Notes from 22/6–28/6

Once again, another surprisingly long week packed with meetings and Innovfest! Quite enjoyed it too

Blockchain

Ethereum Experts Share Their Facebook Libra Insights

Wow okay no idea how fast these people move. Deep dive into instaling, the code, white paper comparisons.

Libra seems to have been built as a more or less fully functioning product at this point.

Development

I’m Not Really A Good Web Developer, I’m Just Good At Googling Things

Google for specific keywords. Document information for retrieval.

Here Are 5 Productivity Tools Every Developer Should Know

Insomnia — API testing

Figma — web design elements

Notion — note-taking.

General

At Work, Expertise Is Falling Out of Favor

Surprisingly clickbait-y title. Written in the context of manning ships for the navy combined with rising labour costs. ‘ specialists’ in this case are people who do just one thing. ‘generalists’ are people who multi-task.

Don’t think we can generalise that expertise is falling out of favour, but that one must be an expert at more than one thing.

How to Land Your First Consulting Client as a Data Scientist or Data Engineer

Prove your worth through work. But start with giving out free stuff so people can see it!

History Will Not Be Kind to Jony Ive

Design that is difficult to repair and wasteful is his hallmark. Not totally sure why but I know macbooks were virtually indestructible. Ah… maybe that’s why. You create such an amazing and durable design, it outlasts it’s popularity in the product cycle.

Life Optimisation

The Yale Happiness Class, Distilled

Set aside time to be grateful for what you already have. This may come in the form of a gratitude journal or a period of brief reflection, and could be as basic as acknowledging the luxury of taking a hot shower or having a choice about what to eat for dinner.

Appreciate what you have

“What if I didn’t have this thing?” For instance, people might ask themselves: What if I didn’t have this house? Which friend or family member would I have to ask for help? This “negative visualization” might help them appreciate their home, even for its faults.

But be okay that it is not perfect

chagency

Pitch decks for everyone! people who need to do slides often, take from here

Product Management

Engineering to Product — Learnings and Observations

One of the team members is a scrum master. This role is not only an accountant or meeting moderator. The scrum master should be able to answer questions during standups and be your ambassador. Invest time in training. Rotate every quarter/year.

When you’re off by any reason (vacation, sick, etc.) ask one of the team members to assume product owner role instead of you. They should drop engineering/design and pretend that it’s a full-time job. Let this person plan, change backlog, attend all meetings instead of you and be in charge. (Safety net — if you’ll drive in a wrong direction we’ll fix it)

Team members do demos — let people show off their work in front of the audience. Stakeholders must be present at this meeting. Invest time into training and making sure that people understand what’s the purpose of the demo and how to do it.

Always ask for input on backlog or roadmap during 1–1s. I don’t see much value in doing it during group meetings because people tend to be more closed and less sincere. 1–1 is a perfect time. If you do it every week, it gets into the habit, and people inevitably think about it before 1–1s.

Data informs everything. Do it yourself (or delegate within your team). Learn SQL and Statistics 101. Do not depend on other teams. Data is your job.

Start every project with data infrastructure. If you can’t measure improvement — there is no improvement.

Politics and cross-team dynamics are very fluid and company depending.

A few things I learned:

“No” is the default answer. (But never say “no” be a polite and diplomatic person). People around are asking for random things that are important to them around your area of ownership. Use it as an input and consider it but do not jump into it or you are risking saturating your backlog with random things and impeding work on The Big Thing.

Ask for help or advice very carefully. You’re sharing responsibility when asking for help. People will (unconsciously) expect you to follow their advice and become sad if you don’t. If you are not going to follow their advice — it’s better to avoid asking.

Mastering Programming

80/15/5. Spend 80% of your time on low-risk/reasonable-payoff work. Spend 15% of your time on related high-risk/high-payoff work. Spend 5% of your time on things that tickle you, regardless of payoff. Teach the next generation to do your 80% job. By the time someone is ready to take over, one of your 15% experiments (or, less frequently, one of your 5% experiments) will have paid off and will become your new 80%. Repeat.

Why Coda Believes The Future of Software is Documents and Makers

Now it makes me want to use Coda too. Hackmd really made my life easier. i can’t imagine if coda, essentially an all in one web app for office tools, could do the same or even better.

Startups

The 20-min Term Sheet

Capital for ecommerce startups. This is genius.