Texan sense and charm.
It’s difficult living through the destruction of one’s society. Writing about it seems even more difficult. There’s just too much. How should one choose what to write about? It is easier now to see why we admire past authors who wrote during social crises: they found something vital and true amidst the chaos, and they managed to put it into words for others. Risking reputation, punishment, and…
Es difícil viviendo en medio de la destrucción de su sociedad. Parece aún más difícil escribir sobre ella. Ya hay demasiado. ¿Cómo debería uno elegir sobre qué escribir? Ahora es más facil entender por qué admiramos a autores del pasado que escribieron durante crisis sociales: encontraron algo vital y verdadero en medio del caos y lograron expresarlo en palabras para otros. Arriesgando sus…
Today I learned the idiom “Buscarle tres pies al gato,” which, literally translated, means “to look for three feet on a cat.” The meaning (in which I’m assisted by my friend and native Spanish speaker @kinduff ), is: when someone is unnecessarily complicating a situation or looking for trouble that doesn’t exist. Example: Maria no debe buscarle tres pies al gato; ya tenemos bastante problemas. I…
A mi me encantan los publicadores independientes y especialmente las plataformas que previenen a los autores de preocuparse por el proceso de publicar para que ellos puedan enfocarse en el contenido. También soy firme creyente que cada uno de nosotros ayuda a crear el futuro del mundo en que vivimos por lo qué escribimos, leemos, financiamos y apoyamos. Substack ha surgido para convertirse en el…
Hay un patrón persistente con las promociones en la industria de software. Es algo más o menos así: un ingeniero de software empieza su carrera, aprende mucho después de un par de años, y luego piensa «¿Cómo consigo una promoción?» Por supuesto que ser ingeniero de niveles superiores sería mejor, pero en la mayoría de las empresas, es probable que este ingeniero haya recibido poca o ningúna…
I love independent publishing and especially platforms that enable authors to stop worrying about the process of publishing so they can get to the content. I am also a firm believer that we each help create the future world we live in by what we write, read, fund, and support. Substack has emerged to become the frontrunner of a new publishing style: paid subscription newsletters delivered via…
Encontré un pesimismo profundo en alguien quien estaba deprimido por todo lo que está pasando en el mundo, y afirmó que todas las cosas en el mundo están empeorando en estos días. Esto me impresionó en dos formas, ambas importantes para mi mente: Esa no es una visión correcta según casi cualquier lectura honesta de los hechos. Este tipo de pesimismo derrotista es, en mi opinión, pernicioso y…
I encountered some deep pessimism wherein someone was really down about everything happening in the world, and made some version of the claim that everything is getting worse these days. I was struck by this in two ways, both important to my mind: That’s not a correct view by almost any honest reading of the facts. This type of defeatist pessimism is, I think, pernicious and too easy to adopt…
I was talking with someone about the challenges of taking a team from a competent but disorganized set of different functions to an integrated whole that is delivering value directly to customers. For a product company, this means that your product development (R&D), marketing, sales, and service functions are all working together with the same intent toward the same goals . But there is an order…
After managing dozens of managers in my career, I’ve noticed a failure pattern that can happen on teams. It usually starts with a feedback signal, either from an individual on the team, from a pulse survey, or from the manager of the team. These situations can also be more of a surprise if you’ve just inherited a team and its manager from a re-org. The manager might tell me in a 1:1, “We’re not…
A fast-paced political thriller, technically ambitious like one would expect from Stephenson, but also full of schemes and clever relationships. This is my second reading of the book (the first was in 2010), and I enjoyed both the feverishly building suspense and the relatively accurate political conclusions, far before our actual reality shift in 2016. Interestingly, the two main narrative…
I often get the question from managers on my team about what it takes to become a manager of managers. Putting job titles aside for now, I have had experience with many managers who have made this role transition, and I can share a few of the less obvious new challenges that arise. There are many obvious changes involved when moving from managing a direct team of experts (e.g. an Engineering…
