Only New Mistakes

Layoff Journal Week 31 – Scarcity

The scarcity of jobs for senior engineering leaders like myself, recruiters, and so many others has been palpable all year. For many, myself included, this is the first time in their career they’ve experienced an economy like this. Other industries are used to the boom-bust cycle, but tech has long been resilient. The zero interest rate policy phenomenon (7m read time if you’re unfamiliar) created a hyper-growth cycle with easy money combined with high leverage opportunities in software that was not sustainable, and we’re experiencing a correction. We’re seeing scarcity in money, job openings, and access to resources like AI for the first time in many years.

Woman in a sweater and a beanie staring at two paths in a corn maze. — Photo by Burst on Unsplash

Scarcity can create an impulse for change, see layoffs, budgets, and reorgs focused on efficiency. But scarcity can also create a negative mindset, focusing the mind on what it doesn’t have and driving lower-quality decisions or distracting from important long-term planning with short-term needs. As a job seeker in this environment, it’s easy to slip into a scarcity mentality, focusing on your finances, job prospects, skills, and more. We’ll dig into ways to overcome and leverage this personally and professionally below.

Scarcity in the Numbers

9,000 – 14,000 Nokia employees to be laid off, up to 16% of their workforce, from their Mobile Networks, Cloud, and Network Services divisions. Source

100% of employees of Convoy to be let go as the company shuts down due to drops in the freight market and monetary tightening. Source

8.9 million tech workers according to the CompTIA “State of the Tech Workforce” report, of which around 250,000 have been laid off in 2023 – source, source

Work Scarcity

A lot of the advice for dealing with and overcoming a scarcity mindset can be very self-help-y, so these seven tips (3m read time for just the tips, or 14m for a deeper exploration into scarcity mindset’s causes and impact for anyone looking for a more profound read,) are a quick reminder of the ways to be taking care of ourselves. Thinking of those of you still on the full-time job hunt, knowing your budget, and remembering to take time for yourself amongst all the job applications and (hopefully) interviews is the key. Connecting with others who will encourage and lift you is excellent. I know the market still stinks for many folks, but please remember this isn’t about your skills and abilities; it’s a business cycle, and you will be in demand again (hopefully soon!).

Scarcity at Work

While a deep-seated scarcity mentality is a negative, as a manager, creating some sense of scarcity at work can be helpful. Let me give an example. By forcing teams to work with fewer engineers, QA, or DevOps support than they believe they need, they are forced to prioritize the features they take on ruthlessly. Teams will automate tedious tasks to reduce their impact on the team’s time. Taking on only the most essential or impactful product features and reducing the overhead of running the team means a much higher return on investment (ROI) from the team (especially when you factor in that employees are often the top cost for organizations.)

Now, you can take this too far and create too much scarcity. The team, starved of the resources it needs to invest for the future, makes only short-term decisions. Or, feeling that they’re not in the growth and profit center for the organization, employees begin to look for other roles, teams, or companies where they are empowered to have more impact.

You can see it’s a balancing act of supporting teams and challenging them to drive a healthy ROI from each team. Of course, how you measure ROI for teams is as varied as the teams you manage. Customer-facing teams will be able to track customer experience and impact quickly. Internal platform teams must track their value based on enabling others or reducing risk. You get the idea.

Fun

Two halloweeen jack-o-lantern buckets of candy on a white background. Caption: Make sure to examine your child’s candy, removing anything odd or suspicious and put it aside to bring into work to share tomorrow.

Pumpkins stacked like a snowman with scratches across the middle pumpkin and a jack-o-lantern face on the top one. Stick arms are holding pumpkin entrails and a white pumpkin flesh type face. In front of this is a smashed pumpkin. Caption: come at me bro

Caption: You’ve heard of Elf on the Shelf, now get ready for …

Photo of a bowl of jello with a spoon and a few cherries. On top of the jello is a small skelton. A skeleton on gelatin.

Final Words

If I can help with your search, please contact me. Please give me feedback on what you like or don’t care for in this newsletter, and I’ll adjust. For total transparency, I have no affiliation with any of the tools, companies, or resources I share. These are my impressions, not colored by any outside influences.

