Category: All Posts

Here, as expected, are a few things I found interesting this week.

• I wrote about Trust in my last substack post, and then saw this excellent article from HBR just a few days later. Not a new article, but new to me – The Neuroscience of Trust
• I am not too proud to admit that I scroll TikTok from time to time – so I enjoyed this article on The Secret Sauce of Tik-Tok’s Recommendations
• I’m finally reading Think Again by Adam Grant, and I wish I would have read it earlier. A lot of head nodding, but a lot to make me think as well.
• It’s no secret that I’m a big soccer fan, and that bleeds into love for the local team. Last year, I bought their Jimi Hendrix tribute jersey because it was awesome…but it’s nothing compared to this year’s Bruce Lee themed alternate jersey.
• We are living in an odd timeline – and it’s getting worse. Sidney Powell cited woman who claimed to be headless, time-traveling entity in email pushing election conspiracy theories.

That’s it – thanks again for reading. See you next week.

Someone asked me recently how long I’ve been doing FfF posts. I wasn’t sure, so I had to look it up. The answer is “over five years”. First one of these was in October, 2017 – boy how things have changed since then. But the five random things from my browsing history continues this week…

• We may as well lead with a good one, and something that I’ve kept open. The Hidden Toll of Microstress.
• I’m a sucker for insightful articles on Psychological Safety, so this one on Work as Imagined vs Work as Done pushes a lot of the right buttons for me.
• I’ve done weekly summary emails off and on in different flavors over my three…fuck…decades in software dev. Sometimes they’re awesome, and sometimes they’re awful. This article on Why You Should Send a Weekly Summary Email is some good food for thought on the subject.
• I feel like the world is now filled with people playing with chat gpt, but with very few of those people actually getting value from it. I’m tired of people “breaking it” and showing how it’s wrong, so I want to highlight at least one article that shows how people are using it to help them.
• Because you need this. Spaghetti-fy your code right from VS Code.

Thanks for reading – see you soon.

My dog decided that 4:30am was time to be awake. Now, she’s asleep again, but I’m still up. Fortunately, Friday’s are on the light side as far as meetings go, so I think I’ll make it.

• What the fuck, Twitter???
• As you know, I think specialists are a bottleneck. So of course, I liked this article on Specialization is for Insects.
• I had an opportunity to talk with Jeff Martens a few weeks ago, and then came across his good article on his Predictions For the Future of Observability.
• The honorary co-writer of this post the last few weeks (Molly) shared this link that I keep on sharing. Scaling Kubernetes to 7,500 Nodes
• This is weird. Scientists Have Built the First Modular Body—a Living Being That Isn’t Alive.

Thanks again for reading – see you next week.

Like last week, this week has had some ups and downs. In between the long days and questionable decisions, I found (or was sent) a few links that I liked.

• In an almost regular feature of FfF, I’ll start by sharing my favorite article on avoiding burnout this week. How To Make 2023 Your Year of No Burnout
• This article – When Your Feelings Conflict with Your Leadership Role – hit home with me. A lot to learn here for a lot of us.
• I watched the first two episodes of The Last of Us on Sunday. I didn’t think I’d like it, because I generally don’t like movies based on video games, but holy shit is it good.
• If you’ve already seen the first two episodes, you should read more about in this all-to-real article on The Cordyceps fungus in this sort of haunting article (thanks Molly for the link)
• I saw the new Avatar movie recently. While the plot and story are…ok, it’s definitely worth the experience in IMAX 3D. It’s also cool that it’s nominated for an Oscar in visual effects (which are made with Unity W?t? tools)

Thanks again for reading – see you all next week.

This was…not one of my favorite weeks. Other than a few long walks with the dog, I’m taking a light weekend to see if I can get my head back on straight. Here are a few things I read this week you may find interesting.

• I probably linked to this book last summer when I first read it, but fuck it – I’m going to share it again. Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations. It’s a fantastic read for people who have been laid off – and people who were not.
• In what I think is a first for me, I’m going to link to a LinkedIn post. Amir Satvat has compiled a list of just about every game or game adjacent company with open roles. It’s a fantastic resource. The post includes a spreadsheet, as well as a place for you to enter your information for hiring managers.
• If you’re having trouble keeping up with which companies are laying off people when, I discovered layoffs.fyi this week – which provides a pretty good summary of what’s going on.
• I’ve played Dungeons & Dragons off and on for over 40 years (yes, I’m old). Whether you play or not, GameSpot has a good summary on the history of the game – and especially the current controversy where Wizards of the Coast are being total shit heads.
• If you’re tired of using your own brain to reply to email, let ChatGPT do the work. Here is one (of many) chrome plugins to help you reply to email with the help of AI.

Thanks again for reading – have a good week.

