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Weekly Digest #122
Articles
Reverse Engineering A Mysterious UDP Stream in My Hotel
1.Lack of accountability
Be insistent that people show business value from their work for as long as humanly possible. If it ever becomes totally impractical, keep it as the default expectation and be reasonable in interpreting aberrations. The minute you let people get credit for things that are totally diveroced from business value, you’ve started to lose the war.
2.Burnout, Resourcing, and The Impossible
Avoid anything that looks like resourcing math as a valid argument for engineering projects (e.g. 2 eng = X, 3 eng = Y). Avoid operating in a way where people are incentivized to get you to agree to smaller business outcomes — e.g. if “finishing your OKRs” is valued more than “your OKRs delivered the amount of value we wanted”, you’re in trouble.
3.Toxic Positivity (not admitting when things are wrong)
Especially with leadership discussions, be clear that a nuanced discussion is happening and desired, and potentially even say out loud that the goal is to build understanding, not enforce points of view. Also: leaders are often very busy — avoid having nuanced discussions in time restricted forums (including instant messaging).
