Octopath Traveler 0 came out a week ago and I’ve been hooked on the game. Similar to how the second entry in the series improved on the first entry, the third entry is yet another step-function improvement in an already solid series. If you enjoyed the previous entries or are looking for an old-school, HD-2D JRPG I can easily recommend this one. Here are some quick thoughts on the game so far:…
There’s plenty of critical acclaim for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and I’m right there with everyone else. Did Expedition 33 ruin gaming? Not exactly. But it did set the bar so high that even two solid games I picked up after felt like a slog. What have you done?? Since finishing Expedition 33, I played Donkey Kong Bananza and Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles on the Switch 2. Bananza…
For every recent Nintendo Direct I would proclaim that it was finally time for both a remaster of Xenoblade Chronicles X and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 to be announced. On February 9th I finally (somewhat) stopped being wrong and we got an announcement trailer for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 with a release window of September 2022! Today - and this is not a joke - we received another trailer which…
Twenty-six years after the release of Pokémon Red, Blue, and Green on the Game Boy we have finally gotten received a noteworthy evolution to the mainline series: Pokémon Legends: Arceus . After rehashing the same formula generation after generation, they finally did it! Shifting to an open world game stressing exploration over the usual linear structure present in previous entries Arceus is the…
Manager Reads returns after a year-long plus hiatus with The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford. Who recommended the book? Twitch’s Leadership Book Club selected this book in a recent poll to decide the next book we cover. It beat out Dare to Lead (a great book I reviewed in 2019 ) and Crucial Conversations. Judge…
The Tales series has reliably produced solid JRPGs for a long time now. From the first entry I played, Symphonia (2004), to the list-topper Vesperia (2008), and more recent entries like Berseria (2016) there’s a lot to be excited about if you’re a JRPG fan and a new Tales game is announced. It won’t be the game you’re most excited about for the year but it’ll be a solid romp nonetheless. After…
This edition of Manager Reads covers a unique and interesting book: The Psychopath Factory: How Capitalism Organizes Empathy by Tristam Adams. Who recommended the book? A member of Twitch’s Leadership Book Club recently suggested this book for our next book. On the surface this book was different enough from all the other books we have covered that folks rallied around it. Judge the book by its…
My journey to combat the planned obsolescence of my 2008 Mac Pro might have finally hit a wall. But before we cover the bad news let’s talk good news! Up until recently my boot drive was a Crucial M4 connected over SATA. Occasionally my computer would slow down and hang for several seconds at a time. SSDs are fast but they have gotten faster since 2013 when the M4 debuted. I figured a 2013 SSD…
As new year activities at work have settled down and my son is getting slightly better at sleeping through the night I found some time to play some more video games. Bravely Default II (BD2) came out in late February and I’ve been eyeing this one for a while. My experience with past Bravely Default games isn’t perfect but it does have an oldschool JRPG charm that appeals to logic-defying…
Kicking off a new year of Manager Reads we are covering Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms by Shellye Archambeau. Who recommended the book? Twitch’s Leadership Book Club selected this book as our first book of 2021. We are not machines but the relevance score on this one was high given Archambeau is one of Silicon Valley’s first African…
Trails of Cold Steel 4 (TOCS4) is more than just the fourth game and closing act of the Cold Steel tetralogy. It is the 9th game in the Trails series and caps off the stories that started in the first three Cold Steel games, the three games from Trails in the Sky, and the two games from Trails from Zero. The world building Nihon Falcom pulled off in all these games shines in this entry as stories…
After successfully ending the Erebonian Civil War in Trails of Cold Steel 2 the war hero, Rean Schwarzer, is now an instructor at a new branch campus of his former alma mater. Things start slow in the third entry of the Erebonia arc. So slow in fact that I had to motivate myself to keep playing through some yawnfests early on. But I had plenty of faith in this series to deliver and after the first…
Warning: This post contains spoilers for both Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. If you haven’t played these games yet congrats - you’ve got two great games to play! Come back to this post once you’ve completed both. Future Connected takes place one year after the end of Xenoblade Chronicles and follows Shulk and Melia as they explore a new area, the Bionis Shoulder, and aim to…
