Author: Alan Page

First things first, I’m going to take the rest of the year off after today. Next week is a holiday, and then December is madness. I’ll do a few more posts in my other blog, and then hit the ground running in 2025.

• First thing worth reading is a short and pragmatic plea that on-call shifts last from Tuesday to Tuesday. On my last team at Microsoft, our on-call shifts were Wednesday to Wednesday (which I sort of like even better), but the author makes some good points.
• Just about every leader I know could be a better at delegation (and yes, I’m looking in the mirror as well). This article on Common obstacles to effective delegation has a lot of great points and advice.
• I also enjoyed the opinions in this article on job promotions. A lot of people get obsessed with promotions rather than the growth opportunities job changes can offer. Great advice in this article as well.
• I’m infatuated with design, but know almost nothing about it. In fact, I was surprised that I’ve read two of the books in this list of Top ten design books. Honestly, I’m not going to read all of them, but I’m definitely going to read some of them.
• And finally – for the few people out there who understand how AI can help them, and also understand the challenges in building effective solutions using AI, I discovered super duper. It looks simple, effective, and I expect it to be massively underused by a lot of orgs who could benefit. Time will tell.

And that’s all for this week, and that’s all for 2025 while I take a FfF break. As always, thanks for reading.

Another week, another five things I felt like sharing.

• I have dealt with, and made fun of “flaky tests” for a good chunk of my career (probably a full blog post on this topic someday). I’m excited to see actual research and tools from trunk.io on some ways to identify and fix flakiness in large test suites.
• I once got a VIP tour at Riot (including playing Leage in their gaming complex). I played the game more than a little, but not a lot. I wasn’t super pumped to hear about a series based on the game, but Arcane slaps!
• This article on Psychological Safety vs. High Standards is excellent. It hits on a lot of points from Heifetz’s Leadership on the Line as well.
• I ran into someone (in tech) recently who said, “I don’t really want to learn new things”. Frankly, I wonder about the job security of someone like this. This article on Learning Starts by Caring About Something is a good read, and gives me some ideas on how to inspire people like this to focus on learning a little more.
• Lastly, I’m avoiding the AI trend and asking you all to read this article on 5 Non-LLM Software Trends To Be Excited About. Yes, Virginia, there are programming concepts in 2024 that don’t involve LLMs

That’s it – we’ll try again next week.

This. Week. Sucked. Here are your five things worth reading (if you want).

• I’ve pointed to this site before, but worth re-mentioning What The Fuck Just Happened Today is a great recap of, well, what the fuck just happened today.
• I enjoyed this post from Laura Tacho on Dumb Leadership Mistakes I Made. Admittedly, I’ve made one or two (or more) of these myself.
• I thought this was an interesting take on Why DX Doesn’t Matter. It hits some good points, but not all of the points of DX.
• On the last AB Testing Podcast, Brent and I discussed performance reviews a bit, so it’s no secret that I also enjoyed this article on Performance Reviews Considered Harmful.
• Lastly, I continue to be blown away by people who try agile (or scrum), and fail because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. I think this article on Scrum Doesn’t Have to Suck would be a help for some of the folks who have bastardized Scrum.

It’s Friday, and those are five things. That should be good for this week.

How the hell is it November already? I’m at home again (and can’t remember if I was home last week), but here are a few things I found worth sharing.

• Probably not news for anyone, but the latest DORA report is out. Biggest takeaway (yet not surprising at all) for me is that AI coding assistants actually hurt software delivery. I completely believe it will get better…someday.
• I don’t use it anymore, but many hundreds of lines of bug fixes and code in XBox One (and thousands more in infrastructure) were written by me using Notepad++ – which is now 21 years old!
• Jit Gosai (who has sent a number of followers to my substack) posted this week on Why We Failed at Testability (and What We Learned!)
• Nice post on feedback today on HBR – Why High Performers Need Feedback Too
• In a story that will probably be written 1000 times – Resume : AI applied for the job

That’s my list for today. Not the best, but not the worst. See you in a week.

Here we are again. It’s dark and cold in the pacific northwest, but that should only last six months, so it’s not a problem at all…

Here are some things I found interesting this week.

• A lot of us are now paying for public IPv4 addresses on some of our AWS hosted sites. I probably should just move those to IPv6, but I fear that most people won’t be able to get to them. Here’s a nice article on the state of moving to IPv6.
• This article from Human Centric Engineering – From Struggle to Insight – hits on some of the things I’ve talked about on the other blog, but also so much more. I spent 10x as much time researching some of the concepts in the article as I did reading.
• This article from Maaret on Dividing future of testing more evenly is a banger. I wish more testers were like Maaret.
  Brent – if you’re reading, tag this for the podcast.
• Adam Grant’s post today on Why Business Leaders Make Lousy Politicians is excellent. He speaks the truth both in specifics and generalities – and in his usual excellent writing style.
• Finally another one in the “why did I not know about this” (or “why did I forget this existed”) category is devdocs.io – brief documentation on …everything. There’s even an offline version.

