Justin Rosenstein wasn’t sure what had happened. One of his company’s highest performing engineers seemed to have lost his enthusiasm for the work. “He had gone from super dedicated to detached,” says the co-founder of Asana, an app that powers teamwork without email. “Something wasn’t right. He seemed to be in an existential funk.”
So he took him for a walk and asked one simple question: “What’s wrong?”
At first, the engineer couldn't pinpoint the source of his malaise. Then he said, “I’m not sure what I’m doing here. I wonder, should I even be writing software?” Rosenstein was struck. Sure, the company had grown, but what had changed?
Instead of reciting a normal pep talk, he started asking questions. “When you go back to your desk, what’s the next line of code you’ll write?” he asked. The engineer explained he was repairing a chunk of old code. “Why?” Rosenstein...
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