What I'm Writing
Will Data Go Cloud Native? The tools and platforms that data professionals use are increasingly running on cloud native technology.
In the Buffer
Designing accessible color systems: As we have seen in the case of CitiBank losing a ton of money because of bad user experiences, organizations are continuing to neglect these issues at their own peril. I find this particularly interesting because I'm bad at picking colors for anything.
On a related note, fairness is a dimension of machine learning model performance.
Machine Learning, Kolmogorov Complexity, and Squishy Bunnies: Daniel Holden does a (hilarious?) walkthrough showing how machine learning can optimize on solved computational problems by reducing complexity.
Things your manager might not know: I love how Julia Evans communicates and teaches/learns in public! This post in particular caught my attention - and I think it would be great for managers to read it too. We should care about blind spots, and a known unknown is better than an unknown unknown!
How HashiCorp Works: In particular, the PRD. This is a great document, file it with: Write the Pitch.
Making Time
Stop reading this now and change your default meeting duration. I'll wait. I have time.
Over the past year, we have learned that the beat will only play faster in this game of musical chairs. We have to escape this, and become kinder to ourselves. In particular, we have to give ourselves "length".
We are all, fortunately, fine and it’s all kind of sort of working out. But, there is less than zero time for me to do anything long for myself and sit for a while in luxury at a Google doc of my own. And length, as I’ve realized, is luxury. Space and time to think, for me, as I’ve written before, is the ultimate thing I value, and when I can scale the top of that Maslow pyramid of small children at home and work and a global pandemic and make it to my sentences, then I am truly complete. — Vicki Boykis, "The Luxury of Length"
Vicki was writing about the ultimate length: with everything else set aside, to engage in intellectual pursuits. This is indeed a pinnacle of luxury. Ultimately, I don't have any business writing about how women should reclaim this kind of length, so I'm just going to speak for myself. I have to make time NOW for strategy, quality, joy, and friendship. I don't know if I'll succeed.
Strategy
One of the things I worry most about when I see zoom-overload is overemphasis on tactics. Having back to back meetings throughout the day changes your mindset - the day becomes about getting through all the meetings. Paul Graham wrote about this in Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule. The solution, I think, is to create systems and documents that net us time back, and to reinvest that time.
Writing strategies and visions saves us from rabbit holes and empowers us to prioritize, and memorializes the decision to head east instead of north. Design documents give us clarity, and let us validate requirements and approaches. Reference docs and tutorials free us from drivebys and wheel-spinning. By expansion of Eagleson's Law, everything that is not documented is less intelligible for it.
The gravity of tactical behavior is that creating these tools, documents, and strategies takes time of their own, different skills, and creativity. They take length. Worst of all, there is no promise that you will realize a net savings in your time (and if your docs are unclear then you surely won't.)
Quality
We naturally like to do things well. We take pride in that. Enjoying high quality things can take effort, study, and context. For instance, there is a limit to which I could enjoy a great wine - I have not put in the requisite study to appreciate it, I have not trained my palate to recognize its complexity, nor I have put in the forethought to pair it with a great meal.
I like to think that I can be great at a few things. That the companies I work for or build will have some competitive advantages. I'll get great pleasure out of a few things in life, I hope. I can't do that if I'm tactical all the time: only by investing can I excel, only with focus can we stand out from the competition.
Joy and Friendship
I don't want to invest my time into joyless pursuits. I have come to believe that joy, in some workplaces, is something you can invest in. Almost every working environment shares a common product: the employee experience. This is pragmatic: people do better work if you invest in joy. It's a privilege, usually, to be able to avoid joyless work, but also any work can be joyless if you aren't intentional.
The same is true for relationships. It takes time and energy. It can feel like it's coming naturally, but joyful and loving efforts often do. I have to invest in being a friend to the people who matter most. For me, sometimes that means building systems, and checklists, and habits, so that the little kindnesses don't fall by the wayside. I can be an absent minded person, and tools help me guide those investments.
Out of Time
Writing these out helped me focus on what matters. At work and at home, I have to keep investing. There's no getting around the need for tactical behavior - I'm going to check into the zoom again tomorrow. But at the same time, getting these ideas out crystalized the balancing need. I have to make time, before it's too late.