Inspiration

README.md

Snippets & Quotes that influence me as I browse around. None of these are fully formed thoughts or prescriptions - just inspiration.

Values

• "Real company values are the behaviours and skills that we particularly value in fellow employees" link
• Take the high road
• Invest in ourselves
• Frugality - constraints breed better decisions

Snippets

• a company with strong human & mindful values
• Not shipping fever, but an urge to ship?
• strive to make the organization simpler. link link
• no codemonkeys allowed
• comments are a failure to explain
• A reliable app is a core emotional need of a healthy company. link
• When you build a calmer web app, you instill those same traits inside your company’s DNA. link
•  increased performance, reliability, and monitoring standards
• implement gradual change - canary releases, easier reviews & easier rollback link
• measure everything link
• find balance through rhythm, possibly with 6-week "segments" link
• The more you have, the more you maintain link
• The job of a manager is to make yourself as unnecessary as possible link
• code should be optimized for readability link
• create a company where talented people can do big things link
• You cannot add simplicity in; you must take complexity out link
• the greatest value you can offer a boss is to reduce their stress link link
• a team committed to sustainable, healthy lifestyles link
• Invite change, don't induce it link
• Work smarter link
• “think-it, build-it and run-it” teams link
• Always Small, Always Better, Always Wrong link
• most programming work has pronounced ramp up and cold down periods link
• the compounding awesomeness of continually fixing small broken things link
• Realize the impact your mood and demeanor has on people link
• Sense of purpose - "Aim in your work not for happiness, but for a goal you care about: improving the world, or even just applying and honing a skill you value." link
• If you have a choice between getting it right and getting it done, pick done. link
• Align your work with your interests. Align your environment with your desired habits. link
• Don't "work harder." Instead: Cut away distractions. Stop doing fake work. Ask for help. Plan. Solicit criticism. Automate what can be automated. Engage your mentors. Exercise. Get more sleep. Whatever you do, don't "work harder." It's pretty much never the answer. link
• OH: “Culture is how people make decisions when the boss isn’t in the room” link
• If you don't know how to recognize value, you'll end up measuring time. link
• designing processes/tools/etc such that they capture implicit knowledge and make it explicit, legible, and enduring link
• The Purpose Of Life Is Not Happiness: It’s Usefulness link
• If you're not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them. And vice versa: when you can do whatever you want, you have more ideas about what to do. link
• make hard things easy link
• Absence is a great measure of leadership effectiveness. link
• keep raising the level of ambition link
• Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast link
• "Be the software developers that everyone wants to work with" link
• Make employees more valuable by giving them agency over their ideas, decisions, and suggestions link
• In the short-run, great managers, coaches, and leaders adjust their strategy to fit their players. In the long-run, great managers, coaches, and leaders recruit players to fit their strategy. link
• A good chef continuously tastes her soup. Good devs work on feedback, not prediction. link
• If someone isn't asking questions about a project or task, they've like not understood what is being done or what is expected of them link
• execution and feasibility are more important than ideas. link
• The main value in software is not the code produced, but the knowledge accumulated by the people who produced it. link
• It is much easier to notice when something is working than to predict ahead of time if it will work. Take action, make many small bets, and run lots of quick (but thoughtful) experiments. Then, double-down on the winners. link
• When you view the world as a series of outputs, you form opinions. But when you view the world as a series of systems, you form strategies. link
• It is very hard to do good work without being optimistic, exceptionally determined, and intellectually curious. link
• "but does this tool actually make an impact on the quality of our end-user experiences?" link
• "Managers would benefit from seeing their roles a bit more as environment designers and a bit less as people growers." link
• "The opposite of anxiety is not calmness, it’s trust." link
• "A person’s best thinking is rarely communicated through synchronous conversation." link
• Build stepping stones, not milestones. link
• "In every conversation you're part of, create clarity and reduce chaos." link
• "The only productivity hack you need is enjoying what you do." link
• "The secret to success isn’t mentors, it’s peers. Surround yourself with people on your same level who are doing great things." link
• "Tools tend to force premature convergence on a process, and then make it ridiculously inconvenient to change that process" link
• "Teams are productive when they’re sharing useful information. Teams are bonding when they’re sharing useless information. Bonded teams are more productive." link
• "Don’t unify tracking tools. Don’t make coordination smoother. Make delivery smoother! by strengthening boundaries." link

Quotes

• Leaders who don't listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say
• Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect
• A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.
• If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid. --Epictetus, Greek philosopher

Ideas

• Coffee Lottery slack room - http://donut.ai
• trunkbaseddevelopment.com

Roles

• CTO - technical vision and architectural decision-making; VPE - people and process management; responsible for delivery link

docs

• github - issues/PRs/Markdown
• quip
• If everyone agrees how the project should be done then writing the approach down should be a piece of cake. It just needs to capture the shared understanding on what the approach is, what architecture changes will be made, what the tricky parts are. link

project management

• github issues/projects + waffle.io

values link

• don’t be clever
• code is a liability
• ask, learn, and teach
• design and architecture matter
• first make it correct then make it fast
• only make it fast if you know it matters
• it’s not done until customers are getting value
• it’s not done until there’s nothing left to take away
• don’t automate something you haven’t done manually
• quick incremental progress is better than the alternative
• code is shared by the team. there is no such thing as my code
• it’s easier to change a dry-erase board than a production system
• code is written to be understood by humans first, computers second