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FREE ELECTRON
There's a Screwed Scenario that I missed. Back in my Borland days, we were working hard on Paradox for Windows. I was a QA engineer testing the database creation and modification functionality. My counterpart in engineering, Jerry, was workingTHE OLD GUARD
Dunbar's Number is a favorite blunt diagnosis for the pains that affect rapidly growing teams. The number, which is somewhere between 100 and 250 describes a point at which a group of people can no longer effectively maintain social connections in STABLES AND VOLATILES Stephen was a hired gun at my first start-up. His contract started a year before I arrived, but he was long gone before I walked in the door. The story goes that when Stephen started, he found a small, solid team of five engineers, a QA lead, and a project manager. They were slowly and steadily goinENTROPY CRUSHERS
When it was five of you sitting in the same room, it was easy. When someone needed to know something, they stood up in the middle of the room and asked, "Who broke the build?" When a decision needed to be made, you looked up at Phil and said, "Phil, this needs to DOOMSCROLLING AT SCALE WARNING: The contents of this article might adversely affect your information consumption habits. A few weeks back, the sitting President incited domestic terrorists to storm the Capitol, so they did. For reasons I still don't fully understand, this was a relatively straightforward process for the RANDS IN REPOSEARCHIVESABOUTBOOKSSLACKSPEAKINGPODCAST WARNING: The contents of this article might adversely affect your information consumption habits. A few weeks back, the sitting President incited domestic terrorists to storm the Capitol, so they did. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, this was a relatively straightforward process for the insurrectionists. BOOKS – RANDS IN REPOSE There are three books. Managing Humans was first published in June 2007. While much of the content originated on this weblog, every chapter has been meticulously rewritten and edited. In July 2016, I published the third edition of the book, which added eight new chapters and removed two embarrassin YOU ARE GOING ON A QUEST The most common conversation I've had during the last three start-ups was the growth conversation. Some version of: "Rands. I am here. How do I get there?" For leadership-minded engineers, there are four career paths available to you. I will describe three briefly, and then I'll talk about the fou THE UPDATE, THE VENT, AND THE DISASTER Business is noisy. Business is full of people worrying loudly about projects, process, and other people. These people have opinions and they share them all over the place -- all the time. This collective chatter is part of the daily regimen of a healthy business, but this chatter will bury the indi FEEDBACK IS A MIRROR You have an internal storyteller, and they are always telling you a story. Today the story is, "Almost done with all of my bugs. There were ten at the beginning of the week, but now I have two. One of them is hard, but I'll figure it out. The other, I'm sure, will be a breeze. When these are done, IFREE ELECTRON
There's a Screwed Scenario that I missed. Back in my Borland days, we were working hard on Paradox for Windows. I was a QA engineer testing the database creation and modification functionality. My counterpart in engineering, Jerry, was workingTHE OLD GUARD
Dunbar's Number is a favorite blunt diagnosis for the pains that affect rapidly growing teams. The number, which is somewhere between 100 and 250 describes a point at which a group of people can no longer effectively maintain social connections in STABLES AND VOLATILES Stephen was a hired gun at my first start-up. His contract started a year before I arrived, but he was long gone before I walked in the door. The story goes that when Stephen started, he found a small, solid team of five engineers, a QA lead, and a project manager. They were slowly and steadily goinENTROPY CRUSHERS
When it was five of you sitting in the same room, it was easy. When someone needed to know something, they stood up in the middle of the room and asked, "Who broke the build?" When a decision needed to be made, you looked up at Phil and said, "Phil, this needs to DOOMSCROLLING AT SCALE WARNING: The contents of this article might adversely affect your information consumption habits. A few weeks back, the sitting President incited domestic terrorists to storm the Capitol, so they did. For reasons I still don't fully understand, this was a relatively straightforward process for the BOOKS – RANDS IN REPOSE There are three books. Managing Humans was first published in June 2007. While much of the content originated on this weblog, every chapter has been meticulously rewritten and edited. In July 2016, I published the third edition of the book, which added eight new chapters and removed two embarrassin ABOUT – RANDS IN REPOSE This is where I write. This is how I work. This is my Cave. If you've never been here before, DON'T SKIP THIS is a handy introduction to this place. There is over 15 years of content hiding around here and some of it remains relevant. I've been writing here since April of 2002. I write a couple SPEAKING – RANDS IN REPOSE I've been known to stand in front of large groups of people, pacing back and forth, waving my hands furiously and talking. I used to get panic attacks when I did this, but after a lot of practice, the butterflies are still there, but I no longer panic. I've spoken to very large crowds in WellingtonHOW TO RANDS
Speculation: there is an idea in this document that you’d like your manager to do. Thesis: Just because I have a practice or a belief doesn’t mean it’s the right practice or belief for your manager. I THINK IN FLOWCHARTS The most valuable part of a long bike ride is the second 30 minutes. The first 30 are spent settling into a groove, finding the right pace, and clearing my head. I know this is done when random interesting ideas start showing up, as I’ve written about before.DON’T SKIP THIS
There are over 400 articles on Rands in Repose, written over the past decade. If you know what you're looking for, your best search move is using Google or DuckDuckGo to find that specific article, but if you're here for the first time, I'd like to give you the lay of the land. Welcome. I'm Rands. THE WORLD IS FULL OF BULLSHIT The world is full of bullshit right now. Perhaps it's always been full of bullshit, but I'm sitting here right now, and I feel that we - as a species - have taken the bullshit to an entirely new level. Strongly held beliefs are based on the flimsy opinions delivered by totally unqualified sham journTHE QA MINDSET
