Your work is a diagnostic tool

There's this moment that happens around month six of working with a founder. I can predict their next three decisions just by looking at what they've shipped.

Not because I'm tracking their roadmap. Because the work itself tells you everything about how they operate.

Your last ten pull requests reveal more about your decision-making than any personality test. The features you've built show me where you get stuck, what you avoid, and what you'll optimize for when nobody's watching.

Most founders think they're building products. They're actually leaving a trail of diagnostic data about their operating system.

Last week I looked at a founder's GitHub history. Sixty-three commits in the main repo over six months. Every single one was a complete, polished feature. Beautiful code, comprehensive tests, detailed documentation.

Sounds great until you realize they've shipped three features total. Each one took two months.

The commits weren't just code. They were a confession: "I can't ship incomplete things. I need everything perfect before anyone sees it."

Another founder I know has a completely different signature. Their repo is chaos. Broken features everywhere, half-implemented ideas, TODO comments from four months ago. But they've got twelve things in production. Eight of them work. Four of them have paying customers.

Their work says: "I'm comfortable with incomplete. Speed matters more than polish."

Neither approach is wrong. But you can't fake it. The work reveals what you actually value when you're alone at 11pm making decisions.

I started mapping this across about thirty companies. The correlation is wild.

Founders who commit small changes constantly? They handle uncertainty better. When the market shifts, they adjust in days. Founders who batch everything into big releases? They struggle with ambiguity. Market shifts take them weeks to process.

Not because they're slower thinkers. Because their work has trained them to need certainty before moving.

Your commit history is a map of your risk tolerance.

Your feature set shows me what you're avoiding. If you've built seventeen backend improvements but your UI hasn't changed in four months, you're uncomfortable with subjective feedback. Backend code has right answers. Design doesn't.

If you've redesigned your landing page nine times but your core product hasn't evolved, you're optimizing for looking good over being useful. Because landing pages are visible. Product depth isn't.

The work doesn't lie about this stuff. You might not even notice you're doing it.

There's usually one move that shows up in everything a founder ships.

Some founders add configuration to everything. Every feature comes with five settings, three toggle switches, two different modes. Their work says: "I need optionality. I'm scared to choose."

Other founders ship the same thing in slightly different forms. They'll build a feature, then rebuild it cleaner, then build something that's basically the same thing with a different name. Their work says: "I don't trust my first instinct. I need to prove it to myself three times."

I know a founder who adds rollback mechanisms to everything. Every new feature comes with a way to undo it, disable it, or revert to the old version. Sounds prudent. Except it means they've never fully committed to a direction. They're always building escape hatches.

Your habitual gesture becomes your architecture. After twenty features, you've built a product that reflects that gesture everywhere. It's not just in the features. It's in how the whole system thinks.

The most revealing thing is what you leave broken.

I've seen founders tolerate messy code but obsess over documentation. Others will ship with zero docs but the codebase is pristine. Some leave UI bugs for months but fix backend issues in hours.

What you're willing to live with tells me what you actually care about.

A founder who ships with broken tests but perfect UX? They care about customer perception more than internal confidence. They're optimizing for external validation.

A founder who ships with rough UX but comprehensive tests? They value certainty over feedback. They need to know it works before they care how it looks.

Neither is better. But it determines what kind of company you can build. The first founder will struggle to scale technical quality. The second will struggle to find product-market fit.

Your tolerance for discomfort in specific areas becomes your company's tolerance. Your first ten features set that pattern. Everyone after just follows it.

Here's what changed for me: I stopped asking founders what they value. I just look at their last five shipped features.

If they say they prioritize speed but every feature is perfectly polished, they're lying to themselves. The work tells the truth.

If they say they value quality but they're shipping broken things constantly, same problem. The work doesn't match the story.

The gap between what you say and what you ship is usually where you're stuck.

Most founders don't see this because they're inside the work. They're solving the immediate problem in front of them. They don't step back and notice they've solved the last twelve problems the same way.

But the pattern is there. Your work is showing you something about how you operate. The question is whether you're looking at it.

Once you see this, you can use it.

Your last ten commits aren't just features. They're data about how you make decisions under pressure. Look at them like you're debugging someone else's code.

Where do you slow down? That's where you're scared or uncertain.

Where do you rush? That's where you're overconfident or avoiding depth.

What do you keep rebuilding? That's where you don't trust yourself.

What stays broken? That's what you're actually willing to sacrifice.

The work is telling you about your operating system. Most founders ignore it. The ones who pay attention can rewrite their own code.