Layoff Journal Week 30 – Time

October 18, 2023

Time is the most precious commodity in the world. Money can be earned and spent, but we can earn money, gain love, find enjoyment, or fulfill our purpose with time. And yet, we all have experienced the feeling of having too little time. I’ve felt it several times throughout my job search and feel it especially acutely right now as I am starting back into (contract) work.

A glowing, golden clock showing the hours in roman numerals set against a black background. — Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash

I was reminded recently of 15five.com in a discussion with other engineering leaders. 15five was a tool I used at Indeed nearly every week over the seven years I was there. Planning each week’s goals and documenting my progress towards them (as well as larger quarterly projects) gave me a clear sense of progress. I haven’t been nearly as regular about documenting my progress or goals throughout the job search, and now fractional work. I have a growing feeling that I’m not delivering enough, that I’m not doing enough, and that the work world is passing me by. I want to bring back some of that rigor to my day and my weeks as we wrap up the end of the year.

Time to think about the numbers

660, 50%, 28% – LinkedIn employees, percent of Bandcamp employees, and percent of StackOverflow employees laid off in the last few days. Source, source, source

4,744 people laid off, as tracked on layoffs.fyi, to date in October, exceeding September, with still almost half the month to go. source

Time Sensitive Tip

For those who received Texas unemployment (other states may have similar processes,) as I understand it, they withheld your first week of unemployment payment, also known as a “waiting week.” Once you have received two times your weekly benefit and return to work or have exhausted your benefits, you can request the “waiting week” payment. So, if you benefits have run out or you have returned to work, take a look.

Time Management

There are countless articles on the internet about time management. The “Getting Things Done” (GTD) methodology has always been a favorite of mine, but the thing it never helped me manage was calendar creep. In the seven years I was with Indeed I had to declare calendar bankruptcy (4 min read, or: deleting or declining all recurring meetings and re-adding only those that were truly necessary) multiple times. Part of that was due to my increasing scope within the organization as my team grew from four to over 80, but part of it is the proliferation of calendars as the arbiter of our attention. I’m about to institute a no-meetings day for my own personal benefit. Thankfully I don’t really have many recurring meetings at this point to clean out.

Fun

A person holding a treat out for their "chair" — https://chaos.social/@julialuna/110265069750585245

Layoff Journal Week 29 – Post-Season

October 9, 2023

My heart is breaking for all of those hurting across Israel & Gaza today. I’m praying that your families are safe, stay safe, and for a fast resolution to the conflict.

Baseball started the post-season this week, and it has some striking similarities for folks who’ve been laid off several weeks (or more). The stakes continue to increase, the losses are more crushing, and it has to end eventually. Personally, the long-term job search continues even as I balance a consulting job and an equity-only (for now) startup role. It is a bit of short-term relief and a chance to grow some skills, which is good but takes up a lot of time that would otherwise be spent networking and job searching. It’s still a balancing act, as I don’t see myself staying a long-term consultant.

a home plate with chalked batters boxes surrounding it in the dirt. — Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash

Just like in baseball, we’re all just trying to get home. We’re trying to find the next great job we can lean into, which will reward us for our hard work. My job search strategy has been like my favorite baseball strategy: small ball. Rather than swinging for the fences and hoping for a home run (or a strikeout) every time, my goal has been to have lots of things going simultaneously. Networking with laid-off coworkers and those currently working to stay aware of opportunities. Job searches on LinkedIn, Indeed, Otta, Google, and more each day. Applying to roles quickly after finding them. Polishing my resume. Each of these things feels like a single, a swing, or a bunt. Enough to keep momentum going to find the next role.

The consulting, the startup, and the training course I’m developing are more like home run swings. They have the chance to dramatically change the course of the next few years of my career. But I’m not banking on them (yet). They’re enabling me to develop new skills while I keep the job search running.

Post-Season Blues

3X more mentions of reassignment (or similar terms) in earnings calls year over year (signs of companies quiet cutting) source

Round 2+ of layoffs for some tech companies are showing some traction (Meta, Amazon/Twitch, Block, and others are named) source

300,000+ people laid off in the last 12 months, but tech employment is still above the pre-pandemic trendline source

Post-Season Parties

I missed this when it came out in June, but some laid-off people have taken to throwing parties to celebrate, commiserate, reconnect, and enjoy life in general (7 min read). This sounds like a ton of fun, and while I’m late to the game, having a small get-together sounds very cathartic. Let me know if you’re in the Austin area and up for a small soiree sometime, and I’ll see what I can do. At the very least, it’s an excuse to get out and drink with a few friends for an evening.

