Issue #193, 5th August 2016

This Week's Favorite


A Day Without Meetings: How I Started From Scratch to Create the Perfect Workday
4 minutes read.

Deep work requires many adjustments to the way you manage your time, to how you allow others to own your day. Great tips by John Zeratsky on how to take ownership of your calendar.

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Culture


When Hipsters Use node.js
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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Buffer's Tough News: We’ve Made 10 Layoffs. How We Got Here, the Financial Details and How We’re Moving Forward
8 minutes read.

It's always remarkable to see how transparent the team at Buffer are. I've seen and worked at companies who suffer from growing too fast, burning a lot of oxygen. It takes a lot of courage to address it on time, and be open about it with the community.

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Transforming Organizational Culture at Etsy (Video)
15 minutes read.

This video is short and packed with great observations and anecdotes. One of them is so good that it worths its own mentioning, so check minute 09:09 around how Etsy celebrate spectacular failures. Funny, inspiring and something worth experimenting in your own company.

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DevOps Versus SRE: Delayed Coverage of the Dumbest War
6 minutes read.

Charity Majors is always fun to read, and as always - plenty of honesty and interesting language to follow. Just an example: "Google insularity is … a thing. On the one hand it’s great that they’re opening up a bit!rainbow-umbrella-clipart-1 On the other hand it’s a little bit like when somebody barges onto a mailing list and starts spouting without skimming any of the archives."

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Peopleware


“I Like I Wish” to Get Better Feedback
5 minutes read.

The "I like, I wish" is a great format you can use to gather feedback and learn from it. Already printed a few pages to try it out myself, just check the internal link to ilikeiwish website on the post. One more thing I'd add to it is another column called "purpose" as I feel that by starting with the purpose, the "I wish" would be more constructive and aligned towards the company's success.

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The Product Development Triathlon
4 minutes read.

Kent Beck on the different stages of product development, and why different tools and state of mind should be used :"The transitions are awkward, but they count. If a project goes from one phase to another and the team doesn’t notice, it’s like trying to swim on a bike."

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How to Think About Your Career
8 minutes read.

Julie Zhuo with another brilliant post on how to deliberately plan and execute your career growth: "your career, like your life, moves forward whether you think about it or not. If you don’t think about it, then you’re putting faith in the winds."

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Inspiring Tweets


@calavera: Me: I must submit two proposals to GitHub Universe before tomorrow. Brain: Great, we have until tomorrow at 11pm to procrastinate

@ballantine70: Next time your CFO is driving out cost remind them that even they have a spare kidney. 100℅ utilisation gives no margin for error.

- Oren

P.S. Can you share this email? I'd love for more people to experiment and improve their company's culture.

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