This is pretty amazing. An exhaustive analysis of how to go about being hired in tech. I’m posting it mostly so those of you who are hiring (pretty much everybody) can see how the process looks from the other side.

An interesting methodology for keeping tabs on how things are really going in your teams. Nicely put together and thought out.

From doing multiple Radical Candor workshops over the past few years, it appears that a common fragility in distributed teams is that the members don’t really know each other personally - they have spent very little time just bumping in to each other, chatting and generally connecting.

Clare Lew of Know Your Team puts her finger on the issue and suggests some solutions. Worth taking seriously if your team is distributed - the lack of connection in remote teams is an issue that can remain silent until it gets quite serious.

A useful, amusing chart about every project ever undertaken.

When I was working with managers at LinkedIn it was clear that “the D” was deeply engrained in their culture. “the D” is the Directly Responsible Individual - the person who is responsible for getting the thing done. Getting the notion of “the D” or “the DRI” embedded in your management culture will make a lot of things just go better. Take a look.

A look at the background of why using “the DRI” works (“Pluralistic Ignorance”).

An interesting update to the terrific work Google did in researching and then codifying what makes an effective manager. Take a look.

Not a bad list. Worth checking through briefly to see how you, or the people around you, are doing.

I’m not usually a fan of speed for its own sake - it can turn into rather frenzied, unconscious action - but this make a good case: doing things quickly lowers the expected cost of doing them which has a bunch of knock-on effects. Worth a read.

Amanda Petrusich on how yelling may be going out of favor, seen as an old-school sign of weakness. Seems like a good thing if true.

My notes on self-awareness: what it is, how to get it. Suprisingly simple to understand. Requires regular practice to actually do.

My notes on how much we deceive ourselves into believing that we are acting rationally when we are, in fact, being driven by much deeper, unconscious forces. Which causes Stupid Stuff.

Includes one of my more favorite bubble stories (the first one, late 90’s edition).

Some great notes from Judy Ringer. If you are wondering about how to put a difficult work relationship on a better footing, take the time to read it.

At some point you’re going to need (or review and rework) a framework in engineering for managers and technical people. This is a good one.

Nice simple piece on how to stay organized and on track (management!), without being overly rigid. If you’re not already thinking this way, check it out - not complicated, helpful.

Speaking of guardrails and tripwires - hey there Feature Creep! A short post reminding us that Feature Creep is always real. Software is hard, not least because it’s easy to generate a lot of it that neither you nor anybody else actually need.

I used to call this “x-ray vision” - the ability to check into a situation and see something just… off. For no explicable reason until I started to dig. Trusting intuition, gut, experience - worth it. Also includes a v cool story of building a simple process to check out what was kicking off that feeling of “uh oh”. Smart.

Excellent. Psychological Safety is a Good Thing - people just work better, more creatively and more effectively together if they feel safe with each other.

So we should measure it, right? Sounds like a good idea! Richard McLean did so and wrote a good, well-thought through exercise and post.

Cool, clear explanation of the Situation, Behavior, Impact Model for feedback - which is a solid way of organizing what you want to say in a feedback conversation. I come back to this often in coaching and it’s always helpful.

Got a hard conversation coming up? Give it a read.

Gets to grips with the costs and benefits of Saying the Hard Thing. And, almost more importantly, how to allow everybody in the team to be able to Say The Hard Thing without just bashing each other.

Includes a nice intro to the Five Dysfunctions of a Team model, which is useful.