Category: All Posts

So. Much. Going on. – But still, the internet never fails to provide interesting info. Here’s some stuff I latched onto this this week.

• I don’t think I’ve ever watched more than one episode of a reality TV show – except maybe The Real World in the early(?) 90s. I’ve been watching Alone on The History Channel, and I’m oddly addicted. I l.o.v.e. camping alone…although maybe not in the circumstances of the “contestants” on this show. It’s a good reminder of how much I don’t know about survival.
• After sitting in my to-read list for months, I’ve finally been reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. It’s about time management, and it’s not about time management, but I’m enjoying it a lot.
• In a topic that may be part of tomorrow’s (or at least an upcoming angryweasel.substack.com post), this article on How Managers Can Make Feedback a Team Habit is fantastic.
• I thought this was a helpful article – Collaboration Across Departments: A Guide for Engineering Managers
• And lastly, this is a wonderfully relevant and appropriate article that I really liked this week. How To Kill A Fly With A Shotgun.

Spring is getting closer, and I’m feeling good. See you all next week.

It is trying to be spring in the pacific northwest – but mostly failing. I’m trying to get out more, but it’s still wet and muddy on the trails, but I expect I’ll be complaining about the heat in another month or two. I did spend a little time on the internet this week, and here are my usual almost-half-dozen things that I thought were interesting.

• Today’s obligatory AI / Chat GPT article is important to read – The New Risks ChatGPT Poses to Cybersecurity
• I’ve been thinking about API guidelines recently, and it made me think of Pact – which is awesome for API contracts – but then I saw this article from two years ago that made me smile. Glad I’m not the only one barking up this tree – Proving E2E tests are a Scam
• I really enjoyed this post on If You See Something, Say Something. I like the idea of asking, “what makes you say that?” when someone says something that…isn’t quite right.
• It’s been a while since Mike Cohn has made an appearance on FfF, but his latest article on Concurrent Engineering & Overlapping Work on Agile teams captures a lot of important points – and asks a few good questions. So few teams “doing Agile” are actually agile, and Mike always has good tips to get out of this rut.
• I worked on the guts of Windows enough to now be a Linux and Mac advocate – and also enough to know that this article is worth pointing out. The weird world of Windows file paths.

And that’s the list for this week. Have a good weekend everyone.

It’s been a funky Friday for me this week – one of those days where I feel like my head isn’t quite on straight. I’m sure it will be fixed by tomorrow. Here are a few links I thought were worth sharing this week.

• This week’s obligatory Chat GPT post is on How I Gained 15 Pounds of Muscle with ChatGPT
• I wrote recently on my other blog about decision making. Here’s a much better article. Strategy Is About Confident Decision-Making
• I love that everything is internet connected, and I’m terrified that everything is internet connected. But if it’s going to be connected to the internet, you may as well have fun. Displaying My Washing Machine’s Remaining Time With curl, jq, and pizauth
• Someone (Hi M) recommended The Every by David Eggers recently, but I have a problem where I refuse to read any book in a series without reading the predecessor first – so I’m reading The Circle. So far, so good – an interesting and scary look at social systems gone awry.
• Last – but in absolutely no way least, Jesper Ottosen wrote an interesting article on Applying Accelerate as a Strategy Legend.

Thanks again for reading – see you next week.

Hey – it’s April. It’s still a bit cold and wet in Seattle, but a few extra birds are around, and Todoist reminded me to take the snow tires off of my car, so it must be spring. Here are a few links I found this week that were fun to read.

• If you’re not aware, the Internet Archive (way back machine) is in the middle of some legal issues. If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed.
• Don’t know how you could have missed this one, but in Chat GPT news, Samsung workers made a major error by using ChatGPT
• Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory released a free mini-book this week on Holistic Testing. I’ve read it, and it’s excellent – perhaps even more interesting for developers than testers, but fun for the whole family.
• Ben Northrop wrote an interesting post on the gray area between doing what you’re told, and doing what you want. It’s about developers, but I think the premise is true for any knowledge workers.
• Part of the “fun” (for me) of running Linux is that you can configure everything. Of course, I forget how to configure almost everything, so how2 is pretty awesome – and I think I’ve only tapped the surface. It works for other operating systems too, but definitely a tool worth checking out.

Thanks again for reading (again). See you next week.

This has been an interesting week – both in world news, and my life (probably more on that on my weekly substack posts, which you should sign up for). Here are a few things I found interesting this week.

• By now everyone has heard that Donald Trump was indicted this week. Here’s a great article from PBS on what happens next.
• Speaking of what happens next, here’s a follow up on how the meeting cancellations at Shopify have been going.
• And speaking of meetings, Microsoft shared some research (two years ago, but I found it this week) that Proves Your Brain Needs Breaks
• It took me a while, but I’ve become a fan of Succession on HBO – here’s what Succession can teach us about negotiation.
• My son is getting into more advanced programming at University. He’s learning, that sometimes the code is easy – but figuring out the right code is difficult. Here’s a short story I found from a dev that took a week to make a 10 line change.

That’s it for cool links this week. Thanks for reading – we’ll try this again in a week.

It is Friday again. I spent the last week in Montreal where I walked a lot, and ate at far too many restaurants to list (but one free link is the vegan ramen at Umami – absolutely amazing).

As usual here are a few (more than four, less than six) interesting things I found this week.

