bookmark_borderFive for Friday – April 28, 2023

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.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – April 21, 2023

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.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – April 14, 2023

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.

Thanks again for reading – see you next week.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – April 7, 2023

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.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – March 31, 2023

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.

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

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – March 24, 2023

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.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – March 17, 2023

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.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – March 10, 2023

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.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – March 3, 2023

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.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – February 24, 2023

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.