Playoff Level Loyalty is Earned Through Change Management

One of the biggest accomplishments I had the privilege of taking part in while at Indeed was rolling out updates to the performance management system for all of Product, Technology, and Engineering (approximately 4,000 people.) I could speak at length about the design and implementation of performance management systems, but I wanted to spend a few words on change management today. Performance management affects promotions, bonuses, compensation, and much more, so getting the communication right on the change was critical. I’ll dive deeper into this topic in a future post, but here’s the headline version on general concepts for change management.

The first thing you must clarify is the purpose of the change. If leadership is unclear on the “why,” there’s a significant risk of losing steam, going off the rails, or a million other failure scenarios. Writing down the goals and the non-goals and wrestling with leaders’ concerns will drive clarity and alignment on the purpose.

Once the vision and motivation are locked in, it’s time to plan and execute the communication. This is the time to think about “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them.” Multiple communications, in multiple formats, and from multiple leaders will be necessary (of course, depending on the size of the team and change.)

Lastly, you’ve got to lock in the people side of the change. You’ll have promoters and detractors. Getting ahead of the detractors and working closely with them to resolve or reduce their concerns helps speed the transition. Identifying your promoters and keeping them aligned with the goals and communication amplifies your message and reduces the workload of your leadership team. Lastly, empowering managers throughout your organization to answer questions, share the messages, and execute the change cements the change as the “new normal.”

Getting the purpose, communication, and people right in change management gives you the best chance of successfully rolling out organizational change and growing the trust and loyalty of your team.

Fun

Man in a Mike Meyers halloween mask standing on a porch next to a jack-o-lantern, labeled “waiting for halloween be like:” Second picture: a weeks old jack-o-lantern, labeled “When you’ve had a rough year abut you’re trying hard to enjoy Halloween.”

Four chairs, three with ghosts, the fourth has a speech bubble, “guys, I forgot my sheet but I’m here.”

Ryan Reynolds representing Aviation Gin talking about pumpkin spice season. — https://www.today.com/video/ryan-reynolds-latest-aviation-gin-ad-calls-out-pumpkin-spice-193182789766

Final Words

Layoff Journal Week 28 – Traditional Holiday

October 3, 2023

Welcome to the holiday season. For those still searching for a job, it’s bittersweet. Thankfully, the holiday season is more stretched than ever, and we’re only starting the Halloween season, so it is still very early. Still, the thought of not having a full-time role lined up before Christmas has been looming over my head for a few weeks. I’m thankful to have the opportunity to take up a contract role and I recognize that not everyone has that opportunity, but the holidays are still in the back of my mind. My advice is to keep the holiday plan as normal as possible. Those traditions are the baseline for memories, and while this has been a dark year for many, having a bit of light at the end of the year can be a lift.

Two jack-o-lanterns on a black background and a reflective black floor. — Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash

I love this time of year. The weather finally starts to cool off, baseball is into the post-season (even if my team didn’t make it this year), and the joy of kids anticipating the costumes, candy, and presents is a great way to wrap up each year. Expect more sentimentality than usual from me here for the next few months.

Non-traditional Numbers

4,632 more people were laid off in September, down from the high of nearly 90,000 back in January. source

83,328 job ads for software engineering jobs were posted on LinkedIn last week, a weakening number but still better than the low point in Q2. source

45% of those laid off were women, while women only represent 39% of the workforce overall (thus they were overrepresented in layoffs) source

Busy, Busyness, Business

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”

— Michael Altshuler

Talking with laid-off teammates, they mention being busier than ever, even without a full-time job. I have had the same experience. Between job searching, filing for unemployment, networking, interviewing, exploring contract work, and all the daily life work of raising a family, the days are long, but the weeks are short. It’s critical to pay attention to where the time is going and look for ways to a) stay busy on things that progress my knowledge or career, b) avoid being overly committed and too busy to be available, and c) keep looking for the new opportunities on the horizon and cultivating them.

I’ve enjoyed more time for family life and getting my hands deep into code again for the first time in years. Starting a consulting business provides excellent opportunities to learn the broader parts of running a company I’ve only ever brushed up against previously. The trick has been choosing which events and activities to say no to. It’s still a real struggle and an area for improvement.

