“My manager needs to put an ROI on everything,” an SRE leader told me at KubeCon this week. Yeah, I feel that. We know the value of SRE, smoothing all other work so that production can produce. Putting that into dollars though? It’s hard to count the cut costs of incidents that didn’t happen. Yet … Read moreSpeak So They Can Hear You
There is something puzzling about software development. It doesn’t work like many tasks, it doesn’t break down the same way. It feels strangely personal, like there’s a connection between the code and the coder, or else it goes brittle. Today I learned a word for this! Ursula Franklin was a physicist, among other things, and … Read moreSoftware development is…
Not only can things be otherwise, they already are, and it is a matter of tuning, tending, activating, connecting, and defending these processes of change that are already in the making. Nick Montgomery and carla bergman, Joyful Militancy Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2025. The system is broken, it is getting worse, and … Read moreThe world is terrible and great
OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) are a framework for validating alignment through the organization. As a company, as a department, as a team: what are we focused on this quarter? What are we trying to make true? Alignment looks nice when the team OKRs roll up to the department OKRs, and those add up to … Read moreCascading OKRs: We can do Better
Here’s a familiar 2×2, the Important & Urgent quadrants: Very early in my career, I was taught to beware the “Not Important & Urgent” quadrant. I’m used to working in the “Important & Urgent” quadrant most of the time, getting the important stuff done just on time. This is the quadrant of productivity. A friend … Read moreProductivity v Impact
I think of “command and control” as one thing. Is there a difference? That common phrase notwithstanding, command and control are two alternative structures, more opposites than synonyms! Command (like in the military) allocates responsibilities to parts of the hierarchy. So a general is tasked with winning a war, and each officer under them is … Read moreCommand vs Control
When Honeycomb was a small company, All Hands meetings had announcements and discussions. Discussions mostly took place in the meeting chat, where everyone can answer anyone’s question. Between that and the announce channel in Slack, information got out to the whole company. Or did it? It’s hard to check for understanding in that big a … Read moreCommunication Structures in a Growing Organization
In a startup that sells software, what is the “business” side of the company? When I worked in retail, developing software for internal use, there was a clear division between the engineering teams in IT and the Business, where people understood retail products and how to run a store. But now that I’m in a … Read moreWho turns software into money? GTM
The court system is not created for “justice” as we tend to think about it. It’s a system that can only enforce the laws created by legislators whose interests often don’t align with the most vulnerable who are looking to be protected by the court. Sarah Galloway, Staff Attorney, Arch City Defenders … something something … Read moreFear and participation
Sometimes my calendar looks like an LA freeway: 100% utilization, ultimate deadlock. This is not one of those times. November through January are quiet at my current job, no big launches or deadlines. I can take a breath. My instinct is to fill it. Sign up for more! Commitments! Deadlines! Quick, pull in the next … Read moreEnabling Gaps