What layoffs teach us about technical leadership

Reading Time: 3 minutesHi folks! I want to start doing an end-of-year giving tradition on my workshop website, so I’ve come up with a plan. If you use the code giving-2024 in the shop between today and December 31, you’ll get 10% off your purchase, and the entirety of your purchase (all the dollars; I won’t even take […]

Reading Time: 23 minutes This post from a week ago talked about three decision-making traps that technical leaders fall into like flies into a honey jar: These traps wreak havoc in individual decision making. So, naturally, we’ve ported the assumptions underlying these traps to many of the structures we use to make decisions in teams. Then,...

Reading Time: 15 minutes Tech’s favorite party trick is promoting programmers into leadership roles with zero coaching on how to make the transition, or even a briefing on what the role entails. The programmer accepts the promotion because…I mean, of course you’d accept a promotion. Then, they quickly find themselves in over their heads. In my...

Reading Time: 20 minutes “Let’s start with cars.” My students break out into groups of four, each quartet gathered around a collection of pink and green post-it notes. For the first few minutes, the room remains quiet while each student jots down a personal story about one way that cars have impacted their lives. As the students finish and […]

Reading Time: 13 minutes By the way, you can listen to me read this post aloud on my Patreon, along with many other audio recordings. In December of 2021, an itinerant sci-fi and fantasy gathering called Worldcon came under scrutiny for accepting a sponsorship from an American defense company. Critics remarked that the conference had clearly...