Category: All Posts

What a week it’s been (and how many times has that been true in the last few years). Somehow, among eight million other things, I still manage to stumble across a few tidbits from time to time worth sharing. Here’s this week’s attempt at that endeavor.

• It’s a sad week for the world with the passing of the Queen of England. Despite her being a fixture for my entire life (and decades before that), there’s a lot I didn’t know. Here is one such list of ‘things about the Queen’.
• Given my time working for a $bigco, I pick and choose what to borrow, and how to make some of their ideas work in practice. As such, I kinda really liked this article on Putting Amazon’s PR/FAQ to Practice
• A lot of good advice here on The best product planning approach does not focus on plans
• Brent and I have been talking a bit about how A/B Testing is testing (and maybe the only testing we want to do). Interestingly, I found this article with some thoughts on the idea. A/B Testing: What is it and How can it Help your QA team?
• Most people don’t realize how difficult the internet can be. For example, http-http-http-http-http-http-http/ is a valud url

I’m off for a long hike this weekend – I’ll try to remember to share photos next week. Have a great week, take care of yourselves, and be nice to others.

We made it to September. I’ve been going to the office a bit more, doing a small bit of traveling, and hoping the world can get to a better state. Here are some interesting articles I found this week.

• Some offices are back at work at almost pre-pandemic levels – while others are still ghost towns. I came across this article (mostly a collection of anecdotes) on Why Many Leaders Believe Getting Employees Back In the Office Is Now or Never that captures a lot of what I’ve heard and expect.
• This is a really well written post on how we solve problems – What problem are you trying to solve?
• There’s been a bit of a buzz recently around “quiet quitting” – and HBR has a great article this week showing that bad management plays a huge part in the buzz.
• Imposing standards is tough – and honestly, the wrong way to drive alignment in most situations. This article on cross-pollination over imposed standards from Jason Yip is full of great ideas and advice.
• I’ve always been a huge fan of Ronny Kohavi’s work in online experiments, and I’m finally getting around to reading his wonderful (so far) book – Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: A Practical Guide to A/B Testing. It’s easy to read, and full of fun informatin.

That’s it for this week. If you have a long weekend, enjoy it. See you in a week.

Greetings from the wrong side of the country. I’m in the middle of a quick family trip and it seemed like a perfect time to let you know what’s been filling my brain this week.

• Free can’t last forever – Heroku is discontinuing their free plans – which is a bit of a bummer, but I’m not mad. They probably have a million people like me that run one app. I think a migration to AWS will be pretty straightforward, and free isn’t discontinued for several more months, so I guess it’s just one more item to put on the To Do list
• I read this article on why Devs don’t want to do Ops – which reminded me in the first half of similar articles on why devs don’t want to do testing, but the answer is the same. Build platforms and tools that make it very easy for them to do Ops (and testing, for that matter)
• Possibly two years late, but still a great article on how to end video calls without being a jerk.
• If you’ve become a closet law voyeur like me, here’s a copy of the redacted affidavit regarding the mar-a-lago search
• I originally wrote several paragraphs for this bullet, but I’m defaulting to the shorter version. Like at least a million other people, I’ve been playing WE, the new Arcade Fire album on repeat for most of the last month. I wasn’t really an Arcade Fire fan before (I listened to Funeral a few times when it came out (like everyone else)), but this recording is the first album from any artist that I’ve really connected with. YMMV, but I think it’s great.

A day late this week, but just pretend you lost track of time like I did. Here’s some stuff I liked this week.

• I’m continuing to wrap my head a bit around the SPACE framework from Nicole Forsgren, but this article has a nice pragmatic view.
• I’ve been playing quite a bit of Steamworld Dig 2 lately, and as a fan of metroidvania games in general, this one is a lot of fun.
• Raymond Chen was (is) a legend at Microsoft. I still check out his blog frequently, and this post on how Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers is an example of the 1000s of fascinating stories he has.
• I was reading this article and wondering why I was nodding my head so much. It’s because Camille Fournier wrote it. The Product Culture Shift.
• I’m not sure what to make of it, but The US, UK, and EU Want to Regulate Cloud Reliability – but this article is helping. We’ll see what happens.

Sorry again for the late post – have a great week.

Today has been an interesting day in American politics. Not sure what happens next, but I hope it gets better.

Here are a few things I found this week that I thought were interesting.

• This post on PM & EM: Rules of Engagement echoes something I’ve noticed over the past several years – there’s a correlation between the partnership between PM and EM and the predictability and quality of what they deliver. Love seeing this written down.
• This is an…interesting take on productivity in a few of the bigger software companies. While I think there’s truth to this, I think there may be another angle as well.
• I’ve re-shared this port from Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin a few times this week – Measuring to improve quality
• Managing in Covid times has been tough – but perhaps more mentally tough than I even realized. Your boss is burned out – but terrified to tell anyone.
• Something I remind folks of more often that I’d like – Developers should deploy their own code.

That’s it for me – I’m spending most of the rest of the day spam refreshing politico to see what happens next. Wish me luck.

I’m typing this week’s FfF from the Unity San Francisco office where I’ve been able to meet for the first time, people who have worked in my org for years. Fun stuff!

Meanwhile, here’s some stuff I found this week.

• Loved this post from Zeno Rocha on The Two Typed of Quality
• Last week, I shared the engineering effectiveness handbook from Okay – this week, I recommend you read their article on The 5 Stages of Engineering Effectiveness
• Also enjoyed Mike Cohn’s latest post on 7 Ways to Get and Improve Fast Feedback. And I just noticed an unexpected pattern of links with numbers in them. Let’s see what happens next.
• I just started reading Build Better Teams, by George Karseras. I love it so far – it’s a great mix of research, theory, and pragmatic advice. Can’t wait to read more on the plane.
• And finally, just when you thought the internet was safe (picture a tone of deep sarcasm as you read that), Twitter confirms zero-day used to expose data of 5.4 million accounts.

That’s it for this week – but who knows what else I’ll discover over the next 7 days.

I hate to be cliché and talk about the weather, but it’s freaking hot here in the pacific northwest. I hope everyone is staying cool and safe. Here’s some stuff to read while you melt.

• Going to lead off this week with two links on Modern Testing. First is a great article from Laura de Paz on the Modern Testing World. It’s an overview written far better than anything Brent or I could have done.
• There’s been a bit of a twitter discussion lately on Modern Testing Principle Number 7, which reads: “We expand (testing) abilities and knowhow across the team; understanding that this may reduce (or eliminate) the need for a dedicated testing specialist.” We knew this one would always generate some conversation, and Ben Dowen shares a good set of thoughts in The 7th Principle of Modern Testing.
• Melissa Eaden wrote a post this week on The Treasure Maps of Committed Code that I think will be interesting to a lot of readers.
• I really like the idea of #anonymous-dev-confessions: Putting humour in humility, and wonder if other teams or orgs do something similar.
• Finally – I came across the Engineering Effectiveness Handbook from okay this week, and think it’s interesting and cool and has a lot of great ideas for any engineering team.

Thanks again for reading – see you next week.

Different week – same stuff. Long time readers probably find patterns in the things I like to read (or at least the things I like to share). Here’s what I found this week.

• I really enjoyed this article on How Google SRE and Developers Collaborate
• Like a lot of Americans, I have paid a lot more attention to politics over the past 8-10 years. Turns out it’s not just me – The Professional Has Become Political.
• A sad and informative story on a $46,000 web redesign…for 3 pages.
• Angela Riggs has hosted a(nother) nice article from Mojtaba Hosseini on the Hierarchy of Metrics (a previous post from Mojtaba on Pitfalls of Metrics is also very good
• Michael Lopp is a much, much better writer than me, but we have one thing in common. We both hate our early writing. He writes about his experience in Just Awful Writing.

Have a great week – see you in seven.

Today was a day off for Unity, so I rode Side Hustle again (link in last week’s FfF). Overall, not a horrible week for me, even though the world continues to find ways to suck. Here are a few interesting links I found this week.

• My first job in Tech wasn’t until (until?!?) 1993. But I could still relate to this article on Working in the software industry, circa 1989.
• I’ve felt this over the last few years – probably longer given that my teams are spread so much around the world. I’d love to hear thoughts on Why Virtual Meetings Generate Fewer Ideas.
• This is a great article on growing Senior Individual Contributors in general – A Staff-Shaped Hole.
• Molly wrote yet-another great post. 5 Months of Sabbatical: On Team Spirit, Building Up Answers, & Finding Stability
• And finally, something for fun. AI Reimagines 10 Harry Potter Characters Based on Book Descriptions.

Thanks again for reading – come back in a week to see what other weird or interesting things I may find.

Last week was one of those weeks where someone could write a FfF post – and then forget to actually post it…you know – hypothetically. This week is…better, but possibly because I took Thursday and today off. Here are some things I liked this week.

• Either the thing I love about the pacific northwest – or more possibly, the thing that keeps me here, is proximity to hiking and biking. It’s about a 15 minute drive from my driveway to the parking lot at Tiger Mountain. I went there yesterday and had a chance to ride Side Hustle for the first time – and it is one of the best trails I’ve ever ridden.
• Once again, the results from the Stack Overflow Developer Survey are out. One thing that stood out to me was the time developers spend, per-day on searching for answers.

• I enjoyed this article on how Covid shifted the balance of power in the workplace
• This link is to a podcast – but there’s a transcription, so you can still read it. Will Larson (author of Staff Engineer, and An Elegant Puzzle) was recently on the Engineering Enablement Podcast with some great insights.
• A team member recommended a book early this week – which I consequently devoured over the last few days. If you know someone going through layoffs – either being laid off, or being a “survivor” of a company layoff, I highly recommend Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations

And that’s all for this week! This time, I’m pretty sure I can post this on Friday. Thanks again for reading, and have a great weekend.