Some time off from work for a staycation brings us this episode of Manager Reads which covers The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Bob Iger. Yes, that’s an amazingly long title, clocking in at 88 characters, but if I told you it isn’t the longest title of a book covered in Manager Reads would you believe me? Who recommended the book? I took a…
As work from home for many companies has been extended indefinitely the need for keeping your team engaged has become even more important. I have found scheduling a meeting with the team with no agenda and no discussion related to work has been a small thing that has worked well. There are a ton of fun ways to spend this time. Ones we’ve tried and enjoyed: Icebreaker questions on plenty of…
Reading has slowed down a bit since the release of Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition but this long overdue episode of Manager Reads covers The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni. Who recommended the book? My manager Ravi recommended this book for Twitch’s Leadership Book Club back in 2018. We’ve covered a bunch of books since then but we still haven’t gotten…
Instrumenting the journey of people you interview is critical to understanding and improving your interview processes. With instrumentation you set up concrete feedback loops that give you insight and opportunities to improve your interviewing. I’ve used two Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), Lever and Greenhouse, and neither provided the data in the format I wanted. Spreadsheets are SaaS apps…
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is less than a week away from release on the Nintendo Switch and I am so excited! Times were dark for JRPGs in 2010 when Xenoblade Chronicles released on the Wii but the game revived faith in the genre for me and many others. Ten years later not only are we getting a visually spruced up version, we’re getting some remastered audio tracks, improved menus, a…
As I approach the ten year anniversary of my move from New Jersey to California to begin my career, today marks seven years of blogging on mark.gg! My first post on Android Annotations, Ant, Dalvik Executable (dex) feels like forever ago. The Android ecosystem has evolved so much since then: Kotlin has become a first-class Android programming language, Apache Ant has been replaced by Gradle,…
Organizational design has always interested me and thanks to Spotify I finally got a book recommendation so without further ado… In this edition of Manager Reads we cover Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais. This is also the first Manager Reads entry featuring a Portuguese author: Olá Manuel! 🇵🇹 Who recommended the book?…
Dread sets in whenever a new version of Xcode releases. It’s dreadful because Xcode is a bloated monolith; downloading Xcode means downloading a 7.5 GB bundle that includes an IDE, simulators, and the appleOS family of SDKs, all from scratch, every single time there is an update. Frustration and dread is compounded with frequent failed downloads from Apple’s Developer website and the random,…
In this episode of Manager Reads we enter the room, take a seat at the table, and review The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table by Minda Harts. Who recommended the book? During the last meeting of Twitch’s Leadership Book Club we discussed Susan Fowler’s The Whistleblower . At that meeting someone mentioned it’d great to cover a book focused on the experience of…
Three years ago Susan Fowler published an explosive blog post detailing sexual harassment at Uber. Two weeks ago, she released an autobiographical book on her life including her time at and after Uber called Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber . In this episode of Manager Reads, we dive into this book! Who recommended the book? This book was selected, in…
Interviewing is hard - the interview is an artificial environment where you are trying to assess someone’s ability in one hour. Interviewing well and doing this consistently is even harder but don’t give up. There are things you can start doing today to make your interviewing more consistent. Send pre-briefs to candidates - At Twitch we send candidates preparation notes on our interview format,…
Changing gears from the usual books covered in Manager Reads today we dive into the world of systems in Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows. Who recommended the book? In An Elegant Puzzle - Systems of Engineering Management Will Larsen calls systems thinking the “most universally useful tool kit” he’s found for effective leadership. Larsen recommends Thinking in Systems if you want…
