Accidentally in Code: Recent Episodes
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My friends and I went pottery painting this year. Next, we’re trying crotchet. The pottery painting was fun, and my star shaped bowl painted in rainbow colors came out better than I expected. I’m thinking to go back and paint a dragon next.
My friends and I, we’re exploring. Trying some new things. Seeing what we enjoy. No pressure to be good at it, or even do it a second time. It’s oddly liberating. I think this is good for me, because I get too focused on being good at things, which makes me too likely to stick to what I know, unwilling to branch out and explore.
It also reminds me of professional development. Sometimes I know what I’m trying to learn and how to do it – I’m pursuing it, in a depth mode. For example when I took the full co-active coaching training, or when I wrote the book.
Right now I’m in more of an exploratory mode. I have some broad themes that I’m interested in, but I’m not quite ready to commit to anything that big. I was inclined to be a little self-judgemental about that, like, I ‘should’ know and focus and achieve. But I’m trying instead to find the beauty of the exploration. The freedom to make small decisions, the lack of pressure when I can truly believe that it’s okay to be wrong, the joy of following my own curiosity, just because.
As a result I’m:
- Listening to wildly different podcasts (a history one!)
- Reading an interesting book with no real practical application
- Redoing a new version of a program I took before, and experiencing it very differently
- On a program committee for a conference I really like
- Planning on taking a course that feels wildly different from anything I’ve done in a long time
- Working on a fun / exploratory project with a friend
In an exploratory mode, I feel much less of a sense of progress, perhaps because it’s so much more chaotic than when I’m more focused on something specific. But I think maybe that’s part of what makes it good for me right now. Exploring is a more generative activity, as in, generating of ideas and perspectives. Depth is more of an exploitation of ideas and perspectives that are already there. Post writing a book – basically a packaging and exploitation of years of exploring – I really want to get back to a more generative space; and I’ve concluded that means I have to explore.
How about you? What have you been exploring lately, and what did you learn?
I think the thing I enjoyed most about Ashley Goodall’s The Problem with Change is the author’s cynicism about corporate America. In places it’s a little bit of a diatribe, but what can I say, I love it. I love it all the more that it comes from someone who successfully navigated the Byzantine ladder of advancement that is Corporate America – this is someone who succeeded in the system enough to add extra weight to the deconstruction of why the system itself is nonsense.
The core thesis of the book is that there is too much change for change’s sake, and a lack of evidence that backs that up as driving effectiveness. In fact the opposite. Human flourishing and human productivity are entwined, and the things that make the best conditions for that are themselves quite human.
- Make space – don’t control people, create the conditions for effectiveness.
- Forge undeniable competence – understand strengths and unique value, and how it delivers value.
- Share secrets – belonging is not driven by corporate values statements but by information that is specific and more meaningful.
- Be predictable – leaders who are consistently defined by the people multiple levels drive more impact.
- Speak real words – remove corporate jargon and buzz words and be clear about what is.
- Honor ritual – ritual is a core way to create belonging, and consistently is the most important aspect.
- Focus most on teams – teams are the units that drive results (and also the strength of the team is one of the strongest predictor of engagement scores).
- Radicalize HR – HR needs to align with employee flourishing rather than business metrics.
- Pave the way – look at making the paths people do take easier, rather than defining new paths.
Some things in the list are easier to implement than others; it’s not the most directly actionable book. But it gave me many things to think about, and was worth the time to read.
Credit: Joe GrooveNo team is perfect, but I think it’s often kind of obvious when a team is bad – there’s usually a level of chaos or drama, a sense that they can’t be relied on or don’t really deliver the value that the organization needs. I think it’s also quite obvious when a team is good, mainly from the output of the team, but the underlying operating that goes into that tend to be less obvious.
Practically, most teams are somewhere in the middle. Not terrible, but not as good as they could be either. Here’s my list of what I think makes a good team. If you think I’m missing anything please let me know in the comments or on your preferred social media.
Clarity of purpose – people understand why the team exists.
Defined work streams aligned with purpose – people understand what the team is doing (and why).
Good team communication (openness, psychological safety) – communication is the foundation of collaboration.
Connected, but not cliquey – the biggest predictor of work happiness is having a friend.
Good delivery fundamentals – this is the team delivering its purpose, consistently and over time.
- Work gets done and to agreed standards
- Delivery is consistent medium term, not just short term sprints + burnout
- Mistakes are a source of learning
- Team is reliable <> people are reliable
- Time is spent on higher value activities (complex tech designs > linting)
Good people fundamentals – the necessary ongoing maintenance work for any team. Without good people fundamentals, management debt gets generated, which over time becomes corrosive.
- Everyone has a good manager
- Onboarding is predictable
- Feedback loops are solid
- Under-performers are addressed (up or out)
- High performers get developed
- Equity (in work allocation, advancement)
Good process fundamentals – like the oil that keeps a team moving, process is the base level organization that facilitates team effectiveness.
- All process has a purpose
- Easy things are easy
- Hard things are possible
- Processes are fluid and evolving (continuous improvement mindset)
The above items were the static needs of a team, if a team is going through a period of higher growth there is some additional complexity, such as:
- More complex hiring (new roles)
- More intense people development (stretch assignments)
- Removing bottlenecks before they hit
- Updating processes before they break
- Balancing risk/reward, (stretch assignments, creative bridging of gaps)
If you liked this, you may also like my book.
The Stake [Amazon] is the book about the CoActive Leadership program. It’s written in a different way, from the other books from the perspective of the people taking it and the journeys they go on. As a result, it’s more engaging to read and the application and impact more clear.
One of the most important concepts in it is that of the “Leader’s stake”, which means the orientation around which a leader is operating. The stake is not a goal, but goals serve the stake. So a stake is not “to be right” but in software something more like, “we can maximize value whilst working sustainably”.
I read this for a couple of reasons, not least of which is that I am thinking about when and how to take the full Leadership program. The thing I love about CoActive is how the training takes people on a journey. I recently did my first back of the room assisting, and was so interested in how the training addresses what is needed, often without talking about it directly. The Stake unravells how some of that is done, such as the co-leadership concept, and the focus on managing the space rather than individuals.
All in all might be quite a specific book and not suited for everyone, but personally I got what I wanted out of it.
Credit: Joe GrooveI started 2022 with a post in Qz – 5 signs it’s time to quit your job. The list is:
- You’re not learning (and you want to be)
- You’re learning coping mechanisms rather than skills
- You feel morally conflicted about hiring
- Your job is affecting your confidence
- Your job is affecting you physically
I stand by this list, I do think this is a solid list of reasons to think about moving on. But three years later, the market is very different and there are two great reason not to quit.
- How hard will it be to find another job?
- Will that new job actually be any better?
A brief diversion that will make sense – I know I should do more weight training, but I really really love cardio. I keep meaning to do more but… the spin bike is right there, and so tempting. So I put off weight training, again.
I think tech workers in a good market, we often approached career growth that way. We know there are some set of things to do which might help us get what we want where we are, but recruiters are emailing and it’s easier to interview elsewhere instead. This goes particularly for under-indexed people, the latest McKinsey report on Women in the Workplace shows that advancement for women, and particularly women of color, is still moving slowly – and in some cases, regressing.
The current market is like… enforced weight training (or enforced spinning, if you have the opposite inclinations). It sucks, and it hurts, but it can also be an opportunity to expand your skills at maximizing the current situation rather than the skills to seek out a new one.
One of the specific things that I think is hard right now is the constraints we operate in. When organizations say “do more with less” that means individuals have more to do. When inflation goes up but wages stay stagnant, that means individuals – even those who are fine overall – have less discretionary income that can be used to save time, recharge, or invest in learning. When things overall feel risky, we’re more likely to be risk averse. If it was hard to do a side project before, when the market was better, it’s probably even harder when things are more difficult and more precarious.
Three suggestions to DRI your career in a bad market (without quitting):
- Take a longer view
- Get creative with what can you learn and where can you learn it
- Mine “opportunities” for Opportunity
Take a longer viewWhen you think about career goals, we often think about the external markers – we talk about getting the job title rather than doing the work, about publishing a book rather than writing it, about giving a talk rather than preparing a talk. This is totally fair – this is when the goal is “done” after all. But if you accepted that external markers are particularly hard to come by right now, that all the work you might do might come to nothing – what would you do?
- What would you prioritize just because you enjoy it?
- What groundwork could you lay for the future?
- What would you stop chasing – and where would you put that effort to better use?
In my book, I write about how this job is just a moment in your career. The same is true here – this market is just a moment in the overall arc of your career. Things may not return to where they were, but the way things are won’t last either. Software engineers have valuable skills that will continue to be needed. If you are in the fortunate position to be able to ride out this period, what do you want to be true at the end of it? What can be intrinsically motivating to you? Orient you? Find that, and hold on to it.
