Dates covered: April 22-28, 2019 (week 17 of 52)
Business
Case Study: Should a Direct-to-Consumer Company Start Selling on Amazon? (via Harvard Business Review)
Given I don’t do much with marketing, this was an interesting article about whether an e-bike company should sell on Amazon. They would get access to a wider customer base, but may not be able to fulfill orders fast enough, or even worse, Amazon would copy their product and sell it as their own private label for much cheaper.
Does Crowdsourcing Need a Cash Prize to Work? (via Harvard Business Review)
Some companies (e.g., Frito Lay, Starbucks) are starting to crowdsource new product ideas. Does incentivizing consumers with cash improve the quality of submissions? One experiment shows that if you want lots of ideas, use a big prize; surprisingly no prize works well in small-scale efforts.
Career
What makes a 10x Developer? (via The Software Mentor)
YMMV with these kinds of posts, and I still review them every so often to see what’s still making the cut. This author suggests (1) being efficient by asking why and how questions, (2) avoiding distractions, (3) learning your tools, (4) being eager to learn, (5) find mentors or other top performers to be around, (6) give back and share what you’ve learned. These are all pretty solid. I’ve been struggling with #5 and #6 recently.
Communication
How to write like the great entrepreneurs (via Software Lead Weekly)
A short post (fitting, given the content) with 15 tips to consider when improving your writing. One I would add is copy/paste your text into a text-to-speech reader and listen to it.
Culture
Why Naval Ravikant Thinks Remote Work Is The Future (via The Software Mentor)
I’m pleased this post wasn’t a cheap shot against non-remote work. The points are pretty solid… you don’t always need to be in-person, some areas of the world (e.g., San Francisco) are too expensive. It will be interesting to see what companies will look like 10-20 years from now.
How Generational Stereotypes Hold Us Back at Work (via TED)
We’re not sorted nicely into generational buckets — Gen X, Millennials, etc.; we are individual people. This talk suggests that instead of trying to cater to groups, we meet people in their “onlyness”, where they are.
Can Online Tools Help Employees Build Resilience? (via Harvard Business Review)
Caveat: This study was done by Happify, a company whose platform aims to address such issues. “For those who lack resilience, a bad day can seriously throw them off their game, lowering their sense of worth, attitude toward their job and work performance.” Common barriers to resilience training are needing an in-person facilitation, many companies don’t offer it, pls there’s a stigma of asking for help. The five areas the study focused on were mindfulness, gratitude, goal-setting, forgiveness, and self-compassion.
How Not to Disagree (via Software Lead Weekly)
I filed this under “culture” as it pertains to how things turn out when the team doing the work decides that management doesn’t know what its doing and the team does something else regardless. This feels good at first, but has long-term negative repercussions (e.g., victimization).
Leadership
Less Herding. More Doing. (via The Software Mentor)
Granted the author said this was his opinion and quite biased… “Be a team member. Be a participant. Less herding. More doing.” I don’t agree. A leader needs to continuously assess where the team is, where they need to go, and figure out how to help them. Sometimes, rolling up your sleeves is what they need. Sometimes, helping do tasks they don’t excel at (yet) or could do but prefer not to is most useful. Ideally, you’d teach the team to run themselves and not need you at all…my opinion of course.
Managing Yourself: How to Calibrate Your Own Strengths and Weaknesses (via Software Lead Weekly)
I’m a huge fan of StrengthsFinder (now called CliftonStrengths), as it’s an affirmative start toward acknowledging who you are and where you work best. I’ve not yet had the opportunity to work at an organization that uses 360-feedback, and can see the value in it. We’re probably harder on ourselves than we think.
The hardest leadership advice to follow: “Work on the business and not in the business” (via Software Lead Weekly)
In short, take time to get away from the daily grind and reflect on long-term thinking. This is easier said than done, and most leaders struggle with this. Some of your best decisions come not from knee-jerk reactions, but during times of reflection (or sudden inspiration) when you’ve had time to let the problem breathe.
Security
CompTIA Security+ (SY0-501) Refresher: Identity and Access Management (via Pluralsight)
This course covers the difference between identity and access management, configuring services, various controls for implementation, and common account management practices.
Software development
Why you should not use feature branches (via The Software Mentor)
The picture at the top of this article was crazy. If you have that many open feature branches, I can understand why you’d be frustrated! The gist here is to work as close to the trunk (e.g., master) as you can, and use feature toggles to deal with work in progress.