Issue 3

I spent this week reading posts I wrote 14 years ago - between 2008 and 2010. They are still public, but they are not tailored for this day and age. The writing style is reminiscent of someone that read too much into Dostoevsky for their own good - that with too many commas. The content also has a different feeling compared to what I am writing these days. But not just me, pretty much like everyone else. I wrote it like a diary, approaching problems that haunted me. Topics that I would consider mindless, or the opposite all together. They were raw feelings and views. The writing version of what Casey Neistat and Vblogers of a past generation did. Because barely anyone would read them, the words weren’t muzzled. These days, musings of that nature are for my eyes only.

This week the streak remains intact. I hope this continues until the end of this year. Afterwards we will see. I have also finally decided to delete my twitter - just to reinstate it a few days later. My follower count and people I follow were reset. In a prolonged death by a thousand cuts, this was my last scratch. You can find me here and you are welcome to reach out here.

Confidence - I was biased about the popularity of Product Management, so I wrote Confidence. It feels like a continuation, but it equally applies to Engineering Managers, or ICs for that matter. It touches something that it’s quite personal to me: not doing the right thing when you know you should. And there are many occasions and justifications to not do it. I feel that the main source is lack of confidence, but likely there are other factors at play.

Estimations - I breakdown my thought process on the subject. There are positive side-effects on going through the exercise, but one should toss the final number in the bin. I believe there are better ways of going about it.

IC to Manager - Promoting an IC to a manager is riddled with many challenges. I have only gone through this a couple of times in my career. There’s still a lot to explore on this subject, but unfortunately I feel I lack the experience to do so with more details and recommendations. Certainly something to touch at a later point.

Holding managers accountable - This is a topic I keep discussing with a friend of mine. This is a personal frustration he has had for many years now. There are several reasons for this, but it’s the same as if they were an IC: it’s their manager’s fault. Invariability, if someone is not doing well, you can always go up the chain of command to find the reason.

Writing - Is a meta post about writing. The force pushing me towards it and the selfish reason why I do it. It also has a beautiful paragraph taken from here:

Writing is the ultimate test of whether your thoughts make sense or are merely gut feelings. Feelings about why something is the way it is don’t need to be questioned or analyzed in your head because they feel good and you don’t want to rock the boat. Putting thoughts onto paper forces them into an unforgiving reality where you have to look at the words as the same symbols another reader will see them as, unaided by the silent crutch of gut feelings.

Holding managers accountable (part2) - Is a reply to a private challenge posed by the same friend: why is it more difficult to evaluate managers, compared to ICs. I have hope that I won’t have to touch this topic in the near future.

Until next time.