We often talk about blame aware culture. Your teams are continuously working towards building a system where, among many goals, a safe and reliable system is available. When we’re surprised, incidents happen. As we’re working towards safety, and by definition these incidents are surprises, shaming folks for failure is counterproductive and instead we should celebrate the opportunity to learn more.… Read more →
Company culture can’t be understated. A big portion of what we do revolves around building exciting projects, tackling hard problems, and working with talented folks in our industry. These often constitute high pressure situations that necessitate fostering bonds between coworkers. Some folks want to clock in, sit down and work for eight hours, and then clock out without having interacted… Read more →
Imagine you’re heading down a road – biking, driving in your car, taking a walk – and you notice a trash can roll into the street. You quickly realize that any large obstruction rolling around is a potential hazard, for you and others. It’s not your trash can. It’s not your street. In fact, it’s likely that you can safely… Read more →
Note: This post is cross posted on Jeli’s blog When we think of the bands of communication that help facilitate our incidents (text chat, phone bridges, video calls), we tend to discount smaller cues, the inbetween that colors and adds depth. It may be on those video calls the notable pause when considering a problem, the tone of voice that… Read more →
I’m putting together a series on common questions candidates face in technical screens. My hope is to give folks a leg up on how they can prepare, and secondarily any screeners better understand what they’re asking and how to improve for a better signal.No question (or answer) is perfect, but that shouldn’t stop us from exploring them. Feedback and constructive… Read more →
External recruiters, also referred to as third party, contingency, or agency recruiters, differ from internal recruiters as they work for a placement firm rather than a tech company directly. They still want well qualified candidates to put in front of an interview panel, but lacking the direct integration, they instead maintain a network of companies that are looking for candidates.… Read more →
Internal recruiters, sometimes called in-house or corporate recruiters, are hired by and work exclusively for the company you’re applying to. They’ll understand the needs of the specific business closely, as they’re developing a tighter relationship being on “the inside”. Along with this, they may have a bit of a marketing aspect to their work as well to help sell the… Read more →
Best practices aren’t universal and the use of the term without deeper consideration can be problematic. They’re straightforward, simplistic answers to difficult questions. Quick answers can at times work in our favor, a way to avoid cognitive overhead and set a clear path to a solution. In fact, we regularly need shortcuts in our day to day work to be… Read more →
Job postings will likely be your first step towards getting any in-depth info about a role. You may have colleagues who can give you inside info or the company may be well known enough that you can get an idea of what you may do, but that may not give you as much about specifics. More often than not, you’re… Read more →
One of the fallacies about our collective approach to retrospectives, incident reviews, and post mortems is the belief that the entire process is a rational machine. Pour in a curated series of events, turn the handle, and out pop all of the action items that need completing to fix the world. I can’t speak to every industry that practices Resilience… Read more →