My first job in technology was a QA internship. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I tested the first release of Paradox for Windows at Borland. As an intern, I started by following someone else’s QA test plan – dutifully checking each test off the list. After a few weeks, I knewGOING FULL PASCAL
First-year of college at UCSC. First computer science class. Introduction to Programming. The language: Pascal. Failed it. Failed it badly. Knew I was going to fail it halfway through the class. This was my chosen profession. I'd been a grocery store clerk, a butcher, a video store clerk, the guySHIELDS DOWN
Resignations happen in a moment, and it’s not when you declare, “I’m resigning.” The moment happened a long time ago when you received a random email from a good friend who asked, “I know you’re really happy with your current gig because you’ve beenraving about it
RANDS IN REPOSEARCHIVESABOUTBOOKSSLACKSPEAKINGPODCAST Confusingly, this reaction applies equally to constructive, helpful feedback as well as toxic unhelpful criticism. In each case, your brain stops and cannot proceed until you’ve somehow processed this new bit of information. You see that they see you, and now you see you. If it’s constructive feedback, you feel it. BOOKS – RANDS IN REPOSE Books. There are three books. Managing Humans was first published in June 2007. While much of the content originated on this weblog, every chapter has been meticulously rewritten and edited. In July 2016, I published the third edition of the book, which added SPEAKING – RANDS IN REPOSE Speaking. I’ve been known to stand in front of large groups of people, pacing back and forth, waving my hands furiously and talking. I used to get panic attacks when I did this, but after a lot of practice, the butterflies are still there, but I no longer panic. I’ve spoken to very large crowds in Wellington, New Zealand, whoscared me with
THE ORG CHART TEST
The Org Chart Test. If you’ve had a 1:1 with me in the last decade you know that once we’re done with our planned agenda that there is good chance that I’ll stand up, walk to the whiteboard, and start drawing some version of the organization chart (“org chart”). I believe the org chart is one of the three critical artifacts that mustTHE OLD GUARD
The Old Guard. Dunbar’s Number is a favorite blunt diagnosis for the pains that affect rapidly growing teams. The number, which is somewhere between 100 and 250 describes a point at which a group of people can no longer effectively maintain social connections in their respective heads. What was simple from a communication perspectivebecomes
THE WORLD IS FULL OF BULLSHIT The world is full of bullshit right now. Perhaps it's always been full of bullshit, but I'm sitting here right now, and I feel that we - as a species - have taken the bullshit to an entirely new level. Strongly held beliefs are based on the flimsy opinions delivered by totally unqualified sham journFREE ELECTRON
A Free Electron can do anything when it comes to code. They can write a complete application from scratch, learn a language in a weekend, and, most importantly, they can dive into a tremendous pile of spaghetti code, make sense of it, and actually getting it working. You can build an entire businesses around a Free Electron.THE QA MINDSET
The QA Mindset. My first job in technology was a QA internship. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I tested the first release of Paradox for Windows at Borland. As an intern, I started by following someone else’s QA test plan – dutifully checking each test off the list. After a few weeks, I knew my particular area insideENTROPY CRUSHERS
Entropy Crushers. When it was five of you sitting in the same room, it was easy. When someone needed to know something, they stood up in the middle of the room and asked, “Who broke the build?”. When a decision needed to be made, you looked up at Phil and said, “Phil, this needs to scale from day one, right?” and Phil nodded.TITLES ARE TOXIC
Titles are Toxic. You have a job and it has a name. A name of convenience. It exists so that when someone asks, “What do you do?” you can simply say, “I am a software engineer” rather than saying, “Well, there are these things called computers and computers run software and humans write software and I am one of those humans RANDS IN REPOSEARCHIVESABOUTBOOKSSLACKSPEAKINGPODCAST Confusingly, this reaction applies equally to constructive, helpful feedback as well as toxic unhelpful criticism. In each case, your brain stops and cannot proceed until you’ve somehow processed this new bit of information. You see that they see you, and now you see you. If it’s constructive feedback, you feel it. BOOKS – RANDS IN REPOSE Books. There are three books. Managing Humans was first published in June 2007. While much of the content originated on this weblog, every chapter has been meticulously rewritten and edited. In July 2016, I published the third edition of the book, which added SPEAKING – RANDS IN REPOSE Speaking. I’ve been known to stand in front of large groups of people, pacing back and forth, waving my hands furiously and talking. I used to get panic attacks when I did this, but after a lot of practice, the butterflies are still there, but I no longer panic. I’ve spoken to very large crowds in Wellington, New Zealand, whoscared me with
THE ORG CHART TEST
The Org Chart Test. If you’ve had a 1:1 with me in the last decade you know that once we’re done with our planned agenda that there is good chance that I’ll stand up, walk to the whiteboard, and start drawing some version of the organization chart (“org chart”). I believe the org chart is one of the three critical artifacts that mustTHE OLD GUARD
The Old Guard. Dunbar’s Number is a favorite blunt diagnosis for the pains that affect rapidly growing teams. The number, which is somewhere between 100 and 250 describes a point at which a group of people can no longer effectively maintain social connections in their respective heads. What was simple from a communication perspectivebecomes
THE WORLD IS FULL OF BULLSHIT The world is full of bullshit right now. Perhaps it's always been full of bullshit, but I'm sitting here right now, and I feel that we - as a species - have taken the bullshit to an entirely new level. Strongly held beliefs are based on the flimsy opinions delivered by totally unqualified sham journFREE ELECTRON
A Free Electron can do anything when it comes to code. They can write a complete application from scratch, learn a language in a weekend, and, most importantly, they can dive into a tremendous pile of spaghetti code, make sense of it, and actually getting it working. You can build an entire businesses around a Free Electron.THE QA MINDSET
