Reading
What I’m reading — a list of articles, blog posts, twitter threads, and everything in-between. Is this recommended reading or a bookmarks list? You decide.
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how.complexsystems.fail
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ilya.grigorik.com
Leadership without management: the what, the how, the tools, and how to measure success as a Principal+ engineer.
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aworkinglibrary.com
On the time for rest.
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medium.com
Change management is a big field, and it sounds scary because it says ‘management’, which is what managers do, right?
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www.forbes.com
Making a decision as a group? Who gets a view or a voice? Who gets a vote or a veto? And why does ensuring that everyone knows in advance make a difference?
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medium.com
If we asked you what your current work priorities were, could you answer quickly and confidently? What about the priorities of the company…
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betterprogramming.pub
Attracting talent at scale is more than just data. But a data-driven process makes it a lot easier
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textbook.cs161.org
Online textbook for CS 161: Computer Security at UC Berkeley.
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kellyshortridge.com
This post is a rebuttal to the recent guide on “Securing the Software Supply Chain” published by CISA, ODNI, and the NSA.
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trustedadvisor.com
The Trust Equation is now the cornerstone of our practice: a deconstructive, analytical model of trustworthiness.
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www.activeagileleadership.com
Having established a team-based organization, the next key is putting the teams to use. One way to generate both faster decision speed and unlock engagement is by decentralizing decision making...
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cloud.google.com
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jacobian.org
Wrapping up my series on delegation with an example: how to delegate meeting attendance.
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github.blog
Declaring productivity is easy. Measuring productivity at scale is hard. The SPACE framework developed by GitHub’s Nicole Forsgren and colleagues addresses this challenge.
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www.jrothman.com
Do you have trouble fitting “all” of the necessary work into an iteration? Your managers might want to push you to do more. Or, the product owner thinks you can do more. Or, the team wants to do more (see Beating a Team’s Goal.) Agile approaches are not about doing more. Agile approaches encourage u…
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federal-field-notes.ca
All carts, no horses.
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www.gov.uk
How to use systems thinking to drive improved outcomes in complex situations.
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review.firstround.com
Gokul Rajaram shares a framework that he’s used at Square and Caviar to make the most difficult decisions, all while assigning ownership, being inclusive and coordinating execution among all stakeholders.
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medium.com
There are a lot of different low-code/no-code options out there. Understanding their strengths and weaknesses will help you pick the right…
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hbr.org
How can leaders help their teams combat change exhaustion — or step out of its clutches? Too often, organizations simply encourage their employees to be resilient, placing the burden of finding ways to feel better solely on individuals. Leaders need to recognize that change exhaustion is not an indi…
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medium.com
Chapter 1
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hbr.org
There are better ways to help people succeed.
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hbr.org
Resignations are at an all-time high, and companies desperate to fill vacancies are trying everything from pay raises to trendy perks. But those interventions are falling short, because the real problem, as the author explains, is that so many jobs are stressful, meaningless, and unlovable. Buckingh…
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logicmag.io
What is Agile? And where does it come from?
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medium.com
Tech and design workers don’t just have pandemic burnout. They have pandemic clarity. It’s time for organizations to catch up.
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thesystemsthinker.com
ow we act depends on how we understand the situation we are in. Our understandings often seem obvious to us, as if they were given by the situation itself. But people can come to very different understandings, depending on what aspects of the situation they notice and how they interpret what is goin…
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medium.com
An investigation of three schools of thought on team development and high-performing teams
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www.bustle.com
A term suggesting rock bottom stops meaning rock bottom when when we’re all there and, somehow, still going. Is our definition of burnout all wrong?
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hbr.org
It’s no wonder that innovation is so difficult for established firms. They employ highly capable people—and then set them to work within processes and business models that doom them to failure. But there are ways out of this dilemma.
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www.communicationtheory.org
History It is necessary to improve self-awareness and personal development among individuals when they are in a group. The ‘Johari’ window model is a convenient method used to achieve this task of understanding and enhancing communication between the members in a group. American psychologists Joseph…
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candost.blog
Expressing disagreements is not always pleasant, but they might be better than misunderstandings. In some cultures, it causes miscommunication, in some of them doesn’t.
