Young Reacts #76 - Is Your Culture Too Nice?
My org decided to take last Thursday and Friday off to make the long week (it’s Memorial weekend in the U.S.) even longer. I have been working hard on my current project, and I desperately needed the break. Though I wish I were able to finish the project before the break, I am glad we have this.
The off days feel different when your entire team is off. As I know no one else is working, I don’t feel FOMO (fear of missing out). I still thought about work on Thursday but my mind was no longer preoccupied with work and truly recharge by Friday. I am fortunate that the leadership at the company values proper recovery, and puts these day-offs in place.
If you see your team suffer from prolonged work from home, try taking a day off together.
Photo by Drew Coffman on Unsplash
Software Engineering 🌐
Product for Internal Platforms - Camille Fournier
As I work on tools for internal users, I see the similar problems listed here as well. Our user base is too small to get meaningful metrics, and our tool is often the only way to do the work. That makes it hard to see if we are truly meeting our users’ needs, which means we need to put extra effort to listen to our users.
I also appreciate the reminder to think about the migration strategies early. When our stakeholders already keep all their data in Google Sheets or Airtable, data migration becomes a real hurdle for adoption.
Visual Studio Live Share Extension - Microsoft
When I pair programmed over Google Meet, my eyes started hurting after an hour since the code on the shared screen was barely legible. Instead of sending pixels over the wire, this extension just syncs your and your partner’s VS Code together. It is just as revolutionary as Figma for remote working sessions.
Responsively - Manoj Vivek
Without proper tooling, a responsive layout often becomes an afterthought. This tool will help with that. If you would like more support, there is a commercial app that solves the same problem as well.
People ❤
Is Your Culture Too Nice? - Ron Ashkenas
My worst failure mode is conflict avoidance. I have made a habit of giving positive feedback, but I still shy away from speaking personal, constructive feedback to my colleagues. With this advice, “start the conversation by saying that you are trying to get better at dealing with conflict situations,” I hope to get better at confronting issues.
More Silicon Valley Going Remote
Just the last week, Facebook, Shopify, and Coinbase announced that they are going remote-first, letting a substantial number of their employees work remotely. To me, remote-first starts with how you run your meetings, as Coinbase CEO said: “in-office folks dial into meetings separately vs. meeting in person.”
Business 💸
Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage - Ranjan Roy
This article gives a sneak peek at how 3rd party delivery services like Doordash work from a restaurant’s perspective. I am mostly surprised that these services would put up order links on Google Maps or Yelp without the restaurants’ agreements. These egregious behaviors show the pressure to grow at whatever cost to justify their valuations.
What Is Clubhouse, and Why Does Silicon Valley Care? - Wired
Clubhouse, a voice-based social app, not this project management app, got all the hype in Silicon Valley (and some $10 million from Andreessen Horowitz). I, of course, didn’t get the invitation so I read about it instead.