Get creative with what can you learn and where can you learn itBefore the pandemic, I used to love going to conferences. I enjoyed meeting people, I appreciated the insights I got, I liked the feeling of having given a talk (not so much everything that went up to that point, let’s gloss over that). I still like to attend the odd event, because I enjoy it, but in terms of professional development, it’s perhaps not the best ROI. Things that have better ROI for both money and time for me personally:
- Regular conversations with friends in the industry
- Books
- Podcasts
- More directed / focused learning (paid courses)
Maybe you also had your way of doing professional development, and now it’s more of a struggle to get it paid for or carve out the time, or whatever is holding you back. This doesn’t have to mean no more professional development. What it does mean is that you have to 1) be more clear about what you want to learn and why 2) get creative about how you do that, 3) navigate a possible (likely) lack of organizational support in order to prioritize the things that matter to you.
Yes, it will be harder, and yes it’s easy to be annoyed that your current employer isn’t supportive. But, your career is bigger than your current job, and it makes sense to prioritize accordingly.
Mine “opportunities” for OpportunityLet’s get real, tech has always loved the trailing promotion, the whole “perform at the next level in order to advance”, and this has always generated bias in terms of the people who are allowed to do that, and those who have a harder time. For many of us, “do this and get promoted” was always kind of a gamble. In this market, you know the odds are even more stacked against you. Why bother?
In this market, there’s less Opportunity, and more “opportunity” – where you get the (additional) work, but not the job title, and certainly not the money. It’s easy – fair – to view this as a con, and not bother. That is certainly a valid option, and at times the correct one.
Sometimes though, the “opportunity” is an opportunity to negotiate, and to think about how to craft it in such a way that it furthers your career goals. This means you need to know what your career goals are. If you’re an IC with aspirations of being a manager that is a hard switch to make currently. But given the option, perhaps you can pick up some additional responsibility, and use it to build your resume in order to be in a stronger position when the market recovers. The trick is to do it in a way that does genuinely build your resume. So in this case, negotiation starts with looking at what is available to take, and crafting a piece of it with a clear narrative that you’re willing to take on. So less “I work as an IC and manage four random people my manager wanted to offload” and more “I run the sub team working on the $component, as a TLM”.
To be clear, I’m not on the side of organizations extracting labour they have not paid for. In my view, you can take the deal as long as it suits you to and you owe the organization nothing. Once you find a situation that will pay you for the work you’re doing, if you get a counter offer, remember you should also be owed back pay.
My bigger point, is that in this market, where down levels are rife, opportunity is scarcer and budgets are frozen, a moral stance might mean less progress for you overall. If that’s the right choice for you, great, but if you can get creative and make progress regardless, you can hopefully turn that progress into money down the line. Remember that job titles are inconsistent to the point of being meaningless, and you’re not obligated to reveal your salary when interviewing for your next job – I strive not to give advice but definitely don’t reveal your salary if you have reason to believe you’ve been underpaid.
Even in this market, some of us should still be very actively looking to move on. Remember the sunk cost fallacy – in good times when you can get what you want (title, money) elsewhere, but in bad times it feels more risky to give up “progress” – even if that progress is not rewarded. The meta point of all of these ideas is to figure out if you can make progress – even if it’s not recognized. If you can’t, then figuring out how to get yourself to a situation where you can make progress is job number one.
Coming back to external markers, these things are like the milestones by the side of the road. Occuring periodically, some places more frequently that others. The current market might be lighter on the milestones, but that doesn’t mean that you personally are making less progress. However in the absence of external validation, you need to maintain your own measures, and rely more on intrinsic motivation. This may be a bit harder, but that’s okay. You can do this. I believe in you.
If you liked this, you might also like my book.
As the year wraps up I spent some time thinking about how it went, and what I’m hoping for in 2025.
PersonalMy word for 2024 was connection – a correction from a multi year pandemic that flowed neatly into [living under a rock] writing a book. I wanted to prioritize being a better friend, and rebuild my sense of community locally. As a guiding principle throughout the year, this was so helpful, and I feel dramatically better about this aspect of my life than I did a year ago. I’m looking forward to more connection in 2025.
This was also the year that we finally finished the multi year building project of renovating the attic. It’s been a bit of an ordeal for a number of reasons that I won’t get into, but super happy to have the house the way we want it with an extra bedroom and bathroom, and moving things around such that we can each have an office.
Adventures* A wedding in Sydney, where I got to see many old friends from when I lived there. A brief but fantastic layover in Hong Kong. 10 incredible days in Bali. * A weekend in London for my birthday, we saw the Sister Act musical (amazing), the Cruel Intentions musical (pure nostalgia), caught up with friends, and saw some fantastic exhibitions at the V&A and the Tate. * A weekend at Castlemartyr for the art show (beautiful). * A trip to the Inchydoney spa (2023’s birthday present from my parents). * Another weekend in London, this time to see Nils Frahm (and also many friends). * A brief overnight trip to Glengarrif for a friend’s birthday, we took in Garinish island and the ever weird, ever wonderful, Ewe Experience. * A week with my parents visiting Killarney (the Muckross hotel, right in my favorite part of the national park) and returning to the beautiful Liss Ard estate. * Another wedding, this time in Dehradun, India, with a few days in Chandigarh (to see the incredible Nek Chand’s stunning rock garden) and an all too brief but fantastic stop in Delhi, where we saw Humayun’s tomb and did some important shopping for Hamper Season. * One night at the Cliff House in Ardmore for Bas’ birthday. Absolutely gorgeous. * A few days in Venice for the biennale, always amazing. Stayed at the wonderful Ca’ Bonfadini. You can read about it in a (rare) public edition of Where the Hell is Cate. * A brief visit to Sheen Falls (beautiful) for Lorge chocolate for Hamper Season. * A weekend in Dublin for the ballet and to see friends.
Professional2024 will always be the year my book came out, in print in April, and as an audio book in November – a product of years of work. Aside from locking myself away [at Castlemartyr] for a brutal week of edits in January, and having to read it 2-3 more times during proofs, most of the work was done and I got to think about what comes next. Still no answers there but I’m trying to give myself time!
I didn’t do a great job at promoting the book, but I did do a number of podcasts, a book signing at LeadDev, and a talk at Leading Eng. I have some more things planned for next year already, so that’s exciting.
This year I also took on another advisory role with Twill. I’m really excited about this, because I find the product compelling – currently hiring feels a bit like candidate and hiring manager AIs talking to each other, and it’s tough to separate the signal from the noise – making for a bad experience on both sides. Twill cuts through that directly to well qualified, vetted candidates. I also just genuinely love advisory work, and am super happy to have another opportunity to do it.
For my own professional development, I took the Co-Active Leadership Workshop – which was really great and I want to try and figure out the time and money for the full program. I also did my first back of the room assisting for Fundamentals, which was interesting. I’m fascinated by the Co-Active facilitation model, and the idea of experiential learning.
I passed the four year mark at DuckDuckGo, which was interesting – in previous jobs this was the time at which I decided to move on. I thought about it, of course, partly because I think it’s healthy to think about this every year, and partly because passing the 4 year milestone for the first time invited deeper thought. Ultimately though, I decided to stay put because 1) I’m working on something huge and interesting, 2) I’m enjoying being with a team I’ve built up and the work of good-to-great, and 3) this market is terrible, why subject myself to it unnecessarily.
2025?I’m not a big planner and I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I do like the act of setting a word and an intention. For 2025, I picked “health”.
First and most obviously, this is about prioritizing physical health. 2024 was a bit up and down here, and I would like to be more consistent.
Secondly, I think there’s a broader meaning here – about healthy behaviours and patterns. I’ve been thinking a lot about garbage in garbage out for the mind – this stage of capitalism is so intent on making us consumers of low value content, and I know I personally need better quality inputs there to have better quality thinking myself.
As always, the word starts as an intention and my experience with it will no doubt evolve over the course of the year. I’m looking forward to seeing where this one goes!
Thanks as always for following along; wishing you a wonderful 2025.
Exciting news, the audio book of The Engineering Leader is out! Available on Amazon or wherever you buy audio books.
I had a chat with Sergio Visinoni who recently wrote this lovely review of my book, to talk about writing as a habit, the challenges of leadership, and what’s driving OSS drama. You can read it here.
My coach recommended The Outward Mindset, from the Arbginger institute, same as Leadership and Self Deception (one of my all time most impactful books) and The Anatomy of Peace. It feels in many ways a continuation of those ideas, but more team/business oriented.
The first part of the book focuses on the impact of mindset, and how you can focus on changing behavior, or you can focus on changing mindset and let behavior change follow from it. I really liked this way of expressing something that I’ve really found to be true.
