.NET
“Stop Using Automapper in .NET!” – LAPD (via Nick Chapsas)
- (The title was a response to some click-baity content on LinkedIn.)
- Don’t trust posts that make claims without the facts to back them up.
- Many of the examples have subtle errors or inefficiencies that without proper understanding will cause you problems.
- Just because something has many likes/reposts doesn’t mean it’s accurate.
The New Way of Calling Your Code in .NET 8 Is INSANE (via Nick Chapsas)
- There are ways to get access to private fields/methods with reflection in .NET 7, but it’s tedious to do so.
- The video also agrees that something is private for a reason, so it should be extra work to bypass those guards.
- Use extern or extern ref and the new UnsafeAccessor attribute
- The advantage is that you get compile-time performance (60x in Nick’s example).
AI
Career Essentials in Generative AI by Microsoft and LinkedIn (via LinkedIn Learning)
This course covers AI in general, generative AI, and ethics.
Communication
How to Have a Successful Meeting with Your Boss’s Boss (via HBR)
Skip-level meetings can help you gain a broader perspective, build social capital, and enhance advocacy. Consider your culture of how this meeting would be perceived. Bring your boss into the loop about why you’re doing this. Define your goals for such a meeting. Prepare powerful questions (e.g., what trends should my team be paying attention to).
The Secret to Successfully Pitching an Idea (via TED)
Use FOMO (fear of missing out) such that if the audience doesn’t want to support your idea, they’ll be missing out on something useful, big, etc. First know your audience and what they care about so that you can craft your message to addressing their concerns. Use the hero’s journey theme: explain the status quo of the hero’s world, introduce tension, then let the hero resolve the tension with something new. Lastly, shore up your weak points — don’t avoid (because your audience will pick up on it) but explain that you’re aware and what you’re doing to address them.
Leadership
The Anxious Micromanager (via HBR)
- The tendency to rely on command energy stems from a leader’s own anxiety and lack of confidence.
- Command energy is useful in some scenarios (military), but otherwise rarely works.
- “There is no room for ‘being right’ in constructive relationships.”
- Energy/emotional tug-of-war is a waste of both people’s energy and gets them no where. The answer is to drop the rope. Whoever voluntarily drops the rope is the leader. Your job is to get people to where they need to be, and people won’t follow you when they’re fighting you.
- “The less I worry about controlling others, the more interested they are in following me.”
- Command energy comes from a lack of trust in themselves. We seek to control only what we do not trust.
- You job is not to control other people; it’s to control yourself and trust others will follow.
Mental health
Helping an Employee in Distress (via HBR)
Managers aren’t expected to be counselors/therapists; however they can use techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Today’s workforce is anxious, and younger generations recognize the importance of mental health. CBT focuses on individuals taking control of what they think and do and involves four states: cognitive (thought patterns), mood (feelings), physiological (physical sensations), and behavioral (how a person copes). Behaviors that commonly appear in the workforce are avoidance, reduction of activity, and perfectionism. Managers can practice active listening and demonstrate empathy; they can also engage in cognitive reframing (replacing unhelpful thoughts with helpful ones). Lastly managers should understand where their role ends and a professional’s role begins (e.g., what services does your company offer)?
Free Your People from the Need for Social Approval (via HBR)
FOPO — fear of other people’s opinions — makes us hypervigilant about what other people think of us, sometimes making us think our identity/value is threatened. This is caused by a human need to belong, but is lensed through social media, overreliance on external rewards, metrics, validation, and pressure to succeed. We’re always scanning our environment in search of approval. We also may read the room to curry favor rather than be true to ourselves. The article proposes having a purpose-based identity, which can be applied to the team or org level, rather than comparing ourselves to others.