You don’t have to read it, but you just might learn something.
Leading Thought
Prime
Avoiding the new-manager syndrome in design
While design is specifically called out in the title, this is a really great post about leadership in general. Written in the form of a letter to his younger self, Fabricio Teixeira lays out some do’s and don’ts he discovered when moving from doer to leader. If you are a leader, some of these may ring true or be worth visiting. If you are thinking of becoming a leader, this is a must-read.
The reality (that no one will explicitly tell you) is that when your team shines, you shine.
The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene
I ran across this story in Firefox’s recommendations from Pocket. It’s moderately old – 2016 – but turned out to be an absolutely fascinating read, and a great example of why you need to be your own advocate when it comes to getting medical attention when you know something is off and no one will take you seriously.
Without spoiling the story too much, two lives were saved and an understanding of more than one genetic condition leapt forward all because a woman identified a condition she had from seeing a picture of someone else with the same condition. Even though no one would listen to her, she continued to believe and pursue answers, eventually getting the attention of researchers in Italy who confirmed her suspicions. Fast forward a few more years where she identified a second rare condition, also disregarded and proven correct, and you get one of the most amazing examples of self-advocacy there may ever be. Long but worth the time, especially if you have any interest in genetics.
Coming Soon
Hacking With The Homies Developer Conference
(Feb 23 - Feb 25, 2023 | Detroit, MI & Virtual)
Hosted by Detroit Black Tech, this conference is focused on helping Black and Brown Software Developers level up in their careers and helping companies connect to a more diverse segment of the working population.
With a virtual attendance cost of just $60, and an in-person, early bird price of $90, this is definitely a conference worth checking out.
Architecture
Software Architecture & Design
I haven’t gone through this (yet), but Udacity is offering a free course that is offered at Georgia Tech as CS 6310. If you are looking to learn more about software architecture, this may be worth a look.
Data
Databases and Data Management Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Starlight Children’s Foundation – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $18 you get 15 titles, including:
- SQL Antipatterns, Volume 1
- A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms, Second Edition
- Seven Databases in Seven Weeks, Second Edition
- Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks
- And more!
DE&I
The Real Reason Why Women and People of Color Receive Less Feedback at Work
Interesting article here that should be read by everyone, not just formal leaders. It’s probably unsurprising that everyone – even minorities – can be afraid of saying the wrong thing and being perceived as racist or biased. This leads to “protective hesitation* when giving feedback, the tendency to say too little rather than say the wrong thing. The interesting thing here is how not providing good feedback can lead to an ever increasing cycle of confirmation bias when an employee fails to live up to expectations that never get communicated.
There are some good suggestions here about how to put guardrails in place to prevent treating people differently. An additional benefit that may be realized by using a framework is feedback becomes much more structured, possibly leading to better quality feedback across the board. Taking the time to implement a feedback framework would also seem to have other benefits relating to the idea of Radical Candor:
- it demonstrates that you, as a leader, care about your team
- it helps to steer feedback away from the “ruinous empathy” quadrant
Engineering
Examples of floating point problems
If you’ve been coding for any length of time, you’ve probably run into some weird results when using floating point numbers. As Julia Evans points out, in JavaScript, there is nothing but floating point numbers.
This is a great post that not only explains how floating point numbers work, but also dives into some of the problems that can happen when floating point math isn’t well-understood. Definitely worth some time (as always with Julia’s posts); it just may save you a lot of pain someday.
Software Engineering and Design Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Every Child a Reader – and, if you don’t know it’s there, there is an Adjust Donation button that will let you give more of the take to charity! For a minimum donation of $18 you get 14 titles, including:
- Foundations of Software Engineering
- IT’s All about the People: Technology Management That Overcomes Disaffected People, Stupid Processes, and Deranged Corporate Cultures
- Software Engineering Design: Theory and Practice
- Modeling Software Behavior: A Craftsman’s Approach
- Java Programming Fundamentals: Problem Solving Through Object Oriented Analysis and Design
- And more!
Infosec
Alyssa Miller: Infosec 28-Day Get Hired Challenge
Teams
Which Meetings Should You Kill?
This post definitely got me thinking a bit. I’m not sure I agree, but I can’t say I entirely disagree, either. Spoiler, the meetings the author is talking about are 1 on 1s. To be clear, she is not talking about 1 on 1s between leaders and direct reports but, more so, those that we have with our immediate teammates, cross-team colleagues, etc.
While I agree that these meetings take time out of the day, I think that the time building relationships is well-worth the effort. I try to meet with each of my teammates, as well as a handful of others, every other week. If pressure is on or there isn’t much to catch up on, we skip (to echo the author, don’t do this with your direct reports!). Does this feel like a lot? I don’t think so, especially when you consider that this is scheduled time. When everyone is in an office together, there is a tendency to spend even more of time relationship building; it’s just not as visible because it’s spread out in small bits. These smaller interactions have the compounding negative effect of interrupting flow.
Beyond this, the author has some interesting thoughts around how 1 on 1s with direct reports have become surrogates for things that should likely be group meetings. The consequence of this can be repetition of communication, diverging messages, or simple miscommunication. Group meetings can absolutely be a drain and can have a lot of negatives, but there are occasions where they make the most sense. To help mitigate some of the most-common – people catching up at the beginning, allowing introverts time to digest and think, etc. – the Amazon one-pager may be one experiment to try.
Read the article, give it some thought.
UI|UX
It’s time we fix the unethical design of cookie consent windows
Thought provoking post here about cookie (tracker) consent forms and how they are presented in a deceptive manner. Some good thoughts here about button placement, default values and more. The call to action is not simply about tracker consent, but about ethical UI design in general.
As technologists, we have the potential to impact and influence large groups of people. When cases arise where doubt exists about the potential to cause harm, we have to be diligent about doing the right thing. While the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) have codes of ethics (ACM Code of Ethics, IEEE Code of Ethics), given the behaviors of Google, Facebook (Meta), and other big tech companies, it seems that we long past the time, as a profession, to require a formal commitment to a unified set of ethics in order to practice software development professionally.
Never in history has designers had such a great influence on people. The product designed by a group of designers now affects millions of people.\
We must recognize the power we have and think ethically in every design decision we make, not just “cookie”.