Every game has a winning strategy, and it's never written in the rulebook - it emerges from the rules. Change a rule, and a different strategy wins. The same is true of everything we build: products, KPIs, team processes. Each choice quietly makes some behavior the winning move, whether we intended it or not. In this session we'll reverse-engineer everyday apps, working backward from visible behavior to the rule behind it. Why is X the meanest room on the internet while Reddit stays surprisingly honest? Why does everyone sound fake on LinkedIn? Why can you trust an Airbnb review but not an Amazon one - when it's often the same people? Then we'll turn the lens on our own work: retention problems, teams that play it too safe, KPIs that reward exactly the wrong thing. You'll leave with a new reflex: when behavior surprises you, stop blaming the players - find the rule that made winning look like that.
Backend Developer at Cloudinary