• While I’m not totally against the US banning Tik Tok, I’m not convinced the lawmakers pushing the bill know exactly why they want to ban Tik Tok – or if they know how to do it either. NPR somewhat agrees.
• Super interesting discussion on how the aCropalypse vulnerability was found. I would love to be a part of the retrospective for this one.
• Charity Majors had a great post recently on Architects, Anti-Patterns, and Organizational Fuckery – (title take from this quote from Charity’s experience: “What I have observed is that the architect role tends to be the locus of a whole mess of antipatterns and organizational fuckery.”
• I’ve mentioned Abe Books on this post probably more than once, but it’s been one-upped. Bookfinder searches Abe Books, plus a bunch of other sites to help find the cheapest new or used copy of just about any book.
• I love a good incident write-up. This one from Reddit on the Pi-Day Outage is excellent – like really excellent. Seriously, you should read it.

That’s all I have for this week. Next week looks to be a busy one for me, but I’ll see what I can find to share.

It’s Friday again, and that means I have random links to share.

• An absolutely fantastic article from HBR today that should be – but isn’t obvious to so many companies and leaders. To Curb Burnout, Design Jobs to Better Match Employees’ Needs
• I spent the last week skiing at Mission Ridge – it’s a small ski area with a huge amount of variety. For Washington, it has excellent snow. I put in a lot of miles and it was great to have a fully unplugged break for a few days.
• A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I have a new System76 linux laptop. My first laptop had a flaw, but this one (after a few small glitches) is working perfectly. With this computer, I also elected to use System76’s Pop OS! – it’s pretty similar to Ubuntu, and after spending several months away from using Linux as my main machine, it’s coming back pretty quickly (I’m using it to type this!).
• After referring to it in a substack article (signup link should be on the right if you’re viewing this on angryweasel.com), I decided to re-read Leadership and Self-Deception, and it’s haunting how much of the story is relevant to things I’ve seen recently. It’s a quick read, and I highly recommend it.
• The world did NOT need this, but it exists, and we all knew it was inevitable. Storybot – Bot submitted AI generated stories.

Once again, that’s all – see you next week.

It’s been an odd week with lots going on…and little going on at the same time. I’m taking some time off, starting with a ski trip next week that I hope goes as well as I imagine. In the meantime, as usual, I found a few things worth sharing.

• I’ve been away from Microsoft for over six years now, and it’s finally happened. Microsoft is (apparently) becoming innovative again. I don’t quite believe it yet, but I trust HBR to not write bullshit, so I look forward to seeing what happens.
• Adam Grant’s latest post / newsletter on Meyers-Briggs limitations is spot-fucking-on. While I find some value in MBTI, I take it with a huge grain of salt (or ignore it altogether). I have taken the Big Five survey he mentions (I took it several years ago, and again after reading this article, and I remain “The Explorer”).
• I liked this article on how a single engineer brought twitter down. But – first off, it’s worth noting that people are never to blame for incidents like this (with the exception of blaming Elon) – production incidents happen because the company creates an environment where making errors like this is possible. /me makes mental note that this could be a good blog post on its own someday…
• Some great advice from Roy Rapaport on waiting before sending that angry email. There was so much I could relate to in this post from my early career (and more recent times as well).
• And finally, another link for the local folks. I went to see Between Two Knees at Seattle Rep last weekend, and it’s fantastic. It has a perfect balance between comedy and guilt that probably plays out best in the pacific northwest anyway. I highly recommend it.

That’s all for this week. Next week may be entirely ski pictures, but we’ll see what happens.

I think I may have actually had a pretty good week. Some things fell into order, and I feel almost…rested. Here are a few links to get your week going.

• Something I’ve been thinking about a lot myself amidst the insurgence of Developer/Engineer Productivity teams (and numerous posts on linkedin). What Is Developer Productivity? explores this topic.
• In a not-so-surprising article (for me, at least), a study showed that Nearly 40% of software engineers will only work remotely. Now to get more of the industry CEOs to read this article…
• I’ve been reading The Advice Trap by Michael Bungay Stanier (author of The Coaching Habit). It’s a great sequel, and extremely practical. If you lead via coaching, I highly recommend this.
• I bought a new laptop this week. I ran linux on my desktop for ~5 years before defaulting to using my work Macbook pro and my phone. I was going to build a new desktop machine, but decided to try a laptop from System 76. They specialize in linux laptops, and I mostly love my new Pangolin. It currently has a weird hardware issue with the power supply, but hopefully I’m back here next week to rave about their support.
• Finally (for the locals), I had a chance to catch up with an old friend last night at the Side Hustle Taproom in Kirkland (with more locations coming). Great idea for a place to showcase local beers.

Thanks for reading – see you next week.

It’s a sunny and cold day here in the greater Seattle area – sort of that simultaneous reminder that spring is on the way, but it’s definitely still winter. Here are some things I found/noticed/read this week.

• I’m on the Semaphore podcast! We recorded this a few months back, but I’m glad to see this released even though I don’t remember what I said. I should have sent them an updated photo – the beard in that photo is sooo 2018.
• Someone (I think) on the Modern Testing slack group shared this article about what ails google, and how to fix it. It’s tough for a company to grow and stick to their core values.
• While the DORA metrics were launched into mainstream via Accelerate (Forsgren et al), the SPACE metrics (which are arguably more valuable) are still in the play-with-it phase. Thus, every time I see a practical and pragamatic adoption / use of the SPACE metrics, I’m going to read about it and link to it.
• This article on building 10x teams contains a huge number of articles and graphics I refer to and teach constantly (I’ve sketched the the autonomous alignment quadrant at least a dozen times in the last year…and will likely keep up that pace). Overall, great stuff to consider.
• I’m good at what I do, because people run stuff in the cloud. As a healthy reminder to many of you, you don’t have to run your stuff in the cloud.

That’s all the fun – at least as far as links go, for this week. Be sure to check out angryweasel.substack.com (new posts (almost) every Saturday). More links in a week.