Tag: Workplace Culture

Are your values a motivational poster or a battle standard.

Are your company values a boring motivational poster stuck on the wall, or a battle standard that you lead your team under? Company values, we’ve all seen them, every company has them. Large companies spend significant amounts of money, defining a nice need set of principles and company morals. They…

Are you building straight, white, male, middle-class products for straight, white, male, middle-class people?

Quit worrying about what your git branch is called and hire for diversity already. The tech industry has a diversity problem. I think by now that we’re all in agreement on that. If you don’t agree then grab a notepad and draw two columns. Then throughout the day for every…

The Working From Home Killer Tip No One Is Talking About.

Everyone is talking about their great tips for ‘Working From Home’ but there is one killer tool we’re not talking about. I avoided for a long time jumping on the bandwagon and writing a post about working from home in the ‘new normal’. It’s been done to death, and I…

10x Team Killers. A Single Point of Failure.

10x developers are a risk I’m not willing to take. They are not a sustainable rock to build your team on. We are still talking about 10x developers, rockstars, and ninjas. If you find one, you can keep them. Rockstars are notoriously well known for their egotistical diva-like expectations, throwing…

Why I built Titlify: Job Title Hyper Inflation

I built a spoof job listing site, Titlify, as a protest about the industries’ problem with job title hyperinflation. Why did I do that? A few months ago, I built a spoof job listing site, Titlify. But why would I waste so much time on creating a spoof job…

Stuck in the Middle (Management) With You.

Middle management isn’t sexy, but it’s essential. It’s not a dirty word. I’m a middle manager and I’m proud. When I started my career at the turn of the century, middle management was perceived to be a dirty word, a word that expressed incompetence and inefficiency. At the time they…

Feedback: Be a little German, Be a little American.

Giving feedback is hard; giving good feedback is even harder. What can we learn from the alternating extremes of German and American feedback cultures? What people say and what they mean. People sayAmericansBritishGermanIt’s needs some work.You’re fired.Please put this in the bin.Fine.It’s acceptable.Please don’t make me call human resources.Needs some…