@brwngrldev - March, 2020
Hey! 👋 How are you holding up? These are strange, sad times we’re living in. The impact of the Coronavirus goes beyond merely physical, it poses lots of mental and emotional challenges as well. I’m naturally a home-body, but this level of social distancing even bothers me. Just grateful that my friends and family are safe and healthy so far.
To help me deal emotionally. I do at least one thing every day to extend an act of kindness to someone else. I ordered a bunch of greeting cards on Amazon and I send out a few each week. It makes me feel good to write them. I hope it makes others feel good to receive them. When you spend time thinking about someone else I find it helps you to think less about your own issues.
Along those lines, I don’t follow the news endlessly. I want to know what’s going on in the world, but not so much that I’m anxious. I subscribe to the Morning Brew. It’s a daily newsletter. I learn what’s going on in a somewhat lighthearted manner. That works for me. I also mute certain words on Twitter when I just need a break. 🤷♀️
Hopefully, you’re adjusting ok and figuring out a good routine that can help you to feel centered.
Books I’m Reading
The Year Without Pants - https://amzn.to/3a7tLrq
A coworker recommended this book. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at the team behind wordpress.com. They’re a completely remote, distributed company. I’m a few chapters in and I like the simple style. It’s a witty, diary-like read, full of thoughtful quotes and passages.
This passage especially resonated with me, "A great fallacy born from the failure to study culture is the assumption that you can take a practice from one culture and simply jam it into another and expect similar results. Much of what bad managers do is assume their job is simply to find new things to jam and new places to jam them into, without ever believing they need to understand how the system—the system of people known as culture—works.”
As a manager, I focus on the culture of my team a lot. I want us to ship meaningful features for users that have a positive business impact. How best to do that depends. In the world of software development, there is a myriad of tools and practices available. But not all of them will make sense for your team’s culture. It’s definitely a balancing act.
Your Code as a Crime Scene - https://amzn.to/3aYeppx
As an avid Forensic Files fan, I knew I had to pick this up. The author uses forensic psychology methods combined with code analysis to help you uncover issues in your software design or team processes.
Here’s a blog post I wrote about one of the techniques mentioned in the book. I created word clouds using commit message logs. It was both nerdy and informative.
Let’s Talk Podcasts
HBR IdeaCast - Defining Radical Candor – and How to Do It
Who is the ideal boss? That was the opening question of this episode on radical candor. Kim Scott was the guest, the author of the book, Radical Candor. I read this book back in 2018 and benefited from the stories that were shared around providing effective feedback. She also shared ideas on how to get on an equal footing with others.
Fragmented - Logging
In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about logging in your Android application. They cover when to log, how to log and what to log. I’ve been thinking about the best way to monitor what’s going on with our mobile app at Meetup. We use DataDog on the backend, so it would be interesting to use the same thing for the mobile apps. 🤔
Talking Kotlin - International Women's Day Special
Svetlana Isakova, Florina Muntenescu, Huyen Tue Dao, and Christina Lee join Hadi in this episode to discuss what idiomatic Kotlin is. This was a cool episode as I believe it’s the largest number of guests he’s had at one time. I personally admire all of these women and respect their perspectives on software development. Their thoughts were refreshing and align with my own. Give it a listen.
A Bit of Culture
The Metropolitan Opera has been offering a series of free opera streams on its website for the past week. I was able to watch Carmen and La Bohéme. Confession: this is the first time I’ve seen an opera. 😱I’ve always wanted to go, but I just never did. The singing and acting are incredibly powerful. I can only imagine what it must feel like to be there in person.
Until next time, thanks for reading!
"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
- Maya Angelou
Blog: http://www.adavis.info
Twitter: https://twitter.com/brwngrldev
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