Thank you, Guido | Dropbox Blog Lots of great stuff in this blog post, but quote: “When asked, I would give people my opinion that maintainable code is more important than clever code,” he said. “If I encountered clever code that was particularly cryptic, and I had to do some maintenance on it, I would probably rewrite it. So I led by example, and also by talking to other people.” (categories: engineeringsoftwareculturetestingdiversitypython )
Thought Leadership vs. Cult of Personality – Feld Thoughts Quote: "I remembered the thought again this morning which prompted this post. I now have a simple way to separate between cult of personality and thought leadership. CP: Obsessed about me, me, me TL: Obsessed about the product, mission, idea When the entrepreneur or CEO becomes the center of the narrative – or more specifically makes themself the center of the narrative – that’s a big red flag from my perspective." Been there. (categories: leadershipentrepreneurshipobsessionpassion )
Setting the Scene: How Technology Created a Richer Playset in ‘Toy Story 4’ – The Walt Disney Company Quote: "Toy Story 4 also features cobwebs—a lot of cobwebs. Jordan describes how one animator wrote a program simulating an A.I. spider building cobwebs: “He guided the spiders to where he wanted them to build cobwebs, and they’d do the job for us. And when you see those cobwebs overlaid on the rest of the scene, it gives the audience the sense that this place has been here for a while.” Without that program, animators would have had to make the webs one strand at a time, which would have taken several months. “You have to tell the spider where the connection points of the cobweb should go,” Jordan says, “but then it does the rest.”" (categories: aimachine-learningpixarprogramming )
Dysfunctions of output-oriented software teams :: Adam Kalsey Quote: "Take small steps and look to continually improve. Start by defining success through outcomes and deciding up from what measurements will indicate you have reached those outcomes. Accept that it’s OK if you aren’t always busy. Slack in the schedule is healthy and helps give time to explore and experiment. If you’re not focused on being busy all the time, you’ll be able to think more about creating a flow of value to the customer. Above all, empower people. Trust that the smart, capable people you’ve hired will do the right thing. Try managing through Commander’s Intent: define what success looks like, and then let them figure out how to get there." (categories: okrkpioutcomecustomerfocusvalue )
Reclaim unreasonable software. Quote: "The abstract deity known only as business value doesn’t care whether your software is easy to reason about, but it does care quite a bit about your ability to release new features and to operate your software well enough to retain users. At some point, the slowing velocity will become the discussion you have at planning and strategy meetings, with one resounding refrain: the status quo isn’t working." (categories: softwarerewritereclaimvalue )
How to Avoid Groupthink When Hiring Take-aways: 1) make it clear to interviewers that they should not share their interview experiences with each other before the final group huddle, 2) ask each interviewer to perform a few steps before the group huddle: a) distill their interview rating to a single numerical score, b) write down their main arguments for and against hiring this person and their final conclusion. This will help them stay true to their beliefs once the discussion starts, which leads to less biased predictions, c) If interviewers are emailing in their numerical scores and thoughts on a candidate, don’t include the entire group in the email, 3) the hiring managers should take note of the average score for a candidate (categories: hiringinterviewmanagement )
Do-nothing scripting: the key to gradual automation – Dan Slimmon Quote: "A do-nothing script doesn’t save your team any manual effort. It lowers the activation energy for automating tasks, which allows the team to eliminate toil over time." Love this… would love to have this for all kinds of onboarding tasks… eliminate multiple tabs in browsers and having to context switch all the time. (categories: automationprogrammingonboardingnew-hiretoilslog )
Peter Kaufman on The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking: Transcript – Latticework Investing Quote: "… The most powerful force that could be potentially harnessed is dogged incremental constant progress over a very long time frame." and "… trustworthy, principled, courageous, competent, loyal, kind, understanding, forgiving, unselfish, and in every single one of your interactions with others, be the list" and "… There’s this great African proverb. It’s the definition of win-win. ‘If you want to go quickly go alone, if you want to go far, go together.’ Live your life to go far together. Don’t live it to go quickly alone. Most people grow up wanting to go quickly alone. It doesn’t work." Everything about this article. Need to read this again and print it out. (categories: leadershipinvestingphilosophylifecareerlistening )
Consume less, create more Quote: "What’s evil is passive consumption, in all its forms. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram—we can all agree that these are serious timewasters. But what about The Economist or War and Peace? How much can you really remember from all of those New York Times op-eds you’ve read? Could you summarize the major themes of Grapes of Wrath? Most knowledge worth having comes from practice. It comes from doing. It comes from creating. Reading about the trade war with China doesn’t make you smarter—it gives you something to say at dinner parties. It gives you the illusion that you have the vaguest idea what is happening in our enormously complex world." (categories: creativitylifeproductivityculture )