Professional Development – 2018 – Week 49

Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/54585499@N04/

Dates covered: December 3-9, 2018 (week 49 of 52)

Business

What a Toys “R” Us Comeback Could Look Like (via Harvard Business Review)

Instead of using the same sales model as Amazon, Walmart, etc., they could provide a toy experience model, where parents and children come in and experience the toys. The longer they’re in the store, the more they’re likely to buy. There are a few scenarios (e.g., game tournaments) where certain parts of the store could be entered for an admission cost.

The Challenges GM Is Facing, and the Reasoning Behind Its Plant Closures (via Harvard Business Review)

GM is idling five plants and cutting 14,000 jobs before things get worse. Most Americans are moving away from small and midsize cars (into light trucks and SUVs), plus most auto makers are contending with the future of self-driving cars and electric vehicles. The article touches on whose responsibility it should be to retrain those displaced workers — public or private?

How to Sell New Products (via Harvard Business Review)

Salespeople often use demos to sell new products, but that doesn’t always help close deals. Customers get excited about new ideas, but balk later in the sales cycle. It’s not just about bells and whistles; salespeople need to understand their clients better to understand the “ideal buyer” and build training programs to implement strategic account management.

How to Ensure the Success of a Position Your Company Hasn’t Had Before (via Harvard Business Review)

As society changes, companies find themselves needing new titles (e.g., sustainability manager, VP of data analytics). You need a balance between having too loose and too rigid of a definition. If it’s too loose, the person in the new role doesn’t know what to do; too rigid and innovation becomes difficult in the new area.

Career

How to Decide Whether to Relocate for a Job (via Harvard Business Review)

Do: consider the move as a possible identity change (who do you want to become), make your partner’s happiness a priority, propose a temporary stint to try it out. Don’t: only focus on how it will impact you, figure it all out by yourself, overthink it.

Job interviews for developers — 15 simple points to happiness (via The Software Mentor)

An excellent summary post of things developers should consider when interviewing… 1) what interviewing is for, 2) know what you want, 3) communicate what you want, 4) start looking before you need a job, 5) avoid agencies, 6) know your deal-breakers, 7) don’t try to change their process, 8) ask to see code, 9) get to know the team you’ll actually be working with, 10) use humor to test culture fit, 11) ask unpleasant questions, 12) research salary, 13) understand if job titles are important, 14) understand what seniority means, 15) learn how the company makes money (and if they have enough to hire you).

20 Questions To Ask Before Joining A Startup (via The Software Mentor)

I don’t really follow the startup scene, but this set of questions seems like a great place to start when considering if you’d want to work for one.

Communication

How to Collaborate with People You Don’t Like (via Harvard Business Review)

1) Reflect on the cause of tension and how you’re responding to it; 2) work harder to understand the other person’s perspective; 3) help them solves problems as a collaborator instead of a competitor; 4) ask more questions; 5) ask for help.

The Art of Public Speaking and Effective Presentations (via Pluralsight Communication for Technologists path)

I’ve spoken at conferences and given presentations at work, so I wanted to see if this course could be something I’d recommend to people wanting to do public speaking. It hits all the major points about how to communicate effectively and craft a solid message. There’s also useful tips about handling tech demos.

Culture

Helping Remote Workers Avoid Loneliness and Burnout (via Harvard Business Review)

Social exchange theory states that employees respond to opportunity to be remote by working harder to pay back the favor. The solution is for people to check in and make sure remote workers are taking breaks and time off. Loneliness can lead to higher rates of mortality. A solution is to have people come in weekly or quarterly, making time for face-to-face interaction.

Management

Confessions of a Recovering Micromanager (via TED)

A funny and informative talk from Chieh Huang (CEO of Boxed.com) about how he got out of the practice of micromanaging. We as managers do this because we started our career by doing the work, but now we manage others who do the work; we’ve lost control of the actual work. If we set people on a mission and let them loose, they’ll come up with different and often better solutions than we could. At the core, we need to learn to trust others.

To Retain New Hires, Spend More Time Onboarding Them (via Harvard Business Review)

1) Teach them how things work; 2) help them assimilate; 3) define what “good” looks like; 4) set up early wins; 5) build a sense of community.