The QA Mindset. My first job in technology was a QA internship. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I tested the first release of Paradox for Windows at Borland. As an intern, I started by following someone else’s QA test plan – dutifully checking each test off the list. After a few weeks, I knew my particular area insideENTROPY CRUSHERS
Entropy Crushers. When it was five of you sitting in the same room, it was easy. When someone needed to know something, they stood up in the middle of the room and asked, “Who broke the build?”. When a decision needed to be made, you looked up at Phil and said, “Phil, this needs to scale from day one, right?” and Phil nodded.TITLES ARE TOXIC
Titles are Toxic. You have a job and it has a name. A name of convenience. It exists so that when someone asks, “What do you do?” you can simply say, “I am a software engineer” rather than saying, “Well, there are these things called computers and computers run software and humans write software and I am one of those humans BOOKS – RANDS IN REPOSE There are three books. Managing Humans was first published in June 2007. While much of the content originated on this weblog, every chapter has been meticulously rewritten and edited. In July 2016, I published the third edition of the book, which added eight new chapters and removed two embarrassin ABOUT – RANDS IN REPOSE About. This is where I write. This is how I work. This is my Cave. If you’ve never been here before, DON’T SKIP THIS is a handy introduction to this place. There is over 15 years of content hiding around here and some of it remains relevant. I’ve been writing here since April of 2002. I write a couple of pieces a month. SPEAKING – RANDS IN REPOSE Speaking. I’ve been known to stand in front of large groups of people, pacing back and forth, waving my hands furiously and talking. I used to get panic attacks when I did this, but after a lot of practice, the butterflies are still there, but I no longer panic. I’ve spoken to very large crowds in Wellington, New Zealand, whoscared me with
RANDS MANAGEMENT GLOSSARY Traditionally, a glossary functions to clarify terms in a book. The fact is I haven’t used many of the following terms in this book, but you still need to know them. Whether you’re a manager or working for a manager, there are those out there who will use these words to confuse you. They’ll throw t I THINK IN FLOWCHARTS The most valuable part of a long bike ride is the second 30 minutes. The first 30 are spent settling into a groove, finding the right pace, and clearing my head. I know this is done when random interesting ideas start showing up, as I’ve written about before.THE IMPORTANT THING
The Important Thing. Welcome to The Important Thing — a frequent collaboration between myself and Lyle. On a regular basis, The Important Thing valiantly attempts to discover and discuss one important thing per episode. Sometimes there are two. Roll with it. You can find The Important Thing wherever fine podcasts can be found:• Episode List.
THE WORLD IS FULL OF BULLSHIT The world is full of bullshit right now. Perhaps it's always been full of bullshit, but I'm sitting here right now, and I feel that we - as a species - have taken the bullshit to an entirely new level. Strongly held beliefs are based on the flimsy opinions delivered by totally unqualified sham journ THE UPDATE, THE VENT, AND THE DISASTER They’re out of character and, as time is passing, they are becoming less themselves. At its core, the Vent is motivated by emotion. That’s the key difference between the Update and the Vent. The topic has triggered an emotional response and their therapyDON’T SKIP THIS
Don’t Skip This. There are over 400 articles on Rands in Repose, written over the past decade. If you know what you’re looking for, your best search move is using Google or DuckDuckGo to find that specific article, but if you’re here for the first time, I’d like to give you the lay of the land. Welcome.SHIELDS DOWN
When management is too lazy to do the work to replace a very good employee so said employee can be promoted, shields down. When management plays the ‘carrot’ game to keep an employee, shields down. When upper management tolerates beastly behavior by middle management because the bottom line looks good, shields down.RANDS _IN_ REPOSE
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I THINK IN FLOWCHARTS The most valuable part of a long bike ride is the second 30 minutes. The first 30 are spent settling into a groove, finding the right pace, and clearing my head. I know this is done when random interesting ideas start showing up, as I’ve written about before. There are three
categories of exciting ideas: * Stop now. Instantly tell Siri to create a reminder. If Siri isn’t working because I’m off-network, I’ll stop my bike and type my reminder. The idea is that important. * Disposable. Interesting idea, but not worth capturing yet. Maybe it’ll come back later? * Greatest hits. These are disposable ideas that keep come back onsubsequent rides.
One of my great hits for a couple of years has been building a flowchart regarding making big decisions. Not small decisions, big ones. As with all complicated people things™, I see these situations as flowcharts. An obvious set of steps, branches, and logical conclusions. Flowcharts give me a sense of control when it’s hittingthe fan.
(click on the image for a larger version)# June 6, 2021
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on I Think in FlowchartsManagement
I preach delegation a lotGOING FULL PASCAL
First-year of college at UCSC. First computer science class. Introduction to Programming. The language: Pascal. Failed it. Failed it badly. Knew I was going to fail it halfwaythrough the class.
This was my chosen profession. I’d been a grocery store clerk, a butcher, a video store clerk, the guy who backs up the system to tape drives on Saturday, and a bookseller. I wanted to be a computer scientist, and I failed my first class… badly. There were situational reasons. First-year in college. Adjusting to living in a dorm. Meeting all sorts of strange new people. The distractions were innumerable, but the real reason was character. This is how I work. I walk into a situation, and I’m furiously trying to figure it out, “Which situation is this?” I am parsing the people, the words, and the mood, and I’m searching for familiarity. I am not calm until I find this familiarity, and when I do _BAM_ Ok, what’s next? How do we make progress from here? Let’sgo. Like… now.