Another week over – see y’all in November. US readers – Go. Vote.

Back again with five links of stuff you may (should??) find interesting.

• First – for United States readers only – please vote. All elections are important – this one is extremely important.
• I like the way this article answers the question, Why is my engineering team so much slower than they used to be?
• I somehow failed to notice Johanna Rothman’s ongoing writing about writing non-fiction. This post on Three Surprising (& Useful!) Learnings from My 60 Seconds of Writing WIP Experiment was a great and inspiring read
• I don’t write a lot of code anymore, but when I do, it’s almost always Python. Because I use it rarely, I forget a lot of things. While I can look them up (or use chatgpt), I find that having access to the main language pieces in a brief and condensed format is faster than looking up what I need. This Python Cheatsheet is bookmarked for me, and really handy.
• “Successful software is buggy software” is the premise of this article – Be Suspicious of Success. It’s a short and fun (and accurate).

And now you can continue your Friday. See you in a week.

It’s Friday, and I have links to share.

• Nothing new here – especially for readers of my proper blog at angryweasel.substack.com, but here’s a write up on a recent study of The Real Reasons Employees Leave Companies.
• In the not-surprised category this week is this story on Bypassing airport security via SQL injection
• I somehow lost (forgot) my favorite sun hoody – an Appalachian Gear Alpaca hoody – but AG are unfortunately out of business. I’ve finally settled on an Arms of Andes replacement – but only time will tell if it’s as good as the one I’ve lost.
• I feel like I’ve shared this link before, but it has enough recent updates that it’s worth sharing again. Short story is that cognitive load is probably the biggest factor slowing down your team of knowledge workers.
• And finally, the Engineering Managers’ Guide to Effective Annual Feedback is worth a read for any manager.

Should be something fun in there for everyone. If not – read again next week. I’ll get it right someday.

It’s been a week, for sure. Here are some things I found that I think you should know about.

• A lot of points in this post on Fear of Failure resonated with me. I’ve come to love failure over my career, but it was a difficult path.
• I listen to too many podcasts, but seem to add new podcasts faster than I remove them. The latest addition for me is the Ship It! podcast. So far, it’s been a fun listen.
• HBR hit a homerun (or beat the boss?) with this article on Why Gaming Is Good for the Workplace.
• I’m not a huge fan of Scrum – it can work, but also be all sorts of anti-agile. The author of this article on Are Scrum Masters Too Much Overhead? and I agree that it’s completely possible to “do” Scrum without Scrum Masters.
• I made a video of my September hike. It has a lot of problems. It’s long (30 minutes), the audio is inconsistent, the video is (sometimes) blurry, and various other glitches and goofs. But – it does capture what it’s like to go on a multi day hike.

And that’s all for the week – thank you again for reading.

Back again for more links that you either already knew about, or (ideally) didn’t know that you didn’t know.

• I thought this take on What LLMs for Coding Should Look Like was thoughtful and interesting. We have a long way to go in this area, and I really appreciate folks who recognize that copilot isn’t the pinnacle of computer assisted programming.
• On the heels of my latest blog post, I was happy to see this post on Self-Care Checklist for Leaders. This is almost all stuff I do – but not consistently. It’s a good reminder.
• …and leaning harder into self-reflection, I found this article on self-reflection in engineering leadership that put a lot of things into perspective for me.
• I know I’m a pointy-haired manager now, but I spent the first twenty-ish years of my career writing a shit ton of code. And I think this article stating that Most Programmers Are Actually Bad at Programming is pretty spot on. Disclaimer – it’s a Medium article and requires an account (which is a stupid choice by the author, but that’s why we all have throw away accounts).
• While I hate to use two of your three free articles on HBR in one post, this post on Why Leadership Teams Fail had me nodding my head too much. Whether you’re a leader or not, it’s worth a read.

We’re done for another week. See you in October.

Oh hey – I skipped a week. I decided almost last minute to walk the Wonderland Trail again this year. Here’s an obligatory trail pic before I get into the internet news that’s crossed my path.

• Two different people have pointed me to NotebookLM this week. I’ve played with it briefly, and it’s sort of freaking me out.
• Again, I do not share every Mike Cohn post, but this one on The Surprising Cost of Bad Estimates has a lot of good points.
• I’m always happy when an actual study with data underlines a lot of what I feel like is obvious. This article on How the Next Generation of Managers Is Using Gen AI is worth a read.
• Speaking of AI and head-nodding – nothing surprising here. AI-Generated Code is Causing Outages and Security Issues in Businesses.
• On the recommendation from a colleague, I began reading The Final Empire on my hike. I’m about half-way through, and I’m really enjoying it. I’ll likely begin a long path through the whole Mistborn series.

I’m all out of vacation days, so I’ll be back next week with more.