Longform Post Worth Spending Time With

The Glorious, Almost-Disconnected Boredom of My Walk in Japan by Craig Mod.

To be “bored” is to be free of distraction.

Mentorship Practices

Developers mentoring other developers: practices I've seen work well by Gergely Orosz

More Reading On Event-Driven Architecture

Understanding Event-Driven Architectures (EDA) by Telmo Subira Rodriguez.

One of the main difficulties when developing an EDA-based solution is that there is not any dominant development framework yet.

That quote, mapped to the Gartner Hype Cycle, sums up my feeling on the current state of Event-driven Architecture... exciting and immature and the right questions are both whether to engage, and whether to engage now.

Another Postmortem I'm Learning From

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN THE UK BLACKOUTS? by Mitch O'neill

Every post-mortem written in mid-2019 must contain at least one still from HBO’s Chernobyl. “Check."

Career Advice I've Been Sharing

How to jump on a rocket ship by Jason Crawford.

I’ve been asked to share career advise by quite a few people this summer. Everyone wants something different and I certainly don’t believe that a mid-stage, hypergrowth startup is the most appropriate landing. However, if it's for you, this post offers some great advise on how to get it done.

Reminder That All Of This Has Happened Before

De re Metallica by Georgius Agricola

A miner should have knowledge of philosophy, medicine, astronomy, surveying, arithmetic, architecture, drawing and law, though few are masters of the whole craft and most are specialists.

This seems like a familiar situation.

Fundamental Skill Worth Resetting On

How To Take Notes on Everything by Max Antonucci

More on Information Overload

Why Digital Overload Is Now Central to the Human Condition by Alison E. Berman

Six Components Of Wisdom

The Wisdom of the Aging Brain by Anil Ananthaswamy

I was digging into the definition of wisdom this week while trying to unpack why we say we prefer X years of experience in a given role.

Behind that requirement is the assumption that wisdom is acquired during years-in-the-seat. Wisdom, per wikipedia, is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Time-in-seat therefore is about both gaining experience and understanding, AND becoming more able to apply those along with knowledge, common sense and insight.

Alright then. This article, while titled Wisdom of the Aging Brain, offers a six-category model for rationalizing (and therefore measuring and improving) wisdom, they are per the article:

• having pragmatic knowledge of life
• emotion regulation
• pro-social behavior which would entail compassion, altruism, and empathy
• knowing one’s strengths and limitations
• decisiveness
• acceptance of uncertainty

Podcast worth listening to

David Allen — The Art of Getting Things Done on The Tim Ferriss Show

Once a month I drive from Portland to the Seattle are to visit my mom. Tim Ferriss's podcasts are one of the ways I make use of the six hours in the car. This episode is especially relevant for engineering leaders. A favorite quote of many good ones: "Control is the master addiction... let go."

Ongoing Incident I'm Following

Malicious attack on Wikipedia—What we know, and what we’re doing by Wikimedia Foundation

Leadership Lessons

Don't Be A Dick... and 10 Other Things I Learned About Leadership by James Altucher

Altucher has a certain dogmatic style that often rubs me the wrong way. I also find he has gems of wisdom to give if I'm willing to put up with the dogmatism. Here he offers a framework for giving critical feedback that resonates with my abundance mindset.

Sleep

Can’t sleep? Don’t worry. It’ll probably get worse when you’re older by Nathan Yau.

This is a subject I need to spend more time with. For myself, because I often have trouble sleeping when stress is piling up. For my team, because something I think about often is: Am I setting my engineers up to get Rested, Relaxed, Refreshed at night and on weekends, or are the things I'm telling them (and the ways I'm telling them those things) stressing them out?