I hate manager READMEs (via The Software Mentor)

Something I pride myself on is reading posts contrary to advice I’ve been given. I’ve shared articles here before that described a technique where managers give their reports a “how I work” readme, which seemed like an interesting concept. Camille Fournier in this post gives some good arguments about how we may not know ourselves as well as we think (Dunning-Krueger effect) and that listing our idiosyncrasies in a document is a lazy excuse for our behavior. “If you want to build trust, you do that by showing up, talking to your team both individually and as a team, and behaving in an ethical, reliable manner. Over, and over, and over again. You don’t get it from writing a doc about how you deserve their trust.”

Set the Conditions for Anyone on Your Team to Be Creative (via Harvard Business Review)

1) Cultivate expertise, 2) encourage exploration, 3) empower your people with technology, 4) reward persistence.

Process

No lazy thinking (via The Software Mentor)

Instead of having your team pitch just the idea, have them think about the impacts, problems it solves, costs involved, etc. Give them the psychological safety to propose such ideas.

How to Motivate People to Do Good for Others (via TED)

1) increase observability (make sure people find out about the good deeds your doing); 2) decrease excuses; 3) communicate expectations (explicitly say “this is what the norm is around here, by the way”)

Bring Your Breakthrough Ideas to Life (via Harvard Business Review)

1) look at the problem from fresh eyes, 2) step back to gain perspective, 3) imagine unorthodox combinations, 4) experiment quickly, and 5) maneuver to avoid having your ideas shot down.

The Power of Incentives: Inside the Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior (via Software Lead Weekly)

Punishment works best to prevent actions whereas incentives work best to encourage them

Always Be Useful (via Software Lead Weekly)

We’re always chasing something that will make us happy, but they don’t endure. I agree with Darius that being useful (some would call it servant leadership) is more rewarding at the end of the day.

Software development

Expert Excuses for Not Writing Unit Tests (via The Software Mentor)

A thorough, tongue-in-cheek post about the arguments that can be constructed about not writing unit tests. Everything can be gamed, and it was interesting to see how far you could take that line.

Zen and Code Maintenance (via The Software Mentor)

1) Developers should be able to do the right thing in the moment; 2) fast doesn’t mean sloppy; 3) fix things as you see them — a.k.a The Scout Rule, or as I call it “clean as you cook” so that you don’t have a mess at the end. This post also discusses how we commonly misuse the “technical debt” metaphor.

Why software design is important? (via The Software Mentor)

“Doing a great software design takes discipline and commitment from the whole team working with the software.” This post highlights many of the common “ilities”… modularity, maintainability, performance, portability, usability, trackability, and deployment.

De-facto closed source: the case for understandable software (via The Software Mentor)

This was an interesting read about the current state of affairs involving free open-source software (FOSS) and who maintains it. There’s too much moving too fast for any one person to keep up with. This was my favorite quotation: “In no other industry is it considered normal for people to work with, let alone develop on, things they don’t understand at least to a certain degree of confidence.”

Adopt a Git branching strategy

We’re moving from TFS to Git at work. This article talks about the best practices for doing branching.

Git patterns and anti-patterns for successful developers

Related to the above Microsoft article about branching, Edward Thomson (PM for the VSTS team) talks about how he used to do branching and how Microsoft does it now. The recommended practice is “trunk based” and having branches ephemeral all while using feature flags/toggles.

Developer On Call (via Software Lead Weekly)

Excellent write-up explaining why developers should be on-call for their code and how to implement such a strategy. It gives devs more “skin in the game”, provides a better view of the entire system, and drives improvements. There are different kinds of alarms and ways to know when things aren’t working.

Technology

Why Companies That Wait to Adopt AI May Never Catch Up (via Harvard Business Review)

1) It takes time to develop and train these systems, 2) it takes time to integrate into existing systems, 3) it will be interacting with existing people, so you’ll need to figure out that balance, 4) models can go stale and have bias, so you’ll need to keep watching them, 5) some companies that have already started may end up eating your lunch.

Getting Started with Gutenberg WordPress Tutorial

Given my recent update to WordPress 5.0, I’ve had issues using the now “classic” editor. I figured I may as well see what the new editor has available.