Category: All Posts

It’s April 21st [sic] and everybody knows today is Earth Day. Bonus points if you know the reference. Here are my 5 things.

• Speaking of the planet, a colleague pointed me to this article on Becoming a Sustainability-Aware App or Game
• A great article on the Modern Testing Principles from Mirza Sisic
• One of my old colleagues called me out in a reflection on his First Year at Meta.
• This article on The Workplace Perks Your Developers Actually Want is a lot more about burnout and mental health than perks, and worth reading
• In the science-that-had-to-happen category, MIT engineers introduce the Oreometer

That’s it. Hang in there, and we’ll see what I find next week.

We made it through another week. There’s still too much bad news in the world for my tastes, but I managed to find a few things worth sharing that aren’t about wars, human rights, or idiot politicians.

• The folks over at Practitest listed me among some testing folks to follow in twitter. There may be some other folks in that article you want to follow too (and if you’re not following me on twitter, do you really know the real me?)
• Nice article on what it’s like to intern at Unity
• Time Magazine said the quiet part out loud – No One Wants to Go Back to the Office As Much As White Men
• Molly Sheets rocked this article on 3 CloudOps Companies That Want You To Destroy Kubernetes in Prod
• I freaking love this article from freacking rectangle on interviewing developers. Stop asking them to write code, and have them read code.

That’s it this week – stay safe, and take care of yourselves.

I’ve started (finally) working from different rooms in my house this past week. I’ve found that this is very confusing for the dog, but I think she’ll be ok. Here are some things I found this week that may be interesting.

• Believe it or not, I found an article on Scrum that I actually liked. Being busy is the silent killer of Scrum Team effectiveness. To be fair, the points in the article apply beyond Scrum.
• Joel Montvelisky sums up what it’s like to see people again really well
• I’ve been reading a bit about burnout (or a bit more about burnout). This article on recovering from (and preventing) burnout is good and pragmatic.
• Speaking of burnout – sort of, I enjoyed this article from Staff Engineer – Hard to Work With
• In news that everyone is already aware of. While I hated the idiotic drama preceding this, I’m happy to see that Ketanji Brown Jackson was finally confirmed for a position on the Supreme Court

That’s all I have. See you next week.

Just got back from a long bike trip, so didn’t see a lot of the internet this week. Here are a few things I ran into that may be interesting.

• Washington (state) is going to require that all new cars sold in 2030 or later are electric
• It’s last year’s prank, but a write up worth reading – How often do people actually copy and paste from Stack Overflow? Now we know.
• I’ve been reading The Weekly Coaching Conversation – you know I love a good business fable, and this one has not disappointed me.
• I really liked this article on behavorial interivews
• And finally, Product Hunt has published The State of Burnout in Tech

That’s it for this week. I’m back to work next week, and we’ll see what lands in my browser.

Another week where I’m really not happy with the state of the world. Between the war in Ukraine, ridiculous questioning of Ketanji Brown Jackson, weirdness in general, I’ve needed the Internet to distract me more than ever. Here are a few of the things I’ve distracted myself with.

• I read Maidens by Alex Michaelides this week because I loved the author’s previous book, The Silent Patient so much. Either I had too high of hopes, or it just wasn’t as good. Still though, I enjoyed it, and it kept my mind off of the world.
• Eran Kinsbruner has a new book out – A Front-End Web Developer’s Guide to Testing – because as we know, developers are far more suited to writing automated tests than a separate test team.
• I hate unproductive meetings. Like really, really hate. So I liked this article on how attendees play a crucial role in meetings.
• I gave up on the term Work-Life Balance in favor of work life blend. This article hits on some good points no matter what you call it.
• Finally, this interactive conspiracy chart is both interesting and amazing.

That’s all for this week. I’m taking a bit of time off from work next week, but if all goes well, I’ll still have a post next week.

Let’s get into it – here are a few (five, to be precise) interesting things I found this week.

• I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Abe Books before. When I want a print edition of a book (let’s face it – some books are far superior in print) I can find a used copy here nearly every time.
• I liked this article on How silos wreak havoc and block your outcome dreams – found myself head nodding quite a bit.
• Creating a team vision is something a lot of folks struggle with. This article is a great resource on building visions.
• This is cool. Uber cut 70k cpus by tuning garbage collection in Go.
• Christopher Alexander passed away today, so I’m posting one of my favorite summaries of pattern design language

And another week is done. Stay safe, and take care of yourself.

Another week gone, and I’m still frustrated with the world around me. Trying to stay positive, but…sheesh. Here’s some stuff worth reading.

• I’m cheating, but this is worth it. Here is a post highligting seven must-reads for women in tech.
• I don’t often highlight AB Testing podcasts here, but we had Anne-Marie Charrett on a few weeks ago, and it was awesome (although Brent and I probably talked too much).
• Documentation – especially tutorials are tough to sell. Here’s a story from the VS Code team on the topic.
• I can’t believe it’s been 30 years since The Lemonheads released It’s a Shame About Ray. This article from the New Yorker is a great recap of the album. I should note that the article says, “…only album by the Lemonheads to feature [Juliana] Hatfield”, but we all know that she also featured prominently on Come on Feel The Lemonheads.
• Finally, a really excellent article on how the BBC changed their org to optimize building the right product.

As always, I hope you found something valuable or interesting here. See you next week.

I remain frustrated with the world, but distracted by the internet. Here’s some stuff that may help in your own quests for distraction.

• I kinda dug this article on Open Source Employee Surveys. It’s worth checking out.
• Google have a free PDF of their Enterprise Roadmap to SRE
• Speaking of SRE, I’m hiring a lead for the SRE team at Unity in Bellevue, WA
• Great article on Supporting the Well-Being of Your Underrepresented Employees from HBR
• For those of you still playing Wordle (I’m one of them), it looks like Canberra, Australia has the best Wordle players

Thanks for reading – see you next week.

Well, this has been a shit week. Here’s some stuff you can read if you need a distraction.

• I tried to register fuckputin.com, but somebody has already claimed the domain, but doesn’t have a website up yet. In the meantime, here’s an update that includes some ways we can help.
• Nice article on estimating work from the Leading in Tech newsletter
• Somewhat related, a wonderful article from Tim Ottinger on Maximizing Value, Not Quantity
• One of the best people you can find for Agile, Testing, and of course, Agile Testing is finally available for everyone. Lisa Crispin is Independent.
• And to wrap things up, this article from Molly Sheets with a #HugSecOps to Ukraine was right on point.

That’s all I have this week. Let’s hope next week is better.

It’s Friday, and according to my calendar, just over four weeks until our local mask mandates go away. While I understand that this is an important milestone, I think I’m going to keep wearing masks at the gym (the only place I go), and wait and see what happens.

In other news…

• Related to the paragraph above, the Moderna CEO says the pandemic is almost over (I’m in the wait and see camp).
• The most recent Agile Book Club has Gitte Klitgaard presenting on Psychological Safety.
• Anne-Marie Charrett has yet another great article on quality coaching – this one on Moving to a Quality Coach Role.
• I’m liking Elizabeth Warren more and more. Recently she suggested that the people making policies about how businesses run probably shouldn’t be trading stocks in those companies.
• Finally, Zuck has officially lost it. Metamates???

Have a great weekend everyone.