Focus Fuels Velocity

Staying in the theme of team principles that we operated the Indeed Incubator under, we had an unrelenting focus on delivering new products as efficiently and as effectively as we could. We very rarely allowed teams to have multiple distinct product bets going at the same time, instead focusing them on the one they thought was most likely to produce the outsized outcome we were looking for.

Having one key thing to work on helps teams to be laser focused on the most important thing. It also helps leaders as they lay out the priorities. Having only one thing to change at a time is clarifying to the team. It makes it clear that anything else is, at best, second priority. When we set a clear focus we clear away the cobwebs of the other things that could be distracting us.

This doesn’t have to be hard (but often it is). Establishing a clear objective and the key results you’re going to use to measure the success isn’t difficult on its own. It becomes difficult when you see that you have 10 objectives and an average of seven key results for each. First, you’ve got to narrow down the objectives. Three at the most per team and generally these are rolling up to higher level objectives, each time increasing in breadth & depth, but still only around three in total per level.

Next the key results have to be reduced. Again, to avoid the problem of too many things to track, you reduce the number of measures to approximately three as well. This will give you approximately nine key metrics per team feeding into three overall objectives. The other important part here is to avoid vanity metrics. Each of these results should be a measure of how your business or product is improving, not just a number that’s moving or a feature that’s delivered.

Fun

Black cat staring into the camera with kitchen in the background.

Caption: The cat definitely wrote the headline and subhead

Headline: ‘Her cat’ alerts owner to burning slow cooker in the middle of the night.

Subheading: Supposed guard dog, meanwhile, offered little help

Picture of a woman holding two chocolate bars with bites out of them. Caption “Every time I avoid eating Halloween candy I reward myself by eating Halloween candy.”

Caption:

me: takes spider web down with a broom.

Me: hangs up fake spider web for halloween.

Picture:

Man in plaid shirt with a puffy vest staring unimpressed/peturbed at the camera with others behind him, labeled “the spider.”

Final Words

Layoff Journal Week 27 – Shifting

September 25, 2023

As the number of people laid off drops each month and the laid-off workers returning to the workforce climbs, this newsletter will shift, too. I still want it to support those on the job hunt, mourning the loss of their role and struggling to position themselves for their next opportunity. However, increasingly, more and more of my connections are back to work. Seeing Salesforce actively recruit “boomerangs” (5 min read), Amazon and others pushing their return to office strategy (3 min read), and a new normal with AI ever present on the job (2 min read) suggests that a shifting strategy for workers is needed as well. The one constant throughout my career has been learning. Whether it’s new technologies, languages, management practices, or business models adapting to change is crucial for success (and growth.)

A gray stickshift with reverse and first through sixth gears diagrammed on top of an all-black background. — Photo by Matthias Speicher on Unsplash

As for me, I’m preparing for my next role by considering the differences between an Indeed-sized organization and the likely size of my next team. I’m reviewing skills needed to lead an entire engineering organization (where previously I had significant support from HR, Recruiting, Legal, and many more teams.) I’m also up-leveling my skills in adjacent areas like Product, User Experience, and more. Some of this is coming through practice – small contracts and self-assigned projects, some through reading, and some through talking with experts in the industry.

For example, I dove deep into starting my own business last week. I have filed for a limited liability corporation, built the initial website, and set up a basic accounting system. Welcome to the world, Simple And Done LLC. This will let me take more contracts, manage the taxes, and protect my family from unforeseen issues. It’s a new adventure and a steep learning curve, but here’s to hoping this investment pays off.

Shifting Numbers

90% of companies surveyed plan to return to office by 2024 source

3% – estimated growth of the US economy this quarter (a sign that consumer spending has still been strong even with headwinds) source

15% – estimated chance of a recession in the next 12 months by Goldman Sachs (down from the 20% estimate in July) source

Inspiring a Shift in Work

“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”—Herbert Spencer

This article in HBR pulls out four key attributes (11 min read and one incredibly unfortunate image of a baby with a sponge for a head) of those who most successfully adapt to the pace of change: aspiration, self-awareness, curiosity, and vulnerability. This line especially jumped out at me, “When confronted with new learning, this is often our first roadblock: We focus on the negative and unconsciously reinforce our lack of aspiration. When we do want to learn something, we focus on the positive—what we’ll gain from learning it—and envision a happy future in which we’re reaping those rewards.” That makes a strong case for keeping a positive attitude and looking for the best in people, processes, and change.

