as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sinking Ship. Full Steam Ahead as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted (2) TBM 438: The Right but Early Club as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Don't Our Leaders Care About How We Work? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Boring Product Manifesto as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bring Back Fun – By John Cutler as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Just Hire Talented People and Empower Them as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Your Product Transformation Will Fail as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Tokens, Hours, Points, and Other Curious Proxies as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Bottleneck Strikes Again as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Bottleneck Strikes Again as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Overthinker as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Three Current Narratives from Tech as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Three short thoughts on change and leadership as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Reducing Complexity as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The X Files (6557 of 2024 edition) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Can-Do vs. Should-Do as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Trust Lets You Observe Reality as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Product Manage Your Meetings as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted First Focus. Then Simplify as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
