To Improve Your Team, First Work on Yourself

Howard George/Getty Images

A colleague and I were recently meeting with a CEO and his leadership team, observing them as they discussed how to improve their annual planning process. As the team of ten explored their current process, the conversation got heated. The team had been talking for 45 minutes, but it wasn’t clear who was leading the discussion or what their objectives were. Many comments were off-topic, and they were not getting closer to answers.

How to make effective decisions by comparing alternatives

Alon Kiriati Jan 19

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Not better, not worse… just different

“React.js is so much better than Angular”, “Java sucks, no one uses it anymore… we should use Golang”, “Pineapple is the worst pizza topping”. You’ve probably heard one of these very straight opinions — one option is the best, the other is the worst, X is better than Y and so on. But Java is still one of the most popular languages in the world, Angular gives a decent fight to React.js, and pizza with pineapple… well, that’s ewwww.

Los Angeles Is the Face of Climate Change – 2069 – Medium

In July 2018, the air temperature in Woodland Hills, a Los Angeles neighborhood some 20 miles north of the Pacific Ocean, peaked at 117 degrees Fahrenheit. For 63-year old U.S. Post Office carrier Peggy Frank, that Friday marked her first day back at work after recovering from a broken ankle. At 3:35 p.m., Frank was pronounced dead after paramedics found her unresponsive in her non-air-conditioned truck. In September, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office confirmed what seemed a forgone conclusion: Frank died of hyperthermia — she overheated.

The infrastructural humiliation of America – TechCrunch

The infrastructural humiliation of America

@rezendi /

2 hours ago

I’m flying back to the USA today, and as an infrastructure aficionado, it’s nice to be going home, but I’m dreading the disappointment. I just spent two weeks in Singapore and Thailand; last year I spent time in Hong Kong and Shenzhen; and compared to modern Asia, so much American infrastructure is now so contemptible that it’s hard not to wince when I see it.

Kyle Zeppelin Wants to Build a City of the Future. Is It All a Pipe Dream?

On a brisk afternoon, Denver’s self-proclaimed “punk-rock urban real estate developer” visits the latest stud in his leather jacket. The Source Hotel is all wooden planks and polished concrete, a nod to the industrial roots of its home in River North, a former warehouse district and grimy artist enclave that’s now a playground for Denver’s twenty- and thirty-somethings.

My Leadership Philosophy

For no fewer than three years, my twitter bio has included the statement “I’m bad at writing recipes, great at cooking the food.” When I set out to define my leadership philosophy, I didn’t realize how true that statement would be.

I’ve been guiding and advising future leaders for many years, as a mentor and overall advocate, and my advice hasn’t changed much in that time. My concept of good leadership is informed by being a woman in a male-dominated field, a person of color in a primarily white-dominated world, and a general faith in the power of a good-hearted group of people.

How To Be Successful

Introduction to systems thinking.

Many effective leaders I’ve worked with have the uncanny knack for working on leveraged problems. In some problem domains, the product management skillset is extraordinarily effective for identifying useful problems, but systems thinking is the most universally useful toolkit I’ve found.

If you really want a solid grasp on systems thinking fundamentals, you should read Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows, but I’ll do my best to describe some of the basics and work through a recent scenario where I found the systems thinking approach to be exceptionally useful.

Metrics for the unmeasurable

As organizations grow complex, they’re managed through incorporeal abstractions that drift increasingly from the reality they represent.

On the smallest teams, decision-makers might be deep in the code on a daily basis. A bit larger, and you’re talking about tasks in sprints. More growth, and you’re talking about collections of tasks, and adopting fancy words like “epics.” At a hundred-plus engineers, you’re likely talking primarily in themes of work with focus on a couple key initiatives. At thousands, you might be talking about your investment framework for resourcing decisions.

Jack Dorsey Has No Clue What He Wants

A conversation with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey can be incredibly disorienting. Not because he’s particularly clever or thought-provoking, but because he sounds like he should be. He takes long pauses before he speaks. He furrows his brow, setting you up for a considered response from the man many have called a genius. The words themselves sound like they should probably mean something, too. Dorsey is just hard enough to follow that it’s easy to assume that any confusion is your own fault, and that if you just listen a little more or think a little harder, whatever he’s saying will finally start to make sense.

