source Everyone has their own favorite note-taking app: Notion versus Google Docs versus Apple Notes versus OneNote versus Obsidian. Dropbox Paper shrieking “what about me?” into the void. I wrote this article in source From the individual’s point of view, the optimal company policy is to allow everyone to use whatever app they like. It’s both From the team’s point of view, however, this is a bad policy. I don’t want to learn how pseudo-database-table-thingies work in Notion, but Bear doesn’t ...
I’ve been doing a lot of swimming over the past few weeks and I’ve regularly been hitting some new personal milestones over the past year. Each milestone brings with in a huge high, an endorphin rush, a personal satisfaction and, honestly, I walk around for the day feeling like It’s so viscerally satisfying to see myself making progress, sometimes huge leaps in performance, and feeling just so… I think we all need to feel that satisfaction, that competence at a skill, and those moments of leve...
In his book Ever since reading this, I’ve been seeing “friction” everywhere in software development: This list is non-exhaustive and it’s not possible to catalogue all possible sources of friction. Friction matters more over large time horizons and large scopes, simply because more things can go wrong. Friction compounds with itself: two setbacks are more than twice as bad as one setback. This is because most systems are at least (This is a factor in the controversial idea of “don’t deploy on ...
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Stable teams are overrated — changes are inevitable. Few teams remain the same for more than a year, so it doesn’t make sense to hold on to the idea that stable teams are the ultimate goal. This is one of the insights Heidi Helfand has gained and decided to talk about in her book Introduction To Dynamic Reteaming Heidi Helfand coaches organizations and teams to create great products. Over the years, she recognized the inevitability of change and found five reteaming patterns. This resulted in h...
March 10, 2024 4-minute read I have been very fortunate to have both worked alongside some incredible engineering leaders, as well as lead engineering teams myself. These experiences have primarily been in the context of startups that are growing rapidly in terms of both customers and employees. The longer I have worked in these environments, the more convinced I have become that there is a singular skill that ultimately decides the success of a leader, and thus their team: As an However, when...