Vulnerability and curiosity are linked in my mind. They come from some of the same places: wondering why, being willing to ask why, and digging in to learn why. Of course, there’s a mindset portion here, too, recognizing our gaps, anticipating our struggles (or even failures), and expecting to get better.

Get Started and Get Better

I broke a rib last week pitching when a line drive struck me in the side. It’s been painful, but after a few days of resting, I realized that there was still a lot I could be doing while recovering. Getting up and moving made me feel much better both mentally (I’m getting something done,) and physically (not the rib, but other areas that were aching to move.) I have to accept my limitations and protect the rib, but getting started made it easier to get better.

“Get started and then get better” was a mantra in the Indeed Incubator and is a great way to tackle problems. It breaks down procrastination. It gets you out of analysis paralysis. It even helps you clarify what’s truly important from what simply seems important. Every beginning starts with a tiny step. Figuring out what your step is, whether it’s in your job search, your new role, or a new project in an old role is the key. The Lean methodology would have you look for the most significant risk and take the first (or the next) step to mitigate, reduce, or learn more about that. That momentum applied every day will easily overcome even the most daunting tasks.

Fun

Photo of an old CD-ROM Drive labeled “Works, but makes Sad Noises” — Me too, sometimes.

Old time sketch of a woman walking away, caption: I’m suspicious of a holiday solely devoted to a man’s inability to ask for directions. — Among other things…

Final Words

Chapter 4: Engineering Tools (part 1 – Team Size)

September 21, 2023

Scaling Innovation No Comments

There are a lot of engineering techniques that are not specific to running a Disruptive Innovation team. Still, continually guiding these teams to be relentlessly focused on producing business value has made a handful of tricks worth sharing. Boiling it down, the focus is on the value of the product being delivered, on learning more about the market and reducing the risk that one or more of our assumptions about this product are incorrect. We’ve already covered A/B testing and other experimentation tools, but there’s so much more to it than that.

Team Size

We first need to address the optimal team size for Disruptive Innovation teams. Jeff Bezos and Amazon are famous for their two-pizza teams, meaning two pizzas would feed the entire team, and this is a good thought. Assuming everyone eats, on average, two slices, and each pizza has about eight pieces, we’re sitting with about eight team members. But let’s break that down a bit more. If we have eight spots on the team to fill, we’ll start with one Product Manager, User Experience Designer, Marketing partner, and one representative from Sales. That leaves us just four spots to fill, and depending on the product you’re trying to build, perhaps four engineers is the correct number. If you have other disciplines that need to be involved in the development, say Legal, Program, Client Success, etc., you may have fewer “seats” for Engineers, and perhaps that’s OK. However, if we get to a place where we feel less than two engineers is necessary, we should seriously reconsider whether we need a full-time engineering team.

A team of one is no team at all. Adding a second engineer helps with a few different things. First, it encourages higher-quality code reviews. If the code reviewer for your application’s changes is not regularly involved in the deployment and maintenance of the product, they may cut some corners or allow the team to ship code that isn’t thoroughly thought out. Beyond that, having a second engineer on the team enables either of the engineers to take time off and not feel guilty that the product is not advancing. Of course, you can have more than two engineers on a team, but it should almost always be your lowest level of investment in any Disruptive Innovation team.

There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes, it’s helpful to start without any engineers at all on the team. For example, if you have quality low-code/no-code tools to test assumptions. Other times, you may have a strong indication from the market that this will be a high-stakes product, and you want to start with a larger team to lay down solid platform components as you launch this new product. The key is to strike a healthy balance between the team size you need to move the product forward successfully without allowing the team to become too large too early and get bogged down in communication and other processes.

We regularly consider the team size and Metcalfe’s Law: “The value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system.” Said another way, you add N more communication points for every person you add to an N-person team. As an example, if you have a four-person team, you have only six points of communication (A->B, B->C, C->D, D->A, A->C, and B->D), but adding another person, E, add’s four more lines of communication (A, B, C, and D now each need to communicate with E) bringing the total lines of communication to 10. Every additional line of communication has a potential for mistakes or translation errors between the start and end of a discussion.

Let’s take an example. Suppose Product Manager A is planning a new feature and has the experiment specification. First, they must communicate that with the Designer, B, and get their input. A & B then need to share their ideas with the developers who’ll build this feature, C & D. Once C & D finish building the feature, they can quickly confirm it’s correct with A and usable with B, and then ship it to production. Simple as can be. With only six lines of communication and the ease of fitting everyone into a tiny room, office, or Zoom call, you can efficiently communicate and deliver software.

Now, instead, imagine we have a Product Manager A, Designer B, five Engineers (C through G), two QA engineers (H & I), and two Release Engineers (J & K). Now, we have 55 possible communication points, some more used than others, but all are still available. Any of these points of communication can introduce noise into the transmission, which can result in either a need for repeated communication or a mistake being delivered. Perhaps a misunderstanding in the requirements for the feature was introduced by one of the engineers, or a change in the requirements along the way was not captured, and the QA engineers flagged it as a bug. No matter what the miscommunication is, you can see that the opportunity for miscommunication has risen incredibly, and you can also imagine that it results in more time taken for the feature to be delivered. To help mitigate this, you might consider standardizing the communication processes, e.g., the Product Manager writes down what they’re proposing, the UX designer captures mockups in a graphical tool, Engineers produce design reviews or other specifications, QA writes test plans, etc. These are practical tools; however, they are supplemental deliverables that have increased the time required to deliver a feature as you generate more and more metadata about the feature to live alongside it. Still, they do not directly provide any business value in and of themselves.

Layoff Journal Week 26 – Multitasking

September 18, 2023

Lacking one full-time job, I’ve been exploring nearly every opportunity that has presented itself. It has sometimes felt like the most aggressive multitasking I’ve done in my career. Here’s a snapshot: I’ve taken a role with an unfunded startup, building the first product and preparing it for launch. I’m preparing for a contract to help a founding team take their idea to a place where they can explore product market fit. I’m meeting with other founders who need support for their outsourcing team. Oh yeah, and I’m searching for full-time jobs, too, which means I’ve applied and interviewed for positions ranging from Director of Engineering to CTO and everything in between. (All of that, and on the personal side, I’m networking to stay connected, coaching a team of 13 and 14-year-old boys in baseball, and all of the other “little things” it takes to keep a family running smoothly…OK, somewhat smoothly.)

four antique keys lying on a crosshatched background. — Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

I don’t say this to brag about my multitasking ability or my in-demand skills. I’ve been fortunate to be presented with these opportunities and am thankful for them. I mention it because I’ve read others’ stories of the same challenges, and more and more people I’ve met are piecing together a new balance like this. I don’t think it’s the new normal or a long-term solution (at least for me), but it has been a chance to grow new skills, reflect, and give back.

Multitasking Economy Numbers (up and down simultaneously)

6pm – the new dinnertime in Meta offices as perks like meals, snacks, shirts, and happy hours return to more regular budgets source

27% Airtable’s latest layoff (following a 20% cut last December.) source

3,300 new roles opening across Salesforce (after their January layoff of ~8,000 people) source

Resume Work

I mentioned a few weeks ago the value of resume reviews. After two excellent reviews by generous friends who have profound knowledge of how to make a resume readable by the applicant tracking systems (ATS), distinguishable from others, and a strong representation of my skills, it is in a much better state. Since Indeed offered ex-Indeedians a free resume review, I decided to get their additional feedback. Overall, it was a good review, and if I hadn’t already had such great feedback, it would have likely been priceless. I strongly recommend getting a professional resume review if you haven’t already done so.

One caveat. Even with the updated resume, I have not seen any apparent difference in my job search application response rate. I’m trying to find the right measure to understand what impact this has had. Still, at a minimum, the push to make my accomplishments more tangible and data-driven has also brought confidence and clarity in my interviews.

Overhiring and Avoiding Overhiring

This read on overhiring (14m read) has both points that resonate for me and takeaways that I strongly disagree with. Still, I appreciate the comprehensiveness and clear action items for engineering leaders. A few key notes:

The concept (albeit unfortunately named) of a “people buffer” – having new hires available to fill roles – is excellent, as long as you have a clear picture of the work to come and strong prioritization.
The difficulty of seeing overhiring from the outside vs. the internal measures that suggest overhiring is occurring.
Silos help reduce overhiring, clarifying ownership and accountability likely at the cost of innovation.

Fun

A Midas, auto service experts sign, with the custom letter sign saying “Pumpkin spice oil changes are back”

Two posts back to back on Mastodon.

The first, “Apple has Thunderbolt and Lightning ports Logically, today’s big announcment is Very Very Frightening ports”

The second “Life tips for tech folks:

schedule a technical interview ith Amazon.

don’t show up

text the hiring manager every fifteen minutes, showing your new location and “one stop away”

Final Words

Layoff Journal Week 25 – Darkest Before the Dawn

September 11, 2023

Last week was a rollercoaster. It came complete with the highs of being at the final stages for only the second time and coaching my son’s baseball team to their season-opening win, along with the low of hearing that the offer went to another candidate. Since then, however, I’ve successfully shipped the MVP iOS and Android applications for the startup I’ve been working with (both firsts for me) and started mid-stage conversations with a few more employers. This fall is shaping up to be very busy and hopefully productive.

A sunrise over a pitch black land, fading up into a red and then blue sky. — Photo by dominik hofbauer on Unsplash

It’s hard to confidently say this is leading to a sunrise because I certainly cannot predict the future, but the traction feels good after so many weeks of waiting on interviews, feedback, and decisions. Either way, I’ve got work to do, and the days and weeks feel short.

A Mixture of Dark & Dawn Numbers

5+ tech IPOs are looming later this year, signaling some investment and increasing multiples. source

$2,000-$10,000 lost revenue per small business during the Square outage last week source (a gut punch to the small businesses, and Square as well.)

16.6.1 A critical security patch for iOS (similarly available for WatchOS and iPadOS) to remove zero-day exploits from the Apple platforms. source

Dark Encouragement

This will be hard to hear (or do) for some folks, but I will look for jobs on Indeed.com this week. I had written it off as a platform that didn’t have the roles I was looking for, but with my lack of traction on LinkedIn, Otta, and others, it now feels foolish to ignore the dominant player in the online jobs space completely. For many ex-Indeedians, this may be a bridge too far, so my encouragement is to step back and assess what is and is not working and make a change. For me, that’s trying Indeed. For you, it could be giving “spray and pray” a chance (2m read). Or something else entirely. Whatever it is, if you’ve reached layoff week 25 (or more), it’s time to, once again, try something new. Let me know what you try and whether it works!

Developing Velocity

I know it’s en vogue to dunk on McKinsey (after their article “Yes, you can measure software developer productivity” – source). There have been several well-thought-out critiques (15m read), criticisms (14m read), and supplements (10m read) to that article. I won’t take it apart piece by piece, and my goal is not to re-present any of the arguments laid out in those articles. However, given that Indeed did have a unique system of measuring developer productivity through Hindsight (developer productivity index), Peregrine (team productivity index), Delivery-Lead-Time (metric, like cycle time, measuring time from ideation to value creation), and more, I think it’s worth capturing what made that work and where it failed.

It’s natural and, honestly, completely reasonable to try to figure out how to measure developer productivity. Indeed’s systems of measuring code commits, code reviews, tickets completed, impact, time from ticket creation to release, bugs escaped, and more made the team a very data-driven organization. As long as that data remained data, we were okay. Data is not the same thing as information. Information is the derivative of data. You use data and the rate of change in that data to understand something about a system or a person. Information derives into knowledge or meaning that can guide decision-making. And eventually, you can distill this even further into wisdom, which gives you the ability to make educated guesses about the future.

Capturing the data and metrics isn’t bad. It makes it easier for managers to ask questions and learn about their developers and teams. But it isn’t blameless either. That same data makes it easier for managers to give out rewards based on arbitrary effort metrics (e.g. lines of code or the likes.) On the whole, having the measures is a win for the company, but only when coupled with a relentless focus on impact (e.g. outcomes, revenue, percent speed improvements, scalability, security, etc.) and strong coaching that avoids the easy trap of metrics based management.

Fun

Caption: returning to the office after a year of working home like

Picture of E.T. dressed in a wig, hat, dress, etc.

Final Words

Layoff Journal Week 24 – Stalemate

September 5, 2023