Para mí, estar sin ropa es propiamente sobre la libertad. Libertad de las restricciones, libertad de juicio, y libertad del acoso. Libertad de la cotidianidad, y de las expectativas. Libertad a estar completo y en paz. Mi desnudez no se trata de las otras personas. No disfruto de ser mirado secretamente, ni busco tener una emoción al sorprender ni molestar a la gente. No me importa lo que las…
For me, being without clothing is all about freedom. Freedom from restrictions, freedom from judgment and freedom from harassment. Freedom from the everyday, and from expectation. Freedom to be whole and at peace. My nudity is not about other people. I don’t secretly enjoy being looked at, or seek a thrill by surprising or upsetting people. I don’t care what people are thinking or fretting about,…
Interviewing to hire managers is a strange and squishy process at best. The team trying to hire the manager has an idea of the types of responsibilities the role will have, and they know who the person hired will work with. But then they must talk to perfect strangers (candidates), and in under an hour each, decide whether that person will be able to fill the role for years—leading others and…
Certain organizations have a culture that encourages and enables the creation of new and healthy relationships among colleagues, and others have a culture that causes competition, mistrust, and toxicity. In one of my roles, I was hired based mostly on my experience solving technical problems on many past teams. A few months in, though, I was promoted and switched career tracks into management,…
Many resources on 360° feedback will tell you that the best questions to ask are about a person’s performance or character as a whole. For instance: Does this employee act professionally? Does this employee follow instructions to achieve the desired results? Is this employee a good active listener? While the intent behind these types of question can be good—uncovering additional perspectives on…
Leading people and projects in a complex organization is difficult. I’m sure there are many ways to break down the difficulties of leadership into categories, but I’m busy so I’ll focus on two: tactical work and strategic work. Tactics vs. strategy Tactically, leaders need their organizations to run well each and every day. Teams need to deliver results, and issues need to be handled. (There are…
There’s a persistent pattern around promotions in the software industry. It goes something like this: a software engineer begins their career, learns a lot over a couple years, and then thinks “How do I get promoted?” Surely being a Senior Engineer is better, but in most companies, this engineer will have received little to no guidance on how to level up. “People get promoted for being on the…
In medium-to-large-sized companies, there is a term of art to denote a set of open requisitions for hire or current full-time employees on a team , and that term is “ headcount .” A certain team may be created “with 5 headcount” or a director may barter for “more headcount” in their department or a team may currently have “8 headcount allocated.” Headcount are treated as a durable and fungible…
I live in a country where it is standard to give employees two weeks of paid time off (PTO) per year. Ten days out of over two-hundred fifty working days in a year. Many companies will also only include 6–8 holidays over 12 months. Let’s say I come from a big family, and I want to find time to visit different parts of my family, the bulk of whom also live halfway across the country. If I worked…
As a developer, I often need to make use of API documentation to understand how to use a service on which I want to depend. Getting started from scratch is always the biggest challenge and use of time, so I greatly appreciate those APIs that are very well-documented. Some of them even make it fun to learn. What makes the best API documentation? Others like Programmable Web and Parse have written…
I enjoyed this thoughtful post from Brian on team communication and decision making. It’s true that some teams will jump from tool to tool for project management without great reasons or a firm understanding of what their process challenges are. There are others who are still forming their teams and trying to create processes that will make them successful. I think there is something more to dig…
There’s a common problem in the software industry, especially among companies that have survived rapid growth spurts: the best software engineers have nowhere to go but up. Up the management chain, that is—away from the code and the details, into the land of meetings, roadmaps, architecture and cost planning. It seems a cruel fate for the best craftspeople in their prime. Would we dare “promote” a…
In the creation of products, some people are more concerned with quality than others. Moreover, among those who do care, different people have different notions of what “quality” means. There are, at least in software development, a few broadly known admonishments and maxims regarding quality in production. There are those who stress the importance of polish and perfection in the final product,…