I'm studying technical leadership right now, out of necessity. My company is growing, and too many startups leave organizational matters in the chaos state until they're incredibly difficult to fix. If we can start designing the organization how we want it from the beginning, we can both make ourselves happier and more effective right now and greatly ease our troubles down the line.

My friend Matt Zimmerman recommended me a great book by Jerry Weinberg, Becoming a Technical Leader. Here's a gem from the book that resonated with me:

There are many technical workers who enjoy wandering so much that, like Alice in Wonderland, they don't much care where they go, so long as they get somewhere. Computer programmers call this process "hacking."

This is an apt description of many of the hackers I know, who are happy as long as the problem is technically interesting. But in order to accomplish anything, we need to place the act and experience of hacking within a system that directs what we're working on towards a goal.

More on this as the research and practical experience continue.