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www.palomamedina.com
Diversity and Inclusion Work, Coaching, and More by Paloma Medina
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web.archive.org
You might have heard about the Basecamp culture changes last week. I’m sure you heard about Google’s culture problems several years ago. These problems are issues of culture: specifically what we can and cannot discuss. What do “makers”—technical people—in any industry need to discuss? Big product i…
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candost.blog
The inflexibility in decision-making is at the root of various problems. Many leaders either use a lot of authority or seek consensus. What they need is a pendulum.
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noidea.dog
Slides and notes for the Being Glue talk.
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bellmar.medium.com
To be a great hiring manager don’t be distracted by rockstar engineers, study up on network theory.
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sre.google
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intenseminimalism.com
Managing change in complex systems such as teams, businesses, and societies can be difficult. That’s why I appreciate when I find solid models that try to provide support in people are workin…
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developerhood.com
We have 3 triggers that activate when we receive feedback. We feel that the feedback is wrong, it comes from a wrong person or it threatens our identity.
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medium.com
I’ve been asked a lot lately to explain what Engineering Enablement really means. Here is my definition.
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en.wikipedia.org
The forming–storming–norming–performing model of group development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who said that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for a team to grow, face up to challenges, tackle problems, find solutions, plan work, and deliver results. As Tuckman knew these inevitable phases were critical to team growth and development, he hypothesized that along with these factors that interpersonal relationships and task activity would enhance the four-stage model that is needed to successfully navigate and create an effective group function.
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papers.governing.com
Download this paper to learn how the right technology can help make No Wrong Door a reality for health and human services providers.
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review.firstround.com
Drawing from her career at PayPal, Intercom, GetYourGuide, and now as founder/CEO of Ascend (an online leadership program that empowers women) Shivani Berry shares her playbook for attracting more feedback.
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www.vox.com
Platforms like OnlyFans mean people with big followings online can earn money. Where does that leave the sex workers who were there first?
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candost.blog
Consensus decision-making means everyone explicitly agreeing to the proposed idea. The leader needs explicit agreement from everyone, and shouldn’t assume consensus in absence of objection.
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paulosman.me
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restofworld.org
Big tech relies on the victims of economic collapse.
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lindsaybraman.com
The Emotion-Sensation Feeling Wheel is one of the most popular resources from my download catalog. Unlike a traditional feelings wheel (first published in 1982 by Gloria Wilcox and widely adapted by teachers, therapists, and other
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stripe.com
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chelseatroy.com
In the last post about remote work, we talked about technical difficulties with remote meetings. But even when the tool works perfectly, you might find remote meetings harder than colocated ones. M…
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ben.balter.com
A high-level overview to highlight common legal issues government agencies may face when participating in the open source community
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medium.com
Learn how Atlassian product managers influence without authority
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www.honeycomb.io
In 2018, Peter Alvaro joined us at o11ycon to deliver a visionary and thought-provoking talk around the problems we had yet to solve. In retrospect, he ended up painting a picture of the problems that ultimately defined a lot of the work that was done in the observability space for the next three ye…
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zapier.com
If you want to know, one hundred percent, that you’re not an impostor, do something no impostor would ever do: out yourself. Here’s why.
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bradfrost.com
I’ve been talking to an increasing number of people who struggle to answer the question “So what do you do?” These are UX designers who end up tackling a large part of development, developers who find themselves running strategic efforts at their job, and other jack-of-all-trades people who run the
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alexschroeder.ch
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web.archive.org
The ‘How might we’ design prompt is insidious, and it’s time to bury it.
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codesubmit.io
Onboarding new hires requires taking their perspective into account and designing the best possible experience to get your new teammate assimilated and contributing as quickly as possible.
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www.linkedin.com
Does this sound familiar? Your team members so badly want to take work off your plate and prove they can handle things on their own. You want to give your team the independence they seek, but have this nagging feeling that they may not be quite up for the challenge.
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review.firstround.com
Twitter’s former Director of Engineering shares the plan he uses to transform engineers into successful and happy managers.
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michaelnygard.com
Suppose we’ve had a recent error with a Kubernetes cluster. As often happens with a problem in our systems, we noticed it first in terms of the visible error, which we could state as “Builds did not complete.” Now we want to trace backwards to figure out what happened. A common technique is the “Fiv…
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zenhabits.net
‘Act without expectation.’ ~Lao Tzu Post written by Leo Babauta. How much of your stress, frustration, disappointment, anger, irritation, pissed-offedness comes from one little thing? Almost all of it comes from your expectations, and when things (inevitably) don’t turn out as we expect, from wishin…
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randsinrepose.com
When you accept a new job, you don’t know who you are going to work with, what you are going to be doing, and how much (or little) you’re going to like it. Call everyone you want. Ask their opinions. Trust the fact that a good friend referred you for the gig. Revel in the idea that the company h
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skamille.medium.com
For varying levels of seniority, from senior, to staff, and beyond.