To effectively manage recurring operational work like sending weekly update and roadmap updates it’s good to batch it all together and set it up as a recurring event on your calendar. Here’s what my bright and early Monday morning batch of work looks like: This does two things: It blocks off time for you to actually do these things. Don’t underestimate the importance of this as this work takes…
A memory that has stuck with me from my days as an engineer was being called the glue of the team . The importance of being glue has only grown since I became a manager. In An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management Will Larson highlights this importance: Managers create stability by becoming glue. We step in as product managers, program managers, recruiters, or salespeople to hold the…
After a short hiatus of Manager Reads posts caused by catching up on posts for previous entries and a newborn, the first entry of 2020 is here! This post covers Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman. Who recommended the book? This book was selected as our next book to cover at Twitch’s Leadership Book Club. The club focuses on books that can…
It’s that time again yet again… Time to plow through some anime! As always featuring my quick thoughts and a GIF! Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The runaway hit of Fall 2019 naturally did not disappoint. This show is fantastic: the story, the characters, the animation, and the music are all very, very well done. What did get a bit annoying after a while was how much Zenitsu and Inosuke yell;…
This retrospective is long overdue given I did the first Manager Reads retrospective after four books and have now covered twenty books in the Manager Reads series. Has reading these books been worthwhile? Yes! Reading books on management won’t instantly make you a good manager but they have certainly have contributed to my success and working through the challenges in the role. Like good QA being…
This holiday season - in between diaper changes, feeds, and meltdowns - I dove into a bunch of literature. Here’s what I read with some brief thoughts: Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky A sequel to the fantastic Children of Time, this book picks up where that one left on and continues building on the newly formed Human-Spider-Ant alliance. It ends up introducing two new lifeforms, which…
When I shared my Managing Management - Time Management via Color-Coded Calendar blog post on Twitter it got some nice traction because of a generous retweet from Will Larson. In the blog post I mention automating color-coding in the future via the Google Calendar API and someone asked for me to share that system once I built it. Striking while the iron is hot… Calendar Colorist is here ! Calendar…
This past summer at Twitch I went from working with our Viewer Experience team to owning all viewer-side features on mobile. This meant working with another team, Viewer Engagement. In preparation for this increase in scope and team size my manager asked me to look at where I was spending time to ensure I could continue to deliver on all my responsibilities. In his fantastic book An Elegant…
After Xenoblade Chronicles, Trails of Cold Steel is my favorite JRPG series the past decade has blessed us with. I loved the first entry and the second entry even more . When the third entry finally landed stateside in late October, I was torn because it was a PS4 exclusive. Don’t get me wrong: I was definitely planning on playing this game on the PS4 once I acclimated to being a parent. Having…
After getting hooked on the ridiculously long demo , I dove into Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age when it came out for the Switch at the end of September. 118 hours later , I’m finally done with the game! This game is great! You build a unique cast of characters and the game does a good job of developing each of their personal stories. The world is big but doesn’t feel like it’s repeating…
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age came out on the PS4 and Steam on September 18th, 2018. While I’m a big fan of the Dragon Quest series, Square Enix said the game would be coming to the Nintendo Switch in the future so I held off on picking it up. Fast forward to this weekend when I downloaded the Dragon Quest XI demo on my Switch to give it a go before committing to purchasing it on its…
After a couple of starts I wasn’t able to follow through on, I finally started and finished Grandia ! Blessed be the power of the Nintendo Switch! For a game released nearly 22 years ago on the Sega Saturn, Grandia didn’t feel too dated. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t think GungHo put a lot love into making this look HD on the visual side, but the story, characters, and game mechanics held up…
Nintendo is on a roll and the latest Nintendo Direct doubles down on that. Among the slew of new things announced (Overwatch) and updates on already announced things (Animal Crossing, Pokémon Sword and Shield), three things in particular have me hyped: Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition - Yes! I love, love, love the Xenoblade Chronicles series and am very excited to play through this…
