A year or two ago I read “Creative Selection,” [https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Selection-Inside-Apples-Process-ebook/dp/B079DVT6VP/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=] a book that gives some insight into how Apple operated internally during the “golden age” of Steve Jobs. It’s a worthwhile read
About a decade ago, a friend of mine, Nina (not her actual name), disappeared into a religious cult. Nina broke with her family in a pretty destructive way. After a few years, we heard she had had a child with a cult leader. Her parents never met their grandchild. Until
I needed a distraction, so a while ago I decided to spend a few hours learning React Native [https://reactnative.dev/]. React Native is an environment to build native mobile applications for multiple platforms at once, based on the popular React.js library [https://reactjs.org/]. One thing really blew
> If you would have to make a hiring decision for an engineer based on just one attribute, what would it be? This is a question that was asked to me by a candidate during our recruitment process. That was a first. I’m involved, generally, in two steps in
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Should it be a company’s ambition to keep people forever? For my parents’ generation and before it was common to stay with a company your whole career. In some cultures this is still the case. Things look quite differently now, so perhaps it is time to reevaluate if we
Other than “robot clams,” Poznań (the city where I live) is not a particularly special place by any objective measure — and I say this with all the love in the world. Sure, it’s a special place to me — it’s my home, I’ve been living here for 9
Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development]: > Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development process relying on software requirements being converted to test cases before software is fully developed, and tracking all software development by repeatedly testing the software against all test cases. This is opposed to software
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> The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. These are essentially the first sentences in the first book on leadership I ever read: Leadership is an Art [https://amzn.to/2FSz1p3] by Max Depree, probably about 8 years ago. “Define
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> “Praise in public, criticize in private.” Take any feedback training, read any management book (this one excluded), and this is the advice you’ll find: praise in public, criticize in private. It’s so wide-spread that it’s just considered fact. This how things ought to be done. Period.
Some months ago I watched Inside Bill’s Brain [https://www.netflix.com/title/80184771?s=i&trkid=255824129] — the Netflix (yes, Netflix again) documentary about — shocker — Bill Gates’ brain. The premise of the documentary as I remember is the following: Bill Gates is an extremely intelligent inventor that
Feedback
I wanted to to tell you this last week as a reaction to your last piece, but it sounded like feedback, so I dropped it. It appears the result of my public musing on toxicity of feedback has resulted in feedback deprivation: a few people have admitted they would have
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> I am very disappointed in all of you. Just a few years ago, when Joe had a baby, the whole company would chip in. We were able to buy a great present. And now, just 17 people out of 120!? What happened to you, why don’t you care?