You think this results from years of being a leadership type who is constantly thrown into random situations where I am required to build situational awareness quickly, and you’d be partially correct. Here’s the rub: I’VE ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY. Voracious consumer of information, professional introvert, and ownership of a painfully short attention span. Combine all those, and you get me: usually well-informed, very aware of what those other shifty humans might be plotting, and probably already thinking about something else. Ta-da. There are situations where this particular set of skills is advantageous, particularly in situations where I have relevant experience. In these situations, I can hit the ground running, quickly assess, and equally quickly get us moving in a credible direction. There are an equal amount of situations where my skills/habit put me at a disadvantage. Which takes us back to Pascal. INCAPABLE OF ACHIEVING YOUR DREAM I’d programmed a bit on my Atari 400 and a lot on my Apple ][ and IBM PC, but this was hacking. Slowly trying to figure out how it all worked, copying code snippets out of magazines, and attempting to convince myself that I understood how a computer worked. When I arrived in my first computer science class, my prior experience gave me the impression that the class was “been there, done that.” It looked like code, so, yeah, I understand what’s going on here. When it quickly became apparent that I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t ask for help (introvert), nor did I focus on solving the core problem (short attention span). I missed the basic rules of how a programming language is structured. Essential details that I’d never seen before. When it came time to demonstrate applied knowledge, my YOLO shenanigans failed me. Worth noting: I was moderately successful in high school with YOLO shenanigans. Hustle. Bluster. Call it what you want; you can’t hustle your way through the necessity ofhard work.
UCSC at the time had an option where there were no grades. You could select a written evaluation, and while I do not remember the specific words, I vividly remember how it made me feel: “The thing you’ve wanted to do all your life. You are incapable of understanding, let alone doing the work.” Deep breath. New strategy. Next semester. Different professor, but same course. First day and every day, I took copious notes. First homework assignment. 25 problems. I answered every problem, and if I had a hint of confusion about my answer, I went back to the book and re-read the section to make sure the answer was understood and defensible. Next week, the professor announced a separate extra credit lab where we’d learn a new language called “Scheme.” Totally optional. I signed up. First tutorial, there were 10 of us in the lab. Scheme, a language based on recursion, was confusing. I never missed a lab. Next week. First programming assignment, which included a bonus objective. I wrote the code, and I obsessed about the bonus objective. Ten points for the assignment. I got 12 total with the bonus. Eventually, our first test. 100 points possible. I got 110 for answering the Scheme extra credit question.Every week.
Fast forward to the end of the semester. Our final programming assignment was a contest to see who could design the most efficient version of an algorithm. Work together as a team. Ask for help. I took the assignment to my extra credit lab, which was now just the Teaching Assistant and myself talking about Scheme. I told him about the contest, and we spent the lab whiteboarding different approaches. The result: a contest win and more sweet, sweet extra credit. My grade-less report card still sits in a drawer in the cave. The phrase I remember, “Best in class.” DEEP VERTICAL KNOWLEDGE This article is not how I became an amazing software engineer. My academic ups and downs at UCSC continued. Data Structures blew my mind. C++ blew my confidence. When I started at Borland, I was a below-average junior engineer. Improving steadily over the years and in awe of those talented humans around me who made it look so easy. Seven years later, when I became a manager, I was average again. The learning cycle restarted. Sitting here now, years later, I am very clear I have strengths and areas I need to invest in. Took years tofigure that out.
As a leader, these days a senior leader, I preach delegation a lot. It’s the complicated act of giving accountability for the work to others. You often delegate works you know you could complete, but your job as a leader is to give others opportunities while also learning how to coach and guide them towards the essential lessons better learned via experience than lectures. Delegation is an art. When handing off a set of work to another human, it needs to feel like support, not avoidance. Well-executed delegation feels like a vote of confidence. Poor delegation looks like abdication. _Great, my manager just handed me a disaster. Now what?_ Poor delegation re-enforces the perception that managers are out of touch and unaware of what is going on. This article is about preventing this perception and understanding when it is in your best interest to Go Full Pascal. Contrary to what I suggested earlier, Going Full Pascal isn’t just hard work because the work should always be some version of hard. Going Full Pascal is when it is necessary to work hard and acquire deep vertical knowledge so that you understand every single nook and cranny of the complicated situation in front of you. This is not a move you attempt in every situation; it’s the one you keep in your back pocket for when the sky is falling, and you don’t need to prop the sky up; you need to prevent it from falling ever again. You’ll know you’ve done this when you’re done, and everyone sees the solution, and they clap. Loudly.NOT MICROMANAGEMENT
A few years ago, I revised my thinking about managers continuing tocode. I went from
“No way” to “Stay programming limber.” Like coding, you can send deeply confusing messages to the team when you Go Full Pascal. You’re always one poorly formed sentence from signaling to the team that you’ve Gone Full Micromanager. How to avoid the micromanager label? That’s another important article. Today I want to remind you that just because it says manager in your title doesn’t mean you are absolved for doing the hard work of deep vertical knowledge. I’m built to be a competent leader. I seek information so that I understand how the world works. My introversion has made me into a good listener because you talking is less scary than me talking. My short attention span means that chances are, when you speak to me about what I’m working on, I’m giddy excited because I seek stimulating situations that hold my attention. I’ve become a better leader because I know when my skills and habits are a detriment. I’ve come to understand bias and how it impacts my team. I’ve worked hard to be a good public speaker who conveys excitement and speaks slowly and clearly. I have objects on my desk right now that I hold in my hand to remind me to focus my attention when it wants to wander. And I know when to Go Full Pascal.# May 21, 2021
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Going Full Pascal
Management
One paragraph in a very long story FEEDBACK IS A MIRROR You have an internal storyteller, and they are always telling you a story. Today the story is, “Almost done with all of my bugs. There were ten at the beginning of the week, but now I have two. One of them is hard, but I’ll figure it out. The other, I’m sure, will be a breeze. When these are done, I am going to spend some time working on my prototype for the next release. Can’t wait.” This narrative serves many purposes. It gives you direction (_Here’s the work I need to do_), priority (_This is what is important_), and motivation (_And here’s my reward when I am done_). Here’s the thing: this narrative has strong bias. It is biased in your favor and is world-class at focusing you on what is important, interesting, and compelling versus what is boring, hard, or frightening. Go back and read the fictional narrative. What is the inner voice trying to get you to ignore? Two things: the hard bug (_We’ll figure it out!_) and the unknown bug (_I’m sure it’ll bea breeze!_).
