The pursuit of humane workplaces

Hey!

Two months have gone by already. I’d like to be able to sing “time goes by, so slowly”, but it feels the oppositive.

Until now, I’ve been learning about product management. This week I also went back to tech stuff. I’m currently reading Microservice Patterns, would you be interested in reading about it?

Let’s do a recap of the month:

• Wrote 4 articles on my blog: alejandronapoles.com.

• Published every working day for the last two weeks on LinkedIn. 2795 impressions, engagement is pretty low and got two followers.

• Released 4 newsletter emails.

• Completed 60% of the product management course.

In terms of creative process, habit and output, the month has been a breakthrough.

In terms of reach, there hasn’t been a massive impact or engagement as of now. It might be too soon and this is a long game, but I’m also wondering about what kind of people I’m trying to talk to and what my message is, and things I can do better.

Lastly, next month's priority is: income. I’ll be looking at freelancing primarily.

This week’s briefer:

• The pursuit of human workplaces

• Turn Up the Good

• Kent Beck and Dave Farley: Two Legends

• Off-topic: The Age of Average

The pursuit of humane workplaces

For a few years now, I’ve been reflecting about how dysfunctional many workplaces are, and how much good work we could do together, as humans, if we were to be in healthier and safer environments.

I’ve written this article as a way to let some of my thoughts onto the world. I would love to hear your take on it, your stories about dysfunctional places, or what attributes the best places you worked in had.

Turn Up the Good

Woody Zuill is one of my favourite people in the industry. He popularized software teaming (a.k.a. mob or ensemble programming): “all the brilliant minds working together on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and at the same computer.”

In his talk, Turn Up the Good, he discusses the concept of turning up the good, which means paying attention to what is working nicely and experimenting with ways to make it even better.

I highly recommend his talk. It has great thoughts about change, and one in particular I loved: “stumbling purposely and purposeful stumble”.

Kent Beck and Dave Farley: Two Legends

What can I say from this conversation about two legends of software development? Just watch it.

Kent starts the conversation with something that resonates deeply with me:

I love software development, solving complex problems, creating software and architecting it, but as time went by, I also reached Kent’s conclusion. Unless we start prioritizing the human part of the equation, we’ll be using the best tools of the future with the same challenges of today.

If you watched the conversation, what parts did you find interesting?

Off-topic

Alex Murrell writes a fantastic article about how everything’s converging into a single style across the world: cities, hipster coffee shops, Airbnb places, cars…even Instagram faces!