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A twitter follower just told me that my five for friday didn’t show up. Yes, I’ve been busy, but mostly just dumb, as I somehow managed to write this, and not post it.

Better late than never.

This week has …not really been any better than last week. Lots of things happening, and only some of them are good. I still found a few bits of information worth sharing.

• Something that really bugs me is stupid password rules. The only password I know is my bitwarden password, and it’s basically the opening paragraph of a novel. Anyway, some smart people at Princeton wrote a really cool paper about stupid websites and stupid password rules.
• I probably linked to Github Copilot when it was first announced (and I’m too lazy to look right now). But apparently, This Copilot is Stupid and Wants to Kill Me.
• I’m reading, When They Win, You Win by Russ Laraway. Oh boy is it a good book for managers to read. It’s full of data, anecdotes, and practical things managers can do to keep employees happy and engaged.
• In my ongoing series of posts about burnout, I present The Best Solution to Burnout We’ve Ever Heard | A Conversation With Slack, Netlify & Ambassador Labs (note – it’s a podcast, but the TL;DL is that burnout decreases when you actually ship things frequently. Burnout is caused by crap like toil, rework and spending too much mental energy on bottlenecks. I’ll say it here – Modern Testing is the antidote to burnout 🙂
• I found out about this today from Noah Sussman. Apparently, Minnesota republicans can’t read, and accidentally approved a bill legalizing hemp-based THC edibles and beverages. It’s good for Minnesota, but yet another embarrassing story about dumb politicians in America.

I hope something here is interesting for you. See you next week!

Well – today has been a shitty day. Thanks to a set of unqualified judges forming opinions based on their fantasies instead of policy, abortion is illegal in 26 states. This will undoubtedly result in health issues and death for many women, and cause economic burden in states who already have high levels of poverty. It’s a sad day for the country.

I guess I better share a few links too – here you go.

• Amazon’s code whisperer looks pretty cool
• This is interesting – Microsoft are measuring thriving over engagement. It actually looks like a good idea.
• This is a good article on limiting your work in progress as a manager.
• A very long time ago, I worked on Windows 98. Apparently, software I wrote is in space.
• Finally, for a site that is traditionally parody, The Onion feels too close to home today.

That’s it. See you in a week.

I’m back home and feeling *almost* healthy. I seemed to have caught a cold on my return trip (multiple negative covid tests – both pcr and antigen) – it seems weird that I think it’s necessary to say that, but it’s the world we live in. Here are some things I’ve found interesting this week.

• I’m unable to express my excitement about Seattle hosting some World Cup 2026 matches. I will attend everything I can in Seattle, but may also see if I can book tickets in some other North American cities. I can’t wait.
• I enjoyed this article on What Leaders Get Wrong About Resilience. The article has a lot of great advice and things to think about.
• I know I share a lot of Michael Lopp (Rands in Repose) articles, but they’re all so good. This one, while on the surface is about layoffs, is really about the importance of explaining how hard decisions are made. I spend a lot of time doing this myself, but this article reminded me how critical this is.
• Nothing we don’t already know in this article on why linkedin is no longer a professional networking site, but it captures my feelings well.

Another week completed. Stay safe.

• I’m a huge Sonos fan, and was amused to hear that a software issue caused them to send people extra speakers in their orders. Apparently, they gave up on asking for returns and stopped asking people to return them. It’s an interesting story for interesting times.

Working from Europe this week, and time (and jet lag) got the best of me. I will make it up for you with an extra link in this exclusive six-pack of stuff I found on the internet.

• I have successfully passed my covid re-entry test (meaning that I didn’t catch the cooties in Denmark). Turns out that starting tomorrow a negative covid test is no longer required to enter the US
• Charity Majors is a gem. So many times when I think I’ve needed to take time to think deeply and try to explain something, Charity is there to the rescue. This time, she explains job levels at Honeycomb – but the lessons and explanations are applicable at most tech companies.
• I’m in love with my Mac M1 – so while this flaw is concerning, afaict, it’s not nearly as risky as the article states. It’s a security feature that other chips don’t even have that can, in special conditions, not work.
• I was happy and excited to see Anne-Marie Charrett (former and future AB Testing guest) win the 2022 Eurostar Testing Excellence award. She’s a fantastic contributor to the software community.
• This is an interesting article on what it means to waste time. I like that it says it’s ok to do what you enjoy, and that downtime is productive time.
• Finally (sixthly?), something I often do when I travel (which means I haven’t done a whole lot of it the last few years) is read fiction. I have selectively read Stephen King novels throughout my life, and gave Billy Summers a shot – and loved it. Not as good as 11/22/63 (probably my favorite King novel), but still high quality writing.

That’s all I have for today. I suppose I almost got this done by the time Friday ended on the west coast, but hopefully a few of you read this and find something interesting.

It’s another week, and I found five more things you may enjoy.