The outward mindset is about how when teams and businesses that think about the perspective of the teams they work with before their own perspective, can be more impactful and effective. When you have an inward mindset, you’re thinking about what you want to get out of things. When you have an outward mindset, you’re thinking about what others need and focusing on that.
One example was that of a debt collection agency, who instead of hounding people for debt started focusing on helping those people make more money.
Another example was of a non profit building wells, who identified that the real success metric was how many days children were in school. They took a more expansive view of what they were doing, and it shifted their approach.
There’s a shift in mindset in both of those from “what is my job” to “what is the real outcome I’m trying to drive”, which is pretty fascinating.
I’ve been thinking about concept a lot in terms of the challenges of building a first team mindset. When people have a perspective of competition, they tend to be inward focused. Having a first team mindset is having an outward mindset with your peers; focusing on being a good team mate rather than being a good competitor.
As with other Arbinger books, I totally see that it’s a really powerful concept when it’s shared, and a really challenging concept to hold up when it’s not. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.
We talked about decisions, communicating, and what makes engineering teams work well.
Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify.
Credit: Joe GrooveA few weeks ago everyone was arguing about “founder mode”, but before it came the idea of “Peace time CEO/War time CEO”.
The removal of the unnecessary violence in the metaphor is an improvement, but the content of peacetime/wartime is actually better. It’s more specific, and more about operating with focus and efficiency. Founder mode is more about individualistic exceptionalism.
It is an eternal mystery to me why some people still rate Eln Msk. Thinking about this, I wonder if it’s that he willingly put himself on extra hard mode by taking a barely viable business and saddling it with a mountain of debt. It’s the leadership equivalent of padlocking yourself blindfolded in a tank of water. Now the world is divided into people who think his confidence means he knows what he’s doing and people who think he’s delusional.
In tech we have spent such a long period in zero interest rate driven growth that what it means to be an effective leader has been more about supporting growth than navigating difficulty. Perhaps it is in part because it’s hard to share the more difficult things. The day I had to lay off half my team remains one of the worst days of my career, but it’s not a story I will ever share publicly in a way other people could really learn from it.
Most people are heavily biased by their own experience, are inclined to credit skill rather than luck, brilliance rather than being in a position to be in the right place at the right time. It’s easy to tell a story about how you did the right things when the numbers were going up, and it’s hard to know what worked and what didn’t when the numbers are going down. You make difficult decisions, and you hope for the best, and you learn what you can. The more you move up the org chart, the fewer people who will have context on the decisions you make – and the more people who will be angry with you, regardless of what you do.
In good times, leaders were defined too much by their ability to sell a vision, which generated the valuation and helped them build a team. I think this whole founder mode idea is about an equally shallow definition of what it means to be a good leader in a bad time, all the shallower because it doesn’t admit that it is a bad time.
In hard times, I think leaders need to:
- Have rigour to decision making – constrained resources mean decisions are harder to reverse and more costly to get wrong.
- Be willing to make hard decisions and stand behind them – it’s inevitable that you have to make (more) hard decisions in a tough market.
- Be intensely focused on delivering value – in hard times leadership is measured less by vision and more what is actually accomplished.
- Build systems of accountability – and use them, when layoffs are more likely, it’s all the more critical that the team you have is structured to be successful.
- Understand constraints (of resourcing, time, or money) and how to operate within them – this feeds into decision making, and also the need to say no.
- Find cheaper and more sustainable ways to motivate and align people – when you can’t promote people or pay them more, what else can you offer them?
Reflecting on this list, I dispute that the skills required for hard times are not needed in good times. Perhaps other skills carry more weight, perhaps it’s easy to get away without them. Perhaps they are the things we cut corners on when we’re busy. I know I could be better at all of these things, and I can think of many times when I haven’t done them more than sufficiently.
Whilst I’m all for pushback on shallow VC think pieces, I think we have to be honest about how the market has shifted, and how we as leaders can be effective within it. For me, that starts with being realistic about the current reality, my own place within it, how expectations have shifted, the skills needed to be effective – and how to reconcile them with my personal value system.
I did a webinar with Suzan Bond for LeadDev/BookMarked talking about the ideas from my book and some bonus ideas on how to be seen as strategic.
Credit: Joe GrooveAbout two and a half years ago, I finally completed CTI’s coach training courses – about 18 months after I started them, and much longer thinking “I think this would be useful and one day I will take it”. I find some people conceive of coaching as being a professional advice giver, or asking questions, but for me it’s been a fundamental mindset shift that changed the way I approached my role as a leader. Here are four core things that I use day in day out.
- Articulate what is going onHow often have you been in a meeting, and listened to people talking, and lost the thread of what’s actually happening? How many of those have you thought it was just you, and stayed quiet? One of the skills of coaching is to listen to a garbled word salad, and summarize it back. “It sounds like you’re saying you will only meet the deadline if someone else can take this piece of work and ensure it’s completed. Is that correct?”
It may or may not be correct, but the skill of succinct summarization – or “bottom lining” can help you extract core points from chaos and move things forward. Whilst – bonus – making people feel heard.
- Meet an argument with a questionHave you ever found yourself in the middle of an argument and not been sure how you got there? People tend to match other people’s energy, so if someone comes in hot you might – naturally, no judgment here – meet them hot in return. Learning to replace reaction with a question can diffuse a heated reaction and make sure you’re having the conversation that will actually move this forward.
The next time someone seems annoyed, take a deep breath and get curious instead. See what you can learn – rather than what you can win.
- Let go of controlYou’re ultimately responsible, and you need things to be done to your standards, therefore you need to enforce your standards by getting in all the details. Right? No! This approach is not just exhausting – it’s also ineffective. When you’re controlling, you steal other people’s responsibility. This erodes people’s ownership, making them less effective, whilst your workload will only increase.
In coaching training, you learn that people are naturally creative, resourceful and whole. And it turns out, the more you operate from that belief the more effective they are. This makes sense – research shows that students live up or down to the expectations their teachers have on them.
- Sometimes the answer is doing lessOften we think we fix things by doing more, but sometimes what is needed is space, and learning how to give that space and let things play out can be a huge adjustment – especially for your average type A overachiever! Creating systems that force you to look at things in a different way, or asking more fundamental questions can help you move things forward.
An example from my own work – I was pushing my leads to think about how to scale their teams, and it wasn’t moving as quickly as I wanted. Eventually, I flipped the question. I gave them the scenario that I went to the spa and never came back, and was replaced by “Dave”. I told them, Dave does half as much for you and expects you to do twice as much for him – what do you need to survive Dave? After we all agreed how much we hated Dave, we all got more creative and many scaling issues started to shift.
A core part of all of these lessons is boundaries – I expected coaching to teach me some skills, and it did, but the thing I am most grateful for, a topic that I come back to again and again as both a coach, a manager and a person, is boundaries. The knowledge of what is my work, and what is someone else’s – and the wisdom to tell the difference.
I have had a beautiful summer. Bookended by two epic trips either side, Hong Kong -> Sydney -> Bali before, and India (Dehradun, Chandigarh, Delhi) after, the summer was peaceful. I prioritized neglected parts of my life. My spine – finally went to the chiropractor, got into yoga, finally learned how to enjoy it. My community – expanded my social circle, prioritized time with friends, including starting a book club (where we just get together and read whatever we feel like reading).
My book came out in April, and when I didn’t feel like doing anything other than the day job, when I just wanted to hang out, have fun, I told myself that it was okay. I thought if I enjoyed the summer, made the most of it, whatever would come next would just arrive. I told myself that it didn’t matter if I couldn’t muster the energy to blog, if the single talk I gave felt so exhausting I never prioritized the other talk idea I had. I knew that a large project takes time to recover from.
At the end of the summer I have to question whether that was true. The truth is, that like any large project, my book had multiple endings.
Nearly a year ago, I finished writing.
In January, I locked myself away to do the big edit, submitted it, and let it go.
In April, I concluded the final copy edits, and it went to print.
In a big project the prospect of the ending is so appealing. It kept me going. “I’ll be so happy when this is done”. Yes. And. I will also miss it. Miss the concrete goals and the certainty. Coming out of a big project I am changed both by the doing of the project, and by being the person who did the thing, rather than the person who thinks of doing it maybe some day. I believe in myself more but also I know what it costs.
The other truth, and maybe this is true of any creative work, putting something out in the world, is not the end of it. It is the beginning of two new phases.
One phase, where you talk about what you’ve done. Try and convince people that it’s worth their time and money to read it.
A second phase where you have to ask – what’s next?
I have been a dillitant at the first phase, at talking about it. Told myself, my partner, my coach, various other people, that what I need to do is get back into blogging. Thought about ideas, sporadically, and executed on them, almost never. Some topics I feel like I am out of things to say anything about – a colleague asked me about hiring, and I just told them they would need to read chapter 8 because I wrote down everything and have nothing more to say.
The other truth of a large project, for me at least, is that whilst it anchored me in a sense of purpose, I was able to hide in it. It kept me safe, gave me good reason not to do anything else – focus is important, after all! But two years is a long time to hide. Writing, I felt like I was living under a rock, excavating a piece of my soul. And then, it’s out in the world. I think I’m supposed to dance on the rock, but it feels too high, too overwhelming, too different.
I wanted to believe that creativity would be a product of recovery, but increasingly I think that recovery is about finding the energy to go searching for creativity again, the next proximate objective of my purpose. It is great to prioritize adventure – adventure is so core to my being, my spine – it holds me up and I need it to be healthy, my community – I love my friends and the experiences we create together. But if that’s not enough, if I want more – well then I need to go and find it.
So – after a rough day, where I deeply felt the lack of purpose that had kept me grounded, stayed with me for two years, anchoring me on other rough days, I went looking for what’s next, and randomly took a course. It’s possible the specific course was the perfect thing, or perhaps I just needed to do something, anything, to create some momentum.
So here I am, writing about having nothing to say. Or, more hopefully, about feeling ready to find what comes next.
I had a great conversation with Oleks about my book, about DRI-ing your career and why leadership starts with self management.
Illustration by Joe GrooveSomeone asked me about my management philosophy recently, and after I stopped panicking (I wrote a book, I should have a philosphy… how do you summarize 400 pages and 2 years of your life in one sentence) I came up with:
“My job is to make it easier for people to make good decisions.”
What does that mean?
Firstly it means my job is not to make decisions. It’s my job to ensure decisions get made. Sometimes that means making the decision, but when that’s the case it’s worth thinking about why it was necessary for me to make the decision, and how to change it for next time.
When it comes to changing it for next time, it means considering what people need to make (good) decisions.
The first thing is context. They need to understand how that decision fits in within the priorities and constraints of the organization. Pretty much every organization has some kind of global priority system, and this helps, but is insufficient. The other piece of context is around what else is going on – this is something that managers who typically have much broader context of the organization should be providing.
Second is scope and responsibility. People need to understand what decisions they are allowed to make, and what input is required on those decisions. Process – like tech designs, or other reviews – helps here, but only if people understand the why of the process. The failure mode of process that seems arbitrary is that it negates people’s feeling of responsibility for decisions. This is also where a sense of collective responsibility is important, because otherwise people make decisions that serve an individual but not the team (aka promotion driven development).
Finally, but importantly, is the timeframe of decisions. Often when decisions seem not to make sense, it’s because people are considering different timeframes. For instance decisions made under pressure of a launch date, without considering medium- (not even long-) term consequences. Being clear about what timeframe is important, why, and balancing competing priorities (i.e. not creating unnecessary problems for near future selves).
When make decision making easier, consider:
- The context people need to be effective, and how to provide that in a time-efficient way (i.e. without having people attend every meeting / read every document).
- Ways that reduce unimportant decisions. My canonical example is a style guide – the purpose of a style guide is never to discuss style again.
- Where there is ambiguity (also known as “judgement”), that can be reduced or encoded. One of the fascinating things to me about incident processes, is how much they aim to reduce decision making under pressure, and move a complex problem into something closer to a flow chart.
- What are the parameters that make a decision more broadly impactful, and justifying of additional input / scrutiny.
Credit: Circe Denyer / Public Domain PicturesThe past year I’ve been working on a book. I organized my entire life to carve out and preserve my Saturdays for this project. It is finally done (almost! Just reviews of proof pages to go); I got my weekends back just in time to work them through the review cycle, and with the worst of that done… I had the first weekend that felt open in a really long time. I feel like I’ve forgotten how to weekend, and I’ll need to figure out how to weekend again.
When I took my current job, it felt like a bit of a step down in some ways – far fewer people, far less to do. But nearly four years later, I’m responsible for an order of magnitude more people than I was at the beginning, my directs are almost all of them directors themselves. In a distributed context, it’s easy to lose sight of what that means. I try to make myself available. I reach out to new people, I hold office hours every week. But I don’t think these things go that far. I pinged a bunch of ICs as part of the review cycle and was struck by how rarely I interact with them. It’s no longer part of my job to be in the standard day to day work that’s going fine – somebody else is doing that now. I’m more elsewhere – where the problem are, working on something further out, or elsewhere in the broader engineering org.
I have always been something who thought critically about time, and considered what was a good use of time, and what was a bad one. Always wanted to maximize the time I had. These two things together – the book and the increase in scope at the day job – concurrently, meant I’ve spent the past year or 18 months feeling the most time poor I ever have. It has made me the most ruthless I have ever been about how I spend my time. It has been so acutely clear to me that any minute that is wasted, is a minute that is taken from either my personal life, or some decent, competent person who it is my responsibility to help.
There’s a cost to that, of course; I think about the Heidi/Howard case study popularized in Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and how much a factor of that is “he’s busy; she’s a bitch”. But there’s also a clarity and an efficiency that I’m really grateful for. I have been more clear about what is worth my time and what is not. I have had better boundaries, had an easier time saying no. I have been less overwhelmed. I have overthought things less. I have got more done than I would have thought possible.
Coming out of writing the book, I feel like I’ve been doing a bit of an apology tour to all the people in my life who I have neglected. I’m determined to use at least some of this space to be a better friend, be more present in the communities that I’m part of. The rest of it, I don’t know. I am thinking about how I can keep the good – the clarity, the focus – but reclaim a little more spaciousness, and a little more chill. And I’m trying to remember the things I used to do before. How to weekend. How to linger. How to write about something just because it’s on my mind – as opposed to committed to in an outline. How to decide what I want – as opposed to need – to do.
I have been quiet on here lately because I’ve been focused on writing a book. The book proper will come out in early 2024, but section 1 – what it means to be the DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) of your career – is now available for early release. You can see it on the O’Reilly website [subscribers only].
As part of this section, I want to include other perspectives, so if you have a story about a time you learned to DRI your career, please submit it via this form, and it will be reviewed and considered for inclusion. There’s a full list in the form about the types of stories I’m looking for, but it’s along broadly similar themes as the DRI your career series I wrote in late 2021.
We talked about hiring directors, the fallacy of “servant leadership”, and what makes teams great [listen].
I recorded an episode of the DOU podcast with Oleks. It was an interesting and fun conversation!
When I talk about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), I’m typically coming at it from an angle of systematic change. The purpose of DEI, as I see it, is to dismantle a rigged system and move to something more equitable. This is why the concept of “no politics at work” is seen as antithetical to […]
I bought Thinking in Bets (Amazon) a while ago, April 2020 to be precise. It finally made it’s way out of my endless “to read” pile because I was having something of a crisis of confidence about my own decision making. Some key thing that stood out. Separating analysis of the result from the decision […]
I recorded an episode of Console‘s DevTools podcast, talking about privacy engineering. You can listen to it here.
I’m unsure what I think about Machiavelli for Women (Amazon). There were things that I appreciated, and things that were infuriating. To be fair, the things I found infuriating were mostly also things the author herself notes as infuriating, saying her goal with the book is to articulate what works as things are, not what […]
One of my coaching clients and I developed this framework to help him think about the kind of impact he wanted to have as a Staff+ engineer, and since then I’ve taken it to other clients and direct reports in a way to think about engineering growth outside of any particular job ladder. The four […]
The wonderful Tanya put together this spreadsheet that helps you track where you are on the 5 Signs It’s Time to Quit Your Job. I love this idea, because it pushes us out of the moment into the long term, which makes it easier to be rational. There’s the risk in the short term decision, […]
My Energy Management for Newer Managers post has been turned into an exercise on Yerbo. You can find it here.
I heard about The Alchemy of Us (Amazon) when the author (Ainissa Ramirez) was on the Broad Experience podcast, talking about her work in Science Communications and the challenges of being a Black woman in science (great episode). I immediately bought the book, and then took… 8 months to get to reading it. It’s a […]
I really got a lot out of Coach the Person, Not the Problem [Amazon]. Whilst the content was covered in the courses I took, it approached it in a different way – deconstruction versus experiential – and that was really helpful for solidifying my learning. At it’s core, it’s about switching your focus to the […]
I would love to find a new name for this, now that JK Rowling is cancelled, but in the Harry Potter books, house elves are powerful magical beings, who are condemned to (mostly invisible) servitude, largely of people who would uphold harmful power structures (much like JK Rowling herself). The tragedy of the house elf […]
Originnally shared internally and lightly edited for external readability. Note that this comes from a context where the self review is not part of the promotion packet so focuses on it as a tool to help the manager put together the review. Goal of a self review: Time to reflect and clarify what you’ve achieved […]
Meta-problem (n): root cause issues of a collection of symptom problems. One of the things I do as an engineering director, is live in the realm of the meta problem. The thing that is behind the problems that people are talking about. For instance, a meta problem of an individualistic mindset on the team might […]
Broadly speaking, my overarching agenda for any 1:1 is as follows: It starts with the checkin, “how’s it going?”, an open ended question that some people respond with a status update, and some do not. The important thing is what comes next – finding out how the person feels. Sometimes a status update is useful […]
Periodically, I like to step back and think about the things that I’m not doing. I’m not talking about the things that are on my list, but that I haven’t done yet, or the things that I’m actively choosing not to do. I’m talking about the things that I didn’t have time to think about. […]
When I coach new managers, or transition ICs into management, one of the key struggles initially (which I also remember myself) is overwhelm. For some, this ends up in exhaustion, and those are the people who often switch back onto the IC path – they find management unsustainable at that time (some return to it […]
I did an interview with Range, talking about how the fully distributed teams I lead at DuckDuckGo work. Read it here
I keep coming back to what it means to recharge. The metaphor that has been working most for me lately is the idea of a battery. In the green, I have plenty of charge. Everything is possible. In the orange is the ideal place for “active rest”. But if that’s not an option, I can […]
When I changed jobs in 2020, I went from a low-process culture to a high-process culture (or: what I perceive as high-process, all things are relative). It was a bit of a culture shock.
The process stressed me out. For instance, my previous job did not have performance review. You were supposed to submit feedback every ~6 months – which I had always understood to be inconsistently enforced (I typically managed to do feedback for my directs every 6-9 months). So, coming into my first performance review, somehow my first ever as a manager despite years of experience, was something of an Ordeal.
To be clear, what stressed me out was the process. I really struggled with the template I had been given. And then I finally submitted what I’d put together, only to get the feedback that I had written everything as a list of bullet points.
Well, yes. The template had been a list of bullet points. Hence: my struggle.
My boss gave me a helpful piece of advice. He told me that if I knew what to do, I should just do it, and then fit the process to it. It helped a lot.
Time passed, and we came to the next performance review cycle. This time I was less caught up on my own struggle, and had more insight into how other people were approaching things in the role of “feedback reviewer”. From this vantage point, it was clear that having a performance review doesn’t guarantee great, or even good feedback – because that depends so much on all the other feedback that happens in between.
But, it’s better than nothing at all.
In Thanks for the Feedback, one of the frameworks is the difference between “evaluative” and “developmental” feedback. Evaluative feedback tells someone where they stand (and whether or not someone gets promoted is inherently evaluative). Developmental feedback tells someone how they can improve. If someone only gets developmental feedback with the evaluation, the evaluative feedback will override everything else. Being great at performance reviews (if there is such a thing), requires consistent developmental feedback the rest of the time – a product of accepting that people are unlikely to fully process the developmental feedback in the review.
The second review cycle was still stressful, but for entirely different reasons. Largely it was stress about whether or not people would get promoted, and anxiety about telling people if they didn’t get what they wanted. In short – it was healthy, unescapable stress. Not stress about process, or the stress of a manager who last gave feedback last review cycle.
Perhaps a less emotionally charged example, consider the release process. Any release process has a checklist. And I believe such a checklist is essential. But the checklist is about the release process and not what is being released. A great release is defined by what is in it – exciting features. A bad release is also defined what is in it, a bug, that causes a problem (and another process: that of running an incident).
The checklists maintain adequacy. They are necessary, but insufficient.
We have checklists for onboarding. We’ve worked hard on improving them. But I knew our onboarding process was better when the checklists failed, and people stepped in anyway to ensure the outcome – the success of the new person. The mindset of the team was one of collective responsibility, the checklist was just adequacy.
I believe the judicious application of process is a super power. But I also believe that process is necessary, but insufficient. Process as a super power makes the unclear, clear, and supports a mindset shift that leads to something more.
But like all super powers, used the wrong way, process becomes a bind and a distraction. People focus on the mechanics, rather than what they’re supposed to accomplish and why. They start thinking their job is to perform the process, rather than the desired outcomes they’re looking to achieve.
Stepping back to consider the contrast makes more clear to me why the low-process culture didn’t really bother me, or (for the most part) impede me from the things I wanted to do. I was willing to create what was necessary in order to achieve the outcomes I wanted. At the same time, it gives me more empathy for the people who I saw really struggle without it. There is no clear starting point or agreements about how things work in a low-process culture, and that can be very overwhelming.
All of this is not to complain about a higher-process culture. It is a relief to have a starting point for most things, even if I don’t agree with all of it. But process is inherently a mechanism of standardization and enforcement. There is no way to enforce greatness – we just enforce adequacy, and should be cognizant of the limits of that.
A company with a performance review process won’t necessarily mean you have a better manager or a better growth path than an organization without one. It just makes it harder for managers to fall short of the absurdly low minimum of some amount of somewhat reasonable feedback on some specific cadence.
No release process will guarantee a great release, just like no onboarding checklist will ensure someone is successful. But – they can help you avoid known pitfalls such that your release doesn’t explode and your new hire isn’t still completely lost after their first month.
But it’s always worth considering what process makes sufficient, and what you’re really aspiring for. Sometimes adequacy is the goal, but when it’s not, the process is usually the least of it. What are you optimizing for?
The last course in my coach training journey – for now – was Synergy. This follows Fundamentals, Fulfillment, Balance, and Process.
The final course, this tied everything together. We learned about the attributes of a coach (fierce courage, aliveness, and connection), worked on range (including silent coaching!) and the idea of “stories”.
Going into it, I was focused on the finish line – this has been a significant undertaking, and I was excited to be “done”. The intention I set for the course was to stay present and “enjoy the last mile”. Mixed success here, 4.5 hours is a long time to be on Zoom, but at the end I felt somewhat bereft. Each course has created a small community, and this was the last one.
It has been quite a journey. I took fundamentals at the end of 2020, after wanting to take it since 2018-19. Spacing out the courses meant that most of my previous classmates had left me behind, although it was nice to reconnect from someone from Process and even another person who had been in my Fulfillment group! Most people get through the courses more quickly, but I’ve been glad to give things space. It makes each one very distinct for me, and that’s helped cement my understanding of the tools that get introduced each time.
I’m glad I chose to make time for it all, I got much more out of it overall than I was anticipating. It has fundamentally changed my thinking and how I approach things. Beyond the impact on me, it’s spread to my team. Four of my teammates have now taken Fundamentals! It’s been fascinating to see what they got out of it, and the overall impact on the team.
As for what’s next, despite the certificate, this still feels like very much the beginning. I continue to bring this mindset to my day job (where useful/appropriate) and the handful of external clients I work with. I continue to stay in touch with some of my classmates, which I love. Beyond that, I’m debating whether (and when) to go through the certification process, and other options for continued learning, but likely nothing more in 2022 as I want to focus on other things for a while.
So much gratitude to everyone who has supported me in this adventure.
Woman of Influence (Amazon) is about building your brand as a leader and taking charge of your career. It’s full of actionable strategies for understanding how you’re perceived – and how to change it.
My personal favourite is a long time favourite tool of Jo’s – the shadow org chart. This is the map of who influences who in an organization, and the concept alone is so helpful for bringing this new awareness into what’s actually happening.
The other thing I really loved in the book was identifying the 12 most common pitfalls that women fall into that hold us back. Such as doing work that will never make you shine, being good at a lot of things and famous for none of them, accepting low-visibility assignments and downplaying your accomplishments. And – of course – being over-mentored and under-sponsored! Never forget that one. Each of these come with a “leaderly move” to help escape the trap and build a better brand and career.
Overall I really loved it. There’s a lot of work in the exercises and I definitely didn’t do all of it! A good book to come back to again and decide where next to put attention to.
My latest in Quartz…
My partner and I had a hellish move recently. We were lucky in that our landlords are nice, reasonable people, and unlucky in that they were quite disorganized and hadn’t done everything they needed to, like ordering furniture and thoroughly cleaning up after the last tenant.
So as this played out, living in a hotel, in a new (to me) country, trying to juggle his new job, my existing job, and the absolute chaos of everything, our differences started to play out.
My partner, a software engineer, said “they should do these things.” I, an engineering director, started to develop a risk mitigation strategy.
Continue reading…
Credit: hoekstrarogier / Pixabay New Year’s resolutions are terrible because we are not a different person on January 1 (or 2) than we are in the last days of December, or November or June. They are also terrible because we over-estimate what we can do in a day, and under-estimate what we can do in a year.
Today is the last day of January. Maybe all your “resolutions” have already collapsed. That’s okay, you have time: try setting an intention for 2022 instead.
