EN 22: Back from hiatus

Hey there,

After taking a small break, let’s continue with the newsletter. There are some interesting articles this week:

• 7 myths about hiring a diverse, equitable, inclusive team

• Continuous user research in 11.6 seconds

• Stuck in The Valley of “Doing OK”

This newsletter comes late, as the previous ones. What I’ve been doing in the past editions, for the long essays, is to sit down and start writing about a topic that I had in mind for an hour or two on Friday morning. After trying this for a bit, I’ve realised that the essays grow bigger, as I think of new things or go back and rewrite some parts. My conclusion is that a) I should write more frequently and in shorter chunks of time, or b) write on Thursday for a few hours and continue on Friday if needed. But not today.

Talking about writing, I was shocked to know that some of the people who have interviewed me have read some of my blog posts. In particular, they mentioned: The search for DevOps Engineers and The pursuit of humane workplaces. At those moments is when I think that I should write more frequently, not only because of enjoyment but because putting yourself out in the world has some potential benefits.

Going back to the interviews, the market is definitely in a weird situation, as we’ve seen from the numerous lay-offs in big companies. A few companies stopped the hiring process until further investment rounds or to reassess their situation. Comparing this period with the last time I interviewed, it was way easier to find a job a year or two ago. Another thing to notice is that little to no company did pair or ensemble programming, followed great practices like Trunk-based Development or Continuous Delivery. In contrast, most of them have commonalities, for example: developers work independently and in parallel, teams doing some kind of Scrum and focusing on rituals, branches galore. It reminds me of something John Cutler said once, paraphrasing: