Over the past 25 years, there have been many forums that I have engaged in. This week Figma just launched a new forum for their users. It made me think I should note the previous communities I have been a part of. I had blogged about Q&A in 2008 and…
I used to doodle all the time. My brother just sent me an old notebook he found. I had this running series of comics about the Assumptions. Creatures from the planet Assump. Get it? Anyway, here is a good sampling of them. Anyway, they aren’t great pieces of art, but…
I’ve been managing people on and off for 25 years now. It’s hard to tell how I have evolved, but I am sure that I’ve changed some over the years. There are certain principles that I think about as a manager that have stayed with me since the beginning and…
At work, I asked everyone on the design team to make a 10-15 minute presentation of their 2020 in review. Specifically, it was meant to be a professional review, not home life. I suggested that they include some journey mapping of their highs and lows as well as some general…
I find that most problem statements are not written very well. Some of them are blatantly circular. Writing a good problem statement aligns the team on the mission. If you solve the wrong problem, you will have a poor business outcome. Give me a bad problem, I will give you…
Good communication (imho) is the most important factor contributing a successful project or product. Interestingly, the ways we communicate at work are pretty diverse. The recent acquisition of Slack by Salesforce had me thinking about alot about this. Here is a list of how I communicate at work: Slack for…
Years ago, I used to write holiday cards for all of my coworkers. I would hand write the card and leave it on their desks. Now, in the age of Covid, we are all working from home. This presents a problem. How can I get everyone their holiday cards? I…
I have a serious feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. In 2016, I felt confident in the morning and sadness and despair slowly built up during the day. Today, I am exhausted with all of the 2020 nonsense. I am sick and tired of there being news…
There are Rules My kids (the older 2) are pretty strict about Covid protocols in general. When playing tennis with others, we were following the Official USTA Rules. The rules say “Bring your own can of balls and ONLY touch those. Don’t touch any other set of tennis balls”. The…
Chrome recently updated their browser and added a much needed feature. It’s called Tab Groups. Firefox used to have it and for some reason lost it. Here is how it works. First, update chrome by clicking the top right kabob (three dots) and then Help → About Chrome. It should…
In the Age of Covid, we are all working in a new way. I spend more time in meetings and less time sitting with people at their desks. As a team leader, I want to make sure we are bonding and developing relationships with each other. We can’t sit and…
When developing a large product, especially for enterprise customers, it is tempting to do some engineering specifically to land (or keep) a big customer. This, on its face, sounds good, right? “The customer is always right.” Marshall Field – Wikipedia I think this makes sense in a department store. However,…
Can you put your life into bullet points? Can you summarize and really boil information spanning decades down to its essentials? Let’s give it a try. Act I (Growing up) Born outside NYC in the foresty suburbs Was pretty bad at school, but I read non stop Got into Art…
I don’t know what the question is, but the answer is a spreadsheet. – Glen Lipka I love collecting weird data and making charts out of it. In the last year, there has been a ton of interesting data. Decisions are made often with lots of bad bias. One area…