What layoffs teach us about technical leadership

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...

Reading Time: 35 minutes This April, I gave a talk at ETE 2024 called “The Tools We Still Need to Build with AI.” I think people expected me to list my predictions for profitable shovels to sell in the AI gold rush. I’ve been accused of playing 4-D chess: baiting the audience who needs to hear this and switching […]