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Making software and software development teams. Mostly the people parts.

Seven For Sunday: November 2019

Updated: 

Story I've Been Following

Leak of Microsoft Salaries Shows Fight for Higher Compensation by Dave Gershgorn

Transparency in pay is part of the wave that Marco Rogers is describing in this tweet thread I referenced a few weeks ago. How we align with the wave(s) as technology leaders is probably the most interesting thing happening in the world right now that I feel like I can (and should? must?) directly influence. As opposed to other interesting things.

Fascinating Meta-narrative

Three Big Things: The Most Important Forces Shaping the World by Morgan Housel

A bold, meaty piece on what's shaping our world currently. Spoiler alert:

The three big ones that stick out are demographics, inequality, and access to information.

Video Conferencing Technique

5 Ways to Make Videoconferencing Less Terrible by Jacqueline Detwiler

Microservices Experience

Operating a Large, Distributed System in a Reliable Way: Practices I Learned by Gergely Orosz

Microservices have reached the point on the Gartner Hype Cycle where we're starting to get a rich set of experiences to learn from. This is one worth spending time with.

Career Thinking

A forty year career by Will Larson.

This is a great post, tying in a lot of concepts I've been thinking about as my career in tech moves towards its 3rd decade. As well as being full of juicy, all-day-rabbit-hole links.

I’d focus on a small handful of things that build together, with each making the others more impactful as they compound over time... I’d focus on pace, people, prestige, profit and learning.

Technique For Abstracting From Work 1

Transcendental Meditation technique from Wikipedia.

Work was in high cavitation mode last week, and has been for several months now. I typically engage with work from 7AM to 6PM, leaving me with roughly an hour in the morning and four hours in the evening as my weekday downtime. During low stress times, I find it fairly easy to shut off work-think in the evenings. Lately I've been looking for better ways to make the hard break when times are higher stress and it's far too easy to carry work-think all the way to bedtime and beyond. TM is one technique I've been exploring.

Technique For Abstracting From Work 2

How to Cure Anxiety — One Workaholic’s Story, Six Techniques That Work by Tim Ferriss

More specific techniques on abstracting from work. I especially like number (2) and practice it in various ways, including ruthlessly pruning out accounts that post news and politics from my social feeds. It's not that I want to ignore the world; it's that I need to have the world-I-can't-control available to me on a pull basis, rather than pushed at me.

Much Needed Comic Relief

React Community Debate I Find Interesting

Thoughts on React Hooks (including a response by Dan Abramov) from Reddit

While my current shop is heavily invested in React, I don't personally have a dog in the fight between hooks and class components. I'm more interested here in the general sense of the value of code reuse.

My experience is that reuse in software - from function to library to service - requires cross-disciplinary buy-in as a strategy. For example, your engineering team can craft reusable componentry with well-defined contracts and perfect abstractions, but if your UX and Product teams aren't bought in on reusing the same header across the four apps you build? It's all for naught... you'll end up with either four different headers or leaky abstractions or blown-up contracts. Or all three.

HTML can do that

HTML can do that? by Ananya Neogi

Codepen examples of (mostly) HTML5 elements that those who, like me, learned their HTML in the 90s or 00s might have missed.

Computer Science

Reading the CS Canon by Harry R. Schwartz

I have a somewhat unique position in that I studied Computer Science but didn't finish my degree; I straddle the line between self-taught and university educated. Regardless of education experience, I think there's a lot of value in learning from CS.

Boring UI

Good UX = Boring UI. Don’t Be Creative by Nick Rollins.

Boring Tech

Movement I'm Learning More About

The Center for Humane Technology (formerly known as Time Well Spent)

Introduced to Tristan Harris and his work through the Tim Ferriss podcast. What's really interesting to me is our role as engineering leaders.

Some of the factors of inhumane technology are likely in our direct control: delivering secure applications that don't expose users to risks, for example.

What about those that aren't so much? What about when the products we're working on, whose product features are often designed and decided on by our business partners outside of engineering, are inhuman? Where does our responsibility and our reasonable expectations to influence end? Does a successful career as an engineering leader mean you have to risk getting (and actually get) fired a few times to stand up for what's right? What about when your whole team's jobs might be at stake as well as yours... then what? Etc.

Deception

Diversity In Investing

Crunchbase's Q3 2019 Diversity Report by Gené Teare and Natasha Mascarenhas.

Jennifer Neundorfer, a founding partner of Jane VC, which invests in women founders, is in the process of raising ten times her initial fund.
But instead of leading her pitch to limited partners (LPs) with a reference to gender, she phrases the investment thesis as follows: “We’re going to invest in an underlooked asset class that is overperforming.” 
“If it’s just about [investing] in more female founders, everyone has a different motivation,” Neundorfer said. “We don’t want this to be seen as a nonprofit charity; that’s not what it is.” 

Remote, Perk or Feature?

You should be working asynchronously (async) by Marcelo Lebre.

Remote still has a branding problem. Especially amongst leaders who've been there for the bad days of remote or seen remote not work. For many, it's still seen as a perk. Articles like this reframe Remote as a feature, beyond the advantage of being able source your team from the world rather than a 20 mile radius.

One Developer Journey

My journey to landing my dream job at Amazon by Arely Miramontes Rodríguez

Sometimes we're here to help someone learn what they need to take the next step in their career. The step to the thing they really want. That can be hard to accept. There's a thing in me that wants to build teams that want to stay together forever. The reality is, people don't stay long at any tech org...

Are you sure it's only 5?

You’re NOT The Average Of The Five People You Surround Yourself With by David Burkus.

Two of my favorite topics together

What Most Remote Companies Don’t Tell You About Remote Work by Amir Salihefendic

posted in Seven For Sunday