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www.verywellmind.com
The first bit of information you learn can sometimes bias the decision you ultimately make. Psychologists refer to this as the anchoring bias.
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web.archive.org
Software architecture documentation helps people in understanding the software architecture of a system. In practice, software architectures are often…
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18f.gsa.gov
Large software systems are hard, and in government we’re tasked with building large systems to manage complex benefits and processes. Often those mandates arrive on the back of a failing legacy system. An agile workflow has the benefit of allowing us to try out our ideas before committing to years o…
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bigthink.com
In today’s excerpt – thanks to the work of Daniel Kahneman and others, we now increasingly view our cognitive processes as being divided into two systems. System 1 produces the […]
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web.archive.org
From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups , by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001
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hbr.org
When employees share novel ideas and bring up concerns or problems, organizations innovate and perform better. But managers do not always promote employees’ ideas. In fact, they can even actively disregard employee concerns and act in ways that discourage employees from speaking up at all. While muc…
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hbr.org
Design thinking is, at its core, a strategy to preserve and defend the status-quo – and an old strategy at that. Design thinking privileges the designer above the people she serves, and in doing so limits participation in the design process. In doing so, it limits the scope for truly innovative idea…
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www.usenix.org
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smallbigideas.substack.com
Your most valuable mental resource.
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www.theatlantic.com
People refer to various forms of malaise as “burnout,” but it’s technically a work problem. And only your employer can solve it.
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review.firstround.com
Therapist Jessmina Archbold (publicly known as Minaa B.) shares her detailed guide to deeper self-care work, pushing back against common myths, offering up tactical advice and making the case for focusing on boundaries.
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opensource.guide
Making your life easier as an open source maintainer, from documenting processes to leveraging your community.
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mcfunley.com
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blog.thepete.net
Deploying something useless into production, as soon as you can, is the right way to start a new project. It pulls unknown risk forward, opens up parallel streams of work, and establishes good habits.
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www.newyorker.com
How an African-American composer’s works were saved from destruction.
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dhemery.com
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webkit.org
This post is all about speculative compilation, or just speculation for short, in the context of the JavaScriptCore virtual machine.
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mobile.twitter.com
Here’s a quick quiz to assess the health of your 1:1s.
Think of one of your direct reports and answer the following questions with "yes", "no", or "I don’t know":
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review.firstround.com
Molly Graham helped forge a work culture at Facebook that’s withstood huge amounts of growth. Today, she’s something of a rapid scaling expert. Here’s the key to doing it right, she says.
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hbr.org
Companies spend millions on antibias training each year in hopes of creating more-inclusive—and thereby innovative and effective—workforces. Studies show that well-managed diverse groups perform better and are more committed, have higher collective intelligence, and excel at making decisions and sol…
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adamdrake.com
Adam Drake is an advisor to scale-up tech companies. He writes about ML/AI/crypto/data, leadership, and building tech teams.
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larahogan.me
Y’all know how crucial I think one-on-one’s are for managers to get to know their direct reports: what they need from their manager, how they like feedback, ...
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bluepenguindevelopment.com
I had dinner this past Monday night with my old college friend, Rob. Rob lives in Vancouver and I live in Boston, so it doesn’t happen very often. In fact, it’s been 15 years since we’d last seen each other. Fortunately, and as is often the case with people who’ve seen you drunk, high, naked and stu…
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medium.com
… and stop doing things that make sense
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www.thoughtworks.com
Joining strategy together with the execution of the right solution challenges most teams today. It’s difficult for many reasons. Defining a strategy is not a static exercise. Predicting the future is difficult, full of uncertainty, and new information is always being discovered. Complicating things…
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startsmallscalefast.com
How do you structure a large business for continuous innovation? These models provide real insight in organisational design for the modern world
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web.archive.org
My post before this was a kind of therapy / Buddhism / personal growth kind of deal, but I also spend a lot of time thinking about how to run effective teams a
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18f.gsa.gov
Governments often use two anti-patterns when sustaining software: equating the first release with complete and how they manage the reduction of staff when a reduction in budget is appropriate. To address the latter anti-pattern, managers need to rethink how they approach spending their operation…
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alexgaynor.net