Career
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2015: Ship
→: 2015: ShipFor 2015, I chose the word ship. I did this for a couple of reasons: Taking some “time out” can easily turn into achieving nothing. It was important to me that I had something to show for my time. I wanted to bias towards putting stuff out there. I am very achievement oriented, and this…
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The Hardest, Shortest, Lesson Becoming a Manager
→: The Hardest, Shortest, Lesson Becoming a ManagerThere’s something we all talk about in becoming a manager – and that’s the process of writing less code. We bemoan it because it’s hard to let go of that part of our identity. But also because it’s so quantifiable. Today I wrote X lines of code. Today I deleted Y lines of code. Today I…
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Book: High Output Management
→: Book: High Output ManagementHigh Output Management (Amazon) is a really great, interesting and helpful. It’s a little dated, being written in 1983, and I don’t think it was really updated for the 2015 re-release. What I found most useful were the sections about meetings and decision making. What does a good 1:1 look like? How long should it…
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Diversity is an Attention Economy and the Economics Suck
→: Diversity is an Attention Economy and the Economics SuckA while ago there was an article about how women got more RTs when they talk about diversity than when they talk about anything else. This wasn’t that surprising to women, I don’t think, although it may have been news to some people. Well before this was news, I had been trying to balance what…
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New Manager Resources
→: New Manager ResourcesA collection of some of the things I’ve found most helpful for becoming a manager. On 1:1s Two things that are most immediately helpful, especially in answering the questions: what does a manager do? How do I run 1:1s? @Geek_Manager gave a talk about what it means to be a manager [video]. I found it really…
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Technical Interview Questions and Time Management
→: Technical Interview Questions and Time ManagementWhat Makes a Good Technical Interview Question? Three criteria of a good interview question: Gives a sense of problem-solving and understanding. Explorable and extendable. Deeply understood by the interviewer. Problem Solving and Understanding What does this look like? The problem presented needs to be decomposed into smaller problems in order to be solved. There are…
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Advice, Mentors, and Questionably Helpful Emails
→: Advice, Mentors, and Questionably Helpful EmailsLet me start by saying: I hate giving advice and I try not to do it. Typically my “advice” falls under two categories (in that order, often deployed together): Telling people that whatever their reaction (stress, sadness, fear…) is understandable. Suggesting books or lines of thinking that I have found helpful in related situations. Of course…
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A Question
→: A QuestionThere’s a question that I have found myself asking a lot over the last two years: “do you know what a good environment looks like, though?” I ask it when a friend comes to me with anxiety about performance reviews. I ask it to the friend who left a bad environment only to end up in…
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My Life as a White Migrant
→: My Life as a White MigrantEver since I read this article on the use of the word “expat” being exclusive to white people from western countries, I have been thinking about my own experiences living in a variety of places, through that lense. The words we use are not the only difference. When it comes to my immigration situation,…