Engineering an Interesting Life
Towards the end of 2017, we reopened hiring on the mobile team at Automattic which had been shut since the start of the year as we got things in order. I think of this as phase 1 of hiring on the team – nailing the basics of the process, and making some progress with diversity […]
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For 2018 I continued my quest to post a photo a day, mirrored between photo.cate.blog and instagram. Last year my top photos had a tropical tint, this year raccoons are the stars. I didn’t have a focus as much this year; like many things, it was much more about the act of showing up. I […]
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My favourite slide from this year, thanks Matt Miklic! Speaking was weird for me this year, my speaker coach (and friend) Denise died at the start of the year, which left speaking at all times tinged with grief. Putting together the talk I prepped [blog posts] (eventually I settled on the name of “Creating Success, […]
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Credit: publicdomainpictures.net I sent 48 WTHIC letters from 21 cities in 14 countries on three continents, one post on Medium (which got 5K views) and had five articles in Quartz. This blog was seen by a smidgen over 45K visitors for just under 73K views, and I published 42 posts. This is down from last year’s 57K visitors, […]
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My latest in Quartz… Early on at Amazon, CEO Jeff Bezos famously issued a memo about how software was to be built at the company. Teams would share their data through service interfaces, or APIs, the same way that they would share it with an outside customer. That meant that a developer on one team […]
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My latest in Quartz… Functional teams have four layers of communication:– A mission (also known as a vision)– Strategy (made up of proximate objectives)– Tactics and process– ExecutionThis list might seem like it includes categories of action—it does. But it’s not just doing these things, but also communicating them that ties teams together. Communicating the items on this list plays […]
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My latest in Quartz… Something I struggled with as a new manager was finding a sense of accomplishment, and as I’ve moved on to manage managers, I’ve seen this become a challenge for them, too. It’s hard to find the right success metrics upon which to judge our work because our output is to make […]
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I read Love Sick on the recommendation of my friend Natasha. I found it an interesting and at times helpful read, but whether or not it’s interesting probably depends on the person. It’s about the way people experience love, mostly as told by literature, illustrated with comparison to mental illness. It’s heteronormative, and not exactly balanced […]
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My second article in Quartz… I’ve never stepped into a leadership role without it quickly becoming clear why a new leader was needed. I think it’s normal for companies to hire new leaders when there are problems that need to be addressed. So I suspect that as the congratulations die down, it’s also normal to […]
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I bought Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (Amazon) by accident trying to buy We Should All Be Feminists, but I have no regrets because I loved it, found myself reading it going yes yes yes and so what follows is not a review so much as a strong endorsement that you should really read it, […]
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