It’s Friday the 13th. I’m not sure what that means, but we’ll see how the rest of the day goes. Here are a few links I found this week that are worth sharing.

• I read Software Engineering at Google a few years ago and enjoyed it. You can now read the book online for free (and you probably should).
• Jesper Ottosen wrote a nice post on Continuous Customer Feedback
• I’m continuing to play with chatgpt, and while I have my own stories about teaching it to be better, I enjoyed this one on Can ChatGPT Write Better SQL than a Data Analyst?
• A pair of fantastic articles on mentoring. Mentoring Through Conversation, and the follow up, Building Growth Plans with Mentees.
• For those not following the absolute shit show that is the American two-party system, this article sums it up. How Right-Wing Gasbags Cooked Up a Fantastically Dumb Culture War.

That’s it for this week (for this blog, at least). As usual, thanks for reading, and have a safe weekend.

Happy New Year everyone! It was great to have a break, but I bet you can’t wait to see what bits of the internet I’ve uncovered for you.

Or you’re here to see if I’m going to get people on linkedin angry at me again. Either way – here are some links to things I’ve enjoyed recently.

• Speaking of Linkedin, a colleague of mine shared a great post this week on how she managed our planning process for 2023. She makes it sound easy, but from the front lines, she was a jedi master of organization and cat herding.
• A lot of companies are trying to get people to come back to the office – but it’s just not happening. This article on how Remote Work Is Poised to Devastate America’s Cities is on point, and something I’ve been thinking a lot about.
• Will Larson (author of An Elegant Puzzle and Staff Engineer) shared his thoughts on Measuring an engineering organization
• I’ve been playing with Whisper from OpenAI for voice transcriptions, and it’s sort of amazing. It doesn’t separate speakers (as far as I can tell), so I can’t quite use it for AB Testing Podcast transcriptions, but it’s still pretty cool.
• Finally, a fantastic article on Things they didn’t teach you about Software Engineering. Especially remember this – (and replace “code” with any aspect of software delivery) – Code is secondary. Business value is first.

Thanks again for reading – see you next week. Don’t forget to check out my old-school opinionated blog posts on substack

Last FfF of 2022 while I take a few weeks off to rest and recover before starting it all over again in 2023.

• My latest binge treat has been Wednesday on Netflix. It’s not deep, but it’s dark and a little funny, and I like that.
• There are some good ideas in this article on How to Deal With Information Overload.
• Perhaps even more relevant is this article on Leading Through an Economic Downturn.
• On the AB Testing Podcast, Brent and I have been discussing how ChatGPT / GPT3 will change the software world. This post on How ChatGPT is Changing the Way We Interact with Technology is a good read along those lines.
• And for the final link of the year, I love this writeup on World Cup 2022: crunching 150 years of big data to predict the winner.

Thanks again for reading, and I look forward to more sharing next year. If you missed the note last week, I want to start blogging again, an want to pre-rebuild a community first – so sign up here if you want to read longer form opinions and rants. I added an introductory post last week, and will start delivering regularly in 2023.

Back for another week of random links. I’ll skip linking to interesting chat bots, because maybe a chat bot wrote this post…

But probably not.

• I watched the 2022 game awards last night. Made me think I should think about giving either Elden Ring or God of War: Ragnarök some playing time over the next few weeks.
• I hope every leader who is thinking about “reducing cost” reads this article on What Companies Still Get Wrong About Layoffs
• Another fun-to-read article from Michael Lopp – and one I guarantee you will be nodding your head to – The Seven Circles of Meeting Hell
• Speaking of head-nodding, I watched this video on the optimal size of a platform team, and it stated (more eloquently) dozens of conversations I’ve had in the past month.
• I’ve followed Steve Denning ever since I read The Leaders Guide to Radical Management. His latest article on A Manifesto For Management In The Digital Age is excellent.

That’s all for this week – thanks for reading.

Oh – and if you missed it on twitter, I want to start blogging again, but want to pre-rebuild a community first, so sign up here if you want to read longer form opinions and rants – you know, like the old days.

Friday got away from me again. Between World cup soccer and budget exercises, my brain blew up. I feel a bit better today, and have a few interesting posts to share.

• It’s an interesting world cup already this year, and that’s before I heard that the Camel pageant is among World Cup’s sidelines attractions
• Repeat link from last year (and the year before that…) – it’s Advent of Code time. First few days are always good warmups.
• I had a reasonable amount of head-nodding in this article on building a vision for your platform teams
• Speaking of platform orgs, another head-nodder in What developer self-service shouldn’t look like
• Every month or so, there’s another good article on psychological safety. Here is this month’s rendition. Follow these 4 steps to create psychological safety in your teams
• Oh – before I forget, I’m on mastadon. You can find me at @angryweasel@hci.social

Time to go watch some more soccer – have a great week.