That hard bug? It’s really hard. In fact, you’ve been dreading it for two weeks because your spidey-sense is telling you it’s the end result of a poor architectural choice you made six months ago. It’s not a bug; it’s feature work. And that it’ll-be-a-breeze bug? Your inner voice literally lies to you here. It’s the last on the list because it’s the hardest. There’s no scenario where it’ll be abreeze.
None of this dialog occurs outside your head. None of this behavior is wrong or weird. It’s just you getting through your stuff today like everyone else, but today of all days, James, a co-worker, is talking with you in Slack and out of nowhere jokingly types, “Yeah, but you always underestimate the worst bugs by 10x. That’s why you’realways last.”
James is joking, but you feel every single word. One of the many benefits of feedback is that it breaks your ongoing inner narrative. It breaks it. It mentally forces you to stop in your tracks and consider the feedback not because you want to but you are incapable of ignoring it. The feedback is that compelling. Confusingly, this reaction applies equally to constructive, helpful feedback as well as toxic unhelpful criticism. In each case, your brain stops and cannot proceed until you’ve somehow processed this new bit of information. You see that they see you, and now… you seeyou.
If it’s constructive feedback, you feel it. _He’s right; I avoid the hard bugs because I worry they are critiques of my possible prior poor architecture decisions._ In the best scenario, you process and act on the feedback. In the worst scenario, you rationalize it away and leave yourself unchanged. If it’s destructive feedback, you really feel it. The other person designs the feedback to cut deep. That’s their intent. I’m not going to explain the motivation of these humans, but please note their nefarious intent is to land the sucker punch, and it somehow landed. Amongst their toxicity, there is something you heard. When I am in this scenario, I attempt to push the toxicity aside, look in the mirror and ask myself, “Why do I care?” There is always anunintended lesson.
Here’s one lesson: when constructive feedback stops you in tracks, it feels like your entire world is this feedback. YOU AREN’T THIS FEEDBACK. It’s a sliver. A thread. One paragraph in a very long in-progress story. You are a fully formed human full of skill, will, flaws, strengths, good days, and bad ones, too.# May 6, 2021
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on Feedback is a MirrorManagement
This. Forever.
YOU ARE GOING ON A QUEST The most common conversation I’ve had during the last three start-ups was the growth conversation. Some version of: “Rands. I am here. How do I get there?” For leadership-minded engineers, there are four career paths available to you. I will describe three briefly, and then I’ll talk about thefourth one a lot.
The first three career paths for leadership-minded engineers are CEO, CTO, or VP of Engineering. If it strikes you a little saccharine or aggressively optimistic about showcasing these executive’s roles to an engineer who just graduated from the University of Waterloo with barely a year of experience under their belt, remember two things. First, the amount of career opportunities at a rapidly growing start-up is a lot. Double-digit hiring for multiple years means there are monthly new leadership opportunities. Second, unlike other large companies, the CEO, CTO, and VP are visible actual humans instead of “Person Who Keynotes from A Far.” This makes substantive discussion regarding these working humans aspirational and informational, as you can see with your own eyeballs how these leaders work. The common response to my initial explanation of the three roles is silence which is expected. The person sitting across the table probably wasn’t thinking about becoming the CEO, but _now they are._ They are still wondering about tangible and actionable next steps for their career, but they are, more importantly, lacking a helpful framework to think about their growth. Good news, I’ve just introduced the beginnings of this framework. CEO. Her job is the whole gosh-darned company, whether that’s product, engineering, people, real estate, legal… I could go on because the list is everything. A CEO is accountable for every single moving part, and if the human sitting across from me wants to head in this direction (the vast majority do not), then my advice is to GET OUT OF ENGINEERING. You’ve already spent at least five years of your life becoming a qualified engineer. If you aspire to run the whole show, you need to get real experience in other parts of the organization. A small leap is product management; a larger leap is running a non-engineering function like customer support.1 CTO / VP OF ENGINEERING. I can’t describe the role of CTO2 without describing the role of VP of Engineering. At a start-up, the CTO is responsible for building the machine. The product. The service. Whatever this particular company brought into being and is now selling. This could have easily been the founding VP of Engineering, but in my experience, the early engineers with leadership aspirations gravitate more towards the CTO title because it’s… shinier.3 At less than 50 engineers and without many managers, the CTO quickly realizes she needs to scale the leadership strata at the company. Still, she also knows she loves building and doesn’t aspire to lead the process, product, and people stuff that has suddenly become allthat she does.
