Victor Loux Bookmarks Tag: work

110 bookmarks tagged “work

Pursuits That Can’t Scale

workingtheorys.com/p/pursuits-that-cant-scale
“Society tends to paint a picture that the final act of every big dreamer’s journey is in scaling up to unimaginable heights, but I think it’s the opposite – it’s actually in scaling back down after trying to reach the proverbial top. Make time to pursue things that can’t scale. I’d bet it does you as much good as ‘real’ therapy ever could”

A Collection of Design Engineers

maggieappleton.com/design-engineers
Collecting people I know who work at the intersection of design and engineering, in an attempt to figure out what a design engineer is

The Power of Small Wins

hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins
Reprint: R1105C What is the best way to motivate employees to do creative work? Help them take a step forward every day. In an analysis of knowledge workers’ diaries, the authors found that nothing contributed more to a positive inner work life (the mix of emotions, motivations, and perceptions that is critical to performance) than making progress in meaningful work. If a person is motivated and happy at the end of the workday, it’s a good bet that he or she achieved something, however small. If the person drags out of the office disengaged and joyless, a setback is likely to blame. This progress principle suggests that managers have more influence than they may realize over employees’ well-being, motivation, and creative output. The key is to learn which actions support progress—such as setting clear goals, providing sufficient time and resources, and offering recognition—and which have the opposite effect. Even small wins can boost inner work life tremendously. On the flip side, small losses or setbacks can have an extremely negative effect. And the work doesn’t need to involve curing cancer in order to be meaningful. It simply must matter to the person doing it. The actions that set in motion the positive feedback loop between progress and inner work life may sound like Management 101, but it takes discipline to establish new habits. The authors provide a checklist that managers can use on a daily basis to monitor their progress-enhancing behaviors.

Career Advice

moxie.org/2013/01/07/career-advice.html
To my great surprise, young people now somewhat frequently contact me in order to solicit career advice.They are usually in college or highschool, and want to know what the best next steps are for a career in security or software development.This is, honestly, a really complicated question, mostl...

my new manager is someone I slept with years ago ... and he doesn't know we have a child

askamanager.org/2023/10/my-new-manager-is-someone-i-slept-with-years-ago-and-he-doesnt-know-we-have-a-child.html
A reader writes: The backstory: I went back to university in my late 20s to do my PhD, and shared an office with a few other students for many years. One

some weird tricks for working faster

chiefofstuff.substack.com/p/some-weird-tricks-for-working-faster
Hi. FYI, I’ll be cross-posting to my blog karlyang.net, where you can find other writing that won’t appear on Substack. The basic theory here is that, most of the time, dependencies slow you down. There are ways to ac/decelerate the process that are problem-agnostic. Usually, you are communicating back and forth with other people until you have reached some form of mutually acceptable agreement, and there are ways to do that faster.

Column: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you | Reuters

reuters.com/article/us-column-great-debate/column-why-a-medieval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you-idUKBRE97S0KU20130829
Life for the medieval peasant was certainly no picnic. His life was shadowed by fear of famine, disease and bursts of warfare. His diet and personal hygiene left much to be desired. But despite his reputation as a miserable wretch, you might envy him one thing: his vacations...

Get It Done

boz.com/articles/get-it-done
Too often people do the best they can with what they have when they should instead get it done

AI as intern

austinkleon.com/2023/03/22/ai-as-intern/
Kevin Kelly making the case for AI.

How to plan? | Kellan Elliott-McCrea

kellanem.com/notes/how-to-plan
Let’s also set aside the question of trade-offs for the moment, except to say, trade-offs are the very heart of engineering and engineering leadership. Software as a medium is so malleable that functionally anything can be made to work. Any language, architecture, approach, style, process, etc can be made to work given sufficient effort. Meaning we find ourselves not asked to choose between right and wrong answers, but between trade-offs. 

There are three types of meetings.

camdaigle.com/posts/three-types-of-meetings/
Not more, not less – just better.# I'll go ahead and tell you this up front: my system isn't necessarily a path to having fewer meetings. After all, everyone's threshold for 'too many meetings' is different based on what helps them feel effective at their role, and every company's need for meetings is dependent upon the work they're trying to accomplish. I'm hoping this system helps you have better meetings – that the people running the meeting feel like it's worth their time to run...

The term ‘quiet quitting’ is worse than nonsense | Financial Times

ft.com/content/a09a2ade-4d14-47c2-9cca-599b3c25a33f
If your staff turn up every day, do exactly what you ask of them, but don’t go above and beyond, they are still working

Quality Is Systemic - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

jacobian.org/2022/sep/9/quality-is-systemic/
If your team is producing defective code, consider that it may not be because they all suck at their jobs. It’s probably because the environment isn’t allowing them to produce quality software.