What is the one goal? The one thing you want to be different at the end of the year?
Hope for many things, but choose the one thing that is most important to you, that will make the most difference to you.
When we start the year with a list, we break it as soon as life gets in the way. When we start the year with an intention we can keep coming back to it again and again – and find that even if the specific goal was accomplished, there is still more depth to uncover. Or we can just pat ourselves on the back; that’s fine.
First, ask why this thing is important to you? What will it give you? What will be possible once it is done that is not today?
Then ask, what is most likely to get in your way? Make a list.
How big are those things? Maybe one of them needs to be the intention for the year; you have more groundwork to lay for the original intention you came up with. That is okay. You have time.
Next, ask who will support you? Who will you share this intention with? How can they help you come back to it? How can they support you practically? We need practical help as well as emotional support to achieve big things.
Now, ask what are you willing to say no to? What do you like, or want to do, but are willing to make less important than this intention? What are you willing to continue as-is, imperfect but adequate, in order to create space for your One Most Important Thing?
Finally, you’re ready to determine your next steps. Every big goal can be broken down, or if not, maybe the first step is figuring out how to break it down and where to begin.
That’s okay. You have time.
I started with the podcast: Magic Lessons with Elizabeth Gilbert, which I loved so much that I ordered the book that prompted it – Big Magic (Amazon).
In the podcast, Gilbert takes people one at a time through their creative block, following up with a call to someone else who she thinks will be helpful. It was so reassuring, after having a long struggle with creativity myself, to hear people echoing the same fears, and finding a way through them.
The book is more Gilbert’s manifesto for what she calls a “creative life”. It’s a little bit out there in some ways (ideas floating around the universe waiting for the right person) but in some ways refreshingly pragmatic. She talks about showing up consistently, and expecting nothing in the way of material success, accepting brutal edits, and letting go of what you put out in the world.
I loved it, really. The book was exactly the pep talk I needed, the podcast the context and empathy that validated my struggle. Definitely recommend if creativity is a topic you’re interested in.
2021 was not the easiest year for the world, but personally it was a good one in many ways.
Career I hit the one year mark at DuckDuckGo (more on that in: 1 Year @ DuckDuckGo), and got promoted for the second time ever in my career (my last job didn’t have promotions). A lot of my energy has been on building out and scaling the team, and it’s been cool to push some of the things we did to achieve that into the wider organization – such as changes to the hiring and onboarding process. I still get to spend time on product development, such the new products we’re building and better delivery overall.
Outside of my day job, a focus has been long term plays for what options I want to have open to me in 5 years. I became an LP in the Acquired Wisdom Fund; I’m really excited about the model of investing in experienced founders, and getting a closer insight into early stage companies.
And, I continued my coaching journey. I took 3/4 courses from the intermediate Co-Active program (one remaining in February), and worked with 3-4 clients at a time over the year, 5 total. I love coaching. I was worried about how I would find the time, but firstly, I find it really energizing, and secondly, it’s only about 2 hours a week. I’m excited to continue that in 2022, although I don’t plan to rush into certification (the Advanced section) as it’s a lot of work and I want to focus on other things for a while.
I had already given myself 2020 off speaking, and in 2021 I kept it light – I replied to many kind invitations with “unfortunately, I realized I hate giving talks on Zoom”. I gave one talk in person (a terrible mistake) and did 2 talks for the LeadDev Together program because LeadDev are the only people I’ve seen doing great remote events, and I have always loved working with them. I also moderated a panel for them, which is another thing I generally don’t do, but I loved the topic – Manager Mistakes – and got to invite some of my favourite people and play with a format of more in depth conversations (watch it here).
Generally feeling good about my priorities and trajectory here, and the balance between my day job and the space (both time and emotional) I have to do things outside of it. Hoping for that to continue in 2022.
Life My partner and I passed one year of living together, which was exciting. I can see how surviving lockdowns together would either affirm or destroy a relationship, and I’m grateful that ours was (mostly) affirmed. Once things reopened and the madness of summer accommodation abated (somewhat), we continued the attic renovation that we started in 2020, which continued to be a bit of a nightmare, now because of global supply chains. And since my partner got a job that required him to relocate to the Netherlands, we now have a second place in Rotterdam and are going back and forth. This is extra convenient in the periods where our Irish house is uninhabitable, and we’re figuring out how we want to split our time. As much as moving during a pandemic has been a nightmare, it’s been fun to explore a new city. I really like Rotterdam.
My fitness goals for 2020 were basically just “do what you can and survive a pandemic” (although I did also get my kayaking certification), but in 2021 I came back to my love of exercise. I caved and became a Peloton person (regular spin bike + app), and have been getting back into regular spin classes. I love the quality of the classes and the on demand nature, I am never going back to group exercise classes. I finally got a yoga mat and started trying to do yoga at least somewhat regularly. The gym has been a bit rubbish in Ireland, with one hour slots, advanced booking etc, and once I was vaxxed and wanting to do personal training again, I discovered that my trainer was an anti-vaxxer. But, I swam as much as possible, especially when we travelled. In Rotterdam I was able to get a good balance in with a mix of cardio/swimming, personal training (the gym right below us does these very intense 30 minute sessions), and spinning. It was great, and I’m excited to pick it back up again when we’re back there (and things are open).
I did a lot of crafting this year. I started it last winter break as a way to jump start my creativity. I’m not sure how creative I was after that – I mainly followed patterns – but it was a nice outlet, away from the computer. I completed four huge cross stitch projects, and many more smaller ones. I built some fun things using my Glowforge, hardest of which was the mini phone jukebox.
Our travel was mainly in Ireland this year, other than that I was only in France (for the terrible conference), Croatia (for work) and Rotterdam (to scope it out, and to live). We had a fun time exploring Ireland though, especially now we have a bigger car (a Suzuki Swift replaced Pinkness the Smart car – I still love a Smart car as a city runaround, but it was not fun for driving across Ireland in) returning to some of our favourite places from last year, like Liss Ard and Castlemartyr (we spent a month in one of the holiday homes). We had a weekend in Kinsale, which was lovely and a nice easy way to resume travel again, went to Fota, had a very quick (one night) trip up to Glengarrif to see the Ewe Experience (very weird but charming), went to Killarney to stay at the Europe (amazing, omg the swimming pool), and finally made it to Dingle (after last year’s trip to “not-Dingle”, aka Cahersiveen), where we stayed in a strange and not entirely comfortable place, with a gorgeous swimming pool. The Dingle peninsula is gorgeous though, a highlight was a seaweed bath by the side of the ocean. We also went to the K Club, where my partner enjoyed the golf, and I adored the spa, but we were otherwise a bit underwhelmed. I took my friend for a “decadent sleepover” at the Dean in Cork, which was super fun.
At the start of 2021, feeling a bit desolate, I booked a bunch of random things spread out through the year, figuring that we would at least get to do some of them. It went better than I expected and we made most things work, and I was really grateful to have things to look forward to. I’m hoping we can travel a bit further afield in 2022 – especially from our base on the continent, but we’ll see. Travel is still not fun in this timeline, and I am fine to wait until it is again. Except for my much delayed trip to St Lucia – originally planned for May 2020, now scheduled in May 2022.
Since 2017, I’ve been posting a photo every day to Instagram and photo.cate.blog. I kept that up last year, posting 361 photos in total.
In 2021, the aesthetic monotony of pandemic life really started to get to me and this was probably the hardest this project has ever felt. I think part of the appeal of the intense amount of crafting I did was to have something new to photograph at the end of each project. I found myself continually digging through my photo roll to find something – anything – to post, and multiple times I found myself about to post a picture I had already posted before.
That being said, I’m glad I kept at it. It is a nice and minimal time commitment habit, and I hope when life becomes more “normal” it will feel easier, again, and I’ll be glad I stuck with it.
In 2021, I committed to publishing each Monday. Aside from a couple of narrow misses in October, I kept at it, making 52 posts over the year, up from 20 in 2020 (I wrote more about what this looked like in my retrospective: The Year of Habits). I had 4 articles on LeadDev. I sent 9 WTHIC letters from three countries (Ireland, France and the Netherlands).
This blog was seen by nearly 39K visitors for over 63K views. This is up from just over 25K visitors for a little more than 41K views in 2020.