Enter the VP OF ENGINEERING. The CTO built the machine. The VP of Engineering’s job is to run the machine. Whether they are peers or the VP works for the CTO, the division of labor is roughly the same: the CTO is accountable for the technology (current and future), and the VP of Engineering is accountable for the humans who build the product, the process they develop to get that job done, and the politics (good and bad) with other teams who all significantly contribute to delivering the product. My brief career advice for each role matches these responsibilities: if CTO lights you up, then the opportunities we’ll find for you are deeply technical and increasingly complex. We need you to stay profoundly technical and in touch with the engineers (regardless of title) who deliver bleeding-edge relevant work. If VP is the role, the opportunities we’re looking for are still engineering-focused, but we’re looking to use the other side of the brain. Work with growing the humans, the signing of process accords with other teams, defining culture, and building useful communication bridges across the company with essential partners. The above framing is intended to start a career conversation, and after having several hundred of these, I can confirm the framing works to get a conversation started. How that conversation twists and turns is a function of the human across the table, the company’s culture, and the current leadership opportunities at the company. It is the first of multiple conversations, with each one finishing with a clear spoken-out-loud commitment to “This is what we are going to donext.”
THIS. FOREVER.
You’re right. I said four roles. Thanks for paying attention. The fourth role is by far the most important. It’s the role the vast majority of engineers will follow in their careers, and I’m going to call it “This. Forever.” The role you have right now is the thing you are going to do be doing forever. Yup. You read that right. Facts. The vast majority of engineers will not become engineering managers. It sure hasn’t felt that way for me for the past two decades, where I’ve spent my time building the leadership detritus to mint new managers out of necessity. Unsurprisingly, engineers begin to believe the only path is that of management in these start-up scenarios. It’s the only way to maintain relevance in a rapidly evolving situation from everything they’re seeing. As a primary contributor to this erroneous perception, I apologize. We managers shine so much light on management’s necessity that we forget that leadership comes fromeverywhere
.
And chances are you going to be doing this… forever. The name of the company might change, you’ll have a new manager now and then, and the product will have a different name, but the work you’re doing now is the class of work that will dominate your work life for years. A depressing thought? Not when you remember you’re on a quest.POETRY, NOT TASKS
I just had a birthday. My wife wrote a very nice birthday card where she listed things she liked about me. Item number four on that list read, “How you are always on a quest.” She’s right. At any point in my life, you could ask me, “What quest are you on?” and I’d instantly have an answer: * Growing an American Chestnut. * Making sure I don’t miss out on this Internet thing. * Figuring out how humans make decisions. * Explaining leadership to engineers in a helpful way. * Getting the hell out of a no-win job scenario. * Writing and publishing a book Some of those quests were finite and understandable. Others were subjectively hilarious, but, again, if you stop me in the hallway and ask me, “Rands, what’s your quest?” I will tell you. Notice. None of those quests read “Become a VP.” I indeed spent a lot of time thinking about what it’d take to become a VP, but the quest wasn’t the title. The quest was a cascading series of quests of advancement that gave me the confidence to believe I was qualified or that helped me build a network of humans over the years, so leadership opportunities appeared. When the interview request finally landed years later, it was an important event that resulted from avariety of quests.
Quests are actionable. They are understandable. They aren’t tasks. They are work with a bit of poetry. They are always front-of-mind, and if I’m not on a quest, my wife can confirm that my only goal at the point is, “Find a quest.” A title is a sign-post. It tells you where you are. A title is a comforting reminder of where you are, but what is more interesting is where you are going next and how you will get there. This will involve a quest. I stand firmly behind my career title opener because it begins a vital conversation; it’s starting a story with the human across the table, not about what title they want, but what quest theyneed to begin.
* I’ve done this before. I was accountable for the people team, marketing, and the cafeteria. I was horrifically bad at allthree.
* There are companies where the CTO title has been a parking lot for valuable engineering leaders who we can’t let go of and aren’tdoing anything.
* There’s a variant to CTO, which I’ll call “Chief Architect.” Both of these roles aspire to keep banging on keyboards and inventing more products and technology. The difference between the two roles is that the CTO is willing to wade into some politics and is willing to do some people work, but the Chief Architect wants absolutely nothing to do with this work. That’s cool. Keepinventing.
# March 14, 2021
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Comment on You are Going on a QuestTech Life
You've been warned
DOOMSCROLLING AT SCALE WARNING: The contents of this article might adversely affect your information consumption habits. A few weeks back, the sitting President incited domestic terrorists to storm the Capitol, so they did. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, this was a relatively straightforward process for the insurrectionists. It was also an incredibly well-documented events thanks to both journalists who risked their lives documenting the riot, a soon-to-be elected official who – _fascinatingly_ – live-streamed his illegal participation, and, finally, the domestic terrorists themselves who were looking to boost follower counts by posting images of their illegal acts inreal-time.
The real-time nature of January 6th lent itself to observation via social media. As it became clear the domestic terrorists were breaching the Capitol, I was glued to Tweetbot, my favorite Twitter client, looking for the latest developments. Years ago, Twitter put limits on their API, effectively lobotomizing third-party clients. This meant within Tweetbot, I had to sit and wait for slow manual refreshes of the latest tweets on the insurrection. And there were a lot of tweets. It was a rapidly developing, incredibly well-documented event, and it was clear I was missing content as I sat there glued to Tweetbot waiting for my horrifically slow insurrection updates. The obvious answer was to move either Twitter’s mobile client or move to their website. As I was at my desktop during this failed coup, I moved to Twitter’s website and remembered what I learned years ago: THEIR WEBSITE IS HOT GARBAGE. TWITTER ASIDE: I am thankful for Twitter for banning Trump. It wasthree years late.
If you haven’t been to the Twitter website, go there now and tell me what you see. I’ll tell you what I see: a lack of place. There’s a promoted tweet dominating half my screen. I see some tweets from people I know, but a robot locked in a basement somewhere decided the order of this particular timeline, so I don’t trust it. The order of a timeline is defined by – wait for it – time. Not robots. Yeah, I get Twitter is trying to help by enhancing the quality of my feed. Yeah, I know it’s configurable.
Still, I’d prefer if they spent their valuable cycles patrolling the feeds looking for humans actively working on toppling democracy.Thanks.