• Practitest posted their top testing podcasts this week. And yes, your favorite podcast was included.
• Also – a great article from Coursera on how they improve developer productivity
• As someone 30 or so years in tech without a comp sci degree, this article on What you don’t know if you don’t have a CompSci degree was insightful (even if I learned almost all of this stuff anyway)
• A few colleagues shared this article – which I expect a lot of folks will find relevant. When Everything is Important But Nothing is Getting Done
• Finally, in a “oh duh” moment for me, this article on The only Linux command you need to know is valuable. Note – this works on mac too – just brew install cheat

That’s all for this week. Next week, I’m attempting another business trip, this time to Denmark. We’ll see what sort of interesting links I find there.

It’s yet another not-so-great week for America. I have so much to say that I think it’s better to say none of it. Here are five of the things I found to distract myself this week.

• First, this article on 3 Strategies for Leading Through Difficult Times (tl;dr – check your ego, have courage, and be transparent). If you’re a leader, this is worth the read.
• This is a fantastic article from Spotify on learning from incidents
• In alternate shitty news, Nearly 100,000 NPM Users’ Credentials Stolen in GitHub OAuth Breach
• I’ve been reading Making Numbers Count by Chip Heath and Karla Starr. I’ve read everything Chip Heath has ever written, and this is another one that’s worth every (digital) page-turn
• This last one only matters to the folks in Seattle, but if you’re in Seattle, this. is. HUGE. The West Seattle Bridge, which has been closed for over two years, is on track to open this summer.

It’s a long weekend in the Americas. Take care of yourselves and your families, and we’ll try this shit again next week.

Here are a few things worth sharing this week

• Old article, but new to me. It accurately describes almost every “agile doesn’t work” article I’ve ever read. We tried baseball, but it didn’t work.
• I learned this week about The Learning Cone, and then bit my tongue from nodding too hard.
• I’m always proud to see members of my team called out – here’s Sharlene Tan, in The Faces of Unity
• Burnout remains high on my mind – here’s a good article on fighting the blahs
• And finally, here’s a transcription of a podcast (you can listen if you want) – Hire an Engineering Effectiveness Team Early

That’s it for this week. Brief and to the point. I hope you found something interesting that you haven’t found on your own.

Not only am I back for another week of FfF, but you are too! Thanks for reading.

• First up this week – in a title that’s obvious, but an article with substance. The Key to Retaining Young Workers? Better Onboarding.
• This is something I need to ask Brent about. Microsoft considers pay raises to stay competitive
• My entry into Tech was at a 90s startup called Midisoft. Stuff happened (I have stories), and I left to join Microsoft. Stuff kept happening, and the company folded a few years later. Recently, their website resurfaced.
• I swear that for every org that uses OKRs properly, there are 50 more that fuck them up. Here are some tips on being on the good side of that fraction.
• Finally – I don’t know if I’ve posted about this before, but I’m currently drinking a cup of tea that has been precisely at 137 degrees farenheit for the last 30 minutes. I received an Ember mug as a gift recently, and for someone who likes sipping on hot beverages, it is absolutely the thing I never knew I needed until I got it.

That’s it for this week. How do I know? It’s because there are 5 bullets. Thanks again for reading – see ya’ in a week.

I spent the week in Los Angeles – meeting some of my peers at Unity for the first time…which was surreal. I did manage a quick walk on the beach – but of course I’m such a bright shade of Northwestern US white, that my face is completely sunburnt. Fortunately, heading back to the shade and rain of Seattle where I can easily heal. Here are a few things I found of interest this week.

• This article from the Guardian is one of the better summaries I’ve read reacting to the absolute bullshit from Justice Alito.
• The folks at Harness profiled one of the wonderful people in my organization in their Women of DevOps series.
• I have a lot of meetings (I should do a whole post on this sometime) – but I don’t want my team to have many at all. There are lot of good points in this article on Why a Meeting Costs More than a MacBook Pro – the Business Case for Fewer Developers in Meetings
• It’s review season at Microsoft, so I will share this article on How to Be a Compassionate Manager in a Heartless Organization (it’s good advice even if your organization isn’t heartless).
• I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s a nugget worth exploring – IBM’s Asshole Test

That’s it until next week – thanks for reading.

It’s that time of the week again – here are a few things I found that you may like.

• I liked this post from Mike Cohn on High Performing Teams.
• This is a really cool bug from a Unity customer on The Worst Bug Ever.
• Another good lessons learned post on Building a Portal for 1000 Developers.
• Cindy Sridharan has a fantastic blog post (all of Cindy’s posts are fantastic) on Why Success Is Often Elusive at the Highest Echelons.
• As I often do, I’ve saved the best for last. The Oatmeal is making an Exploding Cats series for Netflix w/ Mike Judge and Greg Daniels!

That’s all for this week. I’m off to attend my first work offsite in over two years – we’ll see what happens.