Most Popular Posts 2021 1. 5 Signs It’s Time to Quit Your Job – a late entrant (published at the end of November) but clearly a timely topic during the Great Resignation. Also one of the most popular 2021 articles in the LevelUp newsletter. 2. Being the DRI of Your Career – what it means to be the DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) of your career. This post breaks it down into five lines of thinking: expecting less from your job and more from your career, learning from feedback, owning your professional development, distinguishing what your employer rents versus what they buy, and building your support system. This was a relatively quick post but it resonated with people, and I ended up breaking it apart and expanding on each idea within it. 3. The Return of the Office – on the “Remote Work Debate”, why the pandemic experiment was not set up for success, and the disconnect between what engineers want and think works versus how organizations function. 4. Three Core Ideas to Make Remote Work, Work – three core principles of remote work: Embrace async, Enable autonomy, Build connection. 5. The Rent Versus Buy of Career Growth – by far the DRI point that resonated with people the most, understanding what your employer rents, what they buy, and tradeoffs that impact your market value and career decisions. 6. Expecting More from Your Career (and Less from Your Job) – thinking long term; your job is just a moment in your career, what do you want to get out of it? 7. On Being “Strategic” – musing on the “she’s just not that strategic” trap, and tactics I use to (try) and avoid it. 8. Pandemic Burnout; Now What? – how living through a pandemic hits all 6 causes of burnout (only one is overwork) and some thoughts on how we can take the control we have to try and be a little happier. 9. Coachability++ – slides and commentary for a talk I gave at Qz on being more coachable. 10. Your Action Plan to DRI Your Career – a summary of the collection of DRI posts, along with a step by step plan to take control of your career.
Most Popular Posts Pre-2021
indicates that this was also on the pre-2020 list last year.
indicates this was on the 2020 list last year.*
- Testing Intents on Android: Like Stabbing Yourself in the Eye with a Blunt Implement. Intent testing was not particularly straight-forward, or well documented, and I shared what I found in a weekend of fighting with it. I think this is one of my best technical posts, and it’s nice to see it still* getting the attention it deserves! I want to believe this is because more people are writing tests now.
- Unfriending on Facebook*. For some reason, in 2010 this search term was sending a significant amount of traffic to my blog, so I wrote an explainer.
- Rest Day – Buffer Day – Focus Day*. A post from 2015 about having different kinds of days and themes to make progress.
- The Great DomestiCation**. I did a detailed post about the complete house renovation I did in 2018-2019.
- How I Offloaded My Anxiety to Trello**. I wrote about my life admin management system, and how I use Trello to keep track of and make progress on the different areas of my life.
Shaky Bridge, Cork This time a year ago, I felt like my creativity had died of COVID. Died of boredom. Died of exhaustion. Suffocated under the weight of… everything.
In the struggle of this, I felt caught between the should of, I should be able to do this, and the recognition that the world was on fire. I felt called out by all the people using their extra time to achieve incredible things, and comforted by the people who admitted they too could not create in this timeline.
And then sometimes, I would just feel overwhelmed by the sense of loss. Loss of this medium, loss of the spark, the loss of connection – I would joke that I could “barely write a text message”, pointing at the emotion that was much too raw to actually touch.
I used to roam the world and mostly never feel too far from anyone.
Constrained to a 5km radius, by myself, was the loneliest I had ever been.
With another person – a special person, my person – was better, but still not enough.
I could not write. But worst of all, I didn’t want to write. Did not believe I had anything to say. I published just 20 posts in 2020, and my memory is that each one was a fucking ordeal.
So for 2021, I picked the word Habit. Each month I set myself an intention. In my weekly list I tracked my successes, and failures.
It took months for me to even try to set myself a goal of writing. But, each week I published. Every Monday (except one, which slipped to Tuesday, and was the better for the extra time). I started writing on Sunday nights, forcing myself to do it to end out the weekend, sitting in a corner on the sofa, at the counter in the kitchen, as my partner went to bed without me. It got worse when I gave in, and started writing on the Monday. Write and publish – normally late in the night. The habit of suffering. The habit of showing up – reluctantly, begrudgingly, at the last possible moment. The habit of believing in a future Cate and trying to support her, even if it’s just by writing something I think is a bit shit, eaking it out just inside the deadline.
When I was nomadic, people used to find my life so bizarre. They would think that surely all that moving around was disruptive, make it the goto for any sign of stress.
But, when I was nomadic, I was always grounded by habit. I struggled the most in the places where those habits were hard – this is what I remember about Santiago, and why I hated it so. I would create this frame to exist within – the gym, the cafe, the places to explore. I would orient myself in my habits, and pick up where I left off, from wherever I was before.
Far more destructive to my habits was the constant change and inflexibility of pandemic life. The first two months, I took the same walk every day. Then, I got a new job. Then things reopened. My partner moved in. Then things closed. Reopened again, bit by bit. Then we got vaccinated, felt more free. Then we moved. Then the world started to close in, again.
And now I look back over the past year, and I see – the habits were the grounding. They rooted me down, gave me a structure to determine what I cared about, to set my intention. Lowered the bar for myself that I just need to show up, no less, but also no more.
I’m rounding out the year of habit with a three week break from work. It took me the first few days to work through the life admin, but after that, I felt so free. Each day, I do three things.
I exercise. Peloton spin and yoga. The time and breakdown varies, it can be as little as 15 minutes / 10 minutes, but most days it is much more.
I cross-stitch. I listen to podcasts, and I follow instructions.
And I write.
I told myself, that all I expected from myself was to sit in front of a text editor for at least 30 minutes. That producing nothing, producing complete garbage was acceptable, as long as I tried.
It went better than that – much better – but I realized, that the act of sitting in front of the empty text editor is the hardest habit of all. I realized the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t write – I did write, week in, week out – the problem was that I didn’t believe I could, didn’t believe I had anything to say.
The first lockdown, I spent alone. So, so very alone. My friend and I used to go to the grocery store at the same time, just to have some semblance of human connection, when none was really allowed.
When the next lockdown came in, even though I was no longer alone, I realized that that first lockdown had been traumatizing.
The second lockdown, I got a horrific chest infection. Two rounds of antibiotics and a steroid. I barely remember any of it. I missed the whole thing.
The third lockdown, I shut down. Did a lot of crafting. Hunkered down to wait it out.
As we enter into the fourth lockdown, I finally see the spaciousness that can exist when “normal life” is cancelled. Finally, I understand how someone could use this time well.
But, I also see how what we have endured shapes everything around us. I see the hole that is left in the absence of other people, other perspectives, other ideas.
I see that for me, creativity has often meant something to push against, and that I have been existing in something of a void.
I see that I need to come out of the void, sit in front of the text editor.
I see that when I act as-if I have something to say, I can make it so.
I see that it can be easier to write an entire article than a text message. That these two things are, in fact, not comparable.
The way that I existed before the pandemic, there was so little space in my life. I was here and there and everywhere. Working hard in time but perhaps even more so in energy. I used to reclaim space where I could, slotting in a long weekend between commitments for an adventure, making the most of a day before a late flight. Writing in cars, in airport lounges, on planes, in the space between the meetings. Eaking out in bits and pieces, because I needed it, and that is all there was.
The start of the pandemic coincided with a level of exhaustion so overwhelming, that it made it clear that I needed to leave that job.
And then, I never really figured out how to recharge. Spent two months addressing the mountain of life debt that constituted my life. Thought that once that was addressed, I would create space for something better to come. Which, I guess it did, but that was a relationship – the last thing I expected in this timeline. The level of creative exhaustion remained, unchanged.
I kept coming back to the question of what it means to recharge. I did not find a neat answer crafting, on vacation, or in the pool. I could never be sure if the problem was the power source or the faulty battery.
And so, I committed to the habits. The things that ground in the day to day. The things that I know are good for me, even if they don’t always feel that great. The things that I believe in. The things that have worked before.
And finally, I started to want to sit down to write. Finally, I believe I have something to say. My creativity did not die of COVID. It just took a break, got some R&R, did some self-reflection, got ready to do something better – or at least from a better place – than before.
I do not know what changed. But I choose to believe that it is the habits that brought me here. Back above the baseline, ready to expect more from myself – even as the world continues to burn – in 2022.
Credit: Erik_Karits / Pixabay Step 1: Review * Being the DRI of Your Career * Expecting More from Your Career (and Less from Your Job) * The Rent Versus Buy of Career Growth * How to DRI Your Professional Development * Coachability++ * DRI Your Support System * 5 Signs It’s Time to Quit Your Job
Step 2: Plan
1. Assess if it’s time to quit (this will shape how you approach the next steps).
1. If it’s time to quit, or you think it might be, figure out your constraints versus need.
1. Do you need to make your current role manageable to give yourself time to look for something else?
2. If you’re a maybe on quitting, think about what’s pushing you to that point, and what you could try to improve things.
3. If you’re a no, great! Less overhead for you. Move to step 2.
2. Look at what options you want to be available to you.
1. Check yourself on whether it’s a job or a title – what do you really want to be doing in your 40+ hours a week you spend at work?