Channel Points are now available on Twitch on Android, iOS, and Web! This project was a massive undertaking by so many people over the past several months. It feels great to finally release it to the Twitch community. Go forth and highlight messages, unlock emotes, and modify emotes with snazzy sunglasses! I became the Mobile Engineering Manager for the team working on this project near the…
As a manager you’ll get questions and requests from many people coming through different mediums: the very traditional in-person ask, Slack, email, text messages. Being able to take them in and deliver on them is key. Accountability is unbelievably valuable because doing what you’ll say you do is the easiest way to earn trust. Even for those not in management having a system to track and follow…
After months of teasers and announcements of everything except a release date, GungHo finally delivered on giving us a release date for the Grandia HD Collection: 10 days from today on August 16th! This collection releasing on the Switch and PC includes Grandia and Grandia II. This is an easy must-buy for me especially since it’s coming to the Switch. Grandia II is one of my favorite JRPGs : the…
Given it’s been a few months filled with exclusively leadership and management book reading, I focused on fun reading in July. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - Fun reading was the goal of July but this book was far from fun, but this book ended up being devastating and heartbreaking. Although it’s a dystopian science fiction story, this book doesn’t really read like science fiction. It’s set in…
Some say Avengers: Endgame is the greatest crossover of all time, but Cadence of Hyrule - an unlikely mash-up between the indie roguelike rhythm game Crypt of the NecroDancer and the Legend of Zelda - is definitely in the running in my book. Music-themed baddies The game visually looks like A Link to the Past (one of my favorite Zelda games) and has an absolutely amazing soundtrack. Candence of…
The twentieth entry in the Manager Reads series covers a book hot off the press! Released on May 20th this post covers An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson ( @lethain ). Who recommended the book? I first saw An Elegant Puzzle pop up on my Twitter feed before it was released and it looked interesting so I added it to my wish list. Before I got a chance to buy it one…
It’s that time again… Time to plow through anime and movies I’ve been meaning to watch but haven’t gotten around to yet. Here is a list of what I’ve watched these past few weeks and thoughts on them. Mob Psycho 100 - Season 2 - Fantastic! The first season of this show was great and this season is even better. Overlord - Season 3 - I really enjoyed the first season of Overlord and was disappointed…
Companies want everyone to follow the rules but in today’s Manager Reads episode are we throwing that out the window? Even with a spicy title like First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently written by the Gallup Press the answer is no, you’re not going to read anything that will get you fired. Who recommended the book? A good friend at Facebook recommended this…
Happy birthday to my good friend, Josh Wu, and happy birthday to the venerable mark.gg! The past year has been a busy one. I got married! After eight years of Android and iOS development, I recently completed my first year as a Mobile Engineering Manager. I also got back into reading, focusing on leadership books in my Manager Reads series but also devoured the amazing Remembrance of Earth’s Past…
My 2012 MacBook Pro is still chugging along and can install the latest macOS Mojave but my primary computer at home, a 2008 Mac Pro, is stuck on the 2015 iteration of macOS: El Capitan. The largest driver of obsolescence on Apple computers right now is the yearly macOS update cycle. I felt the burn most recently trying to get 1Password 7 only to find it requires macOS Sierra or higher. Have no…
Manager Reads Episode XVIII: The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership by Fred Kofman. Who recommended the book? A Twitch colleague, Matt Verghese, first keyed me in on Fred Kofman during one of our tangent-filled conversations. He quizzed me on what my job was and shared the Your Job Is Not Your Job video with me. I really enjoyed the video but only learned there was an…
Valkyrie Anatomia: The Origin is a mobile JRPG for Android and iOS devices. Serving as a prequel to the magnificent Valkyrie Profile on the PlayStation, it came out in 2016 in Japan and now finally made its way outside Japan. While it’s a prequel to a fantastic game, sadly it’s a gacha game. Regardless of how great the game may be, it has been designed to squeeze money from players. In Valkyrie…