I poked around a couple of other parts of the website and was similarly baffled and lost. The Explore section is surfacing trending topics but is mostly ads. It says this section is for me, but none of these topics are click-worthy. What about notifications? This is broken into three sections: All, Mentions, and Verified. The All section is an aggregated set of notifications on things I might be interested in. Again, smooshed into time-ignorant irrelevance by the robots in the basement. LET ME BE CLEAR WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR AT THE TIME OF THIS EVENT: * I wanted to see the tweets of those I followed as quickly aspossible.
* I was very interested in the tweets of trusted humans who were sifting through all the same stuff I saw to find the most engagingtweets.
* Finally, I was interested in a keyword search of ALL tweets, but I needed an effective way to reduce noise to find a signal. After a few hours of reload misery, I remembered TweetDeck. In the back of my head, my impression of TweetDeck was it was for companies who wanted to slice and dice the Twitter firehose into different useful feeds. For example, I’m assuming that many airlines use TweetDeck to proactively do customer support when a stranded traveler tweet rages. I’ve been that tweet rager. I’ve appreciated it when the airline attempts to be helpful. Installing TweetDeck immediately improved my information consumption. TweetDeck not only defaults to time-based ordering of my tweets, but it also refreshes automagically as it’s part of Twitter and not subject to the lobotomized 3rd party APIs. TweetDeck also provides a multi-column format where you can look at multiple feeds. I’ve since forgotten the default set-up, but it was something like my friends feed and notifications feed. Problem solved. Real-time doom. Many columns. This is great. Really great. Except TweetDeck didn’t allow resizing columns, and the maximum width was frustratingly narrow. I’d be able to consume far more tweets if they’ve just let me make… those columns… abit…. wider.
The question was: why was TweetDeck giving me so much space for more columns? It tortured me, so I decided to make some more columns.OH
MY
GOD
I SEE IT
Some relevant facts: * There are a lot of humans on Twitter, and they are tweeting a crap ton of both informational, opinions, and uselessness. * There are (or were) talented engineers who know/knew that there are humans like me who would want to build and run advanced queries against the entire Twitter fire hose because THAT’S WHAT THEYWANTED.
They did. The ability to build and run random queries exists. You can do it in Twitter , but in TweetDeck, you can build these queriesand
have them presented as different columns of constantly refreshingtweets.
It looks like this:
From left to right, the columns are: * My time-based friend-based Twitter feed. * Notifications: likes, retweets, replies, and follows to my Twitteractivity
* Reporters: this is a Twitter list, which is a
collection of Twitter accounts that I’ve curated. * Keyword search on “inauguration” * Keyword search on “#BREAKING” * Keyword search on “youtube.com” Notes on these columns: * The list feature in Twitter has been around for a long time, but it wasn’t until I saw it in the TweetDeck context to understand the value. These reporters’ tweets show up in my time-based feed, but I am often missing things in that feed. I don’t want to miss thesehumans tweets.
* Simple keyword searches can be problematic because they predictably return a crap ton of results. Shortly after the President committed the impeachable offense of inciting a riot, I started a column for the “25th amendment”. This was full of noise until I discovered I could set engagement filters on the column. _Only show me tweets that have at least X retweets, likes, or replies._ Setting this to 5 likes immediately decreased the noise. For particular noisy settings, setting a higher engagement threshold helped a ton. * The “#BREAKING” search is abused a bit but has revealed some gems in the past weeks. It was that column where I discovered the rumor that the PGA would strip Trump of his PGA championship. Ya’know… because he incited a riot. On the Capitol. As the President of the United States. * There is a slew of other filtering options, including location, language, and a bunch of different knobs and dials to allow crisp filtering of your columns. Go explore. At a time where, well, shit is going down, I am thankful for TweetDeck. A side effect of my newly found doomscrolling at scale are the columns which are not filtered by my friends. The keyword search columns are regularly showing me opinions I disagree with, lies designed to terrify, and other popular tactics of those who are more interested in fear than facts. I mute some. I block others. However, I am discovering brand new humans. Who are fired up and good to go. I’m in awe of the work of journalists seeking and reporting the truth. There have been some good Bernie memes, too. My doomscrolling has calmed since the inauguration. Nothing is fixed, but we are heading in the right direction. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve noticed the tone has been uncharacteristically political. That’s not changing. One of the many lessons I’ve learned over the past four years is the seductive power of lies. I’ll be using every tool at my disposal to remind everyone of thepower of the truth.
You’ve been warned.# January 25, 2021
3
Comments on Doomscrolling at ScaleThe Important Thing
Three acts
THE ONE ABOUT SMALL THINGS, DONE WELL In our 44th episode, we walk through the first chapters of Lopp’s 3rd book. Learning to deal with endless meetings, understanding The Situation™, and learning that people often just want to be seen. Spend 45 minutes with Lyle and Lopp talking about important things. Enjoy it now or downloadfor
later. Here’s a handy feed or subscribe via Overcastor iTunes
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Audio Player
https://traffic.libsyn.com/rands/theimportantthing0044.mp3 00:00 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.# January 14, 2021
1 Comment on The One About Small Things, Done WellRands Don't
think. Don't analyze. Don't assess. Just be scared.FEAR IS A LIAR
_He says things so sweetly. He knows all your failures. He remembers your emotional scars. He sounds like you. And he craves yourattention._
The Thursday after the election, I woke up, grabbed my phone next to the bed, and scanned the latest news. We were still two days from announcing the winner of the election, but there was good news. Some media site had called the election, and the hourly trends on ballot counting in Pennsylvania looked very promising. A sigh of relief. The briefest moment of early celebration in a year where celebration was scarce. I shared this relief with close dear friends, and the reaction was swift and crushing, “Don’t celebrate. Let me explain to you in great detail how this is going to go simply horribly.” And then they explained the terrifyingopinionated detail.
_Fear is a liar._
_She knows what scares you. She was iteratively designed over billions of years to prevent you from being eaten by a cave bear. She’s still around. She has impressive controlling strength over you. She sounds helpful. She sounds smart. She moves so fast._ Early in the pandemic, I was part of a hastily thrown together Zoom interview. The host opened with a softball, “How are you?” A guest, “Spent the morning doomscrolling.” An internal mental giggle. Yeah, it was the first time I’d heard the word: doomscrolling. It perfectly described a regular act for me. Sitting down at my favorite device and just soaking in the doom, the fear. Pick a topic: elections, racism, democracy, civil unrest, or a pandemic. It’s trivial to find a steady flow of content to confirm and stoke my worst fears. I do this daily._Fear is a liar._
The early builders of the Internet had a hit on their hands. They quickly realized they had two critical challenges. A lot of data was being generated by humans using the Internet, and there was an infinite gold mine buried inside that data. Billion-dollar data storage, management, and analysis businesses emerged to tackle thesechallenges.
Machine learning also flourished as businesses learned how to use machine learning to look at vast data sets and learn. What were they learning? Very simply, these ‘robots’ learned to predict things that you like with increasing precision. Correction. It’s not like. It’s engagement. How likely are you going to engage with a piece of content? The content could be a link, advertisement, but – important point here – it’s not relevant whether you like the content or not; it’s whether you engage. The more you engage, the more signal you send, the more data you create, which means more data for the robots to learn from, which means they do an even better job find more engaging things to click on. I’m delighted and a little in awe when Instagram presents me with pitch-perfect advertising. I spent the first fifteen years on the Internet, avoiding engaging in all advertising, but Instagram ads are good. Really good. Why yes, those navy blue leather boots are precisely what I want. Right now. It’s magical. It’s nice that Instagram made my shopping experience better. Still, it’s horrific that the same mechanisms have created a generation of humans who believe doomscrolling is anything but compulsive consumption ofweaponized fear.
_And fear is a liar._ You’re worried about something. Very normal. Very human. You have a moment, so you sit down with your favorite device and take a gander at your friend’s activity, whether that’s a social network, a messaging thread, or any number of means that keep us connected. What are they up to? They’re worrying, too, because there is a lot to worry about these days. One friend found a particularly worrisome piece of content and has shared it. _Oh dear, how worrisome._ You click on the link (engagement), read the opinion (not facts) piece, and it echos your worry, so promptly share it with another group of friends (sharing) who need to read this critical content. Every sentence, every action in the prior paragraph, involves creating useful data for the robots to figure out more what this group of humans cares about to push more engaging content targeted explicitlyat these humans.
Those who peddle fear understand precisely how these robots work and have come to expect how you will react. They throw a thousand lies into a social network and let the robots do their work. Humans react, robots notice and adapt, and the peddlers of fear create a fear-based echo chamber where they’ve discovered the very best lies that will efficiently engage the broadest audience. We’re talking about a PLANET full of humans mostly unknowingly generating data that robots are sorting, filing, analyzing, and search for that one piece of content that instantly engages you. These robots don’t care if that content is a new pair of boots or a lie. Those who peddle fear are counting on the fact that your reaction is fear and that you’ll get mad and want to take action. Quickly. Urgently. Irrationally. They don’t want you to think; they want you to hate. They want to divide. They want you to believe the act of consuming, engaging, and echoing anger, fear, and hate is a productiveact.
Don’t think. Don’t analyze. Don’t assess. Just be scared. Hate an amorphous someone. Fear. The thing is – if you choose… _Fear is a teacher._ I think of that bully in my 6th-grade class who randomly stood up during lunch, walked across the courtyard, and bullied me. First, I was scared, then I was embarrassed in front of friends, and then I wasmad.
Today. Many years later, it’s the only thing I remember about the 6th grade. It’s a permanent mental scar, but I’ve chosen to learn from that scar. I’ve thought about what it means to be a bully, how they are motivated, and how they should be treated. I now treat them appropriately. Quickly and with directed informed purpose. I act because I’ve considered, I reflected, and I’ve learned. This is the bizarre gift of fear: it teaches you. It ferociously highlights a situation where you must pay attention. It’s an unforgettable opportunity to learn when the danger passes because you absolutely do not want to be here again. That’s the lesson. _Fear is a teacher._ _He says things so clearly. He understands you completely. He knows what motivates you. He speaks with confidence. AND HE WANTS YOU TO BESAFE._
_Fear is a teacher._ _She knows how to get your attention because she knows what scares you. She was there when it happened. She remembers how you got that scar and she wants no further harm to come of you. Fear is a reminder that it’s time to learn and then act._# December 14, 2020
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Fear is a Liar
The Important Thing
During these End Times THE ONE ABOUT BINGEWORTHY SHOWS In our 43rd episode, we recommend shows you just gotta binge this holiday season during our end times. (Recorded November 2020) Enjoy it now or downloadfor
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https://traffic.libsyn.com/rands/theimportantthing0043.mp3 00:00 00:00 00:00 Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.# November 25, 2020
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Blind
poker
LISTS
# October 21, 2020 NoComments on Lists
Fake Notebook
Always be
prioritizing
FIVE MINUTE CANCELS
# October 20, 2020
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on Five Minute CancelsTHE TRILOGY
Small Things, Done Well : Practice becoming a better leader. Daily. Managing Humans : Tales of leadership fromthe Silicon Valley.
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