2. Assess where you are relative to them.
1. For those where you’re on track, great – you’re done here.
2. For those where that is not the case, take them to step 3.
3. Define your current moment.
1. What is your current moment?
2. What do you need right now?
3. Given those things, what constraints do you have here?
4. Discuss the constraints with someone you trust – do they have to be true?
3. Clarify the deal you made under capitalism.
1. Think about what your employer is renting.
1. Are you building market value?
2. Are you undermining market value?
2. Think about what your employer is buying.
1. Is there anywhere where they are taking more than they’re paying for?
2. Are there any boundaries to redefine?
3. What kind of deal do you want?
1. What supports your longer term goals?
2. What do you need to support your life right now?
4. Identify some proximate objectives.
1. Come up with some (1-3) shorter-term goals that support what you identified as your overall career options.
1. Make sure you really nail the what and the why – achieving this goal is meaningful to you, and will represent meaningful progress.
2. Put together development plans for each of them.
3. Discuss and refine the plans with someone you trust.
5. Think about your relationship to feedback.
1. Identify what quadrant you’re in for some key relationships.
1. If it’s receptive and actionable – great, what’s working and how did you get to that point?
2. If it’s receptive but not actionable, or not receptive but actionable, why is that? What would help?
3. If it’s neither receptive nor actionable, why is this?
1. Is there a way to extract yourself from this situation?
2. Think about what you could do generally to be more coachable. Pick 1-2 suggestions from the list to work on.
3. Think about some difficult pieces feedback you’ve received. What can you take from them? Is there anything useful here?
1. “No” is okay!
2. Even in the worst contexts, there may be something we can learn about ourselves. And then, it’s much easier to let that feedback go.
3. Some feedback and feedback relationships need to go in the bin. Do you want to put anything in the bin?
6. Audit your network.
1. What relationships are good? Celebrate them.
2. What relationships are okay, but could be better?
1. Think about how things could be better.
2. Think about things you could do to improve those relationships.
3. Decide if you want to make some time to invest in those relationships.
1. “No” is okay!
2. So is “not right now”.
3. What relationships are missing?
1. Think about what those missing relationships cost you – i.e. if you have a very small professional network, maybe it makes it harder to find new opportunities.
2. Think about what you could do to build more of a network, what would be the easiest things you could do? What would you enjoy?
3. Assess the gap versus what you might do to solve it and decide whether or not you want to do it.
1. “No” is okay!
2. So is “not right now”.
Step 3: Execute So excited for you! Let me know how you get on.
All year I’ve been doing the Positive Intelligence app program. Every day there’s a focus (not always different, they rotate) with multiple prompts spaced through the day to meditate on. Some days it’s the exact thing I need, and others it’s not, but the one that always, always, lands is the one about “choose the way of ease and flow”.
It’s infuriating in the same way yoga is infuriating. It seems like trite nothingness and then is shockingly effective. (I took a yoga class this morning and felt fantastic the rest of the day. Damn it.)
Essentially the prompt asks you: what are you making harder than it needs to be? What could be easier if you approached it differently?
This is the counterpoint to the habit of suffering. Of thinking things should be hard, should be difficult. Of expecting stress and misery and then making it so.
It’s a very tempting habit in this timeline. A consistent question in my 1:1s and coaching call is, “how are you suffering?”, and helping people see that with some attention and action they can just… not. They can have the conversation they’ve been avoiding, let go of the worry that is weighing on them, schedule the break that they need.
Type-A people, insecure-overachievers, whatever you want to call it, we often have a habit of making things harder for ourselves than they have to be. We don’t trust the things that come easily. The alternative habit – the habit of ease and flow – is to make things easier on ourselves. Not to achieve less (although sometimes that’s fine), but to get to the same, or better result, without the useless overhead, the friction we put on ourselves that makes it harder than it has to be.
In Rotterdam, it’s been much nicer (ease and flow!) to go to the gym. A huge part of this is that I don’t have to book a specific time. I have more flexibility to fit it into my day, no need to rush, time to linger. But also, because we arrived with almost nothing, I bought a new gym bag. It is quite dinky, and has a separate compartment for my sneakers (tidy!). Since I didn’t have a bunch of tiny hotel toiletries, I added a mid-range shampoo and conditioner, a face wash I was a little bored of, and a basic eye cream / serum / face cream (a balance of things I am happy to use but wouldn’t cry if I left them in the shower by accident) also in their own little compartment. I paid for towel service so I don’t have to carry a towel about (not sure it would fit anyway).
My organized little gym bag with everything I need in it makes me so happy each time I use it. Like bizarrely happy. It has come to epitomize ease and flow to me. I didn’t realize my more chaotic system in Cork was bothering me, but it turns out my trips to the gym can be vastly improved with a very minimal amount of time and euro.
As I come to the end of the year of habit, my thinking about habits has shifted. I started the year beating myself up for not being “better” at certain habits, but having proven to myself – repeatedly – that the habits I care about are attainable and enjoyable when prioritized and integrated, now I’m back to the habits of thinking that hold me back from that enjoyment. Consistently, the thing that has worked has been making things easier on myself. Consistently, I’ve found that when I’ve struggled, it’s been because I’ve been making things harder than they needed to be. The habit of suffering, versus the habit of ease and flow.
I’m looking for more such gym bags, and starting with this one. When looking at a big project, I have a tendency to look at it like an engineer, try and find the optimum path through. Instead, I’m asking myself a different question.
What would be the easiest thing I could do to make progress on this thing?
I feel like I’ve spent much of this pandemic digging out of a case of burnout, watching people burn out around me, trying to get ahead of things, trying to inch up from zero but never really feeling like I make it that far.
I think it’s understandable that people are burning out, left, right and centre. For many of us, the pandemic hits all the causes of burnout.
And all those things feel so much harder when rest is lower quality. When we are more isolated. When time is monotonous, we feel like we have less of it.
I work somewhere with untracked vacation, so I keep my own records. I know how many days I took off as vacation, how many days for “life debt”, how many days for learning and development, how many days I was sick, and how many weekend days I worked. All of these numbers are in the “normal, European” range. But if I think about it, I remember two weeks I took off. One in July, and one in September. The ones where I made a plan and went somewhere. Approaching the end of the year, it doesn’t really matter what my record says – I’m tired like the only breaks I took were those two separate weeks away.
Two benefits of getting away, then. The first is that the change of scene is memorable and changes our experience of time. The second, that it gets us away from all the admin of life. The chores that keep life going but that also sometimes make life feel like a drag.
I used to think that rest was going away somewhere and doing something else entirely. I thought it was finishing a novel each day. Waking up whenever. Wondering around freely, without a schedule. When I think about what it was like to recharge in the before times, I think about the 10 days or so I spent in Bali, doing yoga until my wrists gave out. I think about a blissful long weekend in Hong Kong. I think about Venice in November, the biennial, the architecture, the fog. I think of that trip to Costa Rica, the sea turtles, the kayaks, the jet skis, and swimming every day. I think of days spent wondering across Barcelona, across Reykjavik, across Copenhagen, across Prague. I think of taking the boat to MONA in Hobart, skiing in Andorra and trips to the spa.
My concept of rest was “active rest”, like, in the Peloton class where after 15-20 minutes going hard you get a break at 80-100 RPM but “just” 30 on the tension.
But also I’m biased to remember the active moments. The periods I spent lying down, or days I spent with the program of go to the gym, eat something, and read a book, blur into one. According to my Kindle, I have read 941 books. Not all of them were on planes; I must have passed many days this way.
I used to have two modes: rushing about at full tilt, and collapsing from exhaustion. Therapy helped me shift to somewhere else, to see myself as worthy of rest, to shift my concept of self care to actually involve care for a future Cate. I’m glad I did this work before life as we knew it was cancelled. This timeline has forced me to reconceptualize rest again. To pay closer attention to what makes me feel recharged, and what makes me feel worn out. To find things that make me feel like time has passed but it was time well spent (like crafting), and pay attention to those things that make me feel time was wasted (like binge watching Netflix).
A question I ask – myself and others – a lot, is “what makes you feel recharged?” The answers are fascinating, a friend today described the incredible feeling of painting a wall with a brush, feeling like she was accomplishing something, enjoying the moment – even though her husband subsequently repainted it with a paint roller for a better finish.
I feel recharged when I…
- … experience something new.
- … meaningfully connect with a friend.
- … wake up from the kind of deep sleep you only get from intense exercise.
- … make something.
- … finish a book.
- … bring order to my living space.
- … relax in the sauna after a good swim.
- … emerge from the floatation tank.
- … spend quality time with my partner.
- … see a raccoon.
This topic feels really present right now, as almost everyone I encounter seems exhausted. Most of us get something like a break for the end of the year, and it’s worth thinking about the question, what will you do, so that you can recharge for 2020 take 3?