Professional Development – 2023 – Week 40

Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/54585499@N04/

.NET

Why Do Older .NET Developers Hate Modern .NET? (via Nick Chapsas)

Mostly misconceptions, and some branding missteps by Microsoft (e.g., .NET Framework vs. .NET Core — it still has “.NET” in the title).

The Common Entity Framework Mistake You MUST Fix (via Nick Chapsas)

  • The example application starts as a .NET 7 / EF Core project where the service classes use a DBContext.
  • The integration tests use WebApplicationFactory and Faker — see the Dometrain course on integration testing.
  • Don’t replace the built-in provider of EF Core with an in-memory provider, because then the tests are no longer true integration tests. Integration should fully test how EF turns C# into database queries and how the DB uses those queries. It’s best to have an actual database that’s called.

Culture

What’s Fueling Burnout in Your Organization? (via HBR)

  • This article talks about how it’s not the workload, but the collaborative demands for that work; this leads to increased potential for misunderstanding, misalignment, and imbalances of capacity.
  • “The more complex, the more matrixed, the more required communication and connection between employees, the more ad hoc the more microstresses are going to be impeding the effectiveness of work.”
  • Have processes that make sense (relying on processes instead of people).
  • Agree on collaborative norms about how to communicate.
  • Having people spread over multiple teams doesn’t give them time to build the kind of trust needed for efficient collaboration.
  • Leaders must shape and communicate the goal you’re all working toward.
  • The individual’s purpose needs to extend beyond the corporate one.
  • Be mindful of how your microstresses as a leader impact your team.

Organizational Change

10 Pitfalls That Destroy Organizational Trust (via HBR)

  1. Aversion to making choices
  2. Reliance on heroic employees
  3. Shiny object syndrome
  4. Disengaged middle management
  5. Casual relationship with other people’s time
  6. Comfort with collateral damage
  7. High incidence of the “Sunday scaries”
  8. People-pleasing in the board room
  9. Tolerance for misalignment
  10. Delusions of meritocracy

Create Stories That Change Your Company’s Culture (via HBR)

  1. Be authentic
  2. Feature yourself in stories
  3. Break with the past and lay a path to the future
  4. Appeal to hearts and minds
  5. Be theatrical
  6. Empower others to create their own stories

Work

4 Ways to Make Work More Meaningful (via HBR)

This article has several example questions to pull on the following threads: craft your work, make work a craft, connect work to service, and invest in positive relationships.