On Sizing Your Engineering Organizations

One of the most frequent conversations I have with teams is how to think about organization size. Or rather we have a conversation that goes something like, “We need to double/triple/quadruple our engineering team next year, and now we need to hire a leader who has done it before.” And to have that conversation well you need a theory of organization size.

In the abstract it seems obvious that you don’t grow a team to grow a team. Rather growth is a tool to solve some other pressing issues. In practice, across conversations with hundreds of engineering leaders and CEOs, facing a variety of challenges, the conslusion, “We don’t have enough engineers (and we don’t have the right engineers)” has nearly universal coverage. And while I’m on record saying that most teams don’t spend enough time on hiring, this model of growing the team as a percentage (or multiplier) of headcount is fatally flawed.

“The Linux of social media”—How LiveJournal pioneered (then lost) blogging

Enlarge / No spoilers, but with the departure of a certain high profile fantasy writer, LiveJournal seems to have been left like Jon Snow here.

Last April, famed writer and hero-murderer George R.R. Martin announced that he was hoisting his ancient blog from his moldering LiveJournal onto his personal website. For casual Game of Thrones fans, it was a minor hiccup at best—most clicked the new link and never looked back. For a certain strata of enthusiasts, however, this was a far more momentous move. Described as “the last holdout” by longtime LiveJournal volunteer-turned-employee Janine Costanzo, Martin’s blog was perhaps the once-blogging-giant’s last bond to the world of great pop culture. So while the author may never finish his most beloved literary series, his simple act of Web hosting logistics truly marks the end of an era.

Why Open Source Failed – John Mark – Medium

John Mark Jul 30, 2018

(If you like this essay, you may be interested in my follow-up, “Save Open Source, Save the World”)

2018 is the 20th anniversary of the term “open source”, and a good number of articles have been written and conference talks given about this landmark year, the vast majority of which have been of the self-congratulatory, navel gazing type. Unfortunately, open source proponents seem unable or unwilling to tread into reflective contemplation about the actual impact open source has had on society at large, resulting in a rather large blind spot. I’m afraid, dear reader, that the world has left it to me, the guy who brought you such hits as “There is no Open Source Community” and “It Was Never About Innovation”, to tell you about the gross failure of open source as a mechanism to unlock a more equitable society and why we all need to be better. We may not be entirely responsible for either the problem or the solution, but we’re certainly complicit and, thus, responsible for helping to resolve the issues.

How I Know Your Product Messaging Isn’t Working: A Framework — Nandini Jammi

I’m a copywriter and contrary to what you may believe, my most significant responsibility is not to write. It’s to delete. Mercilessly.

It can be a deeply disconcerting experience to watch a copywriter delete your words and sometimes your ideas, but it’s a very necessary step to clearing the way for an effective product message.

I don’t do this because “less is more” (although this is often true) and I don’t do this to hurt anyone’s feelings (although I have).

7 Things I Wish I Knew When I Was a Younger Product Manager

Yulia Semenova Jan 9

(Smart on Unsplash)

“Who is that stranger?” Do you ask this question remembering yourself a few years ago? I think you do. To me, it happens all the time and I like to consider it as a proof of continuous growth.

Just recently I‘ve been remembering the start of my PM way. Oh God, how many things I did wrong! So in order of learning, I sat and wrote down my thoughts about that time. In the end, I got 7 pieces of advice for a younger version of myself. She’ll never be able to read this, but maybe my experience helps you.

Gov. Jared Polis unveils ambitious, expensive plans in first State of the State. Here’s the speech, annotated.

Gov. Jared Polis outlined an ambitious — and equally expensive — agenda Thursday in his first State of the State address.

The tenor of the 55-minute speech, interrupted dozens of times for applause, left the Democratic majority hopeful, but also anxious about how to deliver on all the policy priorities. Republicans, too, wanted more specifics on Polis’ plans, which included tax reform and leaps into renewable energy.

