Career
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On Time
→: On TimeThe past year I’ve been working on a book. I organized my entire life to carve out and preserve my Saturdays for this project. It is finally done (almost! Just reviews of proof pages to go); I got my weekends back just in time to work them through the review cycle, and with the worst…
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From Visibility to Representation – Rethinking DEI
→: From Visibility to Representation – Rethinking DEIWhen I talk about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), I’m typically coming at it from an angle of systematic change. The purpose of DEI, as I see it, is to dismantle a rigged system and move to something more equitable. This is why the concept of “no politics at work” is seen as antithetical to…
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Dimensions of Engineering Growth
→: Dimensions of Engineering GrowthOne of my coaching clients and I developed this framework to help him think about the kind of impact he wanted to have as a Staff+ engineer, and since then I’ve taken it to other clients and direct reports in a way to think about engineering growth outside of any particular job ladder. The four…
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Tracking When It’s Time to Quit
→: Tracking When It’s Time to QuitThe wonderful Tanya put together this spreadsheet that helps you track where you are on the 5 Signs It’s Time to Quit Your Job. I love this idea, because it pushes us out of the moment into the long term, which makes it easier to be rational. There’s the risk in the short term decision,…
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7 Suggestions for Writing a Good Self Review
→: 7 Suggestions for Writing a Good Self ReviewOriginally shared internally and lightly edited for external readability. Note that this comes from a context where the self review is not part of the promotion packet so focuses on it as a tool to help the manager put together the review. Goal of a self review: None goals of self review: Your self review…
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LeadTime – How teams work: DuckDuckGo’s engineering team
→: LeadTime – How teams work: DuckDuckGo’s engineering teamI did an interview with Range, talking about how the fully distributed teams I lead at DuckDuckGo work. Read it here
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Co-Active: Synergy
→: Co-Active: SynergyThe last course in my coach training journey – for now – was Synergy. This follows Fundamentals, Fulfillment, Balance, and Process. The final course, this tied everything together. We learned about the attributes of a coach (fierce courage, aliveness, and connection), worked on range (including silent coaching!) and the idea of “stories”. Going into it,…
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Book: Woman of Influence
→: Book: Woman of InfluenceWoman of Influence (Amazon) is about building your brand as a leader and taking charge of your career. It’s full of actionable strategies for understanding how you’re perceived – and how to change it. My personal favourite is a long time favourite tool of Jo’s – the shadow org chart. This is the map of…
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Sometimes you have to choose between being right and being effective
→: Sometimes you have to choose between being right and being effectiveMy latest in Quartz… My partner and I had a hellish move recently. We were lucky in that our landlords are nice, reasonable people, and unlucky in that they were quite disorganized and hadn’t done everything they needed to, like ordering furniture and thoroughly cleaning up after the last tenant. So as this played out,…