An Open Letter to Matt Mullenweg: What folks often get wrong about Jamstack

WordPress Co-Founder Matt Mullenweg claims the Jamstack isn’t ready for prime time, here’s what he’s missing.

Richard MacManus had an interesting email exchange with Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress and co-founder/CEO of Automattic, about the Jamstack. It resulted in an Aug 31, 2020, writeup in TheNewStack. I have a deep appreciation for Matt’s role in shaping web publishing but also feel that his points (e.g. “JAMstack is a regression for the vast majority of the people adopting it”) are a bit misleading. Matt chooses to compare a modern architecture like the Jamstack to a monolithic product like WordPress. I don’t expect a recently popularized architecture to provide the tailored features that a 15-year-old product has. We should be asking whether Jamstack is a better architecture than LAMP and what gaps currently exist with products and solutions built on top of the Jamstack.

When a Jump Down to a Smaller Scope is a Jump up in Maturity and Wisdom – Plato

Problem

In 2016 I was leading supply growth with four subteams totaling 35 people, which was a pretty large scope. As a part of a reorganization, I was asked to join a much smaller team of only a PM and one and a half engineer (one person being part-time). It was a humbling moment — I went down in scope in terms of reports but that helped me understand what really matters and allowed me to work in a high leverage area of the company. Eventually, the scope increased and the team became larger, but learning what I did was far more important.

Can Engineering Productivity Be Measured?

I follow you on Twitter and read your blog. I particularly enjoy this post: https://charity.wtf/2019/05/01/friday-deploy-freezes-are-exactly-like-murdering-puppies/ I’m reaching out looking for some guidance.

I work as an engineering manager for a company whose non-technology leadership insists there has to be a way to measure the individual productivity of a software engineer. I have the opposite belief. I don’t believe you can measure the productivity of “professional” careers, or thought workers (ex: how do measure productivity of a doctor, lawyer, or chemist?).

(more…)

When Your Coworker Does Great Work, Tell Their Manager

I’ve been thinking recently about anti-racism and what it looks like to support

colleagues from underrepresented groups at work. The other day someone in a

Slack group made an offhand comment that they’d sent a message to an engineer’s

manager to say that the engineer was doing exceptional work.

I think telling someone’s manager they’re doing great work is a pretty common

Stephen Olmstead of inVision about approaching remote work as a fully distributed team – NoHQ Remote Work Guides

Stephen Olmstead is the Chief of Staff at the fully remote company inVision, the well-known digital product design platform. As the right-hand to the inVision CEO he takes part in a lot of parts of a well-working fully distributed remote-first company. What it took to grow a fully distributed business over almost a decade and how this all changes in the times of COVID-19 in our interview.

The surprising traits of good remote leaders – BBC Worklife

Strong in-person leadership skills don’t necessarily translate to being a good virtual leader. Instead, organisation and competency reign supreme. F

Fifteen years ago, Steven Charlier, chair of management at Georgia Southern University in the US, had a hunch that in-person charisma and leadership skills don’t translate virtually. “Before I became an academic, I worked for IBM for a number of years on a lot of virtual teams,” he says. “I had a boss who was a wonderful guy and great manager, and he drove me crazy trying to communicate. He was incredibly slow and unresponsive.”

If Management Isn’t a Promotion, the Engineering Isn’t a Demotion

I wrote a piece this week about what motivates people to become managers (tldr mostly org dysfunction), and Julian Dunn replied with some typically insightful tweets:

(I originally titled this article “Julian Dunn and the Case of the Bad Manager”, lol)

God, YES. This is something that has been on my queue of “topics to write about” for so long, and I haven’t because it’s just too big (and sometimes I tell myself, optimistically, it’s just too obvious?).

Useful randomness & how we play

This week we uncovered an assorted collection of signals that focus on how randomness can be used to Useful randomness & how we play

By Ethical Futures Lab • Issue #30 • View online

This week we uncovered an assorted collection of signals that focus on how randomness can be used to obscure and inspire, and how tech breakthroughs are changing how we play with machines. Save some time to poke around at beautiful devices from Soviet history and to draw lots of very wrong cats. —Alexis & Matt

Principles Trump Processes

Photography is a hobby for me. As a novice photographer, I believed the camera makes the photo. Whenever I met a fellow hobby photographer, I would discuss things related to photography, but mostly would gravitate to cameras. That was until I stumbled on Sephi. He shoots exquisite photos on an iPhone, debunking the myth that the “camera makes the photo.”

Camera, lenses, bags, and filters are the visible parts of photography, and they are easy to debate, discuss, and dissect. Learning the fundamentals of lighting, composition, and creativity is the hardest, so many photographers are not interested in them.

Independence, Autonomy, and Too Many Small Teams

“The two pizza team” paradigm has become really popular in the context of organizing software teams. The idea is to have small, self-reliant teams working independently to solve problems. The “two-pizza” refers to the guidance to keep the team small enough that we need not order more than two pizzas to feed them.

These teams are all around us today, but we are not seeing the kind of productivity or shipping velocity that we expected to see. Most developers, especially in larger organizations, complain about meetings, the burden of communication, the slow pace of change etc. Startups often sell themselves to potential candidates by touting their agility. But why should larger companies be slow if everyone is using the same “empowered team”/”autonomous team” model for organizing themselves?

How to Spot and Magnify the Powers of Your Engineering Superheroes

It may not be instinctual to link director Christopher Nolan and Looker founder Lloyd Tabb, but the two might view the world through a shared lens. A serial entrepreneur, Tabb has assembled development teams for his startups by classifying engineers by their superhero personas, rather than by standard roles. As Nolan created a reality that hinges on the counterbalance of heroes and antiheroes in The Dark Knight Trilogy, so does Tabb with his engineering team.

Why Johnny Won’t Upgrade · Jacques Mattheij

Software distribution has over the years gone through an enormous revolution in efficiency. Originally, software was developed on things called ‘plug boards’, a matrix of sockets that allowed quick (or so they thought) re-configuration of computing hardware to adapt it to different problems. This was soon followed by papertape, then the punched card deck, a stack of paper cards that contained the program code in a series of holes punched into the paper. Special readers and writers took care of reading, ordering and punching the cards. Woe to you if you dropped a deck of such cards or if your reader jammed or you spilled coffee all over a deck. (From personal experience: if you don’t immediately copy such a deck; within 10 minutes or so the cards will swell to the point that the reader will jam, this will not make your boss happy.) That principle plus miniaturization caused a quick succession of hardware based software distribution models culminating in ROM cartriges, a physical device that you buy which contains the program.

Skydio Engagement and Responsible Use Principles

Skydio Jul 13 · 3 min read

Our mission is to make the world more productive, creative, and safe with autonomous flight.

We consider the holistic impact our products have on communities and countries. Our focus is on advancing our mission to make the world more productive, creative, and safe. We are shaped by core values of accountability, transparency, and the protection of privacy and civil liberties. Informed by these values, we seek positive impact. This also requires us to proactively understand and mitigate potential misuse.

Feedback Equation | Lara Hogan

Feedback Equation

Originally posted Jul 15, 2018

As I mention in my book Demystifying Public Speaking, humans are mostly bad at giving feedback. We’re also really bad at preparing ourselves to receive feedback.

Many of us are paralyzed by the fear of having these awkward conversations. We actively avoid asking for feedback because it’s just so painful sometimes, and often we receive nonspecific, general feedback from others. I wrote a whole chapter in that book about feedback, because I so deeply want folks to learn how to deliver (and request!) better feedback at work.

Debugging Engineering Velocity and Leading High-Performing Teams

Problem

You have a solid set of engineers, you’ve embraced OKRs and Agile, you’ve got standups, and you also do Sprint planning and retrospectives. But have you still felt frustrated by your team’s speed of execution? Have you asked yourself, perhaps in the middle of a Sprint planning session, are we stuck?

Why do some teams seem to work faster than others? Why do some people perceive a team as too slow, while others think the same team is working at a good pace? And why do engineers on some teams appear to be more satisfied and more motivated than those on other teams?

Product Operating Rhythm

One of the toughest challenges I’ve faced while running product teams in the past is knowing which level to engage a team and when. Anyone can easily get caught up in debates about specific product details and unpacking a singular OKR status. And while that level of granularity is important, going there at the wrong time is often a major distraction for a team.

As teams scale, there’s an inflection point when you add a layer of product leadership between yourself and the teams closest to the work. I most recently felt this when Thumbtack moved from a totally flat product org to one with a lead in each key area. The processes that worked for a flat org led to a lack of clarity as the org matured.

Why Tech Companies Need Science Fiction Writers On Staff

Convergent Evolution

This entry is part 9 of 9 in the series Recognitions

• 

  Gabriel Ugueto. “Chamosaurine Phylogeny.” 2016.

Similarly to how social media collapsed high and low culture into a sinuous, middling unibrow; it made room for the fringe to graze the mainstream while allowing outliers and niche practitioners a foot in the door. Though institutional barriers to entry persist, a new art world has never been more possible. It would however be blinkered to consider it only in terms of finished and sanctified outputs; which often makes parameters of fault lines ripe for the pushing. Because it’s structural, the revolution won’t be televised until it’s irreversible and given us its first, fixed forms. The bet is safe, though: anticipate swerves wherever generalised crisis meets new media, patronage and deep shifts in values. The history of the avant-garde has never been more forward-facing.

Thoughts on Conway’s Law and the Software Stack

• Ramblings from Jessie

I’ve been talking to a lot of people in different layers of the stack during my

funemployment. I wanted to share one of the problems I’ve been thinking about

and maybe you can think of some clever solutions to solve it.

Conway’s Law states “organizations which design systems … are constrained

to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these

The Cadence: How to Operate a SaaS Startup

You think you need a COO. What you really need is an operating philosophy.

David Sacks Jul 1 · 13 min read

Let’s face it: most startups are a shitshow. Perhaps the most pervasive problem afflicting venture-backed startups, once they achieve a basic level of product-market fit, is managing the organizational chaos that results from rapid growth. Almost by definition, this is a chronic challenge of Series A-C stage startups since the rapid expansion of the team to chase a new market opportunity is the purpose of that venture funding in the first place. During this time, the growing pains of the startup will reach such a crescendo that the founders and board will cry out as one, “we need a COO!”

The Magic Wand Approach to Surfacing People’s Strengths

Everyone wants to succeed, and for managers, that means leading highly capable teams that deliver excellent results. In order to drive team members to deliver successfully, managers need to identify what those capabilities are and harness them in a way that serves the organizational goals.

There are many approaches to identifying and evaluating employees’ skills. Some rely on measurable tests and assessment methodologies. Others are less formal and rely on observation, such as what people are known for, and are asked to do again and again (more on that in Whitney Johnson’s HBR article).

How We Experience Code

How your first programming language shapes your perspective

DEV.BIZ.OPS Aug 13 · 5 min read

It was a simple question. I did not expect a large response. I was genuinely curious though when the thought popped in my head while I was taking a shower that morning. So I posted the following on Twitter and LinkedIn and moved on with work:

What was your first programming language?

What I got was a steady stream of responses that are still going strong since a week ago. It was both a blast from the past and a pleasant journey looking back into how many of us geeks and techies got our start in the software business. I welcome you to share your first experience with programming in the comments!

Build effective remote design teams with the right communication model – Automattic Design

As designers, we are often very comfortable in working together using the physical space to our own advantage — critiques, workshops, brainstorming sessions, etc. It’s usually part of our education, and it evolves with our practice and experience. Facilitating an in-person workshop is second nature to many of us. Which is why one of the most common questions about working without being in the same room is: how do you design remotely?

Tools of the trade: How I communicate at GitHub (and why)

One of my favorite “laws” is Conway’s Law, an adage that organizations will design systems that mirror their communication structure. As I’ve long said, “how you work is as important as what you work on”:

The tools you choose matter. Tools are more than mere convenience. Tools force teams into particular workflows, workflows that constrain not just how software is produced, but what software is possible. It’s no coincidence then that the open source community, in order to produce the type of software it produces, adopts vastly different tools than most enterprise developers have available to them at their office.

(more…)

Growth Without Goals

I.

Four years ago, soon after learning that my wife was pregnant with our first child, I was sitting on the Metro-North commuter train, reading. I was thinking about being a father; specifically, I was wondering what it would take to be a great father. Unconditional love and support seemed obvious. Patience too. But what could I teach my son Pierce and future kids that would help them live good, fulfilling lives? That day, I read the following passage from Jiddu Krishnamurti:

Chipping Away at a Monolith

My team recently embarked on a journey toward unbundling our part of Gusto’s monolithic Ruby on Rails app.

A monolithic app is a single application that contains code across many domains. The boundaries are unclear. The domains are fuzzy. Typically, as a monolithic app grows, it becomes increasingly difficult for developers to make changes due to unexpected consequences. This is especially true for Ruby on Rails applications, as the ✨ Rails magic ✨ encourages side effects, indistinct domains, and generally spaghetti code.

How to Manage a Remote Engineering Team

One good thing that has come out of the recent quarantine is that we’ve begun to explore what’s truly possible when all kinds of teams work from home. Though there have been growing pains for many in-person office jobs, most people have been able to make it work. Remote engineering teams are no different; they suffer from the same challenges, but they also have an advantage thanks to the great collaborative software options available.

Why Balanced Teams work better together | by Pam Dineva | Product Labs | Medium

Let us take a cue from Xtreme Programming, share more knowledge and share more ownership with less role definition.

Pam Dineva Apr 28, 2016 · 5 min read

What is Balanced Team?

Balanced Team is a global movement of people who value multi-disciplinary collaboration and iterative delivery focused on customer value as a source for innovation.

(more…)

https://cutle.fish/blog/when-you-hear-pay-attention/

Note: With dad-hood I’m doing more lists. They’re easier to write while learning to care for this awesome little farting/burping/pooping/smiling human. Apologies if you’re a fan of the longer posts. I’ll get back to them eventually/occasionally.

A quick list of hints that there may be an opportunity for improvement (and/or that you’re about to fall into a trap and need to pay attention):

• Might as well do [some extra thing] while we [do the original thing]

  (more…)

Opinion | We’ve Hit a Pandemic Wall – The New York Times

It’s Not Just You. We’ve All Got a Case of the Covid-19 Blues.

New data show that Americans are suffering from record levels of mental distress.

Opinion Columnist

Lyfe Tavarres in his apartment in Portland, Ore. He has found support during the coronavirus crisis by reaching out to family members and friends.Credit…Leah Nash

I am trying to think of when I first realized we’d all run smack into a wall.

Don’t Work on Vacation. Seriously.

Loading…

Managing yourself

• 8.95 Buy Copies

Loading…

Executive Summary

As more and more employees shift to flexible work schedules, it’s become increasingly common for people to work during time off. But new research shows that working on weekends or holidays can have a significant impact on intrinsic motivation, leading to both lower employee satisfaction rates and lower quality work product. To combat this, the authors suggest a simple but effective strategy for situations in which working during time off is unavoidable: by mentally reframing time off as “work time,” you’re likely to feel more motivated, find your work more meaningful, and put more effort into your work.

Stepping Stones Not Milestones

A mythology often develops around successful large engineering projects. We celebrate the end results and reflect on the positive steps taken to get there but quickly forget about all the missteps and uncertainty along the way. These “moonshot projects” teach engineers a terrible anti-pattern: Large projects addressed via completely disjoint phases of design, execution, and delivery.

This anti-pattern typically manifests itself in one of two ways:

1. The team that is paralyzed at the prospect of designing a solution to a multi-year problem. The warning signs are months of iteration on design proposals, increasingly complex architectures before a single line of code has been written, optimizations for problems we aren’t even sure exist yet, and an ever-increasing demand for “engineering resources” before we can start building stuff.
2. The team that has a complete system design and execution plan but doesn’t plan to deliver any value to the company or any means for reevaluation until the very end of the project. The warning signs are usually surprise that a VP is hesitant to green-light the project, or an increasing backlog of dependencies from other teams getting stalled on project completion.

In both cases it’s possible to successfully deliver on a project like this, but it’s a huge risk.

Tiny Wins

Over the years, I’ve worked on many important, large-scale projects, from figuring out high level strategy and blue sky products, to overhauling core flows and IA, to implementing design systems from the ground up.

Working on these big projects can be exhilarating. They’re often deemed critical by company leadership and various stakeholders, and it’s validating to be trusted with and attached to something so visible and impactful.

I recently shipped two things at GitHub that had an impact beyond my wildest dreams. The amount of gratitude and love that spilled out of the community is like nothing I’ve seen before.

Spotify’s Failed #SquadGoals

Failed#SquadGoals

Spotify doesn’t use “the Spotify model”
and neither should you.

By Jeremiah Lee

Sunday, April 19, 2020 • Listen • En français • 日本語で • Português (Brasil)

Of all the allures of startup culture, few are more desireable than the speed and nimbleness of a small team. Maintaining that feeling as a company grows is a challenge. In 2012, Spotify shared its way of working and suggested it had figured it out.

Human-scale digital spaces

#### Alexis Lloyd

Jul 13·3 min read

Jane Jacobs. Photo: Phil Stanziola

I was watching Citizen Jane last night (a documentary on everyone’s favorite urbanist, Jane Jacobs), and thinking through the parallels between urban planning philosophies and internet ecosystems. In many ways, the tensions between the open web and the platform web perfectly reflect the Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses theories of urban planning.

Jacobs’s perspective was that urban life happens at street level, and that access to a wide range of other people on the sidewalks of a city allow for an emergent culture that is unpredictable and messy, vital and communal. On the other hand, Moses’s idea of progress involved sweeping away the mess and unpredictability, creating regimented highways and high-rises that would allow for urban life to be planned, and therefore improved. In many ways the contrast is also about scale — for Jacobs, the city should work at the scale and speed of the pedestrian, whereas Moses believed a modern city should reflect the scale and speed of the automobile.