How to rein in Big Tech

• January 11, 2019 at 12:00 pm

• Categories:

  Opinion, Opinion Columnists, Perspective

Cardboard cutouts of Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg were placed outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on April 10, the day Zuckerberg testified before Congress.

Every month, new controversies emerge regarding Facebook, Google, Twitter and other Internet-based companies. Self-regulation clearly has not worked, and this slow-dawning reality has led to a number of proposals to rein them in.

Open Source Business Models Considered Harmful – John Mark – Medium

John Mark Jan 4

Don’t Let the Tail Wag the Dog

Free Software! Get your Free Software! Super cheap!

In recent months, the debate on so-called “open source business models” has begun to rage once again, thanks to recent moves from Mongo, Redis Labs, and Confluent. Taken individually, each situation presents unique characteristics that warrant further analysis without jumping to conclusions about each entity. Taken together, however, the sum total of their individual acts presents a clear trend: movement by companies that build products on open source software towards a more proprietary approach. While each case is different, they have in essence declared that an open source approach is inadequate for generating enough revenue to yield return on investment sought by their investors. I believe that this is because the emergence of the open source business model as a distinct class pushes companies that adopt it into a narrow-banded decision matrix that presents limited options for future changes if the need to pivot arises.

​​How I try to organise my life to make me happy – Paul Adams – Medium

Paul Adams Dec 29, 2018

​​How I try to organise my life to make me happy

​​I’ve Matthew McConaughey to thank for this. More on that in a bit.

​​First though, as I write it’s the 29th December. We’re closing 2018 and about to turn the corner into 2019. I tend to use these moments to reflect on the past and plan for the future. I deeply believe that reflection helps us learn, which helps us plan better, and live happier lives.

Three Important Things

Congratulations! You are in a new management role. Now what?

Remember these three things: don’t fall into the safety of your old job, listen, and provide useful feedback.

These are the three most important insights I gained from working as an Engineering Team Lead at Automattic.

Don’t Fall into the Safety of your Old Job

Stepping into a new role, like managing people or projects, requires different skills than the ones that made you shine as an individual contributor. Recognizing that can be difficult.

Childhood’s End | Edge.org

Conversation : CULTURE The digital revolution isn’t over but has turned into something else

Nations, alliances of nations, and national institutions are in decline, while a state perhaps best described as Oligarchia is on the ascent. GeorgeDyson explains in this, the first Edge New Year’s Essay.

George Dyson is the author of Turing’s Cathedral and Darwin Among the Machines (George Dyson’s Edge Bio Page).

All revolutions come to an end, whether they succeed or fail.

35 years ago, Isaac Asimov was asked by the Star to predict the world of 2019. Here is what he wrote | The Star

Originally published Dec. 31, 1983

lf we look into the world as it may be at the end of another generation, let’s say 2019 — that’s 35 years from now, the same number of years since 1949 when George Orwell’s 1984 was first published — three considerations must dominate our thoughts:

Fake-porn videos are being weaponized to harass and humiliate women: ‘Everybody is a potential target’

It was her face. But it had been seamlessly grafted, without her knowledge or consent, onto someone else’s body: a young pornography actress, just beginning to disrobe for the start of a graphic sex scene. A crowd of unknown users had been passing it around online.

She felt nauseated and mortified: What if her co-workers saw it? Her family, her friends? Would it change how they thought of her? Would they believe it was a fake?

How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit

This article is by Rahul Vohra, the founder and CEO of Superhuman — a startup building the fastest email experience in the world.

We’ve all heard that product/market fit drives startup success — and that the lack thereof is what’s lurking behind almost every failure.

For founders, achieving product/market fit is an obsession from day one. It’s both the hefty hurdle we’re racing to clear and the festering fear keeping us up at night, worried that we’ll never make it. But when it comes to understanding what product/market fit really is and how to get there, most of us quickly realize that there isn’t a battle-tested approach.

Murder on a Mountain Bike

Around 10 A.M. on Friday, September 15, 2017, Ginger Chase-Watkins called the Old Town Bike Shop in Colorado Springs looking for her husband, Tim Watkins. She hadn’t heard from him in more than 24 hours.

A bike mechanic and lifelong outdoorsman, Watkins was known to spend nights in the wild, something he had done since he was a boy in Palmer Lake, Colorado, the town where he and Ginger grew up and still lived. But lately he’d been sleeping in his car, often parked at a local trailhead, to escape the turmoil in his personal life.

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats

Robbie McClaran

Memo: From Nick Hanauer
To: My Fellow Zillionaires

You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I’m no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can’t even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc. You know what I’m talking about. In 1992, I was selling pillows made by my family’s business, Pacific Coast Feather Co., to retail stores across the country, and the Internet was a clunky novelty to which one hooked up with a loud squawk at 300 baud. But I saw pretty quickly, even back then, that many of my customers, the big department store chains, were already doomed. I knew that as soon as the Internet became fast and trustworthy enough—and that time wasn’t far off—people were going to shop online like crazy. Goodbye, Caldor. And Filene’s. And Borders. And on and on.

How Much of the Internet Is Fake?

Photo: Artwork by Ayatgali Tuleubek

In late November, the Justice Department unsealed indictments against eight people accused of fleecing advertisers of $36 million in two of the largest digital ad-fraud operations ever uncovered. Digital advertisers tend to want two things: people to look at their ads and “premium” websites — i.e., established and legitimate publications — on which to host them.
The two schemes at issue in the case, dubbed Methbot and 3ve by the security researchers who found them, faked both. Hucksters infected 1.7 million computers with malware that remotely directed traffic to “spoofed” websites — “empty websites designed for bot traffic” that served up a video ad purchased from one of the internet’s vast programmatic ad-exchanges, but that were designed, according to the indictments, “to fool advertisers into thinking that an impression of their ad was served on a premium publisher site,” like that of Vogue or The Economist. Views, meanwhile, were faked by malware-infected computers with marvelously sophisticated techniques to imitate humans: bots “faked clicks, mouse movements, and social network login information to masquerade as engaged human consumers.” Some were sent to browse the internet to gather tracking cookies from other websites, just as a human visitor would have done through regular behavior. Fake people with fake cookies and fake social-media accounts, fake-moving their fake cursors, fake-clicking on fake websites — the fraudsters had essentially created a simulacrum of the internet, where the only real things were the ads.

PewDiePie’s Battle for the Soul of the Internet – Quillette

This is a story about the question of who holds power over what we can say, hear, watch and read on the internet—an increasingly urgent issue that many ordinary people have cause to think about every day. And yet the protagonist in this story, the man whose fate symbolizes the future of social media and the corporate web that controls it, is unknown to the vast majority of educated readers.

Facebook Is a Problem. The System It Feeds Is a Bigger One.

It’s easy, at this point, to see any Facebook scandal as more white noise; a few million people betrayed by the social network, an egregious overreach into a user’s personal data — another day online. But you shouldn’t sleep on a fresh New York Times report about the company’s dealings with other tech behemoths, like Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Microsoft, Russia’s Yandex, and even, curiously, the Royal Bank of Canada. It follows similar reporting from the Wall Street Journal earlier this year and a related document dump from U.K. parliament just this month, but adds significantly more context to the well-established narrative that Facebook has repeatedly violated the trust of its 2.27 billion monthly users in pursuit of growth and profit.

Why you can’t manage humans like they’re software

Early on at Amazon, CEO Jeff Bezos famously issued a memo about how software was to be built at the company. Teams would share their data through service interfaces, or APIs, the same way that they would share it with an outside customer. That meant that a developer on one team didn’t need to know anything about how another team operated in order to integrate the product it made—he or she could follow the documentation and use that product as though it were an external service. Ultimately, this ease of cooperation became extremely efficient and is what paved the way for Amazon Web Services—a $6.7 billion business that powers huge parts of the web (including Netflix).