You don’t have to read it, but you just might learn something.
Leading Thought
Prime
Underpants gnomes, Outcomes, and Intermittent Reinforcement
Thanks to Ryan McCann for passing along this article about product development and exploring the question of why companies tend to release new things faster without a good understanding of how and why the customers respond.
There are some really interesting looks at a brain’s response to reward. Interestingly enough, an inconsistent reward provides a bigger dopamine hit hit which, expectedly, leads to more attempts to get the reward. That is, we release more frequently in anticipation of getting a reward, which gives us that feel-good dopamine hit whether we are actually rewarded or not. Companies that experience success – especially companies that produce digital products – try to come up with new products and features they think will entice their customers to continue to do business with them. But how many companies really understand the impact the new thing had on their customers and why? As the author points out, this is the conundrum of The Underpants Gnomes.
If you work in product development, management, design or any other position where you are responsible in some part for new features, this is definitely worth a read. The implications of how little control we may actually have over making incorrect assumptions about customers without deliberately slowing down and acknowledging the optimism bias we have is stunning.
Based on an aggregation of anonymized product usage data, Pendo [a creator of analytics software] determined that 80 percent of features in the average software product are rarely or never used.
Night of the Living Document
You’ve probably lived this nightmare: something is wrong with a system and you need to understand where it may be going wrong or, maybe you need to update a system that no one has touched for a while and the Subject Matter Experts have moved on. You go to the documentation (if the is documentation) and quickly find out that it hasn’t been updated since the initial system rollout. You’ve encountered a zombie doc…
This is a pretty quick but important read shared with me by Kristen Cox about the value – or lack thereof – of documents that are not maintained an the problems they can cause, along with some ideas for handling the zombies. One of the suggestions is one I appreciate because my team uses this for our team docs: docs are dated and then reviewed on a regular cycle (we use our on-call team member for this). Not only does it help keep things fresh, it also keeps those using the docs close to them. Definitely worth a couple of minutes to help fight World War Z.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. These were living documents designed to be continually updated and kept in sync with reality — as living documents. But as with all things living, they must be fed and cared for.
A neuroscientist shares the 4 ‘highly coveted’ skills that set introverts apart: ‘Their brains work differently’
Kind of like seeing a car you are interested everywhere once it’s on your radar, it seems that the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking is making introverts a hot topic. This post demonstrates four traits that set introverts apart from extroverts, as well as some suggestions for creating a workplace where extroverts can thrive. Introvert or extrovert, definitely another piece worth reading to deepen your understanding of those with introvert personalities.
If your workplace is dominated by extroverts who criticize those who prefer to work alone — or skip after-work cocktails — as “not team players,” it may inadvertently alienate gifted people.
Anatomy Of A Bank Takeover
Silicon Valley Bank has been all over the news (along with Signature Bank) for failing and being taken over by the FDIC. There are many reasons for this happen, with social media playing a role in creating a run on the bank that helped tip things over. Rather than let the run continue and have a bigger, potentially catastrophic domino event occur, in came the FDIC to take control, manage a takeover, and ensure that people’s money was safe.
Now, while it seems like this should be a rare occurrence, it apparently happens more often than you’d think. Very quietly, a team from FDIC will come into a bank, take it over, and then have it taken over by a larger bank. This story from 2009 on NPRs All Things Considered walks through the takeover of a bank – Bank of Clark County – from the point where agents arrive staggered in town, close the bank, begin their valuation and investigation, and begin transition to the new owner.
If you, like me, thought that FDIC was just there to protect the money you deposit in the bank, you’ll likely find this fascinating.
It was like watching an autopsy being performed by a really skillful surgeon,” he says. “They just came in and sliced and diced and broke the bank up into a bunch of different pieces, threw them into different buckets — and did it with great efficiency.
Humble Bundles
Think Like a Programmer Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Electronic Frontier 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 $40 you get 18 titles, including:
- Write Great Code, Volume 1: Understanding the Machine
- Write Great Code, Volume 2: Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level
- The Art of Clean Code
- Think Like a Programmer
- Data Structures the Fun Way
- And more!
Cybersecurity Book Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Save the Children – 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 24 titles, including:
- Privilege Escalation Techniques
- Mastering Kali Linux for Advanced Penetration Testing
- Cybersecurity - Attack and Defense Strategies
- The Vulnerability Researcher’s Handbook
- Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) v12 312-50 Exam Guide
- And more!
Beginners Web Development Software Bundle
New offering from Humble Bundle benefitting Girls Who Code – 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 $25 you get 20 Pluralsight courses, including:
- HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: The Big Picture
- Front-End Web Development Quick Start With HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript
- Optimizing and Deploying a Website
- JavaScript Best Practices
- Creating Page Layouts with CSS
- And more!
Engineering
Deep Cloning Objects in JavaScript, the Modern Way
Nice explanation here about the new structuredClone function built into JavaScript that will perform a deep clone of an object. The post includes examples of what can and can’t be cloned, as well as comparisons to _.cloneDeep (lodash), JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(x)), using the spread operator ..., and also Object.assign.
If you use lodash or any of the other methods mentioned above for cloning objects, this is definitely a worthwhile read to determine if structuredClone can not only give you better performance and functionality, but also a smaller footprint.
Two Alaska Airlines Boeing 737s Have Tail Strikes Minutes Apart
Anyone who develops software knows at least one story about a tragedy caused by a bug, and most understand that automated testing can be the best way to catch errors. But tests aren’t always correct, even though many take it for granted that they are. I’m absolutely not anti-testing, but they very much can lead to complacency in manual testing because we assume the test suite will catch it.
While it’s possible to make assumptions about how an error in aircraft performance calculations software occurred, the reality is that people are involved, which means mistakes will happen. While it incurs additional time and expense, in systems that can jeopardize human life, manual, exploratory testing becomes especially important, and provides defense-in-depth against human error.
Since multiple pilots realized that the numbers seemed off, it would seem that either not enough manual testing was done by people who could recognize an error, or the training for testers was deficient. It will be interesting to see what the root cause of this error was, what the testing strategies in place were at the time the update occurred, and what changes come as a result of the findings.
This article given to me by Justin Darnell is definitely worth a read as a software engineer, tester, QA, product owner, well, anyone who is involved with building software.
Personal Development
On Feeling Inadequate
This post from Kyle Robertson is extremely personal about his struggles with imposter syndrome and learning to be less critical of himself. Many of us struggle with this same issue, feeling as if everyone else has it together while we are just passing, ready to be found out at any moment.
I appreciate that Kyle took the time to share this openly and be vulnerable. If you struggle with similar feelings, give it a read. Oftentimes one of the best ways to understand ourselves is to understand that we are not alone and others are struggling as well.
Negative self-talk: 5 ways to silence your toxic inner critic
If you are someone who experiences a lot of negative self-talk from your inner-critic, you may want to give this a read. for women especially, the world seems geared toward amplification of the negative, from the ideal lives we see on social media, to the ideal people we see in print. The impact of this negative self-talk can run the gamut from stress to self-imposed limits to full-blown depression.
While the five suggestions here are worth a try if you are in the cycle of negative self-talk, if you are someone who is severely affected, there is no shame in seeking help from a professional therapist.
Negative self-talk is often rooted in past trauma and professional support can offer a great deal of healing and growth.
UI/|UX
Building inclusive products for trans people
If you are like me, you read this title and were probably thinking ‘how can a digital product not be inclusive to trans people?’. This turns out to be an extremely naive view because there is a lot to consider. From how you allow users to identify themselves to asking for a title, from color schemes and pictures that assume CIS-gendered stereotypes, with the threats that trans people face, building safety into your products is paramount.
This is a really great piece and, like most about inclusiveness, there is a ton here I wasn’t aware of. From the initial definitions, to considerations and inclusive forms, if you work in UI/UX, you absolutely owe it to yourself and your users to give this a read.
When the needs of trans people are made explicitly visible within an interface, everyone who uses that interface gets a subtle reminder that trans people exist. […] Changing form field won’t change laws. But the more our daily interactions and tasks happen in digital spaces, the more power those spaces hold over cultural norms. Every form field, every default setting, every push notification, affects people. Every detail can add to the culture we want — can make people a little safer, a little calmer, a little more hopeful. — Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech — Sara Wachter-Boettche