To Cohn’s point, outcomes are a trailing indicator, while outputs are a leading indicator. It would be foolish to only try to measure based on outcomes. We don’t need to pick “sides”.
Author Archives: jhoover
Put it on the blockchain (no, really)
My arsenal of blockchain jokes would seem limitless, so I’m as surprised as anyone that I’m sharing this – Garbage Pail Kids (GPK) on the blockchain. Regardless of one’s opinions about the value of “digital goods”, in 2019 $35B of digital goods were purchased in video games alone. That’s a lot of real $$$ for …
Shared: Why I think GCP is better than AWS
Both AWS and GCP are very secure and you will be okay as long as are not careless in your design. However GCP for me has an edge in the sense that everything is encrypted by default. For example their buckets and their logs are encrypted in transit and at rest. For some bizarre reason …
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Shared: Do I Need an API Gateway if I Use a Service Mesh?
I believe the confusion arises because the following: there is overlap in technologies used (proxies) there is overlap in capabilities (traffic control, routing, metric collection, security/policy enforcement, etc.) a belief that “service mesh” replaces API management a misunderstanding of the capabilities of a service mesh some service meshes have their own gateways The last bullet …
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Shared: Only 15% of the Basecamp operations budget is spent on Ruby
For a company like Basecamp, you’d be mad to make your choice of programming language and web framework on anything but a determination of what’ll make your programmers the most motivated, happy, and productive. Whatever the cost, it’s worth it. It’s worth it on a pure cost/benefit, but, more importantly, it’s worth it in terms …
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Shared: Why I Listen to Podcasts at 1x Speed
On my microblog I mentioned that I always listen to podcasts at 1x speed. Here’s why: We’re in danger, I think, of treating everything as if it’s some measure of our productivity. Number of steps taken, emails replied-to, articles read, podcasts listened-to. – Brent Simmons: Why I Listen to Podcasts at 1x Speed Same. It’s strange though, I …
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Shared: Reorganizing Product Teams
People want to know what worked well at other successful companies because there is an assumption that it might work well for them… this is understandable. But what worked at Spotify or Shopify or Stackify will not necessarily work for them. And recently, a product leader at Spotify shared that her group (and many others …
Shared: The Blue Tape List
Having been through this experience many times, I’ve discovered that a simple fix is patience. In time, that which is different will feel normal. It’s why when a team member reports moderate concerns with a new hire that I gently always ask, “When did they start?” If the answer is less than two months, I …
Shared: How to break the “senior engineer” career ceiling
Remember, your job is to help others become better versions of themselves, not to make them become you! You need to show, not tell. And use your power of influence to level others up. Help other engineers improve their decision making and their ability to execute effectively. This can be slow and challenging and 80% …
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Shared: Crypto can’t scale because of consensus … yet Amazon DynamoDB does over 45 Million TPS
Infrastructure ignorance comes at a cost. Cryptocurrency developers largely ignore the fact that the cloud exists (certainly that managed services, the most modern incarnation of the cloud, exist). This is surprising, given that the vast majority of cryptocurrency nodes run in the cloud